How Does a Soccer Three-Way Moneyline Work, and What Is Draw No Bet?
A three-way line prices home, draw and away over 90 minutes plus stoppage time. Draw no bet removes the draw and refunds you if it happens, at a shorter price.
September 27, 2026 at 5:21 PM EDT
6 min read
A soccer three-way moneyline asks you to pick one of three results — home win, draw or away win — and it is settled on the score after 90 minutes plus whatever stoppage time the referee adds. Extra time and penalties do not count. If you back the favourite and they win in extra time, your ticket lost, because at 90 minutes the match was a draw.
Draw no bet is the same match with the draw taken off the menu: if the game is level at full time, your stake comes back. You pay for that insurance with a shorter price, and — this is the useful part — you can work out what that price should be from the three-way line yourself.
Why soccer has three outcomes when most American sports have two
Basketball plays overtime until someone wins and NFL ties are rare, so a moneyline in those sports needs only two sides. Most soccer matches simply end level. The IFAB's Laws of the Game, which every professional competition plays under, define a match as two equal halves of 45 minutes, and only competitions that require a winner go further. Because a draw is a normal result rather than a freak one, books price it as its own outcome. DraftKings' Massachusetts house rules list the names you will see it under: 3-way moneyline, Win-Draw-Win, 1X2, or Match Result (Regulation Time). "1" is home, "X" is the draw, "2" is away.
What "90 minutes" actually means
Nobody's match lasts exactly 90 minutes. Law 7 tells the referee to add time in each half for substitutions, injuries, time-wasting, disciplinary sanctions, drinks and cooling breaks, VAR checks and goal celebrations. The fourth official shows the minimum; the referee can extend it but not shorten it.
Every rulebook we read treats all of that as part of the bet. Pinnacle settles match markets on "a scheduled 90 minutes of play", including injury and stoppage time but excluding extra time, a shootout or a golden goal. DraftKings settles at the end of regulation "including injury and stoppage time". MGM's Springfield book uses 90 minutes plus "any time the referee adds." So a goal in the 90th+7 minute counts. A goal in the 91st minute of extra time does not.
Reading the three prices
Take an illustrative match:
| Result | American | Decimal | Implied probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home (1) | +150 | 2.50 | 100 ÷ 250 = 40.00% |
| Draw (X) | +230 | 3.30 | 100 ÷ 330 = 30.30% |
| Away (2) | +200 | 3.00 | 100 ÷ 300 = 33.33% |
Add the implied probabilities: 40.00 + 30.30 + 33.33 = 103.64%. The extra 3.64 points is the overround — the book's margin spread across three outcomes. Strip it out proportionally and the book's fair view is roughly home 38.6%, draw 29.2%, away 32.2%. If you want the full method for removing that margin, the Academy's guide on how to devig odds walks through it.
Notice what the prices say: the favourite at +150 is still more likely not to win than to win. That is normal in soccer, and it is why draw no bet exists.
Draw no bet: the refund on a draw
MGM's house rules define it in one line: a wager on which team will win, and if the game finishes in a draw, stakes are refunded. That makes draw no bet a two-way market, and DraftKings' general rules give the same result from the other direction: on a two-way market where "Draw" is not offered, a draw settles as a push.
Building draw no bet out of the three-way line
You do not need the book to offer draw no bet. You can manufacture it by splitting your stake between the team and the draw so that the draw part exactly returns your whole stake.
With $100 and the prices above, backing the home side:
- Put enough on the draw that a draw pays back $100: $100 ÷ 3.30 = $30.30 on the draw.
- Put the rest on home: $100 − $30.30 = $69.70 at 2.50.
- Draw: $30.30 × 3.30 = $100. You get your $100 back. That is the refund.
- Home win: $69.70 × 2.50 = $174.24. Your $100 turned into $174.24.
- Away win: both pieces lose. You lose $100.
A return of $174.24 on $100 is decimal 1.742, or about −135 in American odds. The shortcut formula is:
DNB price = team price × (draw price − 1) ÷ draw price
Home: 2.50 × 2.30 ÷ 3.30 = 1.742 (−135). Away: 3.00 × 2.30 ÷ 3.30 = 2.091 (+109).
This is a useful check. If a book posts home draw no bet at −150 while its own three-way prices build −135, the three-way route pays more for the identical outcome. If it posts −125, the listed DNB is the better price. Either way you now know which one to use. Small rounding differences are normal; gaps of ten or more cents are worth noticing.
Double chance: two results out of three
Double chance goes the other way — you cover two of the three outcomes. MGM's rules describe it as a wager on whether either of two named results happens. The three combinations are home-or-draw (1X), away-or-draw (X2) and home-or-away (12).
The price comes from adding the implied probabilities and inverting:
- 1X: 40.00% + 30.30% = 70.30%, so 1 ÷ 0.7030 = decimal 1.422, about −237.
- X2: 33.33% + 30.30% = 63.64%, decimal 1.571, about −175.
- 12: 40.00% + 33.33% = 73.33%, decimal 1.364, about −275.
These carry the same built-in margin as the prices they were made from; a book quoting its own double chance may add a little more. The same comparison rule applies: build it, then compare.
| Market | Home side wins | Draw | Home side loses |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1X2 home (+150) | Win | Lose | Lose |
| Draw no bet home (≈ −135) | Win | Refund | Lose |
| Double chance 1X (≈ −237) | Win | Win | Lose |
Each step down the table buys more protection and pays less for it. None is a better bet in itself; the value depends only on whether the price beats the real probability.
Knockout matches, extra time and penalties
Cup ties are where people lose tickets they thought they had won. IFAB Law 10 lists the only procedures competitions may use to find a winner after a draw: away goals, two periods of extra time of no more than 15 minutes each, and penalties.
The three-way line ignores all of them. MGM's rules say 90-minute wagers "do not include periods of extra time or penalty shootouts." DraftKings says the same for everything except markets explicitly labelled extra time or futures.
The market that does include them is a different one. MGM calls it "To Advance/To Lift the Trophy" and settles it on the score at the referee's final whistle "whether the match is decided in regular time, extra time or in a penalty shootout." Other books call it "to qualify." A two-legged tie's qualify market settles only after the second leg, over both games.
A worked example of why this matters. A team is 2-1 on aggregate going into the second leg and loses the second leg 1-0 in 90 minutes, then wins on penalties:
- Three-way on that team for the second leg: lost (they lost 1-0 at full time).
- Draw no bet on that team: lost.
- To qualify on that team: won.
Same team, same night, three different results. Read the market name before you read the price.
What to take from this
Three-way markets are not harder than two-way ones — they just have one more outcome and a margin spread over three prices instead of two. Once you can turn the 1X2 into draw no bet and double chance on a napkin, you can see when a book's own versions are priced worse than the line they came from. The next guide in this series, Asian handicaps explained, takes the same idea further: a handicap of 0 is draw no bet, and the quarter lines split the difference.