How I Pick a Bet My Actual Process

No secret formula just the five things I check on every match before a prediction goes up on EC Predicts.

Every day someone messages me asking the same thing: how do you choose the games you post? Usually they are hoping I will name a website, or an app, or some system that spits out winners. There isn't one. What there is, is a routine — five things I check on every single match before a prediction goes anywhere near this site.

I have recorded the video above walking through it out loud. If you would rather read it, here is the same process written down.

Start with the league, not the match

Before I look at a single fixture I look at which competition it is in. If it is a league I don't watch, I don't bet it — no matter how attractive the odds look.

That sounds obvious and almost nobody does it. The temptation is always there: some unfamiliar league is playing on a quiet Tuesday, the odds look generous, and generous odds feel like opportunity. They are not. Generous odds are usually the market telling you there is something you don't know.

My test is simple. If I cannot tell you who a team's first-choice goalkeeper is, who their manager is, and roughly how they set up, I have no business predicting their match. I watch a lot of football — the major European leagues, the divisions below them, the cup competitions and plenty outside Europe — so the list of competitions I will take a position on is long. But it is still a list. If a fixture falls outside it, it does not go up on EC Predicts, however tempting the price looks.

Form is not the last five results

This is where most people go wrong, and it is the biggest single difference between a casual punter and somebody doing this seriously.

A team on a three-game winning run looks like form. Open it up and often it isn't. Ask:

• Who did they beat? Three wins against the bottom of the table is not the same as three wins against the top half.
• Home or away? Some sides are a completely different team on the road.
• Was it a cup game? Managers rest players in cup games. A comfortable win with a second-string eleven tells you very little about the first eleven.
• How did they win? A side that has won three times by a single goal, riding their luck each time, is not in the same shape as one winning comfortably.

Form is about performance, not results. Results are only the scoreboard's opinion of the performance.

Team news is where the money is

This is the part beginners skip, and it is the part that actually decides matches.

One suspended defensive midfielder can change how an entire side plays. A manager with a European tie on Wednesday will rest people on Saturday. An injured first-choice striker means the goals have to come from somewhere else — and often they simply don't come.

I check team news as late as I reasonably can before posting, because it moves right up until kick-off. And if something breaks after I have posted a tip that genuinely changes the picture, I would rather say so than pretend I never saw it.

The odds have to be wrong, not just the bet right

Here is the idea that takes longest to sink in: picking the winner is the easy part.

Anyone can tell you the stronger team is likely to win. The bookmaker knows that too, and the price already reflects it. Backing a big favourite at a short price is not clever — it is just agreeing with the bookmaker.

The job is finding matches where you think the price itself is wrong. Where the market has not fully accounted for the injury, or the fixture congestion, or the fact that a team's recent results flatter them badly. That gap — between what you think will happen and what the price says will happen — is the only thing that makes money over time.

It also means a losing bet can still have been a good bet, and a winning bet can have been a bad one. That is uncomfortable, and it is true.

When I skip a match completely

Some matches I will not touch, whatever the odds:

• Derbies. Form goes out of the window, and so does any edge you thought you had.
• Relegation six-pointers. Too much fear, too little football.
• Dead rubbers at the end of a season, where one side has nothing left to play for. You cannot predict motivation.
• Anything where the team news is still unclear close to kick-off.

Saying "I don't have a bet here" is a skill. Anyone can find something to bet on every single day. Not everything is worth betting on, and forcing a bet because you feel you ought to have one is how a good week turns into a bad month.

The part nobody wants to hear

I lose bets. Everybody doing this honestly loses bets, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something.

What this process does is tilt things in your favour across a long run of bets. It does not guarantee the next one. Judge any tipster, myself included, over months — not over a single weekend.

Free predictions go up on EC Predicts every day, and everything you have just read is the thinking behind them.

Bet responsibly, and only ever stake what you can comfortably afford to lose. 18+.