What Is a Lucky 31 Bet? 31 Lines Explained With Examples

A Lucky 31 takes five picks and splits the stake across every combination they can form, from the singles up to the full fivefold. The result is a ticket that can return something from a single winning selection, while all five winners activate every combination. This guide breaks down how the 31 lines are constructed, walks through a card with exact returns at three different outcomes, sets the format against its close relatives, and looks at when the stake is justified.

How the 31 lines are built

The number is not arbitrary. It comes straight out of the combination maths, and understanding where it comes from makes the cost obvious before you place anything.

The combination maths

With five selections, every possible non-empty grouping gets its own line:

1. Five singles, one per selection
2. Ten doubles, every pair
3. Ten trebles, every group of three
4. Five fourfolds, each leaving out one selection
5. One fivefold covering the lot

Add them together and you get 31. The shortcut is 2 to the power of 5, minus 1, which is the count of all possible subsets excluding the empty one. Every additional selection roughly doubles the line count, which is why the family jumps from 15 to 31 to 63 rather than climbing gently.

What one unit actually costs

The unit stake is per line, not per ticket. A one dollar Lucky 31 bet costs 31 dollars, and a two dollar unit costs 62. Where an each-way Lucky 31 is available, placing it each-way doubles the total stake, turning 31 lines into 62. Bet slips usually display the total before confirmation, which is the number worth reading rather than the unit you typed in.

A worked example with exact numbers

Abstract descriptions of system bets hide the thing that matters most, which is how much comes back. Below is one card settled three different ways.

The card

Five selections, priced in decimals:

• Selection A at 2.50
• Selection B at 2.20
• Selection C at 3.00
• Selection D at 2.00
• Selection E at 2.60

Stake is one unit per line, so 31 units in total.

Three winners

Say A, C and E land while B and D lose. Seven lines survive: three singles, three doubles and one treble.

Singles return 2.50 plus 3.00 plus 2.60, which is 8.10. The doubles are A with C at 7.50, A with E at 6.50, and C with E at 7.80, totalling 21.80. The treble multiplies all three at 19.50. Combined return is 49.40 against a 31 unit stake, so the ticket clears 18.40 in profit despite two selections failing. This example shows how the inclusion of singles, doubles and trebles can produce a positive return even when two selections lose.

All five winners

Every line pays. Singles come to 12.30, the ten doubles to 60.22, the ten trebles to 146.70, the five fourfolds to 177.82, and the fivefold alone returns 85.80. Total return is 482.84 from 31 units staked, a profit of 451.84. Notice that the fourfolds and trebles contribute more than the fivefold, which surprises people who assume the big multiple carries the ticket.

Two winners

Now the uncomfortable version. If only A and C win, the return is 5.50 from the two singles plus 7.50 from the single double, giving 13.00 against 31 staked and a loss of 18.00. If A were the only winner, the return would be 2.50. So the promise that a Lucky 31 always saves something is true only in the narrow sense that a return exists. Whether it covers the outlay depends on how many land and at what price.

Lucky 31 against Lucky 15, Canadian and Lucky 63

The Lucky family and the plain full cover bets differ on two axes: how many selections they use and whether singles are included. That second point drives most of the practical difference.

A Canadian uses the identical five picks as a Lucky 31 but drops the five singles, cutting the stake by roughly sixteen percent. In exchange, one solitary winner returns nothing at all, since the smallest surviving line is a double. That is the whole trade: cheaper ticket, no floor under a bad card.

Moving down to a Lucky 15 halves the outlay and suits anyone who has four picks rather than five. Moving up to a Lucky 63 doubles it again and needs six selections you can defend, which most cards do not contain.

One more detail worth checking rather than assuming: some operators attach bonus terms to Lucky bets, such as enhanced odds when a single selection wins or a percentage uplift when all of them do. These are operator-specific and not part of the bet type itself, so read the rules on the site you are using instead of expecting them by default.

When the format is worth the stake

The Lucky 31 rewards a particular shape of card and punishes others.

Where it fits

Lucky 31 bets are typically built from selections across separate events. Whether selections from the same event can be combined depends on the sportsbook's rules, so that is worth checking before building the card. The prices matter as much as the confidence: as the two-winner example above shows, returns depend on the odds attached to the selections that land, so a card of short-priced favourites needs more of them to come in before the ticket turns positive. The format is especially common in horse racing, where bettors often combine selections from several races on the same card, though football, tennis, MMA and esports work the same way.

Where it does not

Three picks you trust and two you included to fill the ticket is the classic mistake, because at least one of those two weak selections appears in 24 of the 31 lines. A budget that feels stretched by 31 units is a second reason to skip it, since the format only makes sense when the full stake is comfortable. Availability also varies, so check whether your operator offers Lucky bets as a bet type before planning around one. And if following the ticket during a live card feels like work, that is a fair signal too. Working out where you stand mid-afternoon takes actual calculation, and a bet calculator can make a live Lucky 31 easier to track.