Betting Bankers and Football Pools Bankers

What Are Bankers?

'Bankers' is a term usually used to describe 'surefire' results.

For example, you might see that, say Man U is playing one of the bottom of the Premiership teams, at Old Trafford. Most people would see this as a home banker.

Accordingly, the bookies will be offering poor odds (or very good odds for Man U being beaten).

How Do You Find Them?

Now, when it comes to draws forecasts, those that are the most likely of the draws  - i.e. roughly in the middle of my system's sorted list of match forecasts - could be thought of as bankers. Maybe you would select the middle four draw forecasts as bankers. Because they have the highest probability of a draw result, then using them in a group as part of a plan could improve your odds for a given cost.

I don't use bankers myself as I prefer not to tighten my forecasts any more - bankers are a way of cutting cost by cutting coverage. Therefore, in my ebook I haven't included plans to cover them.

How To Use Them

However, if you want to do so, then you might use a plan such as: 

Perm 1 group of four matches (your bankers), with and 2 from each of any 2  of the other 3 groups of four matches.

This simple example uses 14 selections from your sorted match forecast list.

So, your plan is: 

(your group of four bankers) x (any 2 groups from the other 3 groups)  x  (2 from 4 in each of the two groups) x (same again) lines = 108 lines.

That is 1 x 3 x 6 x 6 lines = 108

If you had used a four group plan without bankers, such as any 2 from 4 in each of four groups of 4 (which is 16 selections), then the number of lines would be 6 x 6 x 6 x 6 = 1296. This is a big increase (11 times more lines) for only 2 more selections as compared with 14 selections using four bankers.

I'm afraid it's an endless debate. I set my budget, then get the best coverage I can for that week's stake and don't favour any particular matches in my list of draw forecasts (which is what using bankers does).

There is loads of info available on plans and perms on the web, and some here on this site.

A final word: on the basis of probability, home bankers are the easiest to predict. Away bankers and draw bankers are harder to predict.

There are coupons which offer, say, eleven homes or four aways, which makes a change from eight draw forecasts.

Staking Bank

My budget varies week by week because I use a 'staking bank', and never stake more than 5% of my bank balance (this is an aside, and nothing to do with 'Bankers' or banker bets). That means that I always have enough for 20 stakes over the season, and more when I win. A 'staking bank' is just an amount that I set aside at the start of the season. I keep my records on a spreadsheet, but a piece of paper is fine - after all it's only 20 lines or so for a season (my system doesn't stake every week, only when the circumstances are best).

Good luck! But then, we make our own here...