Correct score betting is one of the most popular bets to make in football, and whilst it’s always one of the hardest to predict, it’s also one of the most rewarding when your bet wins.
Rewarding financially, because correct score bets are invariably at big odds, but also rewarding in terms of the skill it takes to correctly predict the score of a game of football. You can win some serious bragging rights with this one.
Here we take a look at what it is, how it works, what sort of odds you can expect and also offer up some strategy and advice on how to pick your correct score bets
What Is Correct Score Betting?
Credit: Kevin Walsh Flickr Cropped
Starting at the beginning is often a sensible course of action, so we’ll get the ball rolling with an easy one. Correct score football betting, in case you hadn’t figured it out, is betting on what the score will be at full time in any given match.
You can also bet on the correct score at half time and also for a given score to occur at any point during the match (would you believe that’s called “anytime correct score” betting – more on that below) but in general a correct score bet relates to what the score is at full time. This includes injury time but not, unless specifically stated, extra time in cup games.
You can bet on any score from 0-0 upwards (but see our sneaky cheat first) and the highest score available varies from bookmaker to bookmaker.
What Is Anytime Correct Score Betting?
When you bet on a correct score market own goals count, penalties count, in fact any goals at all count, and the winning bet is simply whatever the official final score is recorded as after 90 minutes plus stoppage time.
Anytime correct score betting is a relatively new market and a nice addition to the range of correct score options. It’s fairly self-explanatory really, simply meaning that the score you bet on must occur at some point in the game for your bet to win. So if you place a “2-1 anytime correct score” bet and the game finishes 3-1, you will have won so long as the losing side scored their only goal before your team scored their third. If your team went 3-0 up but the other side pulled one back towards the end, your bet will not have won because the scoreline will never have read 2-1.
Obviously, you can’t bet on 0-0 but other than that you can opt for any score you like. The great thing about placing an anytime correct score bet is that you win as soon as that score happens and don’t need to wait the whole match for your bet to become a winner.
As you would expect, lower scores, such as 1-0 either way and 1-1, will always have lower odds than higher scores.
Correct Score Betting Tips & Strategy
Here we have a few strategies to help you choose your own correct score bets. We’ve also got a full range of how to bet features including information on both teams to score betting, but when it comes to betting on correct scores we’ll start with the obvious truth – that it isn’t easy.
Football is such an unpredictable game that just picking which side will win can be hard enough, let alone nailing the exact result. Also, because of the difficulty in making precise predictions, the bookies use statistical models for most of their odds setting, meaning that mistakes and odds that are genuinely out of line are very rare, especially for the bigger matches/leagues/tournaments.
For these reasons we would suggest that few people, if any, make a living or even a long term net win from betting on correct scores in football. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a great bet but it does mean that for most people it should probably be viewed as a fun bet, rather than a real money-maker.
Betting on the correct score is a brilliant way to liven up a dull match or add extra spice and interest to a game, and because of the high odds you can potentially win large amounts of money from relatively small stakes. A £2 bet on which side will win may not seem worthwhile, but a £2 bet on 3-3 at odds of 74/1 is another matter entirely, and unless one team races to 3 goals or the match is very low scoring, it is also a bet that should keep you interested for most of the match.
That’s one of the many great things about betting on the correct score in football, especially if you are placing the bet primarily for fun – most bets are likely to stay live for an extended period. Bet on the first goalscorer or a team to win to nil, for example and your bet can be blown out of the water in the first minute of the game, but bet on 2-1 at full time and you should get decent “value” from your bet in terms of entertainment at least.
How to Win Betting on Correct Scores
Okay, so whilst fun is all well and good, much of the fun in betting on football comes from winning, so here we offer up our top tips on how to decide what score to pick when betting on correct scores.
There are lots of factors to consider when betting on the correct score market in football, including the quality of the sides involved, what each side has at stake, form, injuries, suspensions, upcoming fixtures, and even weather conditions.
Mathematically, the vast majority of results fall within a fairly narrow range of options, so in terms of simply winning the bet choosing a score between 1-0 and 2-2 is a sensible way to go. However, the odds will reflect this, so the key to winning at correct score betting, as with any betting, is to try and find a value bet. There is a lot to know about value betting and it pays to lap up that knowledge, but in simple terms a value bet is one where the odds are higher than probability suggests they should be; in other words, the bookie has got it wrong. Being able to spot and pounce on these opportunities means that you can benefit financially in the long term.
The ways to find value bets in football tend to be the same irrespective of the market, and generally require lots of research and hard work. However, simple things to consider are injuries to key players, be they attackers, defenders or keepers. Clearly, a side with three injured strikers is less likely to score, and if you are able to get your bets on before this news is common knowledge the odds on the injury cursed side scoring nil may be higher than they should be.
Such information is factored into the bookies’ correct score odds but because they tend to rely heavily on statistical models that look more at long term factors, there can be errors when short term factors are strong. These may include the weather – windy and rainy days generally produce lower scoring games; form – both scoring and conceding are heavily influenced by confidence so streaks are common; and what, if anything, is at stake for this match.
Regarding this latter point, in group-stage competitions a draw may often be a favourable result to both sides and in this instance backing 0-0 and/or 1-1 can offer excellent value – because while the sides don’t “fix” the match neither team pushes too hard for the win.