The British Treble Chance is the game of choosing winning lines from 8 draws from a list of 49 matches on a coupon. Some bettors prefer to bet, for example, on 3 draws or 5 games away. This article briefly describes how you can identify the most likely candidate to tie or drop from a list of qualifying matches.

ranked list

In a previous article I wrote about how to prepare a list of match evaluations. This is a list of the matches on the coupon, with a numerical rating against each. The numerical evaluation is just a number that reflects the probability of the match being a home win, a draw or an away win.

We then sort this list in order of ascending probability (match rating is the term I use). Those with the lowest match rating marked them away, and those at the other end marked them home. Matches with mid-range evaluations I mark as probable draws.

Now, with 49 games on a coupon, knowing where to ‘draw the line’ between away/draw/home odds is a key decision.

Analysis of recent coupon results shows that approximately 45% of matches were home wins during the season, with 26% away and 27% tied with or without a score.

Choosing our candidates

Now, at first glance, this would suggest that we simply divide our ranked match evaluations according to these numbers. But we know that not everything goes smoothly, we get some amazing results and even some games that look like home wins can end in away results. Also, of course, no forecasting system is perfect, even if all the results matched the team’s form.

So the boundaries between home/draw/away are not clear and we need to cast our net wider and cover more games (at triple chance). However, for 3 draws or 5 away predictions, the problem is more difficult: we have to pay much more attention to individual matches, team changes, injuries and other factors.

The 3 draws we need will be somewhere in the list of 20 potential draws we have selected. So how do we find them? We do not! We simply set our coverage to be ‘permanently’ any 3 out of 20. That’s a lot of lines, in fact 1140 separate bets. Even at 20 pence the line is over £200 in total, too much for most punters. And of course the bookmaker’s odds may not cover this. If we are looking for, say, a return of 3 to 1 (£600), then we would need fixed odds of 3000/1.

trim the list

One way we can make this work is to cut back on the number of lines, i.e. reduce the coverage. So we would need to shorten the list to say 12 selections. Any 3 out of 12 would be 220 lines, around £40 at 20p per line, and we would need fixed odds of 600/1 for a target return of 3 to 1 (£120).

Shortening the list would mean eliminating the selections; this is done by analyzing matches and teams in detail, or simply removing higher or lower rated matches from the qualifying list, some from the home win end and some from the away win. final, and in proportion to the percentages of usual results (45% homes, 26% outside). That’s roughly 6 home and 2 away cuts to reduce coverage from 20 games to 12 games.

It can be difficult to find an online bookmaker that offers this type of betting, and you may need to place such a bet in person at the bookmaker’s premises.

(c) Phil Trademarks 2010