How Locked In 90 works

1. Lock it before kickoff

After the final whistle, everyone remembers seeing it coming. Before kickoff, it's another story. A pick on Locked In 90 is made before the game starts, with a time stamp, so your record shows what you actually thought rather than what you remember thinking.

Picks open for matches in a rolling window that covers today and the next two days (UTC). Once a match kicks off, nobody can add a pick to it. The site checks this when you save, and the database checks it again.

What you can pick:

• Who wins: home, draw or away.
• Goals: over or under a line, for the whole match or for one team.
• Corners, total shots and shots on target: over or under a line, for the match or for one team. These only appear for leagues where the match statistics are tracked, because without the stats a pick can't be graded.

You can lock more than one pick on the same match, as long as each one is different. You can also add a short reason of up to 500 characters. It's optional, but it's the most useful part of the pick: when you look back later, the reason tells you whether you read the game well or just got lucky.

2. How a pick is graded

Once a pick is locked, the match, the market, your selection and the line can't be changed, and the pick can't be deleted. The grading system is the only thing that can set a result.

Grading uses the score after 90 minutes plus stoppage time. Extra time and penalty shootouts don't count, so if a cup tie is 1-1 after 90 minutes, that's the result your pick is graded on. The grading job checks finished matches regularly and marks each pick as won, lost or void.

A pick is void (it doesn't count as a win or a loss) when:

• the match is cancelled;
• the match is postponed and still hasn't been played 48 hours after the original kickoff;
• there's still no result 48 hours after kickoff;
• it's a corners or shots pick and the match went to extra time, because those numbers can't be split back to 90 minutes;
• it's a corners or shots pick and the statistics still aren't available 30 hours after kickoff.

Lines always end in .5 (for example, over or under 2.5 goals), so a count can never land exactly on the line.

3. Your record

Every graded pick goes on your public profile, with the date it was locked, the match, your call, your reason and the result. Your record shows wins and losses side by side. Your win rate is wins divided by wins plus losses, so voids don't help or hurt it.

A profile shows Building until it has 25 graded picks, then earns a Verified badge. The leaderboard has an all-time view and a this-month view. You need at least five graded picks in that period to appear on it.

4. How the consensus is counted

Every match page shows where the community's picks are. Each locked pick counts once: picks that make exactly the same call on the same market and line are grouped together, and each group is shown as a share of all picks on that match. The most popular calls are listed first. On the match page, anything outside the top four is grouped as "Other".

A few things to keep in mind when you read it:

• It counts picks, not people. Someone who locks a result pick and a goals pick on the same match adds one to each.
• It's a snapshot of what members chose before kickoff. It isn't a forecast from a model, and it isn't a tip.
• Small numbers move a lot. A split based on four picks tells you far less than one based on forty.

5. Habits that make your record more honest

These aren't rules. They're simply what tends to make a record worth reading back.

• Make your call before you check what anyone else thinks. Look at the consensus afterwards, so you know the view was yours.
• Stick to competitions you actually watch. A record in two leagues you follow closely teaches you more than a scattered one across ten.
• Use the reason box. One plain sentence is enough: "Home side unbeaten here, visitors missing their first-choice keeper."
• Read your losses, not just your wins. Every few weeks, scroll back through your graded picks and look for a pattern in the ones that missed.
• Expect streaks. Five in a row, right or wrong, says very little on its own. A record means something after dozens of picks, not a weekend.

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