Correct Score is one of the most popular sports betting markets today. Major bookies offer the Correct Score option for various sports, but it is most popular for soccer. Other sports where it is available include baseball, snooker, ice hockey, tennis, and e-Sports. This market means exactly as it sounds. To win a Correct Score bet, you have to predict the final scoreline of a match. There are zero margins for error. To use soccer as an example, you have to foretell exactly how many goals each team will score. Examples of scorelines include 2-1, 1-1, 2-3, 2-2 0-1, 1-0, 0-0, 3-0 and so on. The bookie will usually offer a catalog of most of the possible scorelines from each soccer match. More established bookies will have more options, while less established ones will have fewer. Some scorelines are hardly practical (think 30-12, for example), so no bookmaker is likely to list them. The common practice is to create an ‘Any other Score’ market that takes care of such freak, once-in-a-blue-moon outcomes.
So How Do Bookies Set Up Betting Odds For Correct Score?
The short answer is pretty much how they price odds for other sports betting markets, but with a few kinks. As a famous soccer player once opined, “the perfect game of football world end 0-0”. Modern soccer is not yet perfect but is forever tending towards that lofty ideal. The above is that the gap in quality between the very top teams and their less illustrious opponents is continually diminishing. “Lesser” players are matching up and even out-performing higher-rated players. Consequently, huge, eye-catching scorelines are becoming rarer than ever. It is a phenomenon that is more pronounced in the top leagues, which befittingly receive most of the betting volume in today’s sports gambling world.
Bookies are well aware of this. Therefore, they put shorter odds on smaller scorelines. The 0-0’s, 1-0’s, 0-1’s, and 1-1’s are nowadays more probable, while the 4-0’s and 5-0’s of years past are now assigned premium, long odds. There are still a few top leagues with dominant teams that can thoroughly outscore their opponents, but the scoreline permutations for such matches are very many. Therefore, bookies will still have high odds for those. The bookmakers will combine the above knowledge with statistical research data, expert opinion, and historical precedents to set their Correct Score odds.
Is Correct Score Betting Hard?
Yes, undoubtedly so. It can be onerous and extremely daunting. Predicting the winning team in soccer is already a challenge, so how much more trying to call how many goals each team will score? That said, nothing worth having comes easy in betting. Sporting outcomes that are harder to predict will get bigger rewards (longer odds), while the inverse holds for easy predictions. Brave punters who can make true scoreline predictions stand to rake in sumptuous profits from small stakes.
Betting Strategies For Success
Here is what any sports punter can do to improve their chances at securing great Correct Score wins:
Know Your Teams/players
This is a rule that applies broadly to all sports gambling, but more so when playing this market. Spend time to learn about the competing teams and/or players, and the league too. Armed with this knowledge, it would be far easier to speculate the scoring possibilities. Without it, betting Correct Score would be a naive shot in the dark.
Favor Low-Scoring Matches/Leagues
Compared to low-scoring, there’s a sea of permutations when trying to predict high-scoring games. Will it be 4-2, 4-1, 2-1, 3-1, 3-2, 2-2, 2-3, 4-0 or 4-3? A truly low-scoring match will have just four possibilities: 0-0, 1-1 0-1, and 1-0. Established bookies will even offer a refund on 0-0 draws (called a “Bore Draw Refund”), leaving the punter with just three outcomes to ponder. Talk about work made easy!
