Football card betting: how yellows, reds and booking points count

Cards are counted by weight in the main card bet: a yellow is one and a red is two. Both 22Bet and Melbet label this market Cards or YRC, and BetFury and bet365 use the same weights. A second yellow is ignored and the red that follows it counts as two, so one player adds three at most.

The yellow-card market, labelled YC at 22Bet and Melbet, is a plain count of cautions. A second yellow that brings a dismissal is left out of it. Their statistics market called Total Cards has a third sum: a second booking and its red count as one card, so a player adds two at most.

Booking points turn cards into a score: 10 for a yellow and 25 for a red at 22Bet, Melbet and BetFury. The market is called Total Points For Cards at 22Bet. BetFury caps one player at 35 points, 10 for his first yellow and 25 for the red.

Both 22Bet and Melbet word the dismissal case with care. A second yellow that brings a red scores 25 points for that offence, and only when the red follows the yellow at once.

Cards after full time do not count at 22Bet, Melbet, BetFury or bet365. Betfair makes one exception: on televised matches it counts a booking shown after the final whistle, with extra time and penalties left out.

A coach’s card stays out as well. Both 22Bet and Melbet count yellow-card totals for outfield players and the goalkeeper, and score booking points only for a player on the pitch. BetFury leaves out managers, coaching staff and unused substitutes, and bet365 leaves out non-players.

Card bets at these bookmakers run on regular time, which is 90 minutes plus stoppage time. A live yellow-card bet on a timed interval is settled without stoppage time at 22Bet. A card at 90+1 loses a bet on the interval from 85:00 to 88:59.

A half-time card counts in the first half at 22Bet and Melbet when the offence happened before the break. BetFury and bet365 put a card shown during the interval into the second half. The same booking can win a first-half bet at one bookmaker and lose it at another.

Say the referee books a defender at the break for a foul in the 44th minute. A first-half over 1.5 cards bet that stood on one card wins at 22Bet and Melbet. At BetFury and bet365 the card moves to the second half and the bet loses.

Timed card markets have their own clock. BetFury settles card intervals on the moment the referee shows the card, and bet365 does the same for its ten-minute markets.

A player card bet on a man who started on the bench is refunded at 22Bet. It settles the bet at odds of 1 when the player is outside the starting 11. At bet365, first-player-booked bets on players who do not start are void.

BetFury runs two markets. Its Player Cards market, with lines such as 1+, is for starters and voids a bet on a substitute even if he is booked. Its Player To Receive A Card market stands once he comes on, and is void only if he never leaves the bench.

Check the team sheet before kick-off when a card bet hangs on one name. In football card betting the market name decides whether a late substitute still counts.

The corner betting explainer covers the same late-whistle problem for corners. The 22Bet review and the BetFury review cover payments and bonuses, and the football betting sites list compares bookmakers for the sport. The Betbook Table sets betting sites in Nigeria side by side.