Notes on value, discipline and the truth about tipsters.
No tips here — just how the market actually works, and why honesty is the only edge worth selling.
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Are free football prediction sites accurate? We started measuring them, in public
Every day, sites like Statarea and Zulubet publish hundreds of free 1X2 predictions. Almost nobody checks them afterwards. We now read them daily, settle them on official results and grade them against the closing line — and we publish the denominators, including the ones that make our own numbers look thin.
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We read 1,106 tips from 47 Telegram tipsters. We could verify 11% of them.
Three months of auditing public tipster channels against the closing line. The headline is not who won — it is how little of what tipsters post can be checked at all, and what the small checkable part says.
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What is Closing Line Value (and why it's the only number that matters)
Win rate feels like the measure of a good bettor. It is not. The number that actually predicts a long-term edge is whether you beat the closing line.
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Accumulator math: what a parlay really costs you
Every leg of an accumulator multiplies the bookmaker's margin. By leg five you are paying more house edge than a roulette wheel. Here is the arithmetic bookmakers hope you never do.
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More articles
AI Football Predictions Tested: Are They Accurate?
We built about 50 football prediction models and we measure two automated prediction sources against the closing price. As of 1 November 2026 none beats it. API-Football's predictions were right 69.9% of the time but needed 72.1% to break even. Forebet is below the close too.
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Correct Score Predictions: How Often Are They Right?
We checked our correct score estimates on 3,014 matches: the most likely score happened 12.8% of the time, about 1 in 8. Five free prediction sites were right 7–13% of the time on the scores they chose, in line with the fair chance of those scores. Dated figures, with the limits.
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Which bookmaker has the lowest margin on over/under and both teams to score? 667 matches, compared with Pinnacle
We compared the over/under 2.5 and both-teams-to-score margins of eight bookmakers (seven on each market) with Pinnacle's on the same matches, out of 667 upcoming football matches in 74 leagues. Betano came closest to Pinnacle on over/under; both teams to score cost more at four of the six bookmakers that price both markets.
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Which bookmaker has the lowest margin? 6,080 matches, 33 bookmakers, and why the usual ranking misleads
We measured the 1X2 margin of 33 bookmakers on 6,080 football matches over 17 weeks. The straight average says one thing; comparing bookmakers on the same matches says another.
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Why bookmakers limit winning accounts, and what our price data says about it
Soft bookmakers restrict accounts that beat their prices; sharp bookmakers and exchanges do not need to. What triggers a limit, why closing line value matters more than wins, and what the edge at soft bookmakers looks like once you measure it.
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We closed our Betfair value-betting experiment after 262 bets. Here is the autopsy, including the number we got wrong.
TIPS-EXP-002 ran our value signals against real Betfair prices for two months in dry-run. It technically passed its own gate. We are closing it anyway, correcting a closing-line figure we published too generously, and starting a pre-registered successor with the three lessons written in as rules.
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The Italian Draw after 38 selections: the matchweek we lost, and the bug we found in our own closing prices
Five weeks into a pre-registered forward test the honest scorecard is "nothing yet". What the first 38 selections actually taught us is about the parts of a test that pre-registration does not protect — including a measurement bug that briefly made our own numbers look spectacular.
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Did bookmakers get more expensive this summer? Our own index said +1 point. Then we checked properly.
Three months of measured 1X2 margins across 31 bookmakers. The headline number moved a full percentage point — and almost all of it was the leagues, not the bookmakers. A worked example of how margin comparisons fool you, including ours.
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We tried 17 accumulator strategies on our own data. 14 "won". All 17 were losing bets.
Daily tickets at 1 to 6 legs, three selection methods, real Betfair odds, a luck audit on every result. The most complete accumulator study we know of — and the most damning.
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How much should you actually bet? Kelly staking, tested on 152 real value bets
Quarter-Kelly, half-Kelly, flat 1-3% — we ran them all on our settled value bets (figures corrected 29 Sep 2026), then stress-tested every scheme in 5,000 alternative universes. The answer is smaller than you want it to be.
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Strategy graveyard #2: we could predict line moves — and still lost money
Our model genuinely predicted which way odds would move, in 4 of 4 out-of-sample seasons. Following that signal earned +5.2% CLV at the best price — and lost 2.4% in cash. Meet the winner's curse.
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The best betting strategy we ever tested still lost: back every draw
We simulated 1,329 real-odds bets across 8 leagues. Every strategy lost — but "always bet the draw" lost least, beating our own models and the blind favourite. Here is the autopsy, and why the draw is the market's most interesting corner.
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We built ~50 betting models. None beat the closing line.
Elo, XGBoost, Dixon-Coles, xG, tested like scientists, not marketers. None beat the closing line. The full autopsy, including the bug that faked +96% ROI.
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Why a 67% win rate can still lose you money
A 67% win rate sounds unbeatable. It can still lose money: profit is decided by two numbers, and win rate is the less important one.
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How to verify any tipster in 10 minutes: a practical checklist
Before you pay for picks, run this seven-step checklist: full history, the two-number test, sample size, real odds, timestamps and CLV. Ten minutes filters out almost everyone.
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Why a Tipster's ROI Lies — We Analysed 20 of the 'Best'
A '+93% ROI' tipster sounds unbeatable — until you see it's a 20% strike rate on odds of 26 over three months. We break down the top 20 and the one number that actually measures skill.
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The favourite's price dropped — and it won more often. What 5,016 of our own matches say about the closing line
We compared the Pinnacle price we first logged with Pinnacle's closing price on 5,016 matches across 80 leagues. When the favourite's price shortened before kick-off, it won 56.6% of the time; when it drifted, 46.4%. That gap is the whole argument for Closing Line Value — and also the reason you can't simply bet on it.
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Why most tipsters hide their losses
A betting record that only shows winners is not a record — it is marketing. Here is the simple maths of survivorship that makes most tipster results meaningless.
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Weekly bookmaker margin reports
Every Monday, a ranking of bookmaker margins on the matches priced in the previous 30 days.
Latest report · 02 Nov 2026
Bookmaker margins this week: Dafabet cheapest, 0.04 pts below Pinnacle; Unibet (FR) costliest, 11.85 pts above Pinnacle →
Which bookmaker has the lowest margin? Live index →
Earlier reports (17)
- 26 Oct 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: Dafabet cheapest, 0.07 pts below Pinnacle; Unibet (FR) costliest, 11.33 pts above Pinnacle
- 19 Oct 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: Dafabet cheapest, 0.14 pts above Pinnacle; Unibet (FR) costliest, 10.81 pts above Pinnacle
- 12 Oct 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: BetAnything cheapest at 5.06%, SBO costliest at 14.69%
- 05 Oct 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: Coolbet cheapest at 5.04%, SBO costliest at 14.53%
- 28 Sep 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: Coolbet cheapest at 4.99%, SBO costliest at 14.78%
- 21 Sep 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: Coolbet cheapest at 4.93%, SBO costliest at 14.68%
- 14 Sep 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: BetAnything cheapest at 5.44%, SBO costliest at 14.60%
- 07 Sep 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: BetAnything cheapest at 5.14%, SBO costliest at 14.88%
- 31 Aug 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: BetAnything cheapest at 5.19%, PMU (FR) costliest at 14.90%
- 24 Aug 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: BetAnything cheapest at 5.16%, PMU (FR) costliest at 15.02%
- 17 Aug 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: BetAnything cheapest at 5.24%, PMU (FR) costliest at 15.10%
- 10 Aug 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: BetAnything cheapest at 5.27%, PMU (FR) costliest at 15.21%
- 03 Aug 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: BetAnything cheapest at 5.27%, SBO costliest at 14.35%
- 27 Jul 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: Coolbet cheapest at 5.54%, SBO costliest at 14.07%
- 20 Jul 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: Coolbet cheapest at 5.29%, SBO costliest at 14.00%
- 13 Jul 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: Coolbet cheapest at 4.95%, SBO costliest at 14.13%
- 07 Jul 2026 Bookmaker margins this week: Coolbet cheapest at 5.03%, SBO costliest at 14.16%
