Lobotka beat Bologna 1–0, the lay of Napoli lost €990, and the pattern this book published on Friday broke inside forty-eight hours. Today we lay Roma at 1.60: €600 at risk to win €980 — the best-shaped position on the book and the hardest to argue for.

Lobotka scored, Napoli won 1–0, and the lay lost the full €990. Thirteen positions closed: five wins, eight losses, minus €1,830 on €12,440 of risk, a return of minus fifteen per cent. Something else lost yesterday and it belongs in the record. On Friday this book published an observation — that every winning lay on it had come at 1.94 or longer and every losing lay at 1.84 or shorter, with nothing in between and no exceptions — attached to the caveat that twelve positions cannot support a conclusion of that shape. Napoli at 1.99 lost. The exception arrived on the second position after the pattern was named, which is roughly what ought to happen to a pattern found in twelve numbers. It is written down here rather than quietly dropped, because a ledger that publishes only the observations that survive is not a ledger.

Today the book lays Roma at the Olimpico Grande Torino at 1.60: €600 at risk to win €980. That is the shortest price it has laid and the most favourable shape it has taken — a win pays 1.63 times what a loss costs, the widest that gap has been since the reset. Break-even is 38.0%. Strip the margin off the back column — 6.6 Torino, 4.4 the draw, 1.59 Roma, an overround of 100.8% — and the fair line reads 15.0% / 22.6% / 62.4%. The two results that pay us add to 37.6%. We need 38.0%. Four tenths of a point against us, roughly €6 of negative expectation per €1,000. Note where that 37.6% comes from: the draw is worth 22.6% of it and Torino winning only 15.0%. On a short lay the draw is not a consolation, it is the majority of the position. We are not asking Torino to win. We are asking Roma not to.

The honest counter is unusually strong tonight and there is no point dressing it otherwise. Roma lead the table with three wins from three, ten goals scored and one conceded, on eight consecutive Serie A victories running back into last season. They have won fourteen of the last nineteen league meetings with Torino and kept six clean sheets in their last nine visits to this ground. Torino are three matches into Ignazio Abate’s tenure with one win, beaten by Milan and Sassuolo before they beat Fiorentina, and they have conceded in eight consecutive league games; Casadei is out and Coco is doubtful. Roma’s own doubt is Koné. Read together, 62.4% for Gasperini’s side is not a number anyone needs to defend — the mild surprise is that it is not shorter. This position exists because the price is four tenths of a point away from being worth taking, not because the market has erred. Thirteen closed positions at minus €1,830 is not yet an argument in either direction, and saying so on a losing week is the same sentence as saying it on a winning one.