Are football tips accurate?

Why no tip is sure

A football result depends on goals, which are rare and partly down to luck. The best forecasts say "likely", never "certain". A side we make 70 % likely to win fails to win about three times in ten, and that is the forecast being right.

What accuracy means

Two different things are called accuracy. The first is the win rate: how often the tips won. The second is whether the chances were right: of the matches called 70 % likely, did about 70 % come in? A tipster can have a high win rate and still lose money, because the win rate ignores the price. A 70 % win rate at an average price of 1.30 loses 9 % of every unit staked (0.70 × 1.30 - 1 = -0.09). To break even at 70 % you need an average price of about 1.43.

Losing runs are normal

Suppose every tip is 65 % likely and the chances are exactly right. Each tip then loses 35 % of the time. The table shows how often a run of straight losses appears at least once somewhere in 100 tips.

Four or five losses in a row is not a sign that something is broken. It is what a long list of likely bets looks like.

How many tips before you can tell

Win rates swing a lot over short samples. If every tip is really 65 % likely, the win rate over 100 tips lands between about 56 % and 74 % nineteen times in twenty. Over 500 tips the range narrows to about 61 % to 69 %. A tipster who shows you ten wins has shown you nothing: you need hundreds of tips, all of them counted.

How to judge a tipster

• Every tip recorded before the match, with its price, and none removed afterwards.
• Losses shown beside wins, over a long period.
• Results graded automatically or by someone other than the tipster.
• Prices compared with the closing price: beating the closing price over many bets is the best sign that a tipster's chances are better than the market's.
• No guarantees, no "fixed matches" and no screenshots of single wins.

Warning signs

• "Sure" or "fixed" matches. A result cannot be known in advance, and match-fixing is a crime that nobody sells tips on.
• A record that only shows winning days.
• Paying for a tip before you can see its price, or a refund promise that is hard to claim.
• Pressure to stake more after a loss.

What we publish

Every Dawn Odds tip is written before kick-off with its price and graded automatically when the result arrives, at the price it went out at. The monthly audit lists every board and how each tip was graded, and the home page shows the last seven days, losses included. How it works explains how tips are chosen, and football tips today has today's list.