Double Chance: what do 1X, 12 and X2 mean?

What do 1X, 12 and X2 mean?

Three selections, and each one takes two of the three 1X2 outcomes.

1X = home or draw
12 = home or away
X2 = draw or away

Each selection leaves out exactly one outcome. 1X drops the away win. 12 drops the draw. X2 drops the home win. Whichever you pick, one of the three results is left uncovered.

How does a Double Chance bet settle?

Your bet wins as soon as one of its two outcomes happens, and loses in the one case that's left.

Read it row by row. Every result makes two selections win and one lose. Never all three at once, so the third one always goes down, whichever it is.

Why are the odds shorter?

Two outcomes out of three happen more often than one. The price follows. The more likely a selection, the shorter its odds, whether it's a home, away or Double Chance pick. The link between odds and probability is covered in detail on the implied probability page.

Double Chance or Draw No Bet?

Both markets deal with the draw, each in its own way.

Double Chance folds the draw into a selection that covers two outcomes out of three. Draw No Bet covers only one. If the match ends level, it hands your stake back. Close, then, but not the same thing. You'll find both settlement tables side by side on the Draw No Bet page.

A worked example, settled all the way

Take a Premier League match (fictional example). You stake £20 on 1X at odds of 1.25.

Home win or draw, the return's the same: £25.00 (£20 × 1.25), so £5.00 net profit. One price covers both results, so the amount doesn't change depending on which one lands. If the away side wins, you lose the full £20.

Now compare the same £20 on the plain "1" in 1X2, at a longer 2.10. A home win would pay more. A draw, though, would sink the ticket.

Two figures jump out of that table. £5.00 of possible net profit on one side, £20 of possible loss on the other. The Return column makes that point faster than any paragraph could.

Edge cases: extra time and abandoned matches

Double Chance usually covers regulation time only, stoppage time included. Extra time and penalty shootouts don't count unless the operator says otherwise. Same rule as the 1X2 market it comes from. In my reading, because the rule is inherited from the 1X2, there is nothing new to learn here beyond the market's name.

What if the match is abandoned? If it stops before full time and isn't replayed the same day, all three selections are usually voided and refunded. The score at the moment it stopped doesn't matter, and neither does which one you backed. On Draw No Bet, the refund on a draw is built into the market itself. Here, the void only covers the match being stopped, not any particular result.

The margin on Double Chance

All three Double Chance prices carry a bookmaker margin, just like the 1X2 prices behind them. The mechanism is the same on every odds market. You convert each price into an implied probability, then work out the overround. It's all on the bookmaker margin page, so we won't repeat it here. Merging two outcomes into one selection doesn't remove that margin. It just reshapes how it's spread across the three original 1X2 prices.

Compare it with Draw No Bet →

Put it into practice

Apply this guide to real odds.

Dig into the market

Odds movements are only part of the story. Here are the next topics to read.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and method