BETTING INFO GUIDE

Football Betting - This ebook will help you win
Dramatically increase your chances of winning regular dividends AND the jackpot!
If you're really serious about winning on the pools and you want to use the most effective match selection system and entry perm, then read on, as you've definitely come to the right place! This page contains all of the info you need to profit from regular dividends and put yourself in the PRIME position to win the jackpot!
Almost every week of the year, several people in the UK are immediately transported from the realm of rags to riches by scooping the elusive Jackpot on the football pools. They instantly leave behind their money worries and go on to embrace a life of luxury and security. Sports cars, dream homes and exotic holidays are just some of the exciting things waiting for the person who, through skill or just sheer luck, can correctly choose 8 (out of 49) football matches that are likely to result in score draws.
On the surface, the pools seems to work very much like the lottery. In fact, the two games do share a lot of similarities, but as we'll see below, they also share a lot of differences...
The difference between the pools and the lottery
In the UK alone, there are currently over 10 million people playing the pools each week, and around £15 million is spent by the British public in the search for those elusive matches which will result in a score draw.
Like the lottery, the pools is a form of pari-mutuel betting. All of the money staked by each of the betting participants is placed in a "kitty" or central pool. The organizers take their share, and the remainder is shared equally amongst the winners. Unlike a bet placed with a bookmaker, the return on pools betting investments can never be accurately determined in advance because the total number of participants is unknown, plus there can be several winners with the same correct winning forecast. In such cases the jackpot prize is shared.
The football pools is based around 49 numbers just like the lottery. However, with the pools, each of these numbers corresponds to a football match due to be played on the coming Saturday. To win the jackpot prize you have to correctly predict 8 matches that will end in a score draw (eg: 1-1 or 2-2, etc). You can also win smaller prizes for picking up 6 or 7 score draws combined with 1 or more no-score draws.
In a typical lottery, 6 main ball numbers are drawn each time, so the odds remain the same week after week. But the pools is slightly different in this respect. The number of pools matches that result in a score draw varies from week to week. Some weeks there will only be 4 score draws whereas other weeks there will be 12 or more. But it averages out at about 8 per week. If there are fewer or more than 8 score draws in a given week, the odds are effectively reduced, and this means that there will be more winners, and so the prize amounts are reduced accordingly.
The pools is far more affordable, enjoyable and engaging than playing on the lottery because you can take several intelligent steps to maximize your chances of winning. With the pools, you don't need to rely so much on blind luck every week like you do with the lottery. The pools allows you to use your own skill, judgement and statistical reasoning to predict the outcomes of football matches. For example, if the first match on the coupon is, say, Arsenal v Portsmouth, the chances of this match resulting in a score draw are far less than they would be if Arsenal were playing Man Utd. Therefore, in 9 out of 10 cases, you can safely eliminate these and other similar matches and focus on the matches where the two teams have similar form and ability. You can also go one step further and use a professional match selection system to eliminate even more matches. In addition, the pools allows you to stake your money in a shrewd manner, thus allowing you to cover a large proportion of the matches on the coupon whilst keeping your stake down to an absolute minimum (we'll discuss all of these factors in a moment).
How the Pools works
To play the pools you must first get a coupon from one of the pools companies. In the UK, the 4 main
pools companies are Brittens , Zetters , Vernons and
Littlewoods . You can obtain your coupons by writing or emailing the company and asking for them to send you some coupons. Once you're on their list, you'll receive coupons from them every month for all the forthcoming matches.
The object of the game is to successfully pick 8 matches that will result in a score draw (1-1 or 2-2, etc). There are 49 matches on the weekly pools coupon. You simply mark each of your choices with a cross and then post off your coupon with your stake money.
Once the matches have been played, each of your match selections earns a certain number of points. A score draw earns 3 points, a no-score draw (or void match) earns 2 points, and a home/away win earns 1 point. The jackpot, or "1st dividend", is picked up by correctly predicting 8 score draws (thus producing 24 points). It is also possible to win smaller prizes with points totals of between 21 and 23 points - the amount paid out depends on the results and the number of winners at each level.
Each set of 8 predictions is known as a line, and, unlike the lottery, a single line costs a very small amount of money on the pools. The current costs per line are: Littlewoods: 1 and 2/3 pence, Vernons: 5/11 pence, Zetters: 1/8 pence, and Brittens: 1/15 pence. Littlewoods is the most expensive, but they pay out bigger prizes than the others.
One good thing about checking your pools coupon is that you only need to make a claim if you've actually won the jackpot (ie: obtained 8 score draws on a single line). All other prizes are posted out to participants automatically. The results and pools numbers can be found in the major newspapers, on TV, on the Web, and on teletext. To calculate your total score you simply add up the points obtained by the best 8 selections on your coupon.
When placing a perm bet (eg: 8-from-10), you can win multiple prizes because you are increasing the number of selections, and hence, the number of lines you do. The most popular full perm entry is the '8-from-10' perm. That is, 10 matches are selected and if any 8 of those result in score draws, the maximum 24 point total is attained. There are 45 different ways to cover 8 selections from a line containing 10 crosses.
When you fill in your match selections on your coupon, you don't actually enter huge numbers of crosses to cover various combinations of score draws. For example, if you place an '8-from-15' perm, it would require filling out 6,435 individual lines on the coupon (with each line containing 8 "X"'s). This would of course be very tedious and time-consuming, so instead, pools coupons allow you to enter your 15 "X"'s all on a single line, and then you just tick the appropriate box in the list to indicate the type of perm you want to do. Although full perms do increase your chances, they can be extremely expensive if you want to cover a significant proportion of matches on the coupon.
As well as full perms, there are pools plans, which are conditional perms that offer certain prize guarantees. Typical pools plans include Lit Plan, V-Plan, Daily Mail F and Sun Plan 40. For example, one popular plan covers 17 selections and guarantees that if you get 8 score draws in your 17 selections, you'll reap at least one line with 7 score draws. These conditional perms are relatively cheap and they certainly do help you to increase your chances of a win. However, for a similar price, you could use your own tailor-made custom perm, which would give you the maximum 24 points when you get 8 score draws in the correct groups of the perm (more about custom perms in a moment).
How to maximize your chances of winning on the Pools
Successful pools betting involves two very important ingredients. These are Match Selection and Betting Strategy . When you correctly combine these two factors, you will dramatically increase your chances of winning sizeable dividends on a regular basis whilst keeping your weekly stakes down to an absolute minimum...
Match Selection
When it comes to soccer, each match certainly does NOT have an equal chance of resulting in a score draw. After all, some teams are far better than others. This undeniable fact enables you to use statistically-based methods to eliminate the matches which have the smallest chance of resulting in a score draw. How do we do this? Well, using statistics that are freely available in newspapers and on the Internet, it is fairly easy to accurately weed out at least 10 of the matches on any given coupon. However, you'll need to eliminate more matches than this if you want to keep your stakes to a minimum. By far, the most effective way to draw up your shortlist of matches is to use a tried and trusted match selection system. We'll tell you about 7 extremely effective methods later. But whichever method you use, you can be sure that the more matches you eliminate, the lower your chances of success. Therefore you cannot afford to be too selective, as you'll see below...
The result of a football match is often determined by a single goal. Hence, scorelines such as 1-0 and 2-1 are extremely common, whereas scorelines such as 4-1 and 5-2 occur far less frequently. Unforeseen events on the pitch, which reduce the element of skill and increase that of chance, can have a serious impact on the result of a game. There are countless examples of unforeseen events on the pitch which can affect the result of a match. For example, a referee might decide to award a free kick for a dubious foul just outside the penalty area, or a striker might score from a slightly offside position without it being seen by the linesman, or an important defender might get sent off, or a striker might get injured. It is for such reasons that the result of any match can never be a foregone conclusion. Major upsets will always happen. This uncertainty is the very thing which keeps the bookmakers and pools companies in business.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt though that a logically applied prediction system can significantly improve your chances of winning because it will enable you to weed out the matches which have very little scope for ending up as a score draw. Of course, no match selection system can ever be spot-on 100% of the time, but this doesn't matter in the long-run because you only need to be right once!
However, using an effective match selection system is only half of the story. Once you've drawn up a shortlist of matches to include on your coupon, you need to employ a sound betting strategy that will maximize your winning potential...
Betting Strategy
The pools allows you to stake your money in a more intelligent and affordable way than you can with the lottery. The lottery requires you to spend £1 for each line that you do. So to cover 10,000 different combinations of a shortlist of 24 lottery numbers, you'd need to spend £10,000, plus several hours filling out thousands of lottery slips! But the pools allows you to cover many thousands of combinations - all on a single column of your pools coupon - and for a tiny fraction of what it would cost on the lottery.
Let's say that you've used a reliable match selection system to eliminate 25 of the matches on your coupon, and you're now left with 24 matches instead of the original 49. Using a full 8-from-24 perm, you could cover every possible combination of 8 matches from your 24 selections. But as I'm sure you already know, a full 8-from-24 perm would be far too costly for most people to keep up every week. However, it is not necessary to cover every single combination of 8-from-24; you need only cover the combinations that give you the best chance of scooping a payout. This means that you can dramatically reduce the number of lines, and hence reduce your costs considerably.
Most pools companies accept 3 different types of
pools entry, namely: full perms , custom perms and
pools plans . Full perms are the most effective but they are far too expensive if you want to cover a large proportion of the matches on your coupon. And although pools plans do enable you to include a large number of selections for a comparatively small cost, they don't cover all of the possible combinations of your selections. In fact, they only cover a small fraction of them. And what's more,
pools plans tend to contain loads of useless combinations that have very little scope for capturing a win. So in other words, you are effectively wasting a large proportion of your stake money when you use a pools plan. ( click here for a more detailed explanation of the difference between full perms and pools plans).
However, you don't need to rely on the full perms and plans listed on the coupons. You can use your own custom perms! There are plenty of custom perms that enable you to cover all of your selections in the most intelligent way possible, and for a tiny fraction of the cost of a full perm. These custom perms can be perfectly tailored to suit the number of selections you want to include on your coupon! Almost all pools companies allow you to use your own custom perms, yet most people never take full advantage of this because they don't know how to perm their selections intelligently, or how to calculate the total number of lines, or how to calculate the total cost.
Take the custom perm shown below. There are 24 selections altogether. That's virtually HALF of the matches on the coupon! Now look at the way the selections have been permed. There are 8 groups and there are 3 selections in each group. This gives you a total of 6,561 lines, and costs just £4.37 with Brittens Pools.