Updates & Changelog

Kick-off day: live group standings, full-site audit, every page in the new design

Three independent audits swept every page on the site the night before the World Cup, then we fixed the lot.

• Feature Live World Cup group standings: points tables now compute from real finished results within ~15 minutes of full time, with honest empty states before the first whistle. Fixtures page gets a "jump to today" anchor and final-score stamps on played matches.
• Feature Head-to-head pages now draw on our verified results archive, so they stay rich with real past meetings through the summer break instead of going empty.
• Fix The "Build a bet for this match" button on World Cup match pages linked to a dead URL. Fixed. Bet builder pages also stopped pairing redundant legs (Over 2.5 + Over 3.5 in one builder).
• Fix Off-season honesty everywhere: league pages, the EFL hub and team pages now say plainly when a season is over (and point you at the World Cup) instead of presenting May data as fresh.
• Feature Every remaining page, accuracy, track record, results, about, methodology, tips pages, team pages, value bets, brought into the new design language, with long-shot value bets clearly badged.

Full redesign for the World Cup: launcher homepage, one bet builder, tournament hub

The biggest visual and structural update we've shipped: the whole site rebuilt around one design language the day before the World Cup kicks off.

• Feature New launcher homepage, land and see every door: one Build-a-Bet button, six smart tiles with live stats (previews rated today, hit rate, matches in play), and a gold World Cup ribbon at the very top.
• Feature One bet builder, two modes: Smart Acca ("build it for me") and Pick & Mix ("I'll pick myself") merged into a single hub with a toggle. The Customise form is now a guided three-step flow (legs → markets → confidence) and builds without a page reload.
• Feature World Cup hub reorganised into a proper tournament centre, matches on now, bet the World Cup, the race for the trophy, teams & squads, news, with quick-link chips and the fixture wall capped to the next two days.
• Feature Match previews get a sticky section nav (Prediction · Odds · Form · H2H · Line-ups) and Today's Edges trend cards land on the homepage: real streaks tied to a fixture and a price.
• Fix Homepage is ~680KB lighter on mobile (pick data now loads only when you open the builder), long Smart Acca pick pools scroll properly, and building a custom acca no longer dumps the full fixture list under your slip.

Player-level data: injuries, xG, lineups

The model now sees who's actually playing. Until today we tipped Liverpool the same way whether Salah was fit or not. That's no longer true.

• Feature Live injury data per team: top-flight European leagues track every player out, the position, and how long they're expected to be sidelined. Match preview pages now show the casualty list.
• Model Injury impact baked into win probability. A team with 4+ key players out has its win chance shaved up to 3 percentage points; the opponent gains roughly half that back. Small but meaningful when the picks are close.
• Feature xG (expected goals) restored. The previous source died in April, replaced by a fresh feed. Each team page and match preview shows xG for, xG against, last-5 averages, and whether the team's been outscoring or underscoring its xG (a "running hot vs running cold" signal).
• Model xG regression in win probability: when a team's been outscoring xG by 0.3+ goals/game (lucky run), we shave its win chance accordingly. Underscoring teams get a small boost. Stops the model from chasing form that isn't backed by underlying performance.
• Feature Confirmed lineups now cached pre-match (data plumbing only this round, feeding into the model itself comes next).

For the technically curious: three new services pull from API-Football Ultra. Injury severity (0-5) and xG over/underperformance feed a new applyDataEnrichment() step that runs after the bookmaker-blend calibration on every H/D/A triple, with capped per-side adjustments and re-normalised totals. All adjustments are deliberately small. Dixon-Coles + bookmaker blend remain the dominant signals.

Smarter picks for less-covered leagues

Our model learns from past results, but we have way more results from the Premier League than from Eredivisie or the Saudi Pro League, so it could act overconfident on a Dutch top-flight match because the Premier League average looked fine. Today fixes that.

• Model If we don't have enough data on either team yet (fewer than 5 tracked matches), we now skip the fixture entirely. No tip on a side we genuinely don't know.
• Model Each league now keeps its own track record, so if Eredivisie's been overconfident at the 70–80% range, the model shaves a few points off Eredivisie picks at that range without affecting how it handles Premier League ones.
• Feature Net effect: fewer tips on the leagues we have least data on, more accurate confidence numbers on the leagues we have most.

For the technically curious: the Dixon-Coles + Poisson + bookmaker blend is unchanged. We've added a per-team data-volume guard at the start of pick selection, plus a per-league live-calibration map (keyed by league + market + probability bucket) that layers on top of the global market calibration once a league has 30+ verified picks at that confidence level.

Honest stats, methodology page, market tip pages, EFL hub

• Feature New /methodology page: the full Dixon-Coles + Poisson + bookmaker blend explained openly. No "AI" buzzwords. Competitors hide this; we publish it.
• Feature New /why-our-odds-look-lower page: why we quote UK retail prices instead of sharp/exchange ones you can't actually take.
• Feature New EFL hub page: Championship, League One, League Two as first-class citizens. Most tipster sites barely cover the lower leagues.
• Feature Three new market-tip pages: /over-2-5-tips, /btts-tips, /correct-score-tips, with daily auto-filtered picks plus evergreen explainer copy.
• Fix Three different "hit rate" numbers were drifting (homepage 70% / accuracy page 72% / track-record 69.8% / Telegram 73%). Every public surface now pulls the same live count from the verified CSV.
• Fix Min @1.20 odds floor extended from Over 1.5 to all five other tight markets (Under 1.5, Over/Under 3.5, all three Double Chance variants). Sub-1.20 picks no longer get tipped.
• Fix Telegram acca posts now require a minimum total of @2.00. If the day's picks won't combine to a 2× return, no acca goes out. Better silence than misleading 1.44 "accas".
• Fix /h2h pages no longer 200 + index garbage URLs. /h2h/foo-vs-bar now correctly 404s when neither team has data.
• Fix /teams index page now caches its view model for 1h instead of rebuilding 30 days of fixtures + 5,000 verified outcomes per request.

Pro-grade nav, Build a Bet hardening, team search

• Feature Top nav rebuilt to match the editorial-sportsbook standard: flat 5-link row (Tips · Previews · Saturday Acca · Accuracy · Track Record), Build a Bet promoted to a green CTA pill on the right, and a single search icon that expands inline. Mobile centres everything inside the hamburger panel.
• Feature New /teams index: every tracked team grouped by league with last-5 form pills, match-tracked count and a one-click search filter.
• Feature Nav search bar: type a team name, get up to 8 ranked results (prefix matches first), click to jump straight to the team page.
• Fix Build a Bet legs in niche markets (Eliteserien Over 1.5, Scottish Prem totals, lower La Liga Double Chance) were displaying sharp bookmakers like Pinnacle and Coolbet that UK users can't take. New UK retail fallback prefers Sky Bet, Bet365, Ladbrokes, Coral, Paddy Power, BetVictor, Unibet, BoyleSports, Betfred and 888sport when William Hill doesn't price the market.
• Fix Over 1.5 picks priced under @1.20 are now skipped. They barely move the acca payout but carry full break-the-acca risk. Picks now actually contribute meaningful return.
• Fix "No bookmaker odds available for this market" no longer fires on Over/Under 1.5 and 3.5 legs. The comparison panel populates correctly so you can see every book's price.
• Fix Today's Top Picks chips on the homepage now show the kickoff time (e.g. SAT 03 MAY, 15:00) so you can tell at a glance which game each pick is for.

Cleaner stats, tidier nav, smarter previews

• Feature Match preview pages no longer show 0% on Clean Sheet, BTTS or goals-per-game stats when the upstream data feed is sparse. We now fall back to our own form-window data, calculated from actual results.
• Feature Top nav split into a primary row (Home, Live, Previews, Sat Acca, Build, Track Record) plus a "More ▾" dropdown for Value, Accuracy, Results, Offers, How It Works, Updates and Feedback. No more crammed line of 12 links.
• Model Nightly learning Telegram digest now reports data-cache health: team form, xG and injury caches are tagged ✅ or ⚠️ with byte size and freshness, so stale feeds surface immediately.
• Fix Match writeup no longer says "BTTS sits at 0%, it's close to a coin flip" when there's genuinely no data; the line now skips entirely.

Universal team form, nightly learning, broader markets

• Model Daily learning loop now refits Dixon-Coles each night on results from every covered league. Half-life cut from 180 days to 45 days so ratings react to current form.
• Feature Form data added across all 26 leagues: last-5 W/D/L, home/away splits and a full match history with scores on every team page.
• Feature League pages (e.g. Saudi Pro League, MLS, Eliteserien) now show a form table with every team sorted by form points.
• Feature Smart Acca defaults broadened: BTTS, Draw No Bet and Double Chance now included by default. Over 1.5, Over 3.5, Under 4.5, Handicap +1 and Double Chance Home/Away thresholds calibrated against the walk-forward backtest.
• Fix Probability arithmetic: bookmaker overround is now stripped before calibration, so home/draw/away always sum to 100% (previously summed to ~115%).
• Fix Match-preview headlines and correct-score predictions no longer contradict the model's top pick.

Homepage redesign, Find Matches rebuild, William Hill display odds

• Feature Homepage redesign: quick-shortcuts strip (Previews · Live · Sat Acca · Track Record), trust strip with verified-prediction count, email signup for daily tips.
• Feature Find Matches redesign: Today / Tomorrow / Weekend / 7 Days quick chips, league pills, custom date range tucked behind a chip.
• Feature Displayed odds now default to William Hill where available, falling back to best across all books for markets they don't price.
• Content 16 new league SEO pages: World Cup, Conference League, MLS, Eredivisie, Eliteserien, Allsvenskan, Brazilian Série A, Saudi Pro League and more.
• Fix /api/v1/* responses now declare charset=UTF-8 so accented team names round-trip cleanly.
• Fix Today's Games posts no longer show 40-something percentages as if they're tips. Bunched outcomes are now flagged "Tight".

Pre-launch polish, EV tags everywhere, iOS backend

• Feature /track-record page with full sortable table and CSV download.
• Feature /team/{slug} and /h2h/{slug} pages launched for SEO.
• Feature Edge / value badges on every pick across the site.
• Feature iOS backend endpoints + FCM push notification service.
• Content Smart Acca / Build a Bet renamed and reframed across site, Telegram and the iOS app.
• Fix Hero CTAs clearer, mobile Top Picks horizontal scroll, build-a-bet duplicate picks resolved.

QA blockers cleared, Telegram overhaul

• Fix Stack-trace leak on 404 responses fixed.
• Fix Admin-only verify button removed from public /accuracy.
• Fix Old palette purged across templates; WIN badge contrast restored.
• Feature Telegram channel-first overhaul: friendlier copy, milestone tracking, Saturday acca posts.

Live scores

• Feature /live-scores page with proper match cards and goal events.
• Feature Live scores overlaid on previews and the homepage.
• Feature Match previews stay visible during and after kickoff.

xG, value bets, premium palette

• Feature xG data added to API and match preview pages.
• Feature Acca builder API and value-bets dashboard.
• Content Premium colour palette: blue-tinted darks, mint green and gold accents.

Initial public release

• Feature First public version of Football Bet Builder.
• Feature Predictions across 13 leagues with conservative odds, 30+ markets, verified accuracy tracking.
• Feature JSON API v1 published for the iOS app and external consumers.
• Feature League SEO pages launched.