How skill is scored

Your skill score runs from 0 to 100. Higher is better.

Why not just count right results?

Counting wins rewards luck. Call the favourite every week and you will be right often, without reading a single match. A skill score looks at how close each call was to what happened, across every match you call.

How it works

Each call backs one result: a home win, a draw or an away win. After full time we compare it with what happened, using the Brier score, a standard way to score forecasts (0 is perfect, 2 is completely wrong). We turn it into skill so that higher is better:

skill = 100 × (1 − Brier ÷ 2)

Your season skill is the average over every match you called, so for now it is the share of matches where you called the result right. You need three scored matches to appear on a table.

Coming next: how sure are you?

Soon you will be able to say how sure you are of a call. Then a confident call that comes off scores higher than a cautious one, and a confident miss costs more. That is when skill becomes more than a hit rate.

How the stats are scored

The stats give a chance for each result, for example "Burnley 46% · Draw 27% · Wolves 27%". Their skill uses the same formula, so you can see whether you read the season better than the computer did.

Points in a match

Each match also has its own small table, by points: 5 for the exact score (spot on), 2 for the right result, 1 each for goals (3 or more, or 2 or fewer) and both teams scoring, and 1 extra for a call that scores, made a day or more before kick-off.