How BAI8 prices a fixture
Nothing is priced until an assessment runs: a planner, thirteen research aspects, then the market price adjusted by what they found. In order.
On this page
Every number this product publishes comes from an assessment, and every assessment is the same four steps in the same order. Before an assessment runs there is no number at all. Nothing about it is secret, and the reason to write it down is that a number you cannot interrogate is a number you have to take on faith.
One: the plan
A planner reads the fixture and the selection being assessed and decides what is worth finding out. A cup tie with a congested schedule needs different questions from a league match after an international break, and the plan says which questions matter for this one before any searching starts.
Two: the research aspects
Then thirteen research aspects go to work, each with its own brief: availability, form and underlying play, tactics, matchup history, rest and travel, weather and venue, what is at stake, officiating, and more, down to an adversarial review whose job is to argue against everything the others found. Each aspect fans out into about a dozen concurrent searches. Each returns claims with sources attached, and a claim without a source is discarded rather than softened.
Three: composition
The starting point is the market itself: the complete market price, with the bookmaker's margin removed so the outcomes add up to 100%. Published odds are strong forecasts, so that is an honest place to begin. The research then adjusts it, weighted by how much it actually found. A fixture where nothing was learned stays close to the market. A fixture where three sources agree that a first-choice defence is unavailable moves, and the size of the move is a function of the evidence rather than of how interesting the story was.
Four: the price
The assessed probability is then compared to what your book is charging, and the difference is the edge, which is the gap between two numbers and nothing more than that.
What this does not tell you
The pipeline is not a guarantee of accuracy at any step. A market price can be thin or stale, research can find three sources repeating one rumour, and a sound starting point moved by bad evidence is a bad estimate. What the order buys is that every figure has a stated provenance, so when it is wrong it is possible to say which step was wrong.
Common questions
Does BAI8 use a model or research?
Research. BAI8 publishes a number only once an assessment has run. The assessment starts from the complete market price with its margin removed and moves it by what the research found. No number is shown for a fixture before that.
Why not just use a statistical model?
Because a model fitted on past results has no way of knowing that a first-choice goalkeeper was ruled out this morning. The assessment is built around finding exactly that kind of information and stating where it came from.
Does BAI8 place bets?
No. It publishes a number and the reasoning behind it, and holds no bookmaker account. Nothing it produces is an instruction.