Flag Calculator

Work out the returns on a Flag: a Yankee plus six up-and-down pairs, twenty-three bets on four selections.

A Flag calculator works out the returns on a twenty-three-bet wager covering four selections with a Yankee and up-and-down pair cover.

What Is a Flag?

A Flag is a four-selection bet that combines the core structure of a Yankee with additional pair betting for partial cover. The Yankee itself produces six doubles, four trebles and one four-fold on four selections — eleven bets in total. A Flag then adds six up-and-down pairs of conditional bets on top, bringing the total to twenty-three bets. It is a way of backing four selections that guarantees some return on most nights — or at least something back when a Yankee would pay nothing — at the cost of doubling the outlay and adding complexity to the returns.

The Flag is the standard member of the flag family and is common in British betting, especially for long shots on four selections where you want to limit the damage if one or two fail. The pairs ensure that a Yankee with one winner still returns cash; the trade is that you commit significantly more money per bet than you would on a Yankee alone. For bettors who accept that cost, the Flag delivers the combination of upside and downside protection that justifies its expense.

How a Flag Is Calculated

A Flag uses the Yankee as its foundation and then adds the pairs. The Yankee part works as normal: six doubles covering all pairs of the four selections, four trebles covering all three-selection combinations, and one four-fold on all four selections together. Those eleven bets are placed at your chosen unit stake.

The pairs then operate as up-and-down bets: six doubles, each consisting of two conditional legs, placed on adjacent selections in the working order. Each pair is a two-bet slip where a win on the first funds a stake on the second, and vice versa. The detail of how those pairs settle depends on which selections win, but the formula that drives the whole thing is straightforward: twenty-three bets, each at your unit stake, so the total outlay is twenty-three times your stake.

What the Calculator Shows You

The Flag calculator takes your unit stake and the decimal odds for all four selections and returns the total payout if all selections win. It also shows you the individual returns from the Yankee component and from the pair component, so you can see how much of your profit comes from the core bet and how much from the added pairs. This split is useful because it helps you understand which part of the Flag is delivering value and where your money is coming from.

Most importantly, the calculator lets you mark selections as Win, Loss or Void to see what happens in partial outcomes — where a Yankee would return zero, the Flag’s pairs often return something from the conditional bets. That partial recovery is the whole reason to use a Flag instead of a Yankee. The calculator will show you not only the total return on the flag when all four win, but also what you collect when one, two or three fail, helping you decide whether the coverage is worth the cost.

Worked Example

Take four Eredivisie selections at a unit stake of €0.50, for a total outlay of €11.50. The selections are Vitesse to win at 1.50, AZ Alkmaar to win at 1.80, NEC Nijmegen to win at 2.10, and Go Ahead Eagles to win at 2.30. If all four selections win, the Flag returns €48.55, which is a profit of €37.05.

That return comes from both components of the bet: the eleven Yankee lines and the twelve pair lines, each contributing to the total based on which selections won and in what order. The combinations and permutations are complex, but the calculator handles the arithmetic. What matters is that €37.05 profit on an €11.50 stake represents a considerable payout — far larger than the €1.50 odds of a single selection alone, but also higher risk because all four must win, and every bet in the slips must be placed in advance.

What the 23 Bets in a Flag Are Made Of

The Flag’s structure is its defining characteristic. Understanding what the 23 bets are tells you why a Flag costs what it does.

The first eleven bets (6 doubles + 4 trebles + 1 four-fold) are the Yankee structure unchanged. The remaining twelve bets are six up-and-down pairs, which means six two-bet slips where a win on one leg funds the other. This arrangement is what gives the Flag its partial cover: when the Yankee part fails, the pairs often return something because they are conditional and only take effect when their first leg wins.

Total Outlay for a Flag at Different Unit Stakes

Because a Flag is twenty-three bets, your total stake scales directly with your unit stake. This table shows how much money you need to place a Flag at different stake levels.

Notice that the total outlay is always exactly twenty-three times your unit stake. A flag at €0.50 a bet costs €11.50; at €1.00 a bet it costs €23.00. This scales linearly with your bet size because you are simply multiplying the number of bets by your unit stake. The scaling is very different from a Yankee, which would cost only €2.00 at the same stakes (four bets). You must think carefully about whether the additional coverage from the pairs is worth the additional cost before placing the bet.

The Cover Provided by the Pairs

The purpose of a Flag is partial cover at the bottom end, and that is its principal trade-off against a Yankee. Going from four selections to six pairs makes a Flag expensive relative to its base: eleven Yankee lines become twenty-three, so the same unit stake costs more than twice as much. What you buy is cover at the bottom end.

A Yankee returns nothing on one winner; a Flag returns the leftover from each pair that winner opens. It is partial cover rather than a safety net, and it should be judged against simply staking more on the Yankee itself. If you place €11.50 on a Yankee at double stake (€1.00 per bet), you have 11 bets and a bigger payout if all win. If you place €11.50 on a Flag at €0.50 per bet, you have 23 bets and more resilience on bad days, but also a more diluted upside. The choice depends on whether you value that resilience or prefer the simplicity and concentration of the larger Yankee.

When a Flag Makes Sense

A Flag suits four-selection betting when you want partial cover for bad days but still plan for all four selections to land. The bet is most attractive when you have modest confidence in all four picks and want to ensure a return even if one or two fail. Betting €0.50 a line on a Flag is an affordable way to back four selections with some safety net in place, spreading your risk across the full range of outcomes.

The Flag is less attractive when you have very high conviction in all four selections, in which case the Yankee alone delivers enough upside without the extra cost of the pairs. Conversely, if you have low conviction in one or more selections, the pairs will not rescue the bet — they return leftovers, not profits — and you would be better served by staking more on fewer selections or using a different bet type altogether. A Flag makes most sense when all four picks are genuine selections you would back, and you simply want protection against one or two failing to deliver at least some return on the night.

Common Mistakes

Assuming a Flag is just a Yankee with a small extra is a common error — the reality is that it is more than twice the bets and more than twice the cost. Many bettors expect the pairs to rescue a bad night and return significant profit; in reality they return leftovers, not profits, and can only help if at least one selection wins. Setting a unit stake without multiplying by twenty-three often shocks bettors when they calculate the outlay. Finally, a Flag is sometimes confused with a Lucky 15, which adds singles rather than pairs and is a different structure entirely.

Flag Against the Four-Selection Alternatives

The Flag competes with other four-selection bets, each structured differently.

The Yankee is the simplest and cheapest, but returns nothing on one winner. The Lucky 15 adds four singles, giving fifteen bets and partial cover at a lower cost than a Flag. The Flag is the most complex and most expensive, with the highest stake and the potential for the largest returns, but also the most bets to track.