By Opta Tips Team
A research note should preserve what you knew before kick-off. It need not predict every detail of the game. Its job is to identify the selection, the information supporting it and the assumptions still open to challenge.
Complete the contract before collecting opinions
Write the fixture, competition, venue, kick-off time with time zone, market and line. A home win in regulation time is different from the home side qualifying. Two predictions about those outcomes can disagree without contradicting each other.
When reading an OptaTips entry, record its publication time and quoted odds. Record your own available price separately. News released later should not be attributed to an earlier prediction.
A worksheet with unresolved information
The following fixture and numbers are fictional teaching inputs. They are neither an Opta forecast nor a live OptaTips recommendation.
| Field | Illustrative note |
|---|---|
| Fixture and time | Team A at home to Team B; 18:00 UTC |
| Market | Team A to win in regulation time |
| Quote captured | Decimal 1.80 at 10:00 UTC |
| Confirmed information | Competition and scheduled venue |
| Unresolved question | Whether Team A’s expected forward starts |
| Probability input | 55%, a hypothetical estimate requiring its own justification |
| Review condition | Reassess after the official lineup; pass if the assumptions fail |
The unresolved forward is a question to investigate, not a reason to invent a fixed probability penalty. Check official team information and describe what the replacement would change in the matchup.
Test the price as well as the team
For a binary cash bet, expected profit per unit is p × d − 1, before costs. Using the hypothetical 55% estimate and decimal odds 1.80 gives 0.55 × 1.80 − 1 = −0.01, or −1% of the stake.
At 2.00, the same assumed probability gives +10%. These calculations show why “likely winner” is insufficient. They do not demonstrate that the estimate is accurate or that a 2.00 price is available.
If the plausible probability range is instead 48%–58%, the expected profit at 1.80 ranges from −13.6% to +4.4%. Uncertainty in the estimate matters more than a neat central number.
Save the note before the result
Keep the source links, capture time and initial reasoning. Add later updates as new entries. After the match, you can then ask whether the assumption was supported and whether the selection settled as expected.
For source distinctions, read the Opta Football Predictions guide. Use the team-form worksheet to define your evidence window and the results-review example to close the record. A completed worksheet can end with a decision to watch the fixture without placing a bet.
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