FAQs

What use are the "Prediction Performance Records"?

We hide nothing at all on this website, since we consider that it is very important for you to understand exactly how our Predict-A-Win Program's predictions fare and, likewise, how the Bookies' expectations stack up against the actual results. This is because many people seem to think that a computer must be able to get everything 100% right every time, even down to predicting with 100% accuracy what the outcome of a football match will be. Sensible people, and especially those who understand football properly, realise how silly such thinking is. But the reality is that at least 50% of the people who visit this website have misconceived ideas as to what the accuracy level of our Program is and could reasonably be expected to be.

So let's get one thing straight here: across all matches the Bookies do not get more than 55% of their "Outright Win Calls" right, and neither do we. Overall each season, betting using all our Program's predictions would not have made or lost us anything significantly different from what we would have made or lost had we bet based on what the Bookies were expecting as the results.

But the question still remains: what can the Past Performance Records tell us?

The most useful part of the reports relates to the expectation of the Home Win, Away Win and Draw calls (not to the overall weekly reports), which are all listed in the order of lowest Odds first. This means that you will usually see a lot of "Favourites" in the first batch of matches and a lot of correct calls made by our PaW Program. You can therefore establish for yourself the common "pattern" of success (or otherwise) that occurs, and apply that knowledge to the current week's list of matches when making your own betting selections, since we post the data for the current week in exactly the same manner:

Note that, except for perhaps a few isolated matches at the bottom of each "Wins" listing (which is where the "Long Shots" calls are lurking), elsewhere our PaW Program's calls for Home Wins will be generally in agreement with the Bookies' expectations (i.e. our Program's calls stand more chance of becoming Home Wins than Away Wins). This means that if the PaW Program called a Home Win for a "Favourite" but it went wrong, then the Bookies definitely did no better either!

As the Odds increase going down the list, check out to see if more and more matches for the Divisions you are interested in ended up as Draws instead of the anticipated Home Wins. On the other hand, where the Odds for the two teams are near enough equal (those matches more towards the bottom of the listing and above the Long Shots), you may find more Draws or Away Wins occurring.

The PaW Program's Draw calls are listed in the order of lowest Draw Odds first, but the low Odds on offer are no more a guarantee that the Draw will occur than low Home Win Odds are. Instead, where low Odds are offered for the Draw, it might simply mean that the Bookie doesn't have a lot of faith in an Outright Win for what you might think (or the Bookie thinks) is the stronger of the two teams.