We had another brilliant week at Turf365 with the magic 100% profit level delivered again:

Bournemouth 3-1 Grimsby paid 45.05 points net profit. 

We also had an excellent home win treble that paid 57.81 points net profit:

Huddersfield 4-0 Leyton Orient

Norwich 1-0 Swindon

Dunfermline 3-1 Morton

See the updated performance table at Performance.

The Turf365 forecasting model has been refined over many years and takes account of many variables in football. 

I currently use 19 variables in the model and it has provided profitable forecasts over the last 5 seasons. 

I also review the data in the light of the latest team news right up until late evening on a Friday.

You can take advantage of these high quality soccer forecasts by subscribing today. 

Subscription prices are half price at the moment and the forecasts are fully guaranteed to make you a profit or your money back within 24 hours.

Another profitable weekend for Turf365 customers with the main pick coming in at 1.62.  We had 95 points on Partick at home and it returned a tasty 153.90 points.

We also had a small investment of 5 points on a home win treble.  MK Dons and Charlton obliged but Leicester drew 0-0 with Derby.  Because of the small stake of 5% of total bets there was little impact on our profit.

Our early forecasts for overseas customers also came in.  Blackpool obliged at 1.83 and we had 100 points on this one.  I’m sure the 83% profit gave our overseas clients something to smile about!

Check out the performance page for the details of all of this season’s bets.

We scored big time again this weekend at Turf365.  Three home victories in the FIFA World Cup European Qualifying matches netted 108.76 points net profit for our customers:

Finland 2-1 Wales 1.90

Austria 2-1 Lithuania 1.75

Montenegro 2-1 Georgia 1.70

We had a 95 points single bet on Finland and they came up trumps.  As I expected, Finland had most of the possession.

They play a patient game, mainly due to the fact their key players are getting on a bit. This strategy serves them well as they wait for their opportunities and are pretty accomplished at taking them.

They won the reverse fixture and I couldn’t see past them.  It has to be said though that Wales missed an absolute sitter at the end that could have drawn it.

It’s always good to get a treble up.  Austria and Montenegro came in to form a nice treble with Finland.  This took us over the magic 100% yield on advised bets.  Please click on the performance section for the details of all bets advised this season.

The bet of the day came in again for turf365 with Raith Rovers winning convincingly at home to Greenock Morton.  

We advised 92 points on this one, at 1.90 at bet365.  I was really surprised at the odds on offer as Raith looked nailed on for the home win on form alone, never mind the added interest of the Morton keeper being out.  The odds had moved to 1.85 by mid-morning Saturday.

I always find it interesting to look at the split of results on odds of >=1.90 versus <1.90.  One would expect more chance of a clear home win as odds decrease.  This is indeed the case. 

But there is less value to be had down there and that’s where it pays to have some information coming in that can give you the edge.  For me it’s my contacts.

For you it can be turf365.

We also advised 3 draws with Barnet v Bradford C obliging at 3.40.

Overall, the net profit for the day was 83.60 points on a yield of 83.60%.  Running yield for this season is 73.50%.

Hamburg at home on Saturday evening was our nap of the day at 1.83. 

We advised 90 points on this one, which was 90% of the bet allocation this week.  The smaller bet tilted but the overall yield on turnover of 100 points was a healthy 64.7%. 

The use of a Euro selection was based on two things. 

Firstly, the opening form of Hamburg was impressive, winning 3 out of 4 going into this one. My system churned them out right at the top of all the British and Euro homes.

The other was the British card.  I just didn’t fancy a lot of the matches this weekend.  It looked a pretty mixed bag to me in terms of clear win potential, and that became clearer when my own model produced vastly different probabilities from the bookies’ odds.

Looking at the results, I’m glad I steered clear.  For example, of the 5 shortest priced home teams on the pools card, only 2 were home wins.  Celtic, Charlton and Palace all drew at home with home win odds of less than 1.75. 

Overall, there was a massive amount of draws on the British card. This looked likely to happen and in these circumstances it pays to cast the net a little wider.

Subscription rates have been slashed for the new season at turf365.com.  You can now get the full football forecasting service for as little as £10 per month.

The soccer results forecasting service comes with the cast iron guarantee of a full refund of your subscription should we not make you a profit over the 4 week cycle.

Try us, and let us make you money.

A number of people have reported that charges apply when you use a credit card to place entries on the footballpools.com site but not on other sites. 

I tried this and indeed there is a £2.50 charge for a £5.00 entry on the footballpools.com site but not on Brittens.  This is a 50% charge on the product price.

My bank said to me today that this is because footballpools.com have registered themselves as a gambling merchant but Brittens have not.  They also said that it is the resoponsibility of the merchant to warn online of the impending charge.

A cop out if ever I’ve heard one.

Anyway, check your bills and don’t use the credit card for pools entries on footballpools.com if you can help it.  Use a debit card instead.

This week’s football pools card has been published.  Just go to the blog and click “Latest pools cards”.  You can download this and use the spreadsheet to plan your entries.

My football selections for customers are split into 2 sections:

1. Match forecasts designed for fixed odds betting

 2. Score draw forecasts designed for your football pools entries

Customers find this very useful indeed, and an added value.  And remember, my subscriptions are halved this term!

In terms of this weekend, I’m considering Tottenham, Palace and Rotherham to oblige at home at decent prices. 

The deal with my fixed odds selections is that they must make you a profit over the month or I pay back your subscription in full within 24 hours.  This is a cast iron guarantee that you can’t get anywhere else.

For close matches that I think will end in draws, I have 6 in mind including Spurs v Man U. The object here is to beat the actual ratio of score draws on the card.

Please give us a try and subscribe to my great offer.

We are now taking orders for the new season although we can’t continue the free month offer any longer - we were swamped by masses of applicants!

But, as you know, every cloud has a silver lining.  I am slashing the subscription prices by 50% this season.  The pages will show this very soon.

Don’t worry existing customers, you will pay the same rate.

Why don’t you get on board at half price and benefit from the only fully guaranteed service on the internet.

Our draw bets went down this weekend, but we advised a correct treble on 3 homes.

The matches at Man City, Notts Forrest and Watford were chosen but all registered home wins.  We live to fight another day as our season profit is £1380 (at £10 per point bet).

We did however highlight Leeds at 1.83 to win at home against Northampton (see below) and we married this pick with the 2 bankers of Bury and Liverpool for a nice little 2/1 treble.

I think Lit Plan 153 is a great little plan.

It is a 13X entry and costs £1.60 on Littlewoods for 90 lines.  This is cheap for the guarantee of 8 if 8.

There is of course a lot of coverage loss, but the effect of this is minimised.  You are completely covered as long as no more than 2 of your score draws are consecutive.

I think that this is a reasonable assumption.  Looking at the results of this season’s UK pools my analysis shows that this was the case, for pure results on the card, 50% of the time.

This isn’t the same as looking at the shape of actual pools entries I know, but if score draws are consecutive on the results card and you hit them, then they would have to have been consecutive on your entry also.  An indirect method but still sound I think.

The big plusses for Lit Plan 153 are the 8 if 8 guarantee and the cost.

Looking at the UK football card for this weekend there is a larger ratio of odds on homes than usual.  However, most of the the odds are close to evens.

This presents opportunities and threats.

True banker odds for UK soccer matches are quotes of 1.40 or less.  Liverpool and Bury at home this weekend fall into that bracket.

I am looking very closely at Leeds to beat Northampton today at around 1.83.

A Leeds, Bury, Liverpool treble will pay 3.04 decimal.

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.