1X2 is the match-result bet. You choose between a home win (1), a draw (X) and an away win (2), and your pick wins if the match ends that way after 90 minutes. It’s the most common bet in football, and the table below is today’s list of 1X2 tips.
The table is supplied by an outside prediction provider and shown as published. Under it, we explain how the bet works, how often favourites really win, and how to tell a solid pick from a hopeful one.
Other tips for today
De6
Dusseldorf U19
RW Essen U19
–
–
100
Tomorrow’s tips
How a 1X2 bet is settled
Only the score after 90 minutes plus added time counts. Extra time and penalties are ignored, so a cup tie that’s level at full time is an X for this bet. If a match is postponed the bet is normally void, and if it’s abandoned most bookmakers void it too unless the result was already decided. Every bookmaker publishes its own rules, so check the ones on your slip.
Sometimes you’ll see 1X2 called the full-time result, the match result or three-way. They’re the same bet. It isn’t the same as double chance, which covers two of the three outcomes, or draw no bet, which returns your stake if the match is drawn.
Why it’s the hardest everyday bet
Three outcomes make it difficult, and the draw makes it worse. Across 33,324 league matches, 43.5% ended in a home win, 30.3% in an away win and 26.2% in a draw. No result is rare, so there’s always one you didn’t pick.
Home advantage is real and it’s big. Home teams took 55.4% of all goals, 54.9% of shots on target and 54.9% of corners. A pick for the visitors has to climb that hill.
How often favourites win
The closing price tells you how likely the bookmakers thought each result was. Strip out their margin and you get a percentage for each team. We grouped every match by the favourite’s percentage and counted what happened:
| Favourite’s chance at the price | Matches | Favourite won |
|---|---|---|
| Under 45% | 13,986 | 40.6% |
| 45% to 55% | 9,681 | 50.0% |
| 55% to 65% | 5,347 | 61.5% |
| 65% to 75% | 2,707 | 72.8% |
| 75% or more | 1,603 | 83.7% |
The prices held up. A favourite priced near 50% won half its matches, and one priced near 80% won about 84%. There’s no free money in the table either way, so the useful lesson is what a price means. Even at the top end, a favourite fails to win once in six.
Draws are not random
A draw is likeliest when the two teams are close and few goals are expected. Where the gap between the home win chance and the away win chance was under 5 points, 29.7% of matches were drawn. Where the gap was 45 points or more, only 17.0% were. When the closing over 2.5 chance was below 35%, a third of matches (32.5%) finished level.
Some clubs draw far more than the rest of their league. Among teams with 150 or more matches in the data, Brescia and Bari in Serie B drew 38.8% of theirs. PSV Eindhoven drew 11.8%.
Shots on target as a form guide
Goals are rare, so results lie. Shots on target are more frequent, and they track the winner well. The side with more shots on target won 58.6% of matches, drew 25.3% and lost 16.1%.
Before kick-off, it’s a weaker guide. Using each team’s average shots on target in the games before this one, the better side won 47.8% of matches. Ranking by points won 46.5%, by goal difference 47.2%, and picking the bookmaker’s favourite won 51.5%. Nothing beat the price, which is what you’d expect from a price that already contains the form.
What a day of favourites looks like
Imagine ten tips in the table, each a favourite priced near 60%. In our data a favourite at that price won 61.5% of the time, so you’d expect about six of the ten to come in. Four or fewer would happen on roughly one day in six, and eight or more on about the same share of days.
That swing is ordinary. It’s why a good day or a bad day tells you very little, and why the figures above come from tens of thousands of matches and not from last weekend.
Five rules for 1X2 tips
- Read the price before the pick. A pick at 45% and one at 75% are different bets even when they look the same in a table.
- Expect the draw. One match in four finishes level, and the share rises to about 30% when the teams are close.
- Remember the home edge. Away wins are 30.3% of results and home wins 43.5%, so a pick for the visitors has less cushion when it goes wrong.
- Check the team news. A red card changes everything. When the home side was the only one sent off (2,351 matches) it won 22.5% and lost 50.4%, against 43.5% wins in matches without a red.
- Keep accumulators short. Each leg multiplies the chance of failure, and the best favourite of the day is a long way from certain.
Common mistakes
The first is picking the favourite every time and calling it a system. At 55% to 65% the favourite wins 61.5% of the time, which means you lose nearly four bets in ten.
The second is ignoring the draw. People talk themselves out of it because it feels like the boring result, and it happens once in four matches.
The third is paying for confidence. When a price is very short, the return is small, and one failure can erase several wins.
Questions people ask about 1X2
What does 1X2 mean? 1 is a home win, X is a draw and 2 is an away win.
Does 1X2 include extra time? No. It covers the 90 minutes plus added time only.
Is the home team always listed first? Yes. The team named first is the home side, and a 1 is a win for that team.
How often does the favourite win? About 51% of the time across all matches in our data, ranging from 41% for weak favourites to 84% for strong ones.
How often is a match a draw? 26.2%, and more in some competitions: Serie B had 32.0%, the Premier League 23.9%.
Is 1X2 easier than over/under? No. It has three outcomes where over/under has two, so there’s more room to be wrong.
Where can I see tomorrow’s matches? On the 1X2 tomorrow page. The weekend page covers Saturday and Sunday.
These are estimates and not promises. You must be 18 to bet, and a stake should be money you can do without.