What the commitment hash is
Before kick-off the day's pick is frozen and a SHA-256 fingerprint of it is published. After the match settles we publish the one ingredient that was missing, and anyone can recompute the fingerprint and see that it matches. Commit, then reveal — that pair is the whole mechanism.
What goes into the hash
Seven fields, in this exact order, joined by a single vertical bar:
- the date of the day, written 2026-08-20
- the fixture, written away team, spaced em dash, home team
- the market
- the published price, to exactly two decimals
- the minimum price, to exactly two decimals
- the kick-off time, in ISO 8601
- a salt — 64 random characters, generated at the moment of the commit and withheld until the pick has settled
That string is hashed with SHA-256, and the hash is published alongside the fixture and the kick-off before the match starts. The field order and the number formatting are part of the commitment, not decoration: 1.9 and 1.90 are different strings and would produce different hashes, which is why the prices are always written to two decimals and why the order is never changed. Reordering it would stop every commitment ever published from verifying.
What that actually gets you
- The row cannot be edited afterwards. Move one character of the fixture, the market, either price or the kick-off and the recomputed hash is a different hash.
- A pick can be committed only once. A second commit on the same pick is refused outright, because a second hash for the same pick is indistinguishable from rewriting a selection that lost.
- A pick that kicks off in the past cannot be committed at all. A commitment made after the whistle is worthless, so it is refused rather than stored and quietly displayed.
- Every extra pick carries its own hash. A supporting pick published after kick-off would be worth exactly as little as a main one published after kick-off.
We run the check too
Before a card goes out, an automatic check re-hashes the main pick and compares it against what was published. If it no longer matches, the release is stopped and the day is flagged rather than sent. The same check runs again before the salt is revealed: a row that does not verify never gets a salt, because publishing one would put a proof that fails in public into the archive under our name.
The archive
What the published price did in US sports
11,262 games in US sports that are over and carried a price when we wrote them up, between November 24, 2025 and November 6, 2026. Each count sits beside what it is out of, and the share is the one divided by the other.
| What | How often | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| The shorter price won | 7,058 | 10,936 | 64.5% |
| The favourite covered the handicap | 3,373 | 7,003 | 48.2% |
| The total went over | 5,518 | 11,236 | 49.1% |
| The home side won | 6,361 | 11,262 | 56.5% |
How they ended
Over 16,021 finished games in US sports whose result line says how it ended — the feed's own one-line verdict, not a reading of the play.
| What | How often | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Went past regulation | 1,212 | 16,021 | 7.6% |
| Settled on a shootout | 161 | 16,021 | 1.0% |
| Called before the end | 9 | 16,021 | 0.1% |
286 games landed exactly on the number — the handicap or the total — so they are in the counts they are out of and in neither result.
The prices counted here are DraftKings', as they stood when we last wrote each game up — one snapshot per game, near kick-off for almost all of them, and never a closing line. So this says what the published line did, not how it moved on the way there.
A season that happened. Nothing here predicts the next game, and none of it is advice.
Counted November 6, 2026.
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