Union Jack Patent Calculator

This calculator works out the full cost and return on a Union Jack Patent, where nine moneyline picks arranged in a 3x3 grid are combined into eight lines, and every line is played as its own Patent of three singles, three doubles, and a treble.

What Is a Union Jack Patent?

A Union Jack Patent plays each of the eight lines of a three-by-three grid as a Patent — three singles, three doubles, and a treble. That is seven bets a line and fifty-six bets in total across the full grid. The eight lines come from the structure of the grid itself: three rows, three columns, and two diagonals, each one made up of three picks.

What sets this variant apart from a Union Jack built on Trebles alone is that a Patent contains singles. A single line played as a Treble needs all three of its picks to win before it pays anything. A Patent line does not — one winning pick already produces a return, because that pick’s single is a live bet in its own right. Because every pick sits on more than one line in a 3x3 grid, its single is staked once for every line that pick belongs to.

That structural fact is what makes the Union Jack Patent worth understanding on its own terms, rather than assuming it behaves like the Trebles-only or Trixie versions of the same grid. The nine picks and eight lines stay identical across every Union Jack variant — what changes is how many bets each line carries, and how forgiving the format is.

How a Union Jack Patent Is Calculated

The calculation starts from the line, not the grid as a whole. Each of the eight lines is played as a Patent: three singles, three doubles, and one treble, seven bets. With eight lines, that gives 8 lines x 7 bets, or fifty-six bets across the whole Union Jack. Total outlay is fifty-six times the unit stake — at a $0.25 unit stake, that is 56 x $0.25, or $14.00 staked in total.

The part that trips people up is the singles. A pick is not staked as a single once for the whole grid; it is staked once for every line it belongs to, because each line runs its own independent Patent. A pick that sits in four lines carries four separate single bets on it, not one. That repetition is baked into the fifty-six-bet total — it is where a large share of the bet count comes from.

Once every line has settled, the total return is just the sum of what each of the fifty-six individual bets pays out, using whatever decimal odds were entered for the nine picks. There is no shortcut multiplication for the grid as a whole, because each line’s Patent depends on the outcomes of its own three picks, and those picks are shared unevenly across the other seven lines of the grid as well.

What the Calculator Shows You

The calculator breaks the bet down into its fifty-six-bet structure: how many bets are singles, how many are doubles, and how many are the treble on each line, both per line and across all eight lines combined. It shows the combined decimal odds for each of the eight lines, the total outlay for the whole Union Jack Patent, and — once you mark each pick as a win, loss, or push — the total return and profit across every settled bet. It also reflects how many times each pick’s single has been staked, since that depends on where the pick sits in the grid. Together these figures show not just what the grid pays back, but which picks carry the most weight.

Worked Example

Take a Union Jack Patent built on nine MLB moneyline picks set out in a 3x3 grid, at a $0.25 unit stake. Row 1 holds Dodgers to win at 1.70, Braves to win at 1.50, and Astros to win at 2.20. Row 2 holds Yankees to win at 1.40, Phillies to win at 2.00, and Padres to win at 1.80. Row 3 holds Mets to win at 2.60, Guardians to win at 1.90, and Orioles to win at 1.60. Each of those nine picks also sits in a different number of lines depending on where it falls in the grid.

That 3x3 grid produces eight lines — three rows, three columns, and two diagonals — and each line is played as its own Patent of seven bets, for fifty-six bets in total. At a $0.25 unit stake, the total outlay across all fifty-six bets is $14.00.

Each line’s combined treble odds differ depending on which three picks make it up. Row 1 (Dodgers, Braves, Astros) combines to 5.61. Row 2 (Yankees, Phillies, Padres) combines to 5.04. Row 3 (Mets, Guardians, Orioles) combines to 7.90. Column 1 (Dodgers, Yankees, Mets) combines to 6.19. Column 2 (Braves, Phillies, Guardians) combines to 5.70. Column 3 (Astros, Padres, Orioles) combines to 6.34. Diagonal 1 (Dodgers, Phillies, Orioles) combines to 5.44, and Diagonal 2 (Astros, Phillies, Mets) combines to 11.44.

If all nine picks win, every single, double, and treble across all eight lines pays out. On this grid and this $0.25 unit stake, that produces a total return of $46.22, for a profit of $32.22 once the $14.00 outlay is accounted for.

The Eight Union Jack Lines and Their Combined Treble Odds

Every line in the grid has its own combined odds, since each line is made up of a different set of three picks. The table below lists all eight lines from this worked example — the three rows, three columns, and two diagonals — alongside the combined decimal odds for the treble that sits on each one. These combined odds are what the treble portion of each line’s Patent pays against; the singles and doubles on that same line settle separately, at the individual and paired odds of the picks involved.

What the Seven Bets on Each Line Are

Each of the eight lines is a Patent in its own right, and a Patent always breaks down the same way: three singles, three doubles, and one treble, for seven bets. Multiply that by eight lines and the totals scale up cleanly, since every line carries an identical mix of bet types even though the picks themselves differ. The table below sets out that same seven-bet breakdown for a single line next to the totals across the whole Union Jack.

Why the Centre Pick Carries More Singles Than the Corners

There is a quirk in the Union Jack Patent worth understanding before you fill in the grid: because each pick sits on more than one line, its single is staked once for every line it belongs to. How many lines that is depends on where the pick sits in the 3x3 grid, not on anything about the pick itself.

The centre pick sits on four lines at once — its row, its column, and both diagonals — so a Union Jack Patent contains four separate singles on it. A corner pick sits on three lines — its row, its column, and one diagonal — so it carries three singles. An edge pick, the four positions that are neither the centre nor a corner, sits on only two lines — its row and its column — so it carries two singles.

The practical effect is that a winning centre pick pays out on four singles by itself, while a winning edge pick pays out on only two, before doubles or trebles are even considered. The grid layout does not just determine which eight lines exist; it decides how much of your money is riding on each individual result. A shaky pick placed in the centre carries far more weight than the same pick placed on an edge.

When a Union Jack Patent Makes Sense

A Union Jack Patent suits a bettor who has nine picks they are reasonably confident in individually but does not want a single loss anywhere in the grid to wipe out the whole bet. Because every line is a Patent rather than a straight treble, one winning pick already returns something on every line it touches, softening the outcome on days when the grid does not fully come in. That safety net costs more than a smaller bet type, since fifty-six bets at even a modest unit stake add up quickly, and most of that stake sits in singles and doubles rather than the higher-paying treble.

This format tends to work best when the nine picks are spread across a genuine slate of games rather than picked just to fill a grid, since the combined odds on each line depend on which three picks land together on it. Where a pick sits in the grid matters strategically too: since the centre carries four singles and the corners three, it makes sense to place your most reliable pick in the centre rather than an outsider only included to complete the nine.

Bettors who want exposure to a large combination of outcomes without needing every pick to land should find this format reasonable. Those who would rather stake less, and are comfortable needing more picks to come in together, may prefer a Union Jack built on Trebles only, which costs far less to enter but pays nothing unless three picks on a line all win.

Common Mistakes

A common mistake is not realizing that each pick’s single is repeated once for every line it appears in, which understates how much is riding on a single result. Another is setting a unit stake without multiplying it by fifty-six to see the real total outlay. Bettors also sometimes expect one winning pick to cover the whole outlay, when in reality it returns something through the lines it belongs to but rarely turns a profit on its own. Finally, placing a shaky pick in the centre is a mistake worth avoiding, since four separate singles and four different lines all depend on that one result coming in.

Union Jack Patent vs the Other Union Jack Variants

The Union Jack Patent sits between the cheaper Trebles and Trixie versions and the larger Round Robin version of the same nine-pick grid. Each variant keeps the same eight lines but changes how many bets sit on every line, which changes both the total cost and how forgiving the format is.