Torino 0, Roma 2 — every lay this book has filed at 1.84 or shorter has now lost. Six out of six. Tonight we lay Real Madrid at 1.23, which is shorter than all of them: €230 at risk to win €980.

Roma won 2–0 in Turin and the lay lost the full €600. Fourteen positions closed: five wins, nine losses, minus €2,430 on €13,040 of risk, a return of minus nineteen per cent. Here is the book as it stands, stated flatly. Every lay filed at 1.84 or shorter has lost — six out of six, at 1.60, 1.65, 1.70, 1.73, 1.82 and 1.84. Every lay filed at 1.94 or longer has won except one: five out of six, the exception being Napoli at 1.99 on Sunday. This column wrote on Monday that a pattern found in twelve numbers should be expected to break, and then it half-mended itself overnight, which is precisely how a pattern that is not one behaves. Fourteen positions cannot separate a real effect from a run, and will not manage it at thirty either. It is printed because it is what the ledger says, not because anything is being done about it.

Tonight the book lays Real Madrid at Elche at 1.23. The liability is €230 against a win of €980 — a win pays 4.26 times what a loss costs, comfortably the most lopsided position filed since the reset. Break-even is 19.0%: Madrid have to fail to win roughly one time in five. Strip the margin off the back column — 15.5 Elche, 8.0 the draw, 1.22 Real Madrid, an overround of 100.9% — and the fair line reads 6.4% / 12.4% / 81.2%. The two results that pay us add to 18.8%. We need 19.0%. Two tenths of a point against us, roughly €3 of negative expectation per €1,000 — a number that rounds to nothing and is still on the wrong side of the line. That is what this price band does. At 1.23 the margin has almost nowhere to hide and the position comes close to being a fair bet. Close has been the operative word on every position this book has filed, and it is doing the same work tonight.

The counter is short and it is heavy. Real Madrid have not lost to Elche in nineteen meetings and Elche have not beaten them since 1978; Madrid have won thirty-six of the fifty-five. Elche are nineteenth with two points from five. Mbappé has six league goals in five games under Mourinho, and Madrid arrive off a 2–1 win over Inter — the result that cost this book €650 exactly a week ago — and a 4–1 against Rayo Vallecano. Against that: Militão, Mendy and Rodrygo are all out, and 81.2% still means Madrid fail to win here about one evening in five. That is not a rare event. It is only an uncomfortable one to be holding, and being paid €980 to hold it is the whole of tonight’s argument. We are two tenths of a point short — the narrowest margin against us this book has recorded — and fourteen closed positions at minus €2,430 is still too small a number to conclude anything from, which is the same sentence that ran here when the ledger was up €2,940.