How to Win the Football Pools

Resources for those who are interested in how to win the football pools - links to results, plans and perms , dividends, stats, tables, tips, blogs, news and a winning system below. And MORE - there's advice about fixed odds betting too.

 Winning the Football Pools Treble Chance - Why not You?

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Need to find 8 football draws and get them in aline? Football pools systems really do work if they are based on historical performance analysis and common sense strategies. Why? Because football teams play at a predictable level form, in general. Naturally, you would expect higher-ranking teams in the league to beat teams lower down the league, on average. And in that lies the answer to the question.

There are two parts to solving the problem of how to find those elusive football draws and win the football pools. The first is the performance analysis - the designer of the system should have looked at past results of teams and matches, and then produced a mathematical model which explains the results with a reasonable degree of accuracy. It should enable football draw predictions to be made on the basis of the model.

Actually, accuracy only needs to be slightly better than random. An edge of a few percent above random is adequate in the long run, but we would expect to do much better occasionally, and win. Of course, we want to win enough to cover the stakes on those weeks we did not win, so that it becomes a profitable exercise.

But, there is another factor - a long run small edge is not enough, you have to have another element in your plan if you are to reduce the odds to realistic levels some of the time (and by that we mean odds of about 3/1).

The second part in the football draw problem is what we call coverage. It is not economic to cover every possible combination on a coupon of 49 matches - there are 450 million ways of lining up any eight score draw results, if there are eight - there could be as few as three some weeks (thankfully rarely). That is where ‘plans’ and ‘perms’ come in.

These are ways of covering say 20 to 24 selections on a coupon in such a way that when there are maybe 12-15 score draw results on a given coupon, then there is a reasonable expectation of winnings if we have forecast say six or eight of those magical football draws.

 Put simply, the plan may cover the 20 forecast selections in such a way that 25,000 possible 8 match combinations are staked. This reduces the odds significantly.

Before you commit to a system, check that published results for the system are available. One or two football pools system providers do publish results, and some have been know to offer free forecast trials (this site does occasionally, so make sure you are on our mailing list - left hand side of screen).

The final key aspect is that to be successful in this arena, then persistence is important - that one week that an entry is skipped may be the week that would have been the winner. We are, after all, working on a statistical basis. In conclusion, football pools systems can work if they are well designed and properly used (and that means not allowing one’s views on a likely match outcome to affect the selections).

And, do not forget that the football pools season is year-round, as Australian football pools can be done during the northern summer! And, there are ways to do Brazilian Pools too!

In some countries, punters like to do 3 draw forecasts or other combinations. This system can also be used for that.