Anatomy of a Pools Coupon: Codes, Bankers and Line Boxes

Hand a traditional pools coupon to someone who has never seen one, and you will usually get a slightly panicked look. Rows of numbers, boxes to mark, codes down the side, and a separate section for something called a “perm” that looks nothing like the rest of the form. None of it is actually complicated once each piece is named properly, which is the point of this piece: a straightforward tour of the layout, term by term.

The match list and its codes

At the top of a coupon sits a numbered list of fixtures, typically running from 1 upward, each assigned to a specific match for that week’s results. The number is not arbitrary decoration; it is the reference your selections get built around for the rest of the form. Some coupons also use a short alphabetic or numeric code alongside the fixture to indicate the competition or division it belongs to, which matters because scoring rules can occasionally differ slightly between competitions included on the same coupon.

Why the numbering matters more than it looks

Get a fixture number wrong when transferring your selections and you have, in effect, picked a completely different match without realising it. It is the single most common paper-coupon error, and it is entirely avoidable by double-checking the fixture number against the match name before marking anything.

The line box: your actual selection

A “line” is one specific combination of selections across however many matches the particular pools product requires, classically eight matches for a Treble Chance line. Each line box is where you record your choice for a given match: a straightforward win, a straightforward loss, or a draw, sometimes further distinguished between a score draw and a no-score draw depending on the coupon and scoring system in use.

Banker marks, explained properly

A “banker” is a selection you are treating as close to certain within a perm, a match you want included in every single line generated by that perm rather than being varied across different combinations. Marking a match as a banker effectively removes it from the pool of selections being permed and fixes it as constant everywhere.

The practical effect is to reduce the number of lines, and therefore the cost, needed to cover the remaining uncertain matches, because the computer or operator processing the coupon only needs to generate combinations from the matches you have not fixed as bankers.

A worked example

Suppose you want to cover 8 matches from a pool of 11 selections, but you are confident enough in 1 of those 11 to mark it as a banker. Without any bankers, covering 8 from 11 requires a full perm of:

C(11,8) = 165 lines

With 1 match fixed as a banker, you only need to perm 7 from the remaining 10 matches, since the banker is included in every line automatically:

C(10,7) = 120 lines

That drop from 165 to 120 lines, purely as an illustrative example, shows exactly why bankers exist: they let you express extra confidence in one selection while reducing the cost of covering the rest.

Plans versus full perms

A “plan” is a pre-built, named combination of lines designed by the operator to give a specific kind of coverage, often cheaper than a full perm covering the same number of selections, because it does not include every single mathematically possible combination. A full perm, by contrast, generates every possible combination from your chosen selections, which is more thorough but scales up in cost quickly as the pool of selections grows.

A second worked example: stacking two bankers

The saving from a banker grows the moment you add a second one. Returning to the 8-from-11 example above, suppose instead of 1 banker you were confident enough to mark 2 matches as bankers. You would now only need to perm 6 matches from the remaining 9 selections:

C(9,6) = 84 lines

Compare the three scenarios side by side: 165 lines with no bankers, 120 with one, 84 with two. Each additional banker reduces the perm pool by one match on both sides of the calculation, and the line count falls accordingly, sometimes sharply, sometimes more gently depending on where in the sequence it happens. This is exactly why experienced players reserve banker status for selections they are genuinely confident about rather than marking a match as a banker simply to save money; an incorrect banker loses every single line in the perm at once, since it is baked into all of them.

Reading the coupon from top to bottom

Put together, a coupon generally reads as: fixture list with reference numbers at the top, your match-by-match selections in the line boxes, any bankers clearly marked separately from the perm pool, and a stake section where the total cost is calculated from the number of lines generated multiplied by the cost per line. Digital versions of the same product usually walk you through these steps interactively, but the underlying logic is identical to the paper version this glossary describes.

Understanding the terminology does not change the odds of any particular line coming in, but it does mean you know exactly what you are buying and why the cost is what it is, which matters more than it sounds once perms get larger. Whatever combination you settle on, keep the total stake within a budget decided in advance, and remember that pools is meant to be enjoyed as a hobby rather than relied upon financially. Play only if you are 18 or over.