Weekly review
Week of 12 October
12 October 2026 – 18 October 2026 · 638 words
Between 12 October and 18 October we had published a prediction before kick-off for 81 fixtures, across 4 days and 16 competitions. We called 46 of them correctly, 56.8%.
Home, away, and which we get right
We backed the home side 55 times and the visiting side 26, so 68% of our calls went to the home team. They landed 58.2% of the time. The away calls landed 53.8%. Here the home calls are the sounder ones, which is the more ordinary result: home advantage is real and the model is reading it rather than assuming it.
The calls we backed hardest
15 calls were published at 70% or above. 12 of them came in, 80.0%, against an average stated confidence of 80.1%. The most expensive of them was Bayern Munich to beat Viking FK at 85.3%, which finished 3–3 — a draw, which is the outcome we structurally cannot call.
The call we would point to
The call we are most pleased with is not the most confident one, it is the one furthest from the price. KAA Gent to beat AGF in UEFA Conference League: we published 78.0% where the odds implied about 58.5%, a gap of 19.5 points, and it finished 1–0. 5 calls in this period were that far above the market and came in. We list one rather than all of them because a page of the ones that worked, with the ones that did not left out, is how a track record gets quietly turned into advertising — the figure for how that whole group did is in the section above, and it is not flattering.
Where we were most wrong
Viking FK against Bayern Munich, in UEFA Champions League, finished 3–3. We had published Bayern Munich to beat Viking FK at 85.3%, the largest confidence we placed on anything that did not happen in this period. It is worth noting what our five worst misses have in common: 4 of them ended level. The model's most confident errors are not upsets, they are draws. It stays on the record. A site that reports only its hits is not reporting a record, it is reporting a selection.
Against last week
Against the week before: 219 settled fixtures then at 51.6%, 81 now at 56.8%, a move of +5.2 points. Volume changed more than accuracy did — down 63% — so the two figures are not measuring quite the same thing: a week with more fixtures is usually a week with more of the competitions we read least well. More useful than the headline: in the 50 to 70% range, where most of our calls sit, we were 0.3 points above our stated confidence last week and 7.4 points below it this one. That gap widened, which matters more than the headline percentage moving the other way.
Where we published
We published across 16 competitions. The five busiest were UEFA Europa League (18), UEFA Champions League (15), Championship (12), UEFA Conference League (12), MLS (6). None of them has reached 20 settled fixtures in this period, which is the least we would want before ranking one competition against another.
How to read all this
One week of 81 fixtures settles very little on its own. A percentage point either way on a sample this size is noise, and we would rather say so than dress it up. What these reviews are for is the shape that emerges when several of them sit side by side: whether a stated 65% keeps landing near 65%, whether the gap between our number and the market's keeps costing us, whether a competition we read badly this week is still being read badly in three. Those are answerable, and they are answerable in public, which is the only reason to publish the bad figures alongside the good ones.
Every figure here comes from predictions published before the match day — never from a re-run after the results were known. Results come from public fixture feeds. Every period we have reviewed → How the model is measured →