1X2 is the oldest question in football: home win, draw or away win. This page explains what the three numbers mean, how odds become implied probabilities, and why three prices always add up to more than 100%.
1X2 is the match result market. 1 is a home win. X is a draw. 2 is an away win. Every match ends in exactly one of the three.
Implied probability is the chance that a price points to. To find it, divide 1 by the decimal odds. Odds of 2.00 give 1 ÷ 2.00 = 0.50, which is 50%. Odds of 8.00 give 1 ÷ 8.00 = 0.125, which is 12.5%. Short odds mean a high probability. Long odds mean a low one.
Take a match with a strong home favourite, priced at 1.40 for the home win, 4.75 for the draw and 8.00 for the away win.
Only one result can happen, so the true chances must add up to 100%. The extra 4.98% is the bookmaker margin, the bookmaker's built-in share. Every price is a little shorter than the true chance would give, which makes every result look a little more likely than it is.
The simplest way is to divide each figure by the total:
Now the three add up to 100%. This simple method takes the margin off every result in the same proportion. In real prices more of the margin sits on the outsider, so the simple method overstates long-shot chances by roughly 1.2 percentage points.
Zort uses Shin's method, which corrects for this. For the same three prices it gives 69.33% for the home win, 19.55% for the draw and 11.12% for the away win. The away side drops from 11.91% to 11.12%, a difference of 0.79 percentage points, and the favourite moves up. Zort does this with live odds from around 27 UK and EU bookmakers.
Zort converts the probabilities without margin into an expected goals figure for each team and runs a Poisson/Dixon-Coles model, which gives a chance to every scoreline. The three match results are then sums of scorelines.
Say the model expects 1.5 goals from the home team and 1.1 from the away team. In a plain Poisson model the draw is the sum of 0-0, 1-1, 2-2 and so on. The first four are 7.43%, 12.26%, 5.06% and 0.93%, which add up to 25.68%. The rarer high-scoring draws bring it to 25.77%. Adding up every scoreline the same way gives:
Together they make 46.42 + 25.77 + 27.81 = 100%. The Dixon-Coles version adds a low-score correction, because a plain Poisson model underestimates low scorelines such as 0-0 and 1-1. The full method is on the mathematical football prediction page.
Each row of the daily board shows the three probabilities as whole percentages. Because they are rounded, they can add up to 99 or 101. A row showing 35%, 29% and 35% adds up to 99.
The largest of the three is the most likely result, not a likely one in every case. A team on 44% is the most likely winner in its match and still fails to win 56 times in 100, because 100 − 44 = 56. Even a 70% favourite fails to win about 3 times in 10.
The other columns come from the same model: correct score, over/under 2.5 goals and both teams to score. Zort publishes no win rate, return or hit rate for its predictions and makes no claim that they win.
1X2 is the match result market. 1 is a home win, X is a draw and 2 is an away win. Every match ends in exactly one of the three.
Implied probability is the chance that a price points to. Divide 1 by the decimal odds to find it. Odds of 2.00 give 50% and odds of 8.00 give 12.5%.
Because each price includes the bookmaker margin. For prices of 1.40, 4.75 and 8.00 the implied probabilities are 71.43%, 21.05% and 12.50%, which add up to 104.98%. The extra 4.98% is the margin.
The simple way is to divide each implied probability by the total, so the three add up to 100%. Zort uses Shin's method, which takes more of the margin off the outsider, because the simple method overstates long-shot chances.
The board shows whole percentages, so rounding can leave a total of 99 or 101. The probabilities behind them add up to 100%.
The daily board at zort-app.com/predictions/ shows the home, draw and away probability for every match priced that day. It is free and is published every day at 10:00 UTC.
Zort is a bet tracker, not a betting company. It is an app for tracking the bets you have already placed, so you can see your real results in one place: profit and loss, return and win rate. Zort sells no picks and takes no bets. Read more about the bet tracker app.
Download Zort FreeMore: Free Football Predictions · Mathematical Football Prediction · Over/Under 2.5 Goals · Correct Score Predictions · Both Teams To Score Tips · Today's board