The Real Cost of Perm Plans: 8 From 10, 11 and 12

“8 from 10” and “8 from 12” sound like fairly similar perm plans — just two more fixtures, surely not a huge difference. The actual combinations maths tells a much starker story, and understanding it properly before you commit money to a wider perm is one of the more valuable habits a regular pools player can build.

The combinations formula behind every perm

A block perm works by taking a chosen number of qualifying fixtures and generating every possible combination of a smaller winning subset from within them. Picking 8 winning selections from a pool of n chosen matches is a classic combinations calculation, written mathematically as C(n, 8), and calculated as n! divided by (8! multiplied by (n−8)!). You do not need to memorise the formula to use it — what matters is recognising how sharply the result grows as n increases, even by small steps.

The actual numbers, calculated precisely

Here is exactly what happens to the line count as the qualifying pool grows from 10 to 12 fixtures while still selecting the best 8:

Going from an 8-from-10 perm to an 8-from-12 perm — adding just two extra fixtures to your qualifying pool — multiplies your line count by exactly eleven, from 45 lines to 495. That is not a gradual, proportional increase; it is the nature of combinatorial growth, where each additional fixture multiplies the possibilities rather than simply adding to them.

Translating lines into actual cost

The practical consequence of this growth becomes very real once you attach a per-line stake. Using three illustrative stake levels:

At a seemingly modest 25p per line, the jump from an 8-from-10 to an 8-from-12 perm takes your outlay for a single coupon from £11.25 to £123.75 — more than ten times the cost, for an increase that might feel, at a glance, like “only two more fixtures.” This is exactly the kind of jump that catches players out when they decide to widen a perm on a whim without recalculating the actual cost first.

Why wider perms still appeal, and when they make sense

A wider perm is not simply more expensive for no reason — it genuinely does cover more of the possible combinations of results among your chosen fixtures, which is precisely why some players favour it, particularly when they feel reasonably confident about a larger group of matches but are not certain exactly which eight will deliver the strongest points total. The perm structure protects you against guessing the “wrong” eight within a confident group of ten, eleven, or twelve.

The sensible way to use this is to scale your per-line stake down as you widen the perm, rather than keeping the per-line stake constant and letting total cost balloon. Dropping from 25p a line on an 8-from-10 perm to perhaps 5p a line on an 8-from-12 perm brings the total cost back down to a comparable £24.75, while still retaining the broader combinatorial coverage that motivated the wider perm in the first place.

A simple pre-commitment checklist

• Calculate the exact line count for your intended perm using C(n, 8) before deciding anything about stake size.
• Multiply lines by your intended per-line stake to see the real total cost in pounds, not just in “lines.”
• If the total feels too high, reduce the per-line stake rather than abandoning the wider coverage outright.
• Compare the total cost against your weekly or seasonal budget before submitting, every time, even if you have run a similar perm before.

Perm plans are a genuinely useful tool once their maths is properly understood, and a trap for anyone who skips that step. Run the numbers every time, treat the total cost as a fixed part of your planned spending rather than a variable that sneaks up on you, and remember that no perm structure, however wide, changes the underlying chance element of the matches themselves. Participants must be 18 or over.