Earlier this week I made the mistake of picking up a copy of a national racing magazine which I hadn’t read for a while, mainly due to the fact it hasn’t stocked by my local newsagent for some time.
Alongside its various articles on horse racing, I was shocked to find a whole host of very dubious looking adverts for tipsters and systems – all promising to make the reader life-changing profits.
If you wanted to find the world’s best betting system or call a premium phone-line for ‘insider tips’ you would be in clover, yet there was a distinct lack of anything substantial to back up their claims.
There was no evidence that their claimed profits could be backed up or any key stats to help put their results in context. In short, most of them had the distinct whiff of BS we have long campaigned to have eradicated from the tipster industry.
With this fresh in my mind, I thought it would be wise to pen my very own advice on how to find a genuinely professional and worthwhile tipster service.
I have left off some of the most obvious points (that they make a profit!) but here are my 5 key tips to help sift the wheat from the tipster chaff…
1) Make sure they proof to an independent verifier
It might sound obvious but in this day and age, you simply can’t just take a tipsters claims of profit at face value. Thus, the first port of call for any genuine tipster is to have their results verified by a genuinely independent third party service.
The key word here is independence as if the proofing service is using affiliate links (where they earn a cut if you join a tipster via their site), then they clearly have a vested financial interest in you joining. How independent can a proofer be if they earn money should you join the sites they verify?
Needless to say, if you come across a tipster not willing to proof somewhere genuine, it’s simple…walk away as there are plenty who do worth your time.
2) Do they list their results for all to see?
Any tipster worth his or her salt must also keep an accurate and easy to understand record of their full past performance for you to access.
This should include all bets – both winners and losers (don’t fall for the ploy of some tipsters who just list their winners) and include key performance stats on things like number of bets, total staked, profit/loss and Return on Investment/Return on Capital (read more here on why this latter figure is so important)
3) Are they more than just a flash in the pan?
The average age for a SBC Hall of Fame tipster service is well over 3 years and with good reason, as the best services stick around and last the test of time.
Don’t fall for the flash-in-the-pan tipster that hits a good (and usually lucky) run of form as often they can’t maintain this and fall by the wayside.
The best tipsters are often the longest-running, so if you find one with a good record but just a few months trading, keep a watching brief only. If they do turn out to be genuinely good, you can always join further down the line.
4) Do they respond to your emails and operate a professional service?
Any tipster charging a fee for their tips should offer a certain level of professionalism, be it sending their tips on-time or replying to emails in a courteous manner.
You can often gauge so much about a tipster by their customer service and how they respond to your questions.
Thus you should never be afraid to send a quick email before considering joining any tipster. If they are not friendly and helpful in their reply to you as a possible future customer, how might they treat you once you join and they have your money?
5) Are they consistent in their approach to tipping?
Finally, be careful if coming across any tipster that constantly chops and changes its approach to tipping. This might mean stopping and starting their service or making some major changes to the way they work – especially after a bad run.
When this happens it often screams out that they don’t really know where their edge lies…and if a tipster doesn’t know how to make a profit – well then they really shouldn’t be advising tips.
There is nothing more re-assuring than a tipster who runs a consistent, solid service with only the occasional minor and well-explained tweaks to their approach.
Be Careful Out There!
It’s fair to say that despite our best efforts at SBC, there are still plenty of very bad tipsters out there keen to take your cash off you. Hopefully the simple checklist above help you avoid the vast majority, but still you need to be very cautious and cynical until proven otherwise.
It comes to something when some of these poor tipsters are allowed to advertise unchecked in popular racing publications, but that unfortunately is the betting industry for you.
There are far too many people out there representing their own interests, be it as a dubious tipster looking for easy cash or betting publications that rely on their adverts to fund their output.
In contrast, the interests we represent here at SBC are yours – the everyday punter looking to make money betting. We are able to do this due to our independence, which allows us to say it as it really is and point you in the direction of who and what really makes money betting.
We carry no such adverts, instead we are fully funded by our members. Why not read more on how we can help your betting and benefit from our risk-free money back guarantee at the same time?
