It was an exciting Monday evening as 2 out of 3 draws came in for turf365. The odds were Newcastle 3.50 and Metz 3.0 to draw and we took them both as singles.

Newcastle were 1.90 to win - not a form team at the moment!

This is a 2 from 3 draw strike rate on the night.

I am so excited about our new forecasting tool. The results just keep flying in.

You can have a free month’s forecasts by going to the contacts page.

Result: Littlewoods 2nd div paid £25.  The 2% cover of the Sun Plan 40 is, however, looking pretty thin to me now!

Update #2:

The final totals on my football pools entries this week are 23, 22, 21 and 21. I’m assuming a small payout for the second prize 23 points on Littlewoods and an even small one from Vernons for the 22 points third prize. The 21s will tilt.

This is the second time this year I’ve landed 8 score draws and been disappointed in the points total - missing the first dividend on both occasions. I am now reviewing the use of Sun Plan 40.

I am planning to run with a plan I’ve used with some success in the past. It’s Lit Plan 38 which is a 15x plan with a good guarantee. Whilst there are 2 less selections than Sun Plan 40 the big attraction with Lit Plan 38 is that 8 hits are guaranteed if you have 9 draws.

Sun Plan 40 guarantees 7 if 8, but I think that this plan is one to play if you are happy with a second dividend.

I calculate that full cover of 8 from 17 is a whopping 24310 lines. Sun plan 40 covers only 600 of these. As a percentage figure this comes out at only 2% of full cover. Not a very exciting statistic.

Update Sunday night: My hopes of 24 points are dashed. I have 23 points with neither of Monday’s matches featuring on my line (Newcastle v Portsmouth, Norwich v Reading).

The dividends will be low anyway so it’s not a disaster.

I have 4 other lines sitting on 21 points with one or both of Monday’s matches to come…..

On checking my UK Football Pools entries as the results came in this afternoon I find have 8 score draws on a Sun Plan 40 entry.  With 13 score draws and 5 no-score draws with four to play I’m not expecting a massive payout.

It might just cover the entry fee.

It is really one extreme to another with the number of score draws for the last three weeks 6, 4 and 13 respectively.

Our draw forecasts are doubly valuable as you can use them for fixed odds bets and your pools entries.

Why don’t you try a free month by going to the contacts page.

Wolves’ late goal at Barnsley gave us another small profit for subscribing customers.

When Barnsley went 1-0 up I was pretty sure Wolves would come back and claim the Championship title at McCarthy’s old home ground.

My draw forecasting model has come into its own now and I’m confident that the profits will keep rolling in into the closed season and our world football picks.

As usual, the bet-type used gave us massive insurance.  The odds and bet were guaranteed to give a profit if only one correct.

Like any other serious form of investment, football fixed odds gambling is as much about not losing money as about winning it.

The key elements of forecasting, bet-type and odds need to be brought together in a balanced way to provide consistent yield.

You can have a month’s free selections by going to the contacts page.

This week’s UK football pools card has one void match:

27 Leicester v Scunthorpe

My suggestion is always to take the 2 points on offer.

You can download the UK football pools card below by moving the cursor over the list, right click, then choose Export to Microsoft Excel.

You can have a month’s free selections by going to the contacts page.

I have been developing a forecasting tool over the years. The aim is to identify picks with a high probability of success. These can be homes, aways or draws.

One interesting thing about forecasting football matches is that there is a strong tendency to pick clear winners.

This is natural as it is widely believed that draws are the hardest results to forecast. The bookies know that people believe this and set the odds up accordingly with draw odds being relatively attractive.

Wouldn’t it be great to turn accepted belief on its head and bet draws with confidence?

Our forecasting model allows us to do this.

I have been working on the criteria used in our model to refine draw probability calculations. This is proving very profitable for our customers.

I advised 3 correct draws for Saturday 18^th April. The yield for turf365 customers was over 600%. Check the performance page for full details.

Our paying customers particularly value our draw forecasts as they can be used as pools picks as well as for customers’ fixed odds bets.

This makes our football forecasting doubly valuable.

You can have a month’s free selections by going to the contacts page.

What a profitable weekend! We correctly forecast 3 draws to our subscription customers this weekend netting over 600% profit.

At £10 per point the bets brought in £613.60 pure profit. The treble paid 40/1. The matches and decimal odds are:

Carlisle v Swindon @ 3.40, Barnet v Luton @ 3.50 and Inverness CT v Hamilton @ 3.40.  Check the performance page for full details.

I am particularly pleased at the performance of our new draw modelling tool.

As I write this on Saturday morning there are 4 score draws and 3 no-score draws on the card with 5 matches to play. We therefore advised 3 out of 7 available draws.

I have refined the model over the years into a profitable tool but recent developments have added a new dimension.

The aim is to identify score draws so that the draw forecasts can be used as pools picks as well as for customers’ fixed odds bets.

You can have a month’s free selections by going to the contacts page.

We landed a nice draw at Lincoln at the weekend at 3.40 at bet365. The other two draw picks went down but the strength of the design of the bet meant a small profit of 2% overall.

This is a good example of the importance of ensuring that you play a strong bet on your forecasts.

The forecasts were 3 draws. The bet was 3 singles at 3.00 points and 1 treble at 1.00 point.

Since the odds were all 3.40, this meant that one correct provided a small positive yield.  The point here is that this is excellent insurance on a bet that can produce significant yield if two or three picks come in.

Put another way, it is a bet where 67% of forecasts ditched but we still made a profit!

I have turned the performance table upside down so that you now see the latest matches at the top of the table.  I hope this helps.

You can have a month’s free selections by going to the contacts page.

A good way to think about the pools plan v perm argument is in terms of forecasting. At a basic level, you get more crosses per pound with a plan so you can afford to get more selections wrong.

You are more likely to hit the score draws using a plan just because you have more crosses on the card.

As you reduce the number of selections in the entry your forecasting needs to be much better. When you get down to an 8 from 10 full perm then your forecasting needs to be spot on which is a big ask when you are forecasting draws.

One of the big drawbacks of plans is that there is significant loss of coverage.

I had personal experience of this a couple of weeks ago when one of my lines of 17x Sun Plan 40 hit 9 score draws (and 0 no-score draws) and I ended up with 22 points. With another entry on the same card I hit 7 score draws (and 1 no-score draw) using the same plan and ended up with 23 points.

There are two points to note with this example from the international weekend of 28^th March 2009.

One is the weakness of the loss of cover of the plan I used. I was very disappointed in the points total for the 9 score draws as you can imagine.

However, the second and most important point is that I doubt very much if I would have been anywhere near hitting 9 out of a possible 11 score draws if I hadn’t had 17 selections to make.

In other words, if I had entered a full perm of comparable cost to the plan then I wouldn’ have been close enough to even be disappointed.

People have written that, in the final analysis, you pay for the number of lines of 8 you put on, and this of course is correct.

However, the challenge of forecasting score draws is so demanding that I believe using a plan to increase the number of selections available per unit cost is the best option.

This week’s UK football pools card has two void matches:

18 Reading v Sheff Utd

22 Wolves v Southampton

These are a guaranteed 2 points each and this shouldn’t be overlooked in your entry this week.  It’s extremely difficult to catch any type of draw at all, so take advantage of this one.  The extra points could just make the difference for you!

I am working on my forecasting for the weekend matches and will post some draw predictions for you on Friday 10th April.

Boro are in massive trouble - nothing like stating the obvious!  A tasty 2.10 was available on this one and I hope you were on it.

My customers certainly were!

It is looking bad for Boro and they are 2nd FAV to go down at 1.20.  Ony WBA are in a worse position and the bookies have them gone already at 1.01.