Double chance is one of the easiest markets to understand in football betting, and it exists because some predictions are lost due to a draw. It was designed for those who have backed a favourite and seen it pegged back to 1-1.
What does Double Chance mean?
A double chance bet is a bet that combines two of the three possible outcomes into one bet. It's either you are supporting home win or draw, away win or draw or home win or away win, removing the draw from the equation entirely. Only one combination loses; the one that you didn't cover.
This safety clause explains why double chance bets are always less likely to win than straight bets. You're sacrificing a little bit of your payout, but you are also getting a better odds of your bet paying off.
Where It Actually Makes Sense
Double chance isn't a market you want to use on every match. It has a niche in matches where there is a true chance for either side to win, but a slight edge for one side not to lose.
A newly promoted side playing at home to a mid-table opponent is a good example. If you're not confident enough to fully back the promoted team outright, you may feel confident enough to say that they are not going to be beaten. That's exactly where double chance comes in. Double chance is the answer to that.
Cup ties and the early-season games work well for the market, too, because they're more volatile than a League table in April. It is more difficult to predict a team that is in the midst of adjusting to a new level of play and facing new teams, though it may be easier to determine whether the team will lose or not.
How to Analyse a Double Chance Pick
What people do wrong with double chance is take it as a safety play, not a specific play on the match. It isn't safer in general. It's just safe for a specific type of fixture.
What you do is compare the defensive performance of a team, rather than simply their win percentage. A team that isn't going to lose games by more than a goal, even when it does, is a better double chance than a team that goes up and down. Also, home form is important here. A team that is hard to beat at home, but not necessarily scorers, would have a good "home or draw" double chance profile.
Additionally, pay attention to how the two teams play against one another in particular, rather than either team's overall form. Whether they're in the top or bottom of the league, some games are just tougher to win than others, and that seems to happen again and again.
Rooted Predict Verdict
We publish double chance predictions for today and double chance predictions for tomorrow, and the same principle applies to every one of them. There's no 100 sure double chance prediction, no matter how appealing the market may appear on the surface. A draw-inclusive bet still loses if the team you've backed to avoid defeat goes on to lose.
Whenever you see a prediction in our free football predictions, including those in our free double chance football predictions, you'll see the reasoning behind why that match is a good fit for that market, rather than just a market made up for every game.
Conclusion
Double chance is best used as a tool for a certain type of match, rather than a "safer" alternative. Be sure to check defensive reliability, home form, and head-to-head records before picking it, and when it comes to fixtures that are really hard to call, it's a genuinely useful way to navigate and it becomes a useful tool in helping you navigate fixtures you're not sure you can call right away.