Betting market guide
Asian Handicaps Explained
Understand whole, half and quarter-goal Asian handicaps, including refunds, half-wins, half-losses and worked £10 examples.
Read the Asian handicaps guide
Welcome to the DrawBias football betting section
These articles explain popular markets and modelling ideas in plain English, while also showing the calculations behind fair odds, bookmaker margins and betting-exchange trades.
Football betting articles
Start with the market guides, then move on to the more detailed goals and corners modelling articles.
Odds and value
Bookmakers’ Overround Explained
Learn how bookmaker margin—also called overround, juice or vig—is built into prices and how to calculate fair probabilities.
Read the overround guideExchange trading
Lay the Draw Explained
See how the popular football trading strategy works, including lay liability, exiting after a goal, greening up and managing risk.
Read the Lay the Draw guideCorners modelling
Over/Under Corners Model
Explore the team, tactical and match-context factors used to estimate fair odds for an Over/Under 10.5 corners market.
Read the corners model guideGoals modelling and research
How to Build an Over/Under 2.5 Goals Model
A detailed guide to attack and defence ratings, expected goals, Poisson and Dixon–Coles methods, model testing, fair odds and relevant academic papers.
What these guides are designed to teach
The aim is to move beyond simply choosing a bet and instead understand how the market is priced, what information a model needs and how uncertainty should be measured.
Understand the marketLearn exactly how handicaps, exchange lays and bookmaker margins are settled.
Estimate fair pricesTurn model probabilities into decimal odds and compare them with available prices.
Test rather than guessUse calibration, out-of-sample testing and realistic costs when evaluating a model.
Responsible gambling
Betting should be treated as entertainment. No strategy or statistical model can guarantee a profit, and past results do not ensure future performance. Never stake money you cannot afford to lose.