How To Analyse A Tipster…
If the release of our free ‘Financial Year Betting Report’ made one thing clear last week – it is that if following the right tipsters, you can make money betting.
In that report (free to download here) we showcased how SBC writer, Rowan had made 64.4% bank growth between April 15 and 16. Far greater returns than with many other ‘traditional’ forms of investment and savings.
Yet to make money from betting you need good tipsters – so how do you actually find them?
To help answer that key question, today I want to walk you through a few of the ‘tricks of the trade’ in terms of how we here at SBC scrutinise any given tipster and their performance standards.
Most of it is sensible and straightforward advice that can help you get under-the-bonnet of a tipster and quickly separate the wheat from the chaff.
My Example Tipster
To help explain our approach, i’m going to use a real-life example of a tipster we recently pulled apart and reviewed in-depth in our March 2016 SBC Magazine. It’s a horse-racing tipster with on the face of it a 561.4 point profit from 1766 bets (15.9% ROI) since 2014 and all at Betfair SP.
Now, Betfair SP tipsters are highly sought after so do attract a lot of interest from SBC members (hence our review) but not everything is as straightforward as it seems.
Betfair SP – 27% Profit Difference
The first issue with this tipster was that at the time their results did not deduct any commission on winnings. Betfair do charge as much as 5% commission on any winning bets you place so it’s a cost you can’t escape from.
Some people mistakenly dismiss this as 5% doesn’t seem too much. Yet it is as these stats prove.
The first thing we did with this tipster was to deduct 5% commission off each single winning bet to get to a more realistic total.
Here is how it changed things:
- Total profit pre-commission: 561.4 points (15.9% ROI)
- Total profit post-commission: 410.3 points (11.6% ROI)
As you can see, this very simple act knocked off 4.3% ROI and 151.1 points at a stroke – effectively 27% of the claimed profits.
Thus the 5% commission actually accounted for a substantial chunk of profits here, although we do still have plenty to work with – an 11.6% ROI post commission.
Performance Chart
The next thing we like to observe is their performance chart as this can help uncover any underlying issues with the service such as:
- Has the service benefitted from just a handful of big priced winners? If so it might have got lucky.
- Has the service made consistent profits throughout the lifetime of their service? If not, has their edge eroded recently?
- Has the service suffered from bad losing runs? If so, it might be an ‘unstable’ service that you might not wish to follow!
Here is the performance profit chart for this service, which aside from 2 largeish losing runs (more about soon) has grown fairly steadily over the course of 3500 bets.
An ideal chart will go upwards from left to right at a 45-degree angle, and this is not too different as the red line proves.
Watch Those Losing Runs!
Of course we can’t ignore the fact that the service has endured a number of bad losing runs and evaluating the depth of these is vitally important.
- Firstly – a losing run will help us to identify what possible size betting bank we might need to cover any such bad periods. After all – sensible betting bank management is an essential consideration for all punters.
- Secondly – a losing run helps to showcase that the service results are realistic and that the tipster can cope with bad periods of form. Too many naïve tipsters fold under the pressure of a bad run and chase winners, but that doesn’t seem the case here.
So to help evaluate a losing run, we put together what we call ‘Drawdown analysis’. This helps to pick out the worse runs from peak to trough. I.e. if you joined at the worst possible moment and the first bet of a losing run.
Here is the drawdown chart for this service:
The worst run staked peaks at 136.5 points, which took place between June and October 2014 – a period of 195 bets.
What this tells us is:
- We need a betting bank size well in excess of 136.5 points to cope with possible losing runs. Anything less than this and we risk blowing our bank if unlucky! Our recommended betting bank is 250 points for this service
- On occasions you will need to be patient if following this service – the 4-month drawdown period between June and October 2014 illustrates as much.
- The tipster has stayed true and consistent to their approach even during pressurised losing runs. They know their edge and stick to it through thick and thin.
Odds Band, Race Course & Handicap Analysis
So far, we have discovered that this tipster makes an 11.6% ROI at Betfair SP and would require a betting bank of around 250 points to cover possible losses during bad runs.
What else can we find?
Well we often run all kinds of analysis and chop up the service in different ways to see what other strengths and weaknesses we can find. Here are a few of interest…
Performance By Odds
A really simple analysis tool is to look at which odds range a tipster makes its profit from. For this tipster, the vast bulk of their success comes from bets priced at over 8.50, which account for 68% of the total profits.
Performance By Race Course
This particular tipster is an all-weather racing specialist so we also drilled into their performance over the 3 tracks they tip at – Kempton, Lingfield & Southwell.
What was fascinating was the very poor comparative performance at Kempton with just a measly 0.1% ROI from 645 bets at the course.
Handicap Vs Non-Handicap
Finally – we also found varying performance when separating the tips into either handicap or non-handicap races with a definite edge to the former. There was a 210 point and 10% ROI swing in the favour of handicap race tips.
We run all these extra kinds of analysis to identify additional areas of strength and weakness, although it is important to highlight that you do have to be careful if jumping to definitive conclusions in some areas.
For example, if choosing to bet on tips priced 8.5 and over, you would need a much larger betting bank as you would be opening yourself up to a much more volatile tipster. The strike-rate on these larger priced tips only stands at 8.7% compared to 22.3% if following all of the tips in.
Final Scores On The Doors
Although this is just a fairly brief synopsis of our own review process (which goes into a lot more detail than I can outline here) it should give you a flavour of a few ways to evaluate tipsters.
Something as simple as deducting 5% Betfair SP commission or looking at the performance graph can provide plenty of answers.
The good news about this tipster is that they ultimately had a good long-term record of 410.3 points profit at a ROI of 11.6%. To the advocated betting bank of 250 points this equates to a ROC or Betting Bank Growth of 205.2% since 2014.
Here are their yearly figures:
After liaising with this tipster for this review, they subsequently posted up their results with 5% commission deducted as standard. They are also offering all SBC members a 50% discount on the cost of joining their service.
Let Us Help You!
This particular tipster stood up to our analysis but not all do and it’s vitally important to scrutinise any tipster before you consider following them in with your own money.
Whether it be accuracy of results, how realistic their odds are or simply how they handle losing runs – it’s better to know before you join than after!
You can read more on the tipster featured in this article in March’s SBC Magazine (Issue 96)
Equally if you are after independent, professional expertise to help you make money betting with tipsters – whether for the first time or to build on existing profits, we are here to help.
We have hundreds of tipster reviews for you to read within our back catalogue, whilst our Hall of Fame of recommended tipsters can point you in the direction of the very best experts to make you money.