Player to be carded: how the market settles

That's the short version. The detail worth getting right is the straight-red edge case and what happens with substitutes and cards shown once the final whistle's gone, since those are where this market actually gets settled differently from how it might look on the pitch.

What "player to be carded" actually means

Player to be carded, sometimes listed as player to be booked, is a bet on a single named player. It settles as a win if that player is shown a card, yellow or red, at any point during the match, and settles as a loss if they finish the match without one. It doesn't matter which colour of card, and it doesn't matter if they pick up more than one. Settlement covers the 90 minutes of normal time plus any stoppage time added by the referee.

That makes it a simpler market than it can sound. It's not counting cards, not weighting them, and not asking anything about the rest of the match. One player, one card or none, in or out.

The straight red edge case

The question people get stuck on is whether a straight red, shown for one serious offence with no caution earlier in the match, still counts as the player being carded. It does. Paddy Power’s football card rules state that the award of a straight red card is deemed a single card for settlement purposes, and bet365’s card markets rules describe the same standard: a straight red on a to-be-booked selection settles as one card, the same as a single yellow would.

Two yellows, one red: still just "carded"

A second yellow card in the same match, which is automatically followed by a red, also settles a to-be-carded bet as a win. Where bookmakers actually differ is in how they count that dismissal for other markets. For a total-card or booking points line, bet365 caps a player at two cards for settlement, William Hill counts a yellow immediately followed by a red as one card, and Paddy Power counts a yellow-plus-red dismissal as two cards. None of that maths changes anything here: the player was shown at least one card, so a plain player-to-be-carded bet wins the same way whether it was one yellow, a straight red, or a second yellow that produced a red.

Those counting differences matter a lot more for a booking points total, which is covered in full on booking points explained, including the exact points a yellow and a red are worth.

Substitutes and full-time cards

The other two places this market catches people out are substitutes and timing. Both are consistent across the bookmaker rules checked, though it's worth reading the specific market rules for a smaller or newer bookmaker before betting.

On substitutes, Paddy Power’s rules treat any player who takes the field for any part of a match as active for settlement, so a substitute who comes on and is booked counts the same as a starter would. On timing, both Paddy Power and Sky Bet’s general football rules state that bookings made after the final whistle don't count, and Sky Bet's rules add that extra time doesn't count towards the total either, by default.

Not booking points, not a suspension

Player to be carded is easy to mix up with two other pages on this site, so it's worth being clear about where each one sits. Booking points is a bookmaker scoring system that weighs every card across the whole match into a single number, usually bet as a match or team total, rather than a yes/no on one player. Red card suspensions cover what happens after a red card, the ban a player serves in a future match. That's a disciplinary consequence run by the competition, not a betting settlement rule, and it has no bearing on whether today's player-to-be-carded bet wins. Player to be carded sits apart from both: one named player, settled by full time, no weighting and no consequence attached.

FootyMetrics tracks cards for every player across 115+ leagues, the same data any of these markets settle from, whether it's a single player's yes/no, a weighted points total, or a suspension count.