Our forecasts for Round 3 of the Championship are in the Table below.
But first, a quick word on how and why we are expanding our range of forecasts:
Over the past couple of weeks, we have extensively evaluated our forecasting model, both on the 2018/19 results, but also on how it would have performed over past seasons.
If we were only interested in forecasting correct scores, then we would happily just report each week on what the “Most likely” scoreline is. However, the model also tells us what the most likely result is, and this will often conflict with our forecast of the most likely score. This is simply because draws are relatively rare among results, but relatively common among scorelines. People care about results, probably more than they care about scores.
Also, we now believe that prediction performance metrics on the BBC Sport and Sky Sports websites, as well as online games such as Superbru, favour conditional forecasts. That is, to perform well on those games, players should first pick what they think is the most likely result, and only then pick the scoreline sticking to that result.
Therefore, we are expanding on our forecasts to reflect all of the above.
In the table below, we now predict:

  • The Most Likely scoreline, with the % chance of that happening
  • The % chance of a win by the Home team, P(H), or Away team, P(A) (with one hundred minus those two numbers giving the % chance of a draw)
  • The Conditional scoreline, if the most likely result happens, with the associated % chance of that happening among all possible scorelines
Most likely Win (%) Conditional
Score Pr (%) P(H) P(A) Score C.Pr (%)
Ch B’ham Swansea 1-1 13 38 34 1-0 12
Ch Ipswich A Villa 1-1 13 31 41 0-1 11
Ch Hull B’burn 2-2 7 39 40 1-2 7
Ch Reading Bolton 2-0 10 66 15 2-0 10
Ch Millwall Derby 0-1 14 31 38 0-1 14
Ch Bristol C M’bro 1-1 11 53 23 1-0 10
Ch Sheff Utd Norwich 1-0 14 62 15 1-0 14
Ch Wigan N Forest 3-2 5 54 29 3-2 5
Ch W Brom QPR 0-1 14 27 43 0-1 14
Ch Leeds R’ham 4-1 7 85 5 4-1 7
Ch Preston Stoke 1-0 18 51 19 1-0 18
Ch Brentf’d Sheff Wed 1-1 12 45 30 1-0 10