Scoring

The short version

You earn points for getting things right — and the harder the thing was to call, the more it pays. A result everyone expected is worth little. A bold call that comes off is worth a lot. Getting the exact score is the jackpot. Random chaos picks earn almost nothing, so guessing wildly does not pay off over a tournament.

Five ways every pick scores

• Match result — points if you call the winner (or draw). A shock result pays more than an obvious one.
• Home goals — points for how close you are to the home team's real goal count.
• Away goals — same, for the away team.
• Scoring shape — points for reading who scores and who gets shut out — e.g. correctly calling a clean sheet.
• Exact score bonus — a big extra if you nail the precise scoreline.

The closer your guess, the more of each part you keep. Get the winner wrong and the goal points shrink. There are no caps — a rare correct call is paid in full.

Where the prices come from — the odds

"How hard was this to call?" isn't our opinion — it's read straight from the betting odds before kickoff. The shorter the odds, the more expected the outcome, so the fewer points it pays. Long odds that come in pay big.

Take a real match — Mexico 1.45 · Draw 4.33 · South Africa 7.00. Stripping the bookmaker's margin out of those odds turns them into a fair chance for every result, and then into a chance for every scoreline:

Those fair chances spread across every scoreline. Here's the full picture the odds paint for this match — greener means more likely (Mexico goals down the side, South Africa across the top):

The most likely score is 1–0 (15%). A South Africa win lives in the faint top rows — which is exactly why calling one pays so much.

We deliberately don't use bookmaker "correct score" prices — they lean too heavily on popular scorelines like 1–0 and 1–1. When you enter a prediction we show its expected value, so you can see what a pick is really worth.

A real example — what your pick earns

Same match. Say it finishes Mexico 2–0. Here's what different predictions earn, and where the points come from:

Notice 1–0 beats 2–1 even though both are one goal off: 1–0 correctly read the clean sheet (South Africa kept out), while 2–1 invented a goal that never came. That's the scoring-shape points at work.

Now the brave call: from the same odds, if South Africa had shocked Mexico 0–1 and you'd called it exactly, that pays about 299 points — nearly double the 158 for the expected 2–0, because almost nobody saw it coming. That is the whole idea: brave, correct calls win leagues.