Results for Sun 23 August 2026

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 less on precisely the outcome that happened. A rule that grabs the biggest headline number would have taken the worse bet, and the fixture that proved it is the one where the draw actually landed.

Vila Nova drew 0-0 and won. A plus one and a quarter splits into plus one and plus one and a half, and a goalless draw clears both. Two draws on the card, two bets that were not losses.

Porto at 1.40 was the only market on the slip that supported real size, with over twelve hundred pounds sitting at the price and bet365 matching the exchange exactly. It won 2-0. Vikingur, Stjarnan and Paide all cleared their minus one lines comfortably.

The single loss was Genk II at 2.40 on a Draw No Bet, beaten 3-2 by RFC Liege. That was the fixture where I had first reported no exchange market and was wrong, and the corrected price of 2.40 was eleven per cent clear of the best bookmaker. Getting the best available number and picking winners are two different jobs. On Genk the first went right and the second did not.