A Beginner’s Glossary: Coupon Terms Explained Simply

Pick up a football pools coupon for the first time and you’ll run into a small wall of jargon that longtime players use without thinking twice, but which can be genuinely baffling to a newcomer. This glossary works through the essential terms in plain language, so the next coupon you pick up actually makes sense.

Reading and Entering the Coupon

Selection

A single match you’ve chosen as part of your entry, typically because you believe it will finish as a score draw (though the specific outcome you’re forecasting depends on the pools format being played).

Line

One complete, specific combination of selections entered as a single bet. If you enter several lines through a permutation, each one is scored independently against the actual results.

Stake Per Line

The amount of money placed on each individual line. With a permutation generating many lines, the total cost of an entry is this figure multiplied by the number of lines generated — a calculation worth doing properly before submitting, since permutations can generate far more lines than a quick glance suggests.

Perms, Bankers and Structure

Standing Perm

A permutation entry set up once and then automatically re-entered week after week without the player needing to resubmit it manually each time, usually until the player chooses to change or cancel it. This suits players with a consistent approach they’re happy to run on autopilot rather than reselecting fresh matches every single week.

Banker

A selection fixed into every line of a permutation because the player rates it as close to certain, rather than letting it vary across the combinations generated by the rest of the perm. Banking a selection reduces the size (and cost) of the resulting permutation, but concentrates risk on that one fixed judgement.

Full Perm

A permutation that generates every possible combination of a given size from a larger pool of selections — for example, every possible combination of 8 matches drawn from a shortlist of 10, which works out mathematically to 45 separate lines.

Results, Scoring and Settlement

Score Draw

A match that finishes level with at least one goal scored by each side, as distinct from a goalless draw. Many Treble Chance formats score these two types of draw differently.

No-Score Draw (Goalless Draw)

A match that finishes 0-0. Typically scores differently from a score draw under standard Treble Chance conventions, usually at a somewhat lower points value.

Void Fixture

A match that’s removed from scoring entirely for coupon purposes, most commonly because it was postponed before kick-off, abandoned before reaching a point of substantial completion, or affected by some other disruption that prevents a fair result from being used. Void selections are typically handled under the operator’s specific void-match rules rather than scored as any particular outcome.

Scrubber Line

A slang term used by some longtime players for a line within a permutation that was never realistically going to be a big winner — one made up mostly of weaker, lower-confidence selections that got swept along as part of the maths of a larger perm rather than chosen with genuine conviction. Not every line in a big permutation reflects equal confidence, and “scrubber” is the informal way some players describe the weaker end of that spread.

Dividends and Payouts

Net Pools

The portion of the total weekly stake pool that remains available for dividend payouts after administrative costs, prize structure allocations, and the operator’s margin have been deducted. Dividends are calculated from this net figure rather than from the gross total staked by all players that week.

Dividend

The actual payout per winning line or per unit stake, calculated by dividing the relevant share of the net pool among the winning entries for that specific result category. Because it depends on how many other entries also won with the same result, the dividend isn’t a fixed, pre-set figure the way a fixed-odds payout would be.

Treble Chance

The classic pools format scoring selections across three tiers of interest — typically score draws, no-score draws, and away wins — which gives the format its name and its traditionally tiered points structure.

Putting It All Together

Understanding this vocabulary is purely about being able to read your own coupon and settlement information accurately — it doesn’t change the underlying unpredictability of the football results themselves. Keep your weekly stake proportionate to what you’re comfortable losing, treat pools as entertainment rather than income, and remember that participation requires being 18 or over.