How does Skrill pick Final Score matches? The big six, not close games
Skrill does not pick close matches for Final Score; it picks the Premier League's big six. In the first six rounds of the 2026/27 edition it took 27 of the 32 matches of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham, and only 9 of the other 28. Even so, 27 of our 36 picks are 1-1. That is a paradox, because big-six matches against the rest of the league usually have a clear favourite. We explain it with those 60 matches and with 2,660 Premier League matches from the seven previous seasons.
Key takeaways
- 1
Skrill puts almost every big-six match in the round (27 of 32 in the first 6 rounds), but only 9 of the other 28 matches of the matchweek.
- 2
It does not look for close matches: in the ones it picked the favourite had a 54.1% chance of winning on average, in the ones it left out 51.5%.
- 3
Big-six matches against the rest of the league should produce fewer draw picks: in 2019/20–2024/25 such a round averaged 2.6–3.1 picks of 1-1 out of 6.
- 4
We have 4.5 per round because the big six dominate less: their chance of beating the rest of the league has fallen from 62–66% to 58–59%.
- 5
This choice of matches cuts the expected hits by 2.1%, and picks from Elo ratings instead of the odds would have landed in 12.1% of matches rather than 12.9%.
Where the data comes from and how we worked it out
- Rounds. Six rounds of the 2026/27 edition, played from 22 August to 11 October 2026. In each, Skrill picked 6 of the 10 matches of the Premier League matchweek, 36 of 60 in all. The match lists come from the invitations and the round history in a Skrill account. Where we work from the odds we use the 56 matches that had been played when we ran the numbers, as the last games of matchweek 6 fell on 11 and 12 October.
- Chances. From the closing odds on the match result and on over/under 2.5 goals we remove the bookmaker's margin and turn the chances into the chance of every correct score. We do it with the same model, with an adjustment for the favourite's winning scores, that we use in our article on Skrill Final Score chances and in our picks for every round.
- History. 2,660 Premier League matches from the 2019/20–2025/26 seasons with closing odds.
- The big six. Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham, the six clubs that have long had the league's biggest followings and highest revenues.
Who Skrill picks: the big six
| Type of match | Matches in matchweeks 1–6 | Picked by Skrill | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big six v big six | 4 | 4 | 100% |
| Big six v the rest | 28 | 23 | 82% |
| No big-six club | 28 | 9 | 32% |
| Total | 60 | 36 | 60% |
This is not chance. If Skrill drew the matches of a matchweek at random, a split like this would come up roughly once in 20,000 tries. Liverpool, Manchester City and Tottenham were in all six rounds, Arsenal in five, Chelsea and Manchester United in four. At the other end are Leeds and Hull, who made a round only once each.
There is one exception: Ipswich made 5 rounds out of 6, although only one of those games was against a big-six club (Liverpool). The only Ipswich match left out was, as it happens, the one against Manchester United.
Skrill left out five big-six matches. Four of them had a very clear favourite: Arsenal – Coventry (83% for Arsenal), Chelsea – Hull (80%), Hull – Manchester United (73% for United) and Manchester United – Ipswich (73%). The fifth was a close match, Brentford – Chelsea. It is not a hard rule, though, as Manchester City – Coventry (83%) and Manchester City – Sunderland (72%) did make the rounds.
Skrill does not pick matches for TV either. Of the Saturday 15:00 kick-offs, which cannot be shown live in the UK, it took 12 out of 22. From the other kick-off times it took 24 of 38, not much more.
Skrill does not look for close matches
On the closing odds of the 56 played matches, the ones Skrill picked are no closer than the ones it left out:
| Matches of matchweeks 1–6 | Picked by Skrill | Left out |
|---|---|---|
| Matches with closing odds | 34 | 22 |
| Favourite's chance of winning, average | 54.1% | 51.5% |
| Favourite's chance, median | 52.8% | 44.3% |
| Matches with a favourite at 60% or more | 26% | 23% |
| Matches where the best pick is 1-1 | 71% | 77% |
| Chance of the best pick | 11.7% | 12.3% |
The matches left out were even slightly closer, but the difference is within the usual spread. Closeness simply does not matter for the selection. What matters is who is playing.
The paradox: the big six should produce fewer draws
In big-six matches against the rest of the league there is usually a clear favourite, and only then does its win beat 1-1. This is how it looked in the 2019/20–2025/26 seasons:
| Type of match | Matches | Favourite's chance | Best pick is 1-1 | Chance of the pick | Pick landed | Goals per match |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Big six v big six | 210 | 52.6% | 67% | 11.5% | 10.5% | 3.03 |
| Big six v the rest | 1,176 | 62.7% | 38% | 11.9% | 12.7% | 3.02 |
| No big-six club | 1,274 | 48.0% | 80% | 12.7% | 13.5% | 2.69 |
| Total | 2,660 | 54.9% | 60% | 12.2% | 12.9% |
So we rebuilt the rounds from the 266 matchweeks of those seasons in two ways. The first takes 6 matches at random. The second takes 6 matches with the same liking for the big six that Skrill shows this season. We drew each matchweek 200 times:
| Choice of 6 matches | Big-six matches | Favourite's chance | 1-1 picks per round | Rounds with 4+ 1-1 picks | Hits per round |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| At random | 3.1 | 54.9% | 3.6 | 55% | 0.733 |
| Like Skrill | 4.9 | 58.7% | 3.0 | 32% | 0.718 |
A Skrill-style choice of matches should therefore give 3 draw picks per round on average, not 4 or 5. On top of that, more goals are scored in big-six matches (3.02–3.03 per match against 2.69 without them), so the scores spread out more and every single score has a smaller chance.
So why do we have 4.5 draws per round?
1-1 came up in our picks 27 times out of 36: 5, 4, 4, 4, 5 and 5 times in successive rounds. The cause is the Premier League itself. The big six dominate the rest of the league clearly less than they did just two seasons ago:
| Season | Big six v the rest: favourite's chance | Big six v the rest: 1-1 pick | Whole league: 1-1 pick | Skrill-style round: 1-1 picks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019/20 | 64.3% | 36% | 60% | 2.9 |
| 2020/21 | 62.7% | 33% | 60% | 2.9 |
| 2021/22 | 65.6% | 27% | 57% | 2.6 |
| 2022/23 | 62.2% | 40% | 61% | 3.1 |
| 2023/24 | 64.4% | 34% | 55% | 2.6 |
| 2024/25 | 61.7% | 42% | 60% | 3.0 |
| 2025/26 | 58.1% | 52% | 68% | 3.6 |
| 2026/27 (56 matches) | 58.8% | 50% | 73% | 4.5 (our picks) |
In 2019/20–2024/25, with this choice of matches, a round with at least four 1-1 picks came up in 20–37% of matchweeks. In 2025/26 it was already 54%, and for us it has been every one of the six rounds.
You can see it in individual clubs. In all six Tottenham matches we picked 1-1. At home to Everton and to Aston Villa, Tottenham had a 47–50% chance of winning, too little for any of their winning scores to beat the draw. It was the same with Chelsea at home to Bournemouth and to Brighton (52–53%) and with Arsenal away at Brighton (57%). We picked a win 9 times, always for Arsenal, Liverpool or Manchester City and always when their chance was between 60 and 84%. Why a favourite's win only gets ahead of 1-1 at around 60% we show in our article on Skrill Final Score chances; the market itself is covered in our guide to correct score betting.
What this choice of matches costs a player
Not much. A Skrill-style round gives 0.718 hits according to the model, against 0.733 for a round of random matches, which is 2.1% fewer. In the actual results of those seasons it was 0.756 against 0.772. The hardest to call are big-six matches against each other: the best pick landed in 10.5% of them, against 13.5% in matches without a big-six club. With the 2026/27 edition's prize table, the whole difference is worth less than €1 in Knect points a season.
Can Elo ratings do better than the odds?
Picking a draw in a match that "everyone knows" the big-six club will win looks suspicious. So we checked what would happen if the chances of winning came from Elo ratings rather than from the odds. We still took the number of goals from the odds and chose the pick the same way.
- Elo and the odds usually name the same favourite. That was the case in 89% of the 2,660 matches, so the disagreement is mainly about how strong the favourite is.
- Elo picks the draw more often, not less. 1-1 was its best pick in 66% of matches, against 60% for the odds. Elo has flatter chances, because it knows nothing about transfers, injuries or line-ups.
- Elo lands less often. Picks from Elo came in in 12.1% of matches, picks from the odds in 12.9%. This season, in the 34 played matches of the rounds, they would have given 2 hits instead of our 5.
Elo ratings with closing odds, which also learn from closing prices, predict better than classic Elo. For Final Score, though, the margin-free odds themselves are still the best, because they contain everything the market knows. Why no model beats them easily we explain in why a betting model is not enough.
What this means for your picks
- Do not switch 1-1 to a win just because a big-six club is playing. Pick the win when the favourite has roughly a 60% chance or more. This season that applies mainly to Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal.
- Four or five draws in a round are the norm this season. They come from the state of the league, not from a fault in the picks. When the big six start beating the rest clearly again, there will be fewer draws in the picks.
- You only see the match list in the invitation, but you can assume it will include almost every big-six match. Our set of picks with percentages for the current round is on our Skrill Final Score picks page. From round 10 it deliberately has fewer 1-1 scores; why, and what that costs, is in Skrill Final Score chances.
- Rounds without a correct draw prove nothing. The best pick lands in 12–13% of matches, so even with five 1-1 picks in a round, zero hits happen almost every other time. Draws come unevenly and can stay away for a long time, as the draw progression system shows.
We will check these numbers again after more rounds, because six rounds is still a small sample. The split between the big six and the rest is clear enough, though, that it is unlikely to reverse.
FAQ
Skrill does not publish its selection rules, but the data from six rounds of the 2026/27 edition are clear. Almost every big-six match makes the round (27 of 32), and the remaining places go to matches of other clubs (9 of 28). Neither how close a match is nor its kick-off time makes a clear difference.
No. In the matches it picked the favourite had a 54.1% chance of winning on average, in those it left out 51.5%. The ones left out were even slightly closer, and the difference is within the usual spread.
Because this season the Premier League has few matches with a clear favourite. 1-1 is the most likely score as long as the favourite has less than about a 60% chance of winning. The big six now have a 58–59% chance against the rest of the league on average, against 62–66% in 2019/20–2024/25. That is why 1-1 is the best pick in 73% of this season's matches, against 55–61% in 2019/20–2024/25.
Only when the favourite has about a 60% chance of winning or more. Below that threshold each single winning score (1-0, 2-0, 2-1) has a smaller chance than 1-1, because a win is spread over many scores while a draw is concentrated mainly in one. This season we picked a win 9 times out of 36, always for Arsenal, Liverpool or Manchester City.
No. In 2,660 Premier League matches, picks from Elo ratings landed 12.1% of the time and picks from the odds 12.9%. Elo picks the draw more often (66% of matches against 60%), because its chances are less certain. This season, in the played matches of the rounds, it would have given 2 hits instead of 5.
Only very slightly. A round made up mostly of big-six matches gives 0.718 hits on average, against 0.733 for a round of random matches, which is 2.1% fewer. In Knect points that is less than €1 a season.