Steadbank

Five picks. Four won, one lost, and the day closed 2.58 units up at plus fifty-one per cent. The one loss was the one line that cannot push. Rana needed to beat Follo by two goals on a minus one handicap and the game finished 3-3. A draw takes the full stake on that line, exactly as it did three times on Saturday. Four losses this week on minus one, three of them draws. The two long prices carried the card. JyTy Turku and Al Nasar returned 2.80 units between them. The two short favourites, Real Madrid and America de Cali, returned 0.78 between them. Two bets of the five produced most of the profit, which is what the high odds lane is for. JyTy Turku had no Asian handicap market anywhere , at any bookmaker, and no exchange either. A minus quarter splits into a level line and a minus half, and a minus half on the home side settles identically to a straight home win, so both halves were quotable even though the handicap itself was not. Betway's Draw No Bet at 1.91 and Unibet...

Four picks. Two won, one lost, one pushed, and the day finished 0.71 units up at plus eighteen per cent. A quiet Monday, but two of the four are instructive. Al Ittihad won and returned nothing. They beat Al Hazm 3-2, a one goal margin against a minus one handicap, so the entire stake came back. Nothing won, nothing lost. That is the push working exactly as intended, and it is the reason a minus one is a different animal from a minus one and a half. That selection has a history worth telling. It did not exist on the morning card. The Saudi Professional League's new season was not in our database at all, because the competition reference we had stored still pointed at last season. Once the correct season was downloaded that morning the cell ranked and the pick appeared. It then pushed, so all that work changed nothing on the scoreboard. Some days that is how it goes. Isloch was the biggest winner and I very nearly called it unpriceable. One per cent market coverage, no excha...

Ten picks. Eight won outright, one half-won, one lost. The day closed 5.16 units up at plus fifty-one per cent, and it is the best card I have published this month. Spartak Trnava at 2.49 was the biggest winner and the thinnest market on the slip. I wrote at the time that four of the books quoting that line were one shared feed showing a single price four times, that BetVictor's 2.39 was the only real bookmaker number, and that the exchange had three pounds seventy four behind 2.49. Trnava won 4-0 away. Thin is not the same as wrong. Riga is the one worth dwelling on, because it settles an argument I made on the card that morning. I said the bridge lost to the native line once you weighted the draw properly. The bridge paid more on a win, 1.860 against 1.790, and less on a draw. I took the native. Rigas FS and Riga drew 3-3. On a plus quarter a draw pushes the level leg and wins the half-goal leg, so it settled as a half-win. The bridge would have paid more had Riga won and...

Eleven picks. Five won, one half-won, five lost, and the day finished 1.54 units down at minus fourteen per cent. It is the worst day of the week and the losses share a shape worth setting out plainly. Four of the eleven were on the minus one goal line, and three of them died the same way. Nomme Kalju lost 1-0. Slavia Prague drew 2-2. Union Omaha drew 1-1. Not one of those was a thrashing. Two were draws and the third was a single goal. A minus one handicap has no push protection. If your team wins by exactly one the stake comes back, but a draw is a full loss and it settles no differently from losing four nil. That is the trade you make for the price, and on Saturday the trade went against us three times out of four. Al-Ahli won 4-0 and was the only one of the four that was never in doubt. The quarter lines did the opposite, as they are designed to. Pogon drew 2-2 away from home on a plus quarter, so the level leg pushed and the half-goal leg won. Half the stake back plus half...

8 picks, seven settled and one still to come. Three won, four lost. Down 2.41 units on the day so far, and the worst result of the month. The three quarter lines all lost outright and that is where the day went. Aldosivi were beaten 3-1, Vänersborgs 1-0 and Garliava 2-0. A plus 0.25 gives you protection on a draw and nothing else; none of the three drew, so none of the three got any. Three full units. Worth recording that all three had come in shorter than our own number before kick-off — the sort of move that says money has arrived on the other side. I flagged one of them at the time as sitting in the range where a drop rule would take it out, and noted that the rule is untested and I was not going to trim on it. I still would not, on three bets. But it goes in the record, because the only way that ever becomes a rule worth having is if it is written down before it is convenient. The whole lines were the other story. Auda beat Tukums 3-0 and Haka beat SJK Akatemia 2-0, b...

4 picks. Two won, one returned the stake, one lost. Up 0.22 units. Magni is the one worth explaining, because the game was drawn and it still paid more than half a unit. Dalvík/Reynir and Magni finished 1-1. On a plus 0.25 the Draw No Bet half came back and the Double Chance half won at 2.16, which returns 0.55 units on a drawn game. I want to be precise about something here, because I have been quoting these bridges at their winning price and that is only half the picture. When you build a quarter line from two legs, the headline number — 2.857 on Magni — is what it pays if the team wins. On a draw it settles on the Double Chance leg alone, and that is a smaller number. Both outcomes were set out in the slip before kick-off, so nothing was hidden, but the single figure at the top of a bridge is a win-branch price and I will label it that way from now on rather than let it stand as though it applied to every result. Ottawa won 4-0 and both halves paid. That was the pick w...

4 picks. All four won. Up 3.67 units, the best return per position of the month. Fram at 2.70 was the longest price and the biggest return. They beat Stjarnan 3-1 giving a goal, which pays 1.70 units on its own. That was the pick where I said the price had drifted our way through the day, out from 2.60 to 2.70, and that two independent ways of pricing the line both landed around 2.71 to 2.77 — so we were taking fair value with essentially nothing shaved off it. You rarely get that at a counter and it came off. Both whole lines won by exactly two, which is one goal from a push. Nõmme United U21 won 2-0 and Fram 3-1. On a minus 1.00 you need two, and both got two and no more. Worth noticing on a clean-sweep day: a single goal in either game and the return halves. That is not a criticism of the picks, it is the honest margin they won by. Recoleta drew and that was a win, not a rescue. A plus 0.50 on the away side is a Double Chance exactly — draw or away and nothing else. T...

10 picks across two waves. Six won, one pushed, three lost. Up 0.15 units — which is to say the morning made two units and the evening handed them back. The early card went four from four. Suzhou drew 0-0 and a plus 0.50 pays on a draw. Forward won 5-0 on a minus 1.00 that was never in question. Rana won 3-1 away. Jerv drew and returned nine hundredths on the shortest price of the day. Two and a bit units by quarter to three. On Forward I had written that the market was moving onto our side — their match price had shortened from 1.68 to 1.40 through the morning while the handicap had not caught up. That was the whole bet, and it came in 5-0. Sometimes the read is right and the game agrees. The late card lost two units. Egersund were beaten 4-0, Flora lost 3-2 at home, Lugano lost 2-1. Three defeats out of six, and one of the three that survived only pushed. Levadia is the push and it is a clean example. They won 2-1 away, which on a minus 1.00 is exactly the handicap...

11 picks across two waves. Seven won, three pushed, one lost. Up 3.88 units and the best day of the month. Three pushes in one day, and all three landed on the number exactly. Gwangju were beaten by one on a plus 1.00. Smedby won by one on a minus 1.00. KTP won by one on a minus 1.00. Three whole lines, three results sitting precisely on the handicap, three stakes returned untouched. I said this after the pushes a week ago and it holds: a whole line landing on its exact number is not a near miss. It is the market and the model agreeing about where a game sat, and the game obliging. Three of them in an afternoon is unusual, and on a day where one bet lost, those three returned stakes are the difference between a good day and an ordinary one. The two Queensland youth games at six on Sunday morning were the two biggest prices on the slip and both won. Gold Coast United U23 won 4-3 at 1.89 and Moreton City U23 won 3-2 at 2.20, both Draw No Bet. I asked you to set them the nig...

5 picks. Two won, two lost, one returned the stake. Down 0.42 units. Västerås carried the day and it was the biggest price on the slip. A plus 0.50 on the away side is a Double Chance and nothing else, so it needed a draw or a win, and it got a 3-0 win at Elfsborg. 2.16 on the exchange against a best of 2.00 in twenty shops — sixteen pips of difference on a price that long is real money, and it was the widest exchange edge of that week. Hammarby I warned you about and it lost. I wrote that the price had been shortening all day and was still moving, and that if it had gone a long way by the time you reached it then it was not the bet I was advising. Eskilstuna won 1-0. The market had been moving against our side before kick-off and it kept going in the same direction after it. That is worth recording rather than glossing: when I tell you a price is running away, the honest reading is that somebody knows something, and often enough they do. Brisbane lost 2-1 and played a go...

4 picks, three of them winners, and the day closed four hundredths of a unit down. That is not a typo and it is the most useful thing on this page. Three from four and level. Neftchi returned 0.28, San Luis 0.25, Sogdiana 0.43. Curicó lost a full unit. Add it up and you are four hundredths of a unit short of where you started. Every card on this slip was an Asian plus 0.25 and the average price was around 1.40, which means each winner pays a third of a unit and each loser costs three times that. This is the arithmetic of a short-price portfolio and it is worth internalising rather than rediscovering on a bad week. At these odds you need roughly three winners for every loser simply to stand still. We got exactly that and stood exactly still. A day that reads as a comfortable win in the strike rate column is a flat line in the bank. San Luis is the one to look at, because it drew and still paid. A plus 0.25 is half your stake at level and half at plus a half. The game finis...

4 picks. One won, two lost, one postponed. Down 1.74 units and the worst day of the month so far. Fram were beaten 5-2 and that was the day. It was the longest price on the slip at 2.10, held at five separate shops, and I spent a paragraph pointing out that four bookmakers were showing 1.80 on the same bet and that taking their number would cost you fourteen per cent for nothing. All of which was worth saying and none of which helps when the game finishes 5-2 the wrong way. A Draw No Bet gives you the draw back; it does not give you anything else. Medellín was postponed, which is a void and not a loss. The stake comes back in full. It is worth stating plainly because a postponed fixture sometimes gets recorded as a losing bet by people keeping their own figures, and it is not one. Three positions settled on this card, not four. The one that won was the one I nearly left off. I described Paysandu as the weakest price on the card and wrote that of everything on the slip it...

4 picks. Two won, two lost, and the day closed 1.03 units down. This was the most confident card I have put out in a while and it is worth being honest about how it went. Banga was the one I liked most and it was beaten 3-0. I wrote that it was the strongest position on the slip, that every possible route onto it was priced, and that the exchange bridge cleared our own number by nearly ten per cent. All of that was true and none of it mattered. Sūduva won comfortably and the bet was never alive. There is a distinction here worth drawing carefully, because it goes to the heart of what this service does. Getting the best of five available prices is a real, repeatable advantage and it is most of what I spend my time on. It is not the same thing as knowing which bets win. On Banga the route analysis was correct — the exchange bridge genuinely was the best number on the market — and the selection still lost. Those two things sit alongside each other and always will. Víkingur dr...

8 picks. Five won, one lost, two pushed. A good day, and an unusually instructive one — two of the eight landed exactly on their handicap and returned the stake, which is worth explaining properly because it happened twice in the same afternoon. Hønefoss did the heavy lifting, and then some. 9-1 against Ullensaker/Kisa II. We were on twice — giving half a goal at 1.39 and giving a goal and a half at 1.90 — and by half an hour in neither was in any doubt. Nine goals is not a scoreline you plan for. Two selections on one match is the most this system will take, and it only happens when both lines qualify independently; here the match repaid both without breaking sweat. The two pushes, and why they are not near misses. Rågsved beat Syrianska 2-1 and Charlotte Independence beat Greenville Triumph 1-0. Both were on a –1.00 handicap, meaning they needed to win by two. Both won by exactly one. That is a push: the stake comes back, nothing is won and nothing is lost. People read ...

5 picks. One won, four lost. A bad day and there is no way to present it otherwise, so let me go through what actually happened rather than round it off. Devonport City was the one that worked. 6-0 against Launceston City, giving half a goal at 1.67. Never remotely in doubt. That is the shape of selection this system is built on — a side the market had priced close when the underlying numbers said it should not be. Glenorchy Knights is the frustrating one, because they won. 2-1 against Launceston United, and the bet still lost. We were giving a goal and a half, which needs a two-goal win, and they got there by one. Winning the match and losing the handicap is a specific kind of irritating, but it is not a bad beat — a –1.5 line is priced at 1.59 precisely because winning by two is genuinely harder than winning. The price was telling the truth. VG-62 had the game taken away from them. Down to ten men in the 27th minute and beaten 2-1 by MaPS, on a Draw No Bet at 1.59. Six...

5 picks. Four won, one lost. A good day, and the first one in a while, so I want to go through it properly rather than take a lap. Keflavík did the heavy lifting. 3-0 against KA Akureyri, and that scoreline paid on both of the day’s selections. The –1.00 handicap needed a two-goal win and got three, so it settled in full at 2.09 profit — the biggest single return on the card and the only price above 2.00 all day. The Draw No Bet on the same match came in at 1.69. Two bets on one match is the most this system will ever take, and it only happens when both lines qualify on their own merits rather than because I liked the look of the fixture. They did, and the match repaid both. It is worth being clear that this cuts the other way just as hard — a 0-0 there would have cost a full unit on one leg and a stake return on the other, and days where the double lands are the reason the cap exists at two rather than three. The Keflavík –1.00 also makes a point about where these prices ...

4 picks. One won, one half won, two lost. A losing day, and it comes in the middle of a run that has not been enjoyable — so rather than skip past it, I want to go through what actually happened. Nasaf did the job. 2-1 away at AGMK, carrying a quarter-goal start it never needed, at 2.03 — comfortably the best price on the card and the only one above 2.00. That is the shape of bet this system is built around: a side the market has slightly underrated, taken at a price the market has not caught up to. Neftchi drew 0-0 and half won. A +0.25 handicap is two half-stake bets: half at level, half at +0.5. The draw voids the level half and wins the other. At 1.21 that returns a small profit rather than a full one, which is exactly how the line is supposed to behave. No complaints there. San Lorenzo is the one worth looking at properly. They were carrying +1.25 — they could lose by one and still get half the stake back. The bet was alive deep into the match at 1-0 and then conceded ...

11 picks. Five won, two pushed, four lost. The two pushes are worth explaining, because they are the difference between a flat day and a bad one. Forward carried the day. 1-0 against Nyköpings on a –0.5 handicap at 2.63, which was the top price on the whole board and the only selection above 2.10. One goal was all it needed and one goal was all it got. That is the bet this system is built to find: a home side the market had priced as a coin flip when the underlying numbers said otherwise. Eidsvold won 4-1 giving a goal and a half, which is the kind of margin that makes a –1.5 line look easy in hindsight. It was not easy at 1-0 or 2-1. Junkeren stayed in it for an hour. The two pushes. Paide beat Kuressaare 1-0 giving exactly one goal, and Trelleborg drew 2-2 on Draw No Bet. Both return the stake. Neither is a win and neither is a loss, and people sometimes read a push as a near miss — it is not. A –1.0 handicap that wins by exactly one is the line doing precisely what it i...

7 picks today. A deliberately short card — more on that at the bottom. Smedby did most of the work. It was the only price on the card above 2.00, and it was only there because of the route: no bookmaker was pricing the Asian line properly, but a –0.5 handicap and a straight match-winner bet are the same thing, and the match-winner market paid 2.00 across three firms that price independently of each other. Smedby won 2-0 and returned the full unit. That single bet is over half the day. Kvik Halden won 5-4, which is a ridiculous scoreline for a bet that only needed them to avoid defeat. We had the half-goal start and never needed it. FC Caspiy is worth explaining properly, because it is the case people find confusing. A +1.25 handicap is two half-stake bets: half at +1.0 and half at +1.5. Caspiy lost by exactly one goal. The +1.0 half came back as a refund, the +1.5 half won. So a defeat still paid. That is the whole point of the quarter line — it buys you a soft landing on the...

9 picks today. Five winners from nine and the day still finishes down a unit, which tells you where the losses landed rather than how many there were. The two biggest prices on the card both went, and neither went narrowly. Nõmme United were beaten at home by Trans and Vålerenga lost 3-0 to HamKam having been, on the numbers, the best-supported bet of the day. Between them that is two units gone at prices that were supposed to be the ones worth having. South Hobart repaid the double. We held both the -0.50 and the -1.50 on the same match, which is two positions on one 90 minutes and the kind of thing that reads badly when it goes wrong. They won 3-1 — by exactly the two goals the deeper line needed. A minute of Launceston pressure at 3-2 and half of it disappears. PEPO also landed on the exact margin, winning 2-0 in Finland when a one-goal win would have handed the stake straight back. Mercedes drew 1-1 and still paid, because the half-goal start covers a draw — that one was ...