How Punts tips work
How Punts tips work, in full: one goals model for football, one published rule for UK49s, one engine that compares every licensed South African price with the sharp market, and a ledger that records every pick before kick-off and grades it after.
The football model
Every team has an attack and a defence strength, fitted to every result on file (7 317 weighted results, 323 teams), with recent matches counting most (a match from 300 days ago counts half) and a measured home edge. The expected goals for each side give the chance of every score; a correction for 0-0, 1-0, 0-1 and 1-1, which simple models get wrong, sharpens the low scores. From the scores come the chances of a home win, a draw, an away win, over 2.5 goals and both teams scoring.
We test it the hard way: every match since 2025-08-01 predicted only from the results before it, the model refitted weekly. Over 2 174 matches it beat our earlier model on log loss (0.9845 against 0.9981). Its pick was right 52.3% of the time overall; at 60% or more, 73.8%; at 65% or more, 79.3% over 300 picks. Over 2.5 calls at 65% or more were right 68.3% of the time; both-teams-to-score calls at 60% or more, 61.2%. We publish a tip only above those lines, and never call a match strong when a side has few results on file.
Value bets
The arb desk reads 25 licensed South African bookmakers every few minutes. We match each football game to Pinnacle, the bookmaker that takes the largest professional bets, remove Pinnacle's margin (the power method, fairer to favourites than plain dividing) and call the result the fair price. A licensed SA price at least 3% above it, on a market where Pinnacle accepts large stakes and at odds up to 6.00, is a value bet. It is logged with its time, price and fair price before kick-off; after the match we grade it and measure closing-line value against Pinnacle's last fair price.
Sure bets
When the best prices on every outcome, at two or more different licensed books, add up to under 99.5% in implied chance, backing every outcome in the right split returns more than the stake whatever happens. We take them from comparable markets only: the same match, the same market and the same settlement rules.
UK49s
For each draw, the last 40 results: the three numbers drawn most often and the three that have waited longest. The banker is the hottest. We re-pick every past draw from the draws before it and score it against pure chance (0.73 numbers a draw for any six):
- Brunchtime: 0.70 numbers a draw over 186 draws; banker landed 15% (chance 12%).
- Lunchtime: 0.72 numbers a draw over 2 658 draws; banker landed 11% (chance 12%).
- Drivetime: 0.69 numbers a draw over 187 draws; banker landed 10% (chance 12%).
- Teatime: 0.74 numbers a draw over 2 815 draws; banker landed 13% (chance 12%).
UK49s is random: over enough draws any rule scores close to chance, and ours does. We publish the numbers because players want a way to choose, and the record so nobody mistakes it for a way to win.
Where the data comes from
UK49s: 6 046 draws since 2018-09-01, from a lottery supplier's results feed used by South African bookmakers, checked against an independent results service. Football: fixtures and results from the PSL, openfootball and ESPN; prices from licensed South African bookmakers; TV channels from SuperSport's guide; crests from ESPN and flags from the open flag-icons set.
The record
Every free tip and value bet goes on a log before kick-off and is graded after; the full record prints it with the hits, the misses and the return.
What we will never do
Edit a pick after the event, call a tip sure, hide a losing run, or send you to an unlicensed bookmaker.