Three coupons, three losses: what a 70% leg really means

What happened

Both Saturday coupons came down to one leg. The first lost at Villarreal, who were 65% favourites against Elche; the second lost at The Hague, where PSV were 75%. Every other leg - City, Barcelona, Bayern, Roma, Galatasaray, PSG, Fenerbahce, Feyenoord - came in. Sunday's coupon lost two: AZ at Cambuur and Twente against Utrecht.

All three are settled as losses in the record, at one unit each, the same way a winner would have been.

Why four from five is the normal result

A 70% favourite loses three times in ten. Put five of them on one slip and the chance that none of them slips is 0.7 multiplied by itself five times: about 17%. The coupon page prints that number for exactly this reason.

So four winners from five is not a near miss. It is the most likely way for a five-fold of favourites to finish, and it is what happened twice on Saturday.

The single picks

The single picks are the other side of the board: prices that sat above fair value, mostly outsiders. 53 have settled and 4 have won - Lazio at 5.71, Hamburg at 4.33, Lecce at 4.72 and Utrecht at 8.50 - for -29.74 units.

At an average price near 6.7, a fair hit rate is about one in seven, so four from 53 is behind it, but 53 is a small sample for prices that long. The number stays on the page until there are enough results to say something.

What changes

The coupon now uses one match day only, today or tomorrow, so a result arrives the same night instead of days later. The rule for choosing legs is unchanged: the most likely five, each priced against the market's fair line.

What does not change is the reporting. A tipster that only posts its winners has nothing to measure, and this site is built to be measured.