Punting Insight: James Bond, The Professional Gambler? Understanding Value Betting

Posted on September 11, 2019September 11, 2019 by Peter Ling

On a semi-regular basis, I like to deviate slightly from my usual posts and share with you betting articles of interest – those that can help both challenge and educate us as punters.

With that in mind, I have a fascinating article to put to you today, one written by a relatively new tipster we have begun proofing here at the Smart Betting Club by the name of ‘Insider Gambles ‘ on the theory behind successful value betting.

Although a fairly long article, it raises some incredibly useful points that any aspiring punter really needs to understand such as randomness and betting when the odds are in your favour – i.e. value betting.

All of the professional gamblers and tipsters that I have come into contact with use this form of value betting to inform the wagers they place, so understanding it is critical to your ongoing success.

If and when you do have a few minutes spare, please do give it a read as I feel it is the type of article you want to bookmark and return to especially when your betting gets tough.

My thanks to to Mick from Insider Gambles for giving me permission to publish this article. We are actively proofing the ‘Insider Gambler’s’ advice with a view to a detailed SBC review in 2020.

James Bond The Professional Gambler?

What image comes into your mind when you hear ‘professional gambler’?

A James Bond type, suave and handsome, standing at a roulette wheel, martini in hand and a gorgeous blonde draped over his shoulder? He pushes forward a huge pile of chips onto a number, and watches with smug certainty as the ball falls into the right slot…..

This is all absolute nonsense of course.

For a start, James Bond’s favourite game was baccarat not roulette. Secondly, if you shake a martini you chip the ice and just get a watered down drink. Thirdly, neither James Bond nor anyone else in the history of human civilization (fictional or real) has ever been able to accurately predict where the ball will finish on a roulette wheel. A roulette wheel is an efficient random number generator, and the only way to beat it is by having the odds on your side.

So why do successful gamblers win?

How do some investors make loads of money, when most investors lose?

Every successful professional gambler/investor in history has something in common; they bet with an EDGE.

An EDGE is having the odds in your favour. Over time, if the odds are in your favour then you’ll win.

So the reality of professional gambling is somewhat less glamorous than the James Bond fantasy. A pro gambler is much more likely to be found reading a newspaper, or playing with numbers in a spreadsheet than standing in a casino, drinking and flirting with blondes.

The reality of professional gambling is mostly a little dull, and unfortunately there’s no way of explaining the basics that will be a roller-coaster ride of page-turning excitement.

But….if you master the basics it is possible for you to become filthy stinking rich through professional betting.

The Warren Buffett Approach

Just look at Warren Buffett. He leads a frugal, slightly eccentric life, with his head buried in a newspaper most of the time. But depending on what the US stock market has done in the last couple of days, he may very well be the richest man in the world as you read this.

And all Warren Buffett has done his whole life is practice ‘value investing’. He’s a professional gambler. He bets on the share prices of companies. Buys them for less than they’re worth. Sells them for more than they’re worth. That’s it. He understand randomness, he recognises value and he has developed investing methods to turn that value into an edge. You can do it too. Albeit likely on a smaller scale. But theoretically, once you understand how to find an edge there really is no limit to how much you can win.

So think of this article as studying for your O-Level (giving my age away) in professional investing.

Make yourself a cup of tea, settle down and be ready to make some notes. By the end of this article you’ll be ready to pass your exam, armed with the knowledge of how Tony Bloom, Phil Ivey and Warren Buffett made their millions.

Occasionally people manage to win without an EDGE. For example a lottery winner doesn’t have an EDGE. Neither does a guy who flukes a 6 horse accumulator bet. Or someone who buys a company’s shares on spec, just before their shares rocket in value.

Bookmakers, casinos, lottery operators and stock brokers all make a living by selling the dream; ‘it could be you!’. But it almost certainly won’t be. For every guy on the front page of a paper celebrating a £multi-million lottery win there are countless millions of losers. 99.999% of people who buy lottery tickets will make a loss in their lifetime on their lottery ticket investments.

The ratio of winners to losers is broadly similar when you look at people who invest with bookmakers, casinos and stock exchanges. There’s a reason lottery operators get you to tick a box to allow them to publicise you if you win. By displaying you with your winnings, they sell the dream of ‘it could be you’.

Same with big winners at the bookies. The ‘dream’ is what distracts their customers from the reality that the odds are consistently, and hugely against them. The truth that they are overwhelmingly unlikely to actually make a profit; that it ‘will’ be you. Their customers effectively pay a bookie/casino/lottery operator for providing them with a hobby. And a dream.

Professional investors are rare, and they are different. They are not seduced by the dream of a single big win. They take luck out of the equation, and turn the odds in THEIR favour. They get an EDGE.

But how do you get an EDGE?

The process of getting an edge is in 3 Steps;

Randomness – Value – Edge.

This article will explain what that means. How you get to the EDGE. It first involves explaining some theoretical concepts; RANDOMNESS and VALUE. But don’t worry, the payoff for learning the theory comes when you get to the EDGE.

To Be A Good Punter You Need To Understand ‘Randomness’

The first step to becoming a successful investor is to understand RANDOMNESS.

RANDOMNESS is a theoretical concept that you need to ‘get’ before you can move on. It’s invisible, but you have to know that it’s there, and how it works. Like a physicist has to believe in, and understand gravity, even though he can’t actually see it.

Understanding RANDOMNESS is the opposite of believing in fate. Events are not pre-ordained. Events are chaotic, random. Nothing happens ‘for a reason’. Things just happen because events that take place, no matter how small, have an effect on everything around it.

The influence of the laws of cause and effect are at play all around us, every second of every day. Everywhere in the universe. From the moment of the big bang. Anything that can happen, might happen. It will happen, if you wait long enough.

Everything that happens in the universe does so within a framework, the ‘laws’ of how the universe works. The rules of the game. Our best way of describing these laws is with;

The standard model of particle physics
Einstein’s general law of relativity

Essentially the force of gravity and the speed of light are fixed. Everything that happens in the universe conforms to these laws, but what actually happens within the framework that these create is random, chaotic.

There is loads of stuff in the universe, moving around, so it is interacting all the time with lots of other stuff. Even the tiniest event, the briefest collision between the most tiny and insignificant of these can set off a chain reaction that leads to a radically different outcome than would be observed if the tiny event hadn’t taken place.

Ok, enough already with the physics! What the hell has all this got to do with gambling? With sport, poker or the price of a company’s shares?

Everything.

Because games of sport, hands of cards and the economies of the world all work in the same way as the universe, fundamentally. There are rules. And there is randomness. That’s all.

Take a football match. The rules are fixed. There will be 22 players, a referee, a rectangular field and 2 sets of goals. The referee will blow his whistle and the players will start to play.

What happens over the next 90+ minutes on that rectangle is random.

There is a discernible and predictable pattern to the randomness for sure. We can know that it’s likely that the better players will play better. The team with more of the better players is more likely to win. The number of goals scored is most likely to be between 2 and 4. Etcetera.

We can know these things, these ‘likelihoods’, by observation and research, considering data on previous similar occurrences, i.e. other football matches, especially those involving these teams and these players.

But what we can’t do is predict EXACTLY what will happen.

From the moment the referee blows his whistle to start the match there are a virtually infinite number of possibilities of how the game might play out. Every decision a player makes, every spin and deflection of the ball, every instruction given by the coach, each breath of wind, every noise from the crowd that the players hear, every decision by the officials….they all come together to create a narrative, a story on a timeline across the 90 minutes that describes exactly what happened. And if you played the match a trillion times, the story would never be exactly the same twice.

This is because every variable is multiplied by every other variable to come up with the total number of possible storylines.

In the infinite number of storylines a % of them will result in the score ending nil-nil. A different % will be 1-nil, 2-nil, 3-1 etc. A much smaller % will result in the score ending 8-4. If it’s possible that it can happen, it will happen, even if it’s a tiny % of the time.

Every possible outcome will be included in the % distribution of different scorelines that result from our infinite number of storylines. We can look to this distribution to observe the implications of the rules of the game, the framework within which it operates.

None of the storylines will end up yielding a score of 5,000-nil. The rules of the game are that you play for 90 minutes (plus a bit more) and that after a goal the ball gets placed back on the centre spot. The clock continues to run while the ball is returned to the middle. So there isn’t enough time for a team to score 5,000 goals in a football match. That possibility exceeds the framework of the game established by the rules, so it will never happen. Nothing will ever travel faster than the speed of light.

In our infinite number of football match storylines the upper end of the total number of goals scored might by something like 60. Incredibly, mind-bendingly rare though such a match might be – it is possible that one match could yield 60 goals. And if it’s possible that it could happen, then it will happen. Eventually.

Nothing will ever travel faster than the speed of light. That is one of our laws of the universe. Things can and will travel at any speed up to and including the speed of light, but nothing over that.

Value Betting Is No Guarantee ‘Something Will Happen’ (Or A Bet Will 100% WIN)

So what are the practical implications for a professional gambler of understanding this RANDOMNESS theory?

First, you understand that fundamentally predictions are useless. It is impossible to predict exactly what will happen because the number of actual possible storylines is infinite.

But it is possible to guess at the pattern of likelihoods in advance. That is the best we can do, and it what we must do.

We know that, within the framework, all the things that are possible will occur a certain % of times. The job of the professional gambler is to discern the pattern in the RANDOMNESS.

To say ‘how likely’ something is to happen. Not to say what ‘will happen’.

Where the subject involves animate objects, like the players, officials, fans, pitch and weather of a football match then the pattern in the RANDOMNESS cannot be projected precisely. It involves an element of guesswork. Observation, such as watching previous matches involving the teams, or analysis by looking at a league table can make the guesswork more accurate than a guess plucked from thin air. Modelling the relative strengths of the teams and the players using sophisticated analysis, and then feeding that into an engine which works out a distribution of possible scorelines can get you pretty close to projecting the % distribution within the infinite storylines. But it’s still guesswork, even when it’s very informed guesswork using a computer model.

But where the subject involves an inanimate object such as a roulette wheel or a drum of lottery balls then we can be can be absolutely precise in discerning the patterns in the RANDOMNESS. So long as the roulette wheel (let’s use a European wheel here with a single 0) is well made, and working properly then the % distribution of the ball falling into each slot will be 2.7% over an infinite number of spins of the wheel.

It will be 2.7% in slot 0, and exactly the same % in slots 8, 13, 28, 31….. The % distribution of the ball falling into a slot numbered 57 will be 0%. The framework of a roulette wheel is defined by the rules of how many slots it has. Our wheel has 37 slots, so the number of times a ball will fall in a slot other than one of these 37 is the same number of times our football match will have with 61 goals. And the same as the number of times an object will move faster than the speed of light. Zero.

When two boxers get in a ring the better fighter will normally win. But the rules of the ring dictate that either fighter could win. So there doesn’t have to be a ‘reason’ why Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson. Randomness means that it was inevitable that it would happen at some point, if you iterated that fight over many times. It just happened to be that night.

When a roulette wheel spins it is randomness that governs which slot it falls into.

There is no memory to the wheel, no number is ‘due’ to come up just because it hasn’t come out for ages. In 1913 in the Monte Carlo Casino the ball in a roulette wheel landed in a black slot 26 times in a row. The odds of that happening were over 67 million to 1. So while it was surprising to the onlookers (and ruinous to the ‘red backers’!) the sequence was actually no more surprising than any of the other 67 million possible storylines that the 26 spins could have produced.

So the point of learning the theory of randomness is to realise that predictions are useless to a professional gambler, because they are impossible.

It is impossible to see into the future. It is one of the immutable laws of nature. Part of the framework.

We need to understand that our job is to discern the patterns in the randomness. To say how likely something is to happen. Not to say what we think will happen.

Once we understand this principle we can move on to VALUE.

Value Betting – The Odds In Your Favour

VALUE mean finding investment opportunities where the odds are in your favour.

VALUE is backing something with a 50% chance of happening at odds of 11 to 10.

If anything can happen. And we can’t know what is going to happen. How can we profit from betting on something that is going to take place in the future?

The answer is that all you need is to be armed with an idea of how likely something is to happen. And then, to know that the chance of it happening is greater than the odds you get when you make your investment.

It’s all about the odds.

An investment is risking something in the hope of a profitable return. The profit you make when you win, divided by the amount you risked are the odds.

So if you bet £100 on a horse, and it wins, and you get £400 back then your profit was £300. 300 over 100 is 3 over 1. Your odds were 3 to 1.

On this occasion the horse won. But how likely was it to win? If we ran the race a million times, on how many occasions would our horse win? What is the pattern in the distribution of the randomness? Lets say out of a million races our horse wins 200k times. The pattern in the randomness is that our horse’s true chance of winning the race is 800k over 200k. Or 8 over 2, which is 4 over 1. 4/1 are the horse’s true odds.

If we bet a million times on our horse at 3/1 we would lose money. We would get back £800k having staked £1m. Our loss would be £200k. 200k is 20% of 1m. 3/1 is ‘bad value’ for that horse, to the tune of 20%.

But if we could get 5/1 about the horse the sums become £1.2m return on our £1m stake. The horse becomes Value, at 20%.

When I say the ‘horse’ becomes value, I don’t really mean the horse. I mean the odds of 5/1 are value. Where odds of 3/1 are not. The horse is, effectively, irrelevant. What matters is the odds that you get, not the horse itself. Every horse, no matter how slow has a chance of winning any race that it lines up for. Those are the rules. That is the framework that we are operating in.

So if a horse is so slow that it will only win 1% of the time then its true odds are 99/1. If you can bet on that horse, slowcoach that it is, at odds of 100/1 or better then it’s a Value bet.

What happens in the race on any single occasion doesn’t make the bet a bad bet. Single results don’t prove whether something was value or not, whether it was a good bet to make or a bad bet.

The truth of value investing only reveals itself over time.

There’s a paradox that gamblers have to get their head around. The difference between short term and long term. The only thing matters is winning overall, in the long term.

But winning on any one single occasion barely matters at all.

Value investing is a war waged though a series of many, many battles. Winning or losing any single battle does not really matter. Looking back on all the battles, from a position of triumph having prevailed in the war, the fuss that you made about the loss of any single battle will seem ridiculous.

Value investing is nothing to do with trying to win every battle. The only thing that matters is having the odds on your side consistently as you fight the battles, so that as a the results of a great number of battle becomes known your superiority becomes apparent.

Even great football teams lose some games. The best poker players regularly lose loads of hands. The best investors buy shares in companies who go bust. The best golfers make bogies. Champion jockeys lose far more races than they win. Short term losses are ultimately irrelevant. All that matters is long term overall victory.

So this is the concept of value; investing with the odds in your favour.

There is a neat, simple mantra for any professional investor to adhere to; Decisions Not Results.

If you keep making the right decisions, keep betting with the odds in your favour, keep finding Value then as long as you stay in the game for the long term you will end up a winner.

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I hope you enjoyed this article – if you have any feedback on it, please do share your thoughts with me via email – pete@smartbettingclub.com

Peter Ling

Smart Betting Club Editor

Should you bet to win or each way at Betfair SP? A new spin on this age-old question

Posted on July 19, 2019 by Peter Ling

Monday saw the release of the latest SBC review and the first in our series on profitable betting exchange tipsters as we honed in on the racing guru showing a fine profit at both Betfair SP and bookmaker prices.

Yet as profitable as this service is, one of the dilemmas our review threw up was the old query of – should you back a horse to win or each way?

Its a question as old as betting on racing itself as punters weigh up whether to go for broke and the big win OR to play it safe and get a payout of some kind should the horse finish 2nd, 3rd or 4th.

What is new is understanding which approach you should take when betting at Betfair SP as the each way market on the exchange is split into two – you bet into the win market and the place market separately.

Posing the updated question…

If betting at Betfair SP, should you back a horse to win or in both the win/place markets?

Allow me to help explain how we approached this dilemma in this new review…

Win only betting returns the highest points profit

Without question, the most profitable angle to follow this particular racing tipster from a points profit basis is to bet on each horse to win outright.

To outline this, below you can see the performance if backing win only at Betfair SP (after commission is deducted):

Betfair SP win only: 827 bets, 430.44 points profit @ 14.25% ROI

And then comparing that with mixing up win and place bets as directly advised by the tipster himself:

Betfair SP win/win & place mix: 827 bets, 290.68 points profit @ 9.63% ROI

On the face of it, this looks an open and shut case. Back all the tips to win and leave it at that.

Yet when we dig a little deeper, things turn out a little differently…

Next step – analysing the worst ‘drawdowns’

What the above doesn’t take into account as that bane of all punters everywhere – losing runs and specifically from our point of view, working out the worst drawdown from peak to trough.

Explained another way, a drawdown is an understanding of what the worst possible run you might suffer actually is….Should you be extremely unlucky and choose to follow this tipster on the very day they start their worst losing run.

Such drawdown figures are essential to understand because just as we always ask a tipster ‘what can i make?’ – we also need to ask ‘what can i lose?‘ should the worst happen.

Without hindsight its impossible to know when a bad run will actually hit – all it can really do is prepare you and make sure you have a bankroll to cover the worst eventuality. And if you think that losing runs don’t happen to us all, even professional punters when betting, well, think again…!

Here then are the worst drawdowns for both the win and win/place method:

Betfair SP win only worst drawdown: 154 points

Betfair SP win/win & place mix worst drawdown: 132 points

If these seem large, don’t be worried as the losses during each of these drawdowns were more then recouped simply with patience and time. No tipster, no matter how good they are is ever invincible and ALL go through drawdowns and losing runs at some time.

The method with the biggest ‘bank growth’

With the above ‘drawdown’ figures alongside the results of our in-house montecarlo simulator (which repeats the profile of each tipster several thousand times), we are then able to come up with an advised betting bank figure for each method.

This betting bank is designed to absorb drawdowns – thus ensuring you never go bust!

For the win only betting approach, we naturally need larger betting banks to cover larger possible drawdowns than the win/place method. And from this information, we can gauge exactly how much betting bank growth (or Return on Capital) we can make per method.

Here is how the 2 approaches stack up from a bank growth perspective:

Betfair SP win only: 142.04% Growth

Betfair SP win/win & place mix: 145.34% Growth

From this we can clearly see that its actually betting in both the win and place markets (effectively each way bets) which produces the most betting bank growth in this scenario. It’s only an extra 3.30% growth but every little counts.

This is because you need a much smaller betting bank if following win & place then if following win only.

And it is this higher bank growth figure you should focus on – not simply always just ‘points profit’.

Individual tipster analysis required

Although in this example, the greatest bank growth came by betting in both the win/place markets rather than win only, this is not always the case.

Such analysis needs to be performed on a tipster by tipster basis as each strategy is different and you need to understand them fully to really maximise your returns.

As ever – putting the profits made by any tipster into context is key – especially when it comes to betting banks

Which is why we pen these detailed reviews to help you maximise the revenue you can make by following any given tipster. We also perform the above analysis on all tipsters reviewed as standard.

If you would like to know more about the Betfair SP tipster featured in this example, you can access our detailed review the instant you join the Smart Betting Club.

You can sign-up today at our lowest prices ever – from just £27.99 + VAT per quarter, which provides you with the ENTIRE Smart Betting Club service including all our SBC Magazine, Tipster Profit Reports, Best Tipster Guides, Pro Betting Guides & more.

It’s our best ever SBC membership deal and with our amazing money back guarantee offer you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Best Regards

Peter Ling

Smart Betting Club Owner and Founder

Subscribe NOW to the Smart Betting Club.

What’s better – The number of winners you back or how much you win?

Posted on June 7, 2019 by Peter Ling

Today, I want to share with you a fascinating article recently published by a friend of mine from the betting world – Matthew Walton, who raises some very important points that all aspiring profitable punters need to be aware of

Matthew delves into the battle between strike-rate and profit and the real-life mental challenges that occur when using tipsters, especially those that select bets at big odds and to low strike-rates.

Like Matthew, I have seen far too many punters quit a good tipster all too early because they suffered more losers then they could handle. Despite the fact that when a bet did win, it won big.

There is no shame in falling foul of this especially when you consider the pain of a losing bet is twice the joy we get from backing a winner.

It’s a psychological test – all of which makes it vitally important that as punters we absorb as much information as possible from experts like Matthew. After all, he knows what it takes to win long-term, which is of course what matters most.

So, without further delay – over to Matthew…

What’s better, strike rate or profit?

Which is more important… the number of winners or how much you win?

This is something which I have thought about, spoken about, and written about A LOT!

Because over the many, many years I have worked in this business, some of the most common questions I get asked by new members or, more often, punters who are considering becoming new members, are along the lines of…

“What’s the strike rate of your best racing tipster?

And

“How much profit did your best football tipster make last week/month?”

Don’t get me wrong, both are sensible questions. And both are well worth asking of me, or any other service you care to take an interest in joining. Because you need to know if Service X has the kind of strike rate you’re comfortable with, or whether Service Y will actually make money from soccer betting.

You need to know these things.

And they’re questions that I would ask myself when doing my due diligence on any new football tipster, or horseracing expert, who tugs my coat and tells me they’re the next big thing when it comes to making money at football, or beating the bookies at racing.

They are fundamental to whether you (a) join and/or (b) stay with a service.

And you should ask yourself the question right now, if you haven’t already… which would you prefer? Or rather, which order would you put them in.

Stupid question, it’s obvious…

Profit, right?

We all bet to make money, primarily. And the more we make, the better.

So if it’s a case of sacrificing a few percentage points in terms of strike rate, in order to generate a bigger overall return… it’s a no-brainer. You should take the cash every time.

Well, you say that. But I know from experience there’s a flipside to this argument.

Take these two notional services… Service 1 has a 10% strike rate but returns a 40% Return on Investment (ROI), whereas Service 2 has a 40% strike rate but returns a 10% ROI.

I know from working in this business for more years than I care to remember, the majority of punters would actually stick with Service 2 longer than Service 1.

“What?? That’s absolute rubbish!“… I hear you cry.

Not so.

Whilst most backers would like to win more money (and I agree with that, who wouldn’t), crucially the manner in which that profit is made also must be to their liking.

And as such, low strike rates, which sap confidence (from some, not all), which clean out betting banks (only of those who don’t budget properly, or stake erratically), and test the patience to breaking point (yes, of the less savvy punters)… these low hit rates cause many to throw in the towel, and often far too quickly.

Which means even though a bigger payday is waiting for them, somewhere down the line, they’re simply not able, or are not prepared, to wait for it to arrive.

Believe you me, I have seen this time, after time, after time.

Take one top golf tipster that I work with, which the guys at SBC recommend… a proven profit-maker that has made 500+ points profit to level stakes in 5 years (Yes! He has generated an average profit of around 100 point per year to level stakes).

I’ve seen this service ditched because it didn’t deliver “certain members” enough winners in a short space of time – in other words, the strike rate was too low. As a result it is kicked into the long grass because a member has grown impatient, spent up their insufficient funds, or simply lost confidence (in what has already been proven to be a long-term profit maker).

But the point is, the average price of these golf bets is around 80/1.

You’ll never get a high hit rate backing golfers at 80/1. Never.

But you will make a long-term profit if you back enough of them when they are assessed to be over-priced (which is exactly what the Golf Insider does).

This service has an ROI in excess of 20%… but the low strike rate is seen (incorrectly, I argue until I’m blue in the face) as a negative, when it shouldn’t be. Not if you get your staking correct and your mindset right.

You can’t handle the truth!

Of course, when someone joins one of the tipsters I work with, they do so with the goal of making money from horseracing or to win big at golf betting… I offer them some initial advice on the importance of a betting bank, and a sensible staking plan, and a degree of level-headedness when it comes to results… and they all nod their heads in agreement.

But throw in the curve ball of a few losers…

Even though they are to be expected with the service they’ve joined (or any other betting service for that matter)…

And it’s panic stations! Needlessly.

As I often say in the office, mis-quoting Tom Cruise in the film A Few Good Men…

“You can’t handle the strike rate!“

And this is something which actually ends up hurting the member themselves in the long run. Because they’re the ones who head for the exit, when if they’d stayed longer, the winners (and profits) would have fallen into their lap.

But strike rates aren’t everything

I totally agree.

I’ve seen services, and this is often the case with football betting syndicates, or laying services on the horses, where the strike rate is higher than, say, a standard horseracing operation or a golf betting cartel… but the ROI is half, a third, maybe even a quarter of the amount on offer with those other services.

And when you factor in costs, it means you either (a) have to stake big, big amounts to make any money or (b) you stake within your own comfort zone and end up with a membership that breaks even, or makes just a few points profit after months of subscribing.

Unless this is a service offering exceptional betting bank growth or Return on Capital – something that only occurs with a few very high volume tipsters, then the above outcomes are not what you want from your betting.

Because you want to show a healthy profit for your efforts… we all do.

And if you get too hung up on the number of winners you’re going to back with a service, or how many bets there were in its longest losing run, or what’s the biggest drawdown of funds it has endured… all to the detriment of the “elephant in the room” (i.e. how much profit a service makes)… then you could easily miss out on a nice little profit-generator.

I think of an example like the Scottish Football Tipster I work with which has a strike rate of close on 46%. This means members can lump on the bets safe in the knowledge that almost every other bet will be a winner… great!

But the flipside is the ROI on this service is nearer the 15% mark. That’s less than the my golf expert.

However, members tend to stick with the Scottish Football Tipster longer. Why? Because it simply provides then with more winners (also, let me add, it’s because a 15% ROI betting on football is a truly exceptional level of performance. Better than you’ll find anywhere else on any other soccer service).

So reverting back to the original question, would you prefer a high strike rate or bigger profits? As sadly you rarely get both!

Is it all down to your risk profile?

Most likely. It all boils down to what kind of punter you are, how prepared you are to accept a few losers, how much “bottle” you have when funds appear to be ebbing away, and whether you can keep faith in a proven service when it’s not necessarily firing on all cylinders.

From my perspective, and as stated above, you might get a service that has a low strike rate and low profits (we’ve all seen those, right?) but you will never see a service which has a high hit rate and a good level of profit. Certainly in terms of ROI anyway. They are as rare as hen’s teeth, unicorns and rocking horse poo.

So what I try to look for are services which deliver the best of both. Ok, a lower strike rate than some… but still a higher profitability than others. Or maybe a shade more winners, traded for a scrap less return.

And that sweet spot should provide you, the prospective member, with the best of both worlds. Enough winners (relative to the average price) to keep you happy, but enough profit to make sure the service – whether it be golf, horseracing, football or greyhounds – more than pays its way.

OPINION: You have every right to expect the service you’re joining to make as much profit as possible. But do not make the mistake of falling for the horseracing service, or football syndicate, that boasts the highest figure… because the way it generates that return (e.g. backing big-priced bets with a low strike rate) might not sit well with your own personal way of betting. But by the same token, if a service freely advertises that it only tips long-shots (but does make money doing this) then make sure you give it due time and opportunity to deliver. Because backing at an average price of 80/1 doesn’t produce the same strike rate as backing at 6/4… sad, but true!!

Get The Professional Betting Fundamentals

My thanks to go to Matthew for granting me permission to share this article with you all and I hope you found it as useful as I did.

As Matthew alludes to – much of the battle to become a winning punter takes place in the mind and a greater understanding of the challenges we face when betting, can help us dramatically improve our bottom-line profit and loss figures.

All of which is why we provide all new Smart Betting Club members with access to our Pro Betting Fundamentals – featuring 2 key reports to help you think and act like a professional, profitable punter.

Whether it be the tools and expertise to get your betting setup professionally OR the mindset you need to be a winning punter, these guides will help you every step of the way.

Subscribe NOW to the Smart Betting Club.

Peter Ling
Smart Betting Club Editor

Lessons we can learn from legendary winning gambler, Bill Benter

Posted on May 29, 2019May 29, 2020 by Peter Ling

In today’s article I want to share a couple of betting articles I feel are of note and details on a recommended tipping service bang in form.

First of all, I wanted to share a link to this long but fascinating article on Bill Benter, titled ‘The Gambler Who Cracked The Horse Racing Code‘, as published by Bloomberg Businessweek.

Sharing his story for the first time ever, in this article you can get the full scoop on just why Bill is such a legend in betting circles, his ups and downs and just how he made his betting pay in the end.

Despite the headline behind this story being about the man ‘who cracked the horse racing code’ – through the article it’s clear how it wasn’t all plain sailing for Bill and his approach finally bore fruit after several years of trial and error.

His winning strategy was like almost all others, one based on ‘value betting‘ whereby he was able to successfully identify bets with a higher chance of winning then the odds available. Here is how the article explained it:

“[Bill had] A private system of odds that was slightly more accurate than the public odds. To simplify, imagine that the gambling public can bet on a given horse at a payout of 4 to 1. Benter’s model might show that the horse is more likely to win than those odds suggest—say, a chance of one in three. That means Benter can put less at risk and get the same return; a seemingly small edge can turn into a big profit.

High Volume & Patience

Now having an edge is one thing – making it pay on a regular basis is another as Bill knew he had to churn through enough bets on a daily basis to eliminate randomness as “The impact of bad luck can be diminished by betting thousands and thousands of times”

His ability therefore to back hundreds, if not thousands of bets in Hong Kong every day ensured this regular profit.

Now as fascinating and inspiring as Bill’s story undoubtedly is, it does raise the question as to exactly how we as punters can apply it to our own betting. Whilst none of us are likely to have the time or ability to place hundreds of bets every day as he did, there are some clear qualities that stand out, including that of patience.

His patience came more in the form of the time it took to build his profitable model in the first place, yet he clearly knew that betting for profit was about the long haul and not the short-term when it came to results.

And that ties into another article I wanted to highlight for you on the theme of patience and why its so important, especially as I feel that it is a lack of this quality which holds so many punters back with their betting. Click here to read it.

Like it or not – patience is fundamental whatever way you are attempting to make money – be it the stock market, bitcoin or anything else for that matter.

Punters without patience and those making knee-jerk decisions based on short-term form are ultimately those that only lose out – and that is something I wanted to help tackle and address through this article.

Don’t Go Overboard on Short-Term Form

The problems with a lack of patience jumped out at me again when I was putting the finishing touches to a new tipster review to be released on Sunday to SBC members.

Although this service has an exceptional record having made 400.4 points profit @ 17.76% ROI from 844 bets, it like any service does suffer from losing periods from time to time.

And any tipster who claims to never lose or suffer losing runs is telling you what you want to hear – not what is true.

To highlight this, allow me to showcase what happened if following during 2019, where if you had started on the 1st January 2019, come the end of August 2019, you would have been better off to the tune of 276.52 points @ 35.33% ROI from 285 bets advised. Each month returned a profit.

As you can imagine at that time such form ensured this was a very popular service, yet as night follows day, a losing run was due and in September and October the service lost a combined 67.79 points.

Anyone who was a member during these 2 months might well have wondered what all the fuss is about – and indeed the service in question did receive a few emails querying this point during this period.

Yet, ultimately, If you were to judge the service on just September and October alone and the 103 bets advised during this period, you would be selling yourself short.

Which is exactly why Bill’s method was based on betting high volume to eliminate bad luck or bad runs of form just like this.

With November and December back in profit with a further 38.68 points made, over the full year in 2019 the service actually made a 247.71 point profit @ 19.42% ROI from 453 bets. Very similar to the long-term ROI figure achieved of 17.76%

If this tipster interests you, then I would be happy to share details on it – drop me an email and I will send on information.

Guided By The Goal of Long-Term Profits

Whether it be the tipsters we review in each SBC Magazine, our Tipster Profit Reports or the Free Tipsters available to all SBC members, the fundamentals of being patient when betting ring true:

No-one can ever guarantee a profit over a small sequence of bets.

Bill Benter knew this – which is why he churned through so many bets everyday. He knew that taking 4/1 about a 3/1 chance would make him a profit long-term. It might take 20, 30, 50 even 100+ bets for this to come through over short-term patterns, but judged on significant data-sets, the edge would materialise.

And it is this point that guides us in our work exploring and recommending tipsters here at SBC.

Long-term profits are what matter and the ability to understand losses and place them in context is equally important. In fact, I would say its not just important, but absolutely crucial to anyone who wants to bet seriously for profit.

I hope you find this email useful and the various articles and links of note. If so, you might like to consider a Smart Betting Club membership and see how we can help you, like thousands of others before you improve your betting.

Until then, be lucky!

Peter Ling
Smart Betting Club Editor

If you have any questions on this article or a Smart Betting Club membership in general, you can contact me directly via pete@smartbettingclub.com. I respond to all emails as quickly as I can!

Why This Is The Biggest Mistake Many Punters Make

Posted on April 8, 2019May 27, 2020 by Peter Ling

I want to follow up my 5-step article last week on getting started betting with tipsters, with more advice today on what I believe to be the biggest mistake many punters make when using tipsters:

A Lack Of Patience

I know for many the idea of needing patience when it comes to tipsters is a dirty word. After all you are paying a tipster to back winners, so if they keep tipping up losers, you should get rid of them.

Right?

Wrong!

The problem with that attitude is that it doesn’t take into account the laws of making money across all forms of investment AND the need for realistic expectations based on the type of tipster you are dealing with.

As whether we like it or not, when trying to bet profitably, it is a marathon not a sprint and it’s only the patient amongst us who benefit in the end.

If that sounds unpalatable to you, then fair enough – you are probably not suited to the cut and thrust of following tipsters to profit. Not everyone is.

Yet if you are determined to make your betting pay and are keen to see how we can help you do this, just as we have done for Dave, Michael, Billy and many others, please read on.

High Risk: High Reward

The first thing to understand is that betting for profit is in so many ways, very, very similar to any other form of investment.

Whether you are buying, shares, gold, houses or bitcoin – the principles are exactly the same as betting, including the concept of High-Risk, High-Reward.

This simply states that the greater return you are looking for, the greater the risk you will have to take to make it.

Bitcoin is a classic example of a very high risk investment – as it went from $1,000 on January 1st 2017 to $17,000 by the end of 2017, before since dropping all the way back down again and up to its current price of around $4,500.

Anyone investing in bitcoin over the past 2 years would have needed nerves of steel as you were taking a huge risk. You might have made 17X your investment, yet could easily have lost that – all depending on when you stuck your cash in.

A Classic Tipster Example

A good example of the need to be patient with tipsters comes in the form of one very highly rated tipster, who sits in our ‘Hall of Fame’. He is a proven expert and his record of over 1600 points profit at 17.6% ROI dating back to 2013 highlights him as a tipster that knows his tipping onions.

Yet if you are going to follow him in, then you have to be patient, due to the fact he backs long shot horses at an average price of just under 11/1.

At these odds it’s to be expected that you will experience the occasional losing run and over the 65 months he has been actively tipping, 20 of them have made a loss – a strike rate of 69% winning months to losing months.

Or to put it another way – in an average year you can expect to have approximately 3 to 4 losing months

Although the 8-9 winning months will completely outweigh these losses, if you jump ship after a losing one, you are short-changing yourself. Yet this is exactly what some punters are doing and have done during the past year – making the same mistake over and over again.

Why Are They Jumping Ship From This Tipster?

The reason they are jumping ship too soon becomes easier to understand when we analyse the monthly breakdown of his performance over the past 12 months.

Should you have joined on March 1st 2018, then come the end of May 2018, you would be sitting on a 58.4 point loss from 202 bets.

How many of you would have quit then? I dare say quite a few.

If you had done so, then you would have missed out on the 208.3 points made in June and July, which would have left you up 149.9 points overall.

As this table indicates, there are peaks and troughs across the year but taken as a 12 month snapshot, this tipster did return a fine profit.

His 12 month ROI of 10.90% is a little below his expected 17% ROI, although in the 4 months prior to March 2018, he did make another 177 points @ 30.14% ROI, which again illustrates the value in patience.

Eyes On The Long-Term Prize!

I hope this article has helped to shed some light on how to approach betting from a profitable point of view and the need for patience when following tipsters.

I would love to be able to say to you – “I can guarantee you will win month-in, month-out”. Yet that is not true and I won’t sell you a lie.

There are plenty of people out there saying exactly this and usually its trying to flog some get-rich-quick-scheme.

The Smart Betting Club is different as we are geared towards helping you make a sustainable profit betting. We are not interested in helping you make a quick buck, but instead giving you the expertise, information and resource to make it pay year-in, year-out.

This includes things like helping educate you on not just who the best tipsters are but the setting up of betting banks, the best bookmakers or exchanges to use and so on.

I like to think that this long-term approach is why we have been around since 2006, over which time we have helped hundreds, if not thousands of punters make their betting a success. You can read some real-life examples here.

If you are interested in following in their footsteps, I invite you to consider a Smart Betting Club membership, which is currently available from as little as just £2.15 per week.

All of which comes with an iron-clad money back guarantee – enabling you to join with the full confidence you have everything to gain and nothing to lose!

Subscribe NOW to the Smart Betting Club

Best Regards,

Peter Ling
Smart Betting Club Editor

If you have any questions on this article or a Smart Betting Club membership in general, you can contact me directly via pete@smartbettingclub.com. I respond to all emails as quickly as I can!

Interview With The Punter Making Five-Figure Profits With Tipsters
For even more inspiration and advice on how to make a profit using tipsters, then be sure to read this interview with SBC member on how he runs a successful tipster portfolio – one that now makes him a five figure profit each year. You can read all about Dave’s approach in this revealing interview now available on the Smart Betting Club Blog

More pro-punter advice: betting banks, setup guidance & the winning difference they can make

Posted on July 9, 2018 by

In my blog post last week, I spoke about the importance of patience, emotional detachment from your bets and a long-term vision and today I want to expand further on this with more professional punting advice.

In particular I want to talk about another term many punters run away from, namely that of ‘betting banks’

Whether you are backing your tips, running a system or following a tipster – a betting bank is absolutely imperative.

A good betting bank will allow you to keep track of your performance, stake sensibly, avoid going broke and ultimately to maximise your profits . As the example I share later on where a simple £10 stake has made £1334.08 over the past 12 months will testify…

Experience tells me that many punters avoid betting banks either through ignorance or through a lack of understand as to how they work.

Yet, I am here to tell you that betting banks are very simple indeed and to show you how they work…

A different betting bank for each tipster

First off, I always recommend you have a separate betting bank for each tipster you follow.

This is because each tipster has a different staking plan, different strike-rate and requires its own individual approach.

For example – if you had a tipster with a 10% strike-rate, a 50 point betting bank would be far too small. As this excellent don’t go broke table outlines, at a 10% strike-rate, you would have a 25% chance of hitting 51 losers on the bounce over a sequence of 600 to 650 bets. 51 losers on the bounce would break a 50 point betting bank.

Yet if you had a tipster with a 30% strike-rate, there is a less than 1% chance of a losing run 28 tips strong over the same period. So, at very worst, you might only lose 28 points of your 50 point betting bank. Not ideal but covered by your betting bank.

Real-life example

To explain more, allow me to outline how the betting bank works for the tipster I focused on last week from the latest SBC Tipster Profit Report, which has made a ROI of 49.2% over the past 12 months.

We recommend a 100 points betting bank for this service based on our extensive modelling on the profile of bets they supply.

To briefly outline why it’s 100 points – we took into account their biggest drawdown since conception in 2009 and viewed what might have happened in the absolute worst context. That is if you joined on the exact day the worst run started.

The chart below outlines these worst runs over time, which as you can see has peaked at around 46 points, whilst also has broken the 40 point loss barrier on 3 other occasions over the years.

As we know this service has a strike-rate of 16%, using the don’t go broke table again, we can also see there is a:

75% chance of 24 losers on the bounce every 600-650 bets
50% chance of 29 losers on the bounce every 600-650 bets
25% chance of 34 losers on the bounce every 600-650 bets
Less than 1% chance of 53 losers on the bounce every 600-650 bets

This data certainly seems to ring true with several runs dropping between 20 and 30 points on top of a few in excess of 40 points. We haven’t yet hit the 53 point drawdown yet, although that always remains a statistical possibility and we would be foolish to ignore it.

Adding in extra cushion should the worst happen!

Despite the fact the worst runs seem to be peaking out at 46 points historically and 53 points theoretically, our approach here at SBC is to add in extra cushion to your betting bank beyond this to cater for the worst case scenario.

The reality is that if you had just a 60 point betting bank, most punters would have given up once they lost half or more of it during a bad run.

On paper you might think you could stand such a run but experience tells us quite the opposite rings true.

I see it all the time unfortunately – punters giving up the ghost on a good tipster or method simply because they had an inadequate betting bank.

All of which is why our policy here at SBC is to add in extra cushion and to recommend a 100 points betting bank for this service.

Yes – you might not ever need the full 100 points (let’s hope not) but when the runs of 30 or 40 points happen – as they always will – then you are covered.

The power of betting banks

The other major advantage of a betting bank is that it is very easy to see how much money you could make following a tipster using them.

Taking our example tipster, for whom we recommend a 100 point bank – with a starting pot of £1000 and staking £10 per bet, you would have made a £1,334.88 profit after the tipsters cost has been deducted.

At £5000 this grows even further to £7,493.28 profit after tipster costs. All over the past 12 months.

See what I mean here…

And because this is a tipster that has a fantastic track record historically, you could have made even more dating back 7 years with him.

That £1000 starting pot would have made £4,103.16 after fees and £5000 will have returned a £26,247.96 profit.

Not bad for a simple 1 bet a day strategy and even one that has had losing runs as big as 45 points during this 7 year period.

Betting Bank Advice Across Every Tipster

For each tipster we review and recommend here at SBC, we provide betting bank suggestions for you to use.

This helps to provide you with peace of mind that we have analysed their historical and theoretical data in depth and put together an optimised betting bank that will cover all bases.

And as our policy of ensuring you lose no more than around 50% of your bank during the absolute worst runs will attest – this is not a risky strategy either. Plenty of cushion has been factored in.

If you are after more help with your betting, you might like to consider a Smart Betting Club membership, which comes complete with a 90-day money back guarantee and is discounted by as much as £45 for 2018.

Subscribe NOW to the Smart Betting Club

See you on the inside

Best Regards,

Peter Ling
Smart Betting Club Editor

The betting tactics all pro-punters have in common – expert guidance on what it takes to win

Posted on July 2, 2018 by

One of the most important qualities a winning punter should have is an ability to detach themselves emotionally from their betting.

Most of the pro-punters I have come across in my 12 years at the Smart Betting Club have this quality in common.

A cold, calculated ability to view the outcome of bets they have placed – win or lose with a simple shrug of the shoulders and as lines of red or black on a spreadsheet.

Very often they don’t even watch the bets as they happen.

Instead choosing to update their betting figures at the end of a day, week or month. Again, this is all part of the emotional detachment because if you don’t live each bet out win or lose – it can’t impact you or your betting habits negatively.

You can tell this is the right approach as bookmakers want you to treat your betting differently and to act extremely emotionally.

Compelling you to bet to make a game more interesting, to be closer to the action or that it somehow matters more when there is money on it.

None of which is of course true. Yet they sell their products like this because they know that the more emotionally involved with your bets you are, the more likely you are to bet irrationally.

Even when you are winning and everything you bet on seems to turn to gold – they know if you bet emotionally, then you are more likely to risk more to maximise your hot streak (which is often simple randomness at play) and ultimately hand all your winnings back when the losers inevitably hit again.

All of which goes back to the old mantra – do the opposite of what the bookmaker wants you to do, because there will only be one winner long-term, it’s either you or them and despite what they say, they are not your friend. Not many billion-dollar businesses tend to be!

A Big Dirty Word

The other quality you need in conjunction with emotional detachment is patience.

It’s a totally boring concept and one losing punters reject straight away. To them it’s a dirty word and usually because they are betting with emotion, which immediately makes being patient very difficult indeed.

Yet, ultimately patience is crucial and it’s one reason you can only join the Smart Betting Club for a minimum of 1 year. We do this because we know there is little point in you signing-up unless you are willing to give betting professionally with us at least that time period.

If you are only going to give professional betting a couple of weeks to make you a profit, then you will probably only lose money. This is because you will give up at the first few sign of a few losers and not stick around long-enough for the winners to come in again.

I am not saying that you won’t start to win money within your first few months betting, yet depending on when you start and the tipsters you choose from those we recommend, every punter’s experience will be different and you might need to be patient to reap the benefits.

To outline what I mean by the need for patience, I want to use a classic example from the latest Tipster Profit Report and focus on the tipster on the front cover with a ROI of 49.2% over the past 12 months.

Huge Profits From This Recommended Tipster

This is a Hall of Fame rated racing tipster, providing a 1-bet-a-day strategy that is very easy to follow. Taking no more than a couple of minutes time daily, it has made a profit of 154 points from 313 bets at 49.2% ROI since the 1^st June 2017.

Depending on when you joined this tipster, your experience will be different and it’s only patience (that dirty word again) that will see you make a profit sometimes.

Firstly, let me show you their profit and loss table from the past 12 months, broken down into bet number, stakes, profit/loss and ROI.

This table tells us that 9 out of 12 months were profitable with some particularly strong performance over the year. Everything looks rosy and how you could you not make a profit following this tipster?

Well, you would be surprised how many punters, especially those betting emotionally or without patience will have struggled.

Had you joined on the 1^st September 2017, come the end of October 2017 you will have actually posted a 23.6 point loss over 48 bets. At this point you might well be thinking ‘Well, I have given it 2 months and I’ve only lost money – should I stick with it’?

Even if you had continued following until the end of February 2018, over this 6-month period, you would only be showing a 7.16 point profit from 157 bets. From my experience, most people at this point would have already quit and moved onto another tipster in the mistaken belief they were wasting their time.

Yet as we know from the above table, they would be wrong to as March to May 2018 made a huge 84.34 points profit and over this 9 month period as a whole, a total of 91.50 points profit would have been accrued. Job done.

At simple £50 stakes, that is a superb profit of £4,575.00 over just 9 months.

Don’t throw in the towel too soon

The sad truth is that many punters, had they started on the 1^st September would have thrown in the towel long-before this tipster service was ever given the chance to show why we rate them so highly.

And often this will be down to the fact they are living out each bet win or lose on a daily basis – which in turn affects an ability to be patient and to make betting decisions without emotion.

So, to help overcome this problem – we provide lots of information via our reviews, tipster tables and key facts pages to provide assistance and guidance on tipsters when you need it.

For example – the tipster I reference above has a huge database of past results that show their edge – just shy of 3000 bets dating back to 2009. Providing confidence and assurance that they know what they are doing, even if short-term results indicate otherwise.

You can read about this long-term edge in our past reviews of this tipster, league tables of long-term performance and key facts pages (all of which are available with an SBC membership).

Helping to provide reassurance during bad runs when they hit (as they always do – no punter wins all the time) that you are on track.

The power of hindsight

Ultimately, nobody knows without the power of hindsight when a good or bad betting run will hit, so it’s only emotional detachment from your punting and patience that will see you through.

It might be unsexy and exactly what the bookie doesn’t want you to do – but that’s the life of a winning punter. Being boring and doing the opposite of everyone else!

If you are after more help with your betting, consider a Smart Betting Club membership, which comes complete with a 90-day money back guarantee and is discounted by as much as £45 currently. Click here to see how we can help you.

See you on the inside

Best Regards,

Peter Ling
Smart Betting Club Editor

You can’t make money backing favourites…Or can you?

Posted on April 6, 2018August 20, 2019 by

“You can’t make money backing favourites”

…Or so goes the famous phrase favoured by many in the betting world on the notion that it’s only mugs who bet at short prices.

Yet the reality is that betting (like most things in life) is not quite so black and white and you can make money backing favourites…as long as you back the right ones…

The right favourites – such as those put forward by the ‘myth-busting’ racing tipster featured in SBC Magazine (Issue 104) who has made a fine profit backing short horses.

Our review of this tipster found that over the course of 1676 bets advised over 2 and a bit years, he had made a baseline profit of 5% Return on Investment (ROI).

For those who prefer to concentrate on Return on Capital (ROC) this equated to a figure of 140% over the same period.

To put that into easy to understand financial figures…

A £1000 starting betting bank would have grown to £2,400.
A £5000 starting betting bank would have grown to £12,000.
A £10000 starting betting bank would have grown to £24,000.

And best of all – solely from backing favourites.

Although it’s fair to point out that it’s not always the favourite he tips up, but sometimes also the second favourite – in general it’s selections 5/2 and below at the front of the market

Ultimately – the saying “You can’t make money backing favourites” should really read “You can’t make money backing bad value favourites” as therein lies the difference between making a profit or loss betting.

If you are taking 9/4 on a bet that should be 6/4, long-term you will make a profit. Just as you might taking 20/1 about a bet that should be 10/1.

So, the next time someone tells you that backing favourites is a mugs game…you know what to say!

Major Benefits Of Backing Favourites

There are also some very important additional benefits from backing favourites to be aware of – here are 4 of the most relevant:

1. It’s easy to improve profits with Best Odds Guaranteed offers

I used the word ‘baseline profits’ when discussing the tipster above as the reality is that you can easily improve the profit figures if you have access to the Best Odds Guarantee concession in your bookmaker account.

We equated the potential to improve your ROI by as much as 5.4% simply by using Best Odds Guarantee offers.

As many as 40% of all bets drifted after being advised by this tipster and were therefore subject to a better price if taking Best Odds Guaranteed.

2. Hit a high strike-rate – easier on you mentally

If you are one of those punters who struggle when facing a losing run, then a short priced tipster might be the right answer for you. After all – not everyone is cut out to handle low strike-rates, nor have the patience to wait for the winners to hit home.

This favourite-backing tipster has a high strike-rate of 43.1% from the 1676 bets with 723 winners and 953 losers during this period.

Ensuring in general, short losing runs and a regular supply of winners to put your mind at rest!

3. You can get on with the bookies – even if you win

Perhaps best of all, favourites are very easy to bet with the bookies as they know most punters backing them will be long-term losers.

Your betting account might show a fair profit but when they see its from backing horses at 5/2 and under – they will often assume that in time you will lose and you have been lucky thus far. Even if you are chucking £100, £200 (or more) on these tips to win.

Making backing short priced tips such as those advised by this tipster ideal for those of you worried about betting restrictions. It’s just a fact that if you are backing 2/1 winners instead of 20/1 winners, your betting account is much more likely to go un-restricted.

4. A genuine betting-exchange option

Even if you can no longer bet with bookmakers, this favourite tipster is very easy to follow on the betting exchanges.

Our analysis found that you can actually IMPROVE your profits by as much as 1.1% ROI by simply taking better odds available 15 minutes after the tips are advised.

At the time these tips are put forward (10am) there is also considerable money available to trade on all betting exchanges and we found no issues getting our bets matched on these favourites.

So, if you are limited to betting with exchanges like Betfair, Smarkets, Betdaq or Matchbook, it’s a very valid option for you.

Read All About It In SBC 104

If you want to know more about this tipster and the profits he has made backing favourites you can read the detailed SBC review in SBC magazine – Issue 104.

Inside the review you can also find details on how you can save 25% on the cost of joining this tipster as an SBC member.

Join the Smart Betting Club now and see what all the fuss is about!

See you on the inside.

Best Regards,

Peter Ling
Smart Betting Club Editor
pete@smartbettingclub.com

How Much Can A Tipster Really Make You?

Posted on January 12, 2018August 21, 2019 by

That is the question I was posed recently by a punter intrigued by what we do here at SBC, yet ultimately unsure on just how much they could make betting with our help.

After all, once you take into consideration tipster fees and the time and effort getting your bets on – is it worth your while?

Judging by the frequency I hear this question, it appears to be something on a lot of punters minds.

So I thought I would tackle this question today, using some examples from our latest Tipster Profit Report, such as the tipster that made a £12,707 clear profit from just a £2,000 starting point in the past 12 months.

…And the combination of 15 tipsters that made £35,137 in 12 months AFTER all tipster subscription fees were taken into account. Let me reveal more:

A World Away From Backing 5/4 Horses Each Way

The first thing to make clear about the tipping world is that it has moved on significantly since the Smart Betting Club first started way back in 2006.

Forget the prehistoric tipsters putting up 5/4 shots each way or advising you to ring their premium £1.99 a minute hotline for their latest odds-on tip.

Whilst you might still find a few of these prehistoric types advertising in the Racing Post (a topic for another day), the tipster world has moved on. Nowadays, there are many highly professional and well regarded tipster services with a history of genuinely achievable profits behind them, generated over several years.

They put their customers first, settle their bets at realistic odds and best of all – are simple to follow.

The very best tipsters can be found in what we term our ‘Hall of Fame’ – which are those tipsters we recommend as offering an excellent level of service at reasonable prices, which are best of all profitable.

The ‘Suggested Profits’ You Can Make With Tipsters

So to go back to the original question and just how much a tipster can make you?

To explore this, it’s worth checking out the ‘Suggested Profits’ tables we publish in each Tipster Profit Report – an example as taken from the last report I have copied below.

These reports gives you the latest on the best tipsters and just how much they have made on an ongoing basis. Enabling you to find the best, in-form experts and those consistently ahead of the bookie.

There are currently 15 racing tipsters in our Hall of Fame (we list a separate table dedicated to sports tipsters) and here are the Suggested Profits for each of them from the past 12 months:

I have had to remove the tipster names as this is for Smart Betting Club members only (sorry – that’s the secret bit) but as you can see the profits on offer are vast.

As a combination of all 15 they have made a profit of £35,137 for a monthly outlay of £863 per month (not that I would expect anyone to follow all of them)

Here are some other key figures:

• ‘Tipster 14’ enjoyed the best profit, making a mind-boggling £12,707 profit from a £2,000 starting point after membership fees over the past year.

• Also impressing is ‘Tipster 10’ who made a £4,310 profit from a starting bank of £2,000 for an outlay of just £50 per month.

• 11 of the 15 tipsters made a profit in the past 12 months. Ideally it would be all 15, but at least you know this table is realistic because not every tipster wins over a rolling 12 month period.

• Of the 4 tipsters that made a loss – these were in general very small deficits (e.g. £20, £34 and £40). Crucially all 4 have excellent long-term records.

• The average age of a Hall of Fame racing tipster is over 5 years – showcasing how long these services have been advising bets and why they can be trusted.

Realistic Profits AFTER Fees Are Deducted

The suggested profits table above should also help answer another common question, namely:

Exactly how much money can you make after you pay for a tipster in the first place?

All the profits listed above are AFTER fees have been deducted from the final sum. So for example, the £2,632 profit made by ‘Tipster 1’ is after the £27 monthly fees have been removed.

In terms of what you can expect to pay for a top tipster, the average cost sits around the £30 marker, although this does depend on many factors. Generally, the more exclusive a tipster service (i.e. those that keep membership numbers very low to protect odds) then the higher the subscription cost.

It is worth pointing out that as an SBC member you can benefit from several exclusive discounts and free trials to many of these tipsters, which reduces these costs further too.

You Don’t Need Huge Sums To Get Started

One thing you shouldn’t be is put off by the size of the suggested betting banks on offer in the table above.

We put these together as an example, but many people can and do follow these tipsters with much less. You certainly don’t need £5,000 to get started betting profitably – far from it!

Many SBC members enjoying success from their betting started off with much smaller amounts initially and gradually built up their betting banks with the profits recouped.

After all, betting for profit is not a sprint – you should take your time to get it right.

Give Us A Try – Risk Free For 90 Days

The best news is that you can now sign-up to the Smart Betting Club risk-free courtesy of our 90-day no quibble make-money guarantee.

This ensures you can join today and if not happy for any reason whatsoever with our service, you can get a full refund within your first 90 days. Ensuring you can test us out with full peace of mind.

You can gain instant access to the latest Tipster Profit Report and everything else we offer here at the Smart Betting Club as soon as you start your membership.

Join The Smart Betting Club & Get Started Immediately

Best Regards,

Peter Ling
Smart Betting Club Founder

SBC Guide: How To Improve Your Profits With Betting Banks

Posted on October 27, 2017 by Peter Ling

One of the simplest, yet most important things you can do when following a tipster, system or even your own betting – is to setup the right betting bank.

And whilst betting banks might not be the ‘sexiest’ topic in the world, getting them setup right can make a massive difference to your betting bottom-line.

In today’s email I am going to show you just how using the real-life example of the SBC Hall of Fame tipster that turned £2000 into £6,278.80 (after fees) using a betting bank.

(Best of all – even with a £500 betting bank, you will have made a profit of over £1200 in the past 12 months, so you don’t need large sums to get going!)

Betting banks are also hugely important as I have seen too many people lose money they shouldn’t have, simply because they didn’t set one up.

And the daft thing is – they are so easy to understand and implement, that once you start working to a simple betting bank, you won’t look back! It will become your default thing to do whenever you follow a new tipster, system or method.

After all anything that can help minimise losers and enhance winners has to be a good thing right?

What Are Betting Banks?

Firstly then, a short guide to what betting banks are and how they work from the point of view of following a tipster service (like the many we recommend here at SBC).

Simply put, a betting bank is a set amount of money that you put aside for each tipster that you follow so as to make you the most effective return. I.e. the biggest bang for your buck!

For each tipster that you follow, you should have a separate and designated betting bank.

A good betting bank will:

Protect you from losses caused by inevitable losing runs.
Stop you from going bust!
Keep your staking nice and consistent.
Help to maximize effectively how much profit you make during the good times.
Help you keep a track on how much you are making overall!

The good news is that setting up a betting bank is extremely simple and here at the Smart Betting Club we provide advice on doing just that for each tipster we review and report back upon.

But before I talk more on that, first here is how to set up a betting bank…

How To Setup A Betting Bank

Betting Banks can be split up into two distinct types as follows:

1. Points Betting Bank (PBB)
2. Financial Betting Bank (PBB)

1. Points Betting Bank

Most tipsters will advise staking in terms of ‘points’. This generally varies from 1 point up to 10 points.

A Points Betting Bank will then tell you how much to stake in real £ (or euros, dollars – whatever your chosen currency) on each tip.

E.g. If you have £1000 and follow a tipster using a 50-point betting bank, 1 point would equal £20. More on how to make this calculation later.

Points Betting Bank: Rule of thumb

For each tipster we monitor here at SBC, we calculate the optimal amount of points you need to assign into a betting bank.

This protects you from losing runs, enhances winning runs, and keeps staking consistent over time.

Each tipster stakes differently so this Points Betting Bank (PBB) is optimised for each individual service. This allows you to stake efficiently with the confidence that your Financial Betting Bank will not go bust.

The PBB for each tipster should at the very least take into account the historical worst losing run for that service. A general rule of thumb is to double the previous longest losing run, so that should such a poor run happen again in the future, then no more than at worst 50% of any betting bank should be lost.

To generate the Smart Betting Club’s own betting bank recommendations, we actually use a special in-house ‘betting bank simulator’ which comes up with a highly tuned figure for optimal returns. So as a member, you know we have your bank and back covered!

2. Financial Betting Bank

Of course the amount of money you can actually make from following a tipster depends on the real-life Financial Betting Bank (FBB) you can apply to it.

This refers to the amount of money you set aside to follow a service, when considering the Points Betting Bank. This FBB amount is related to the PBB as we will go on to demonstrate in the example below.

This FBB amount should be an amount of money you feel comfortable risking in following a particular tipster.

This should be a lump sum of money you have available for investment and should be separate to funds needed for living expenses

“I have made around 20k per year extra”…

“I used to work as trader for Paddypower and Sportsbet so i have an obvious interest in betting. [Using Tipsters] I have made around 20k per year extra.”
As written by Justin – An SBC member since December 2013

Click here to read more from Justin on his SBC membership experience

Real Betting Bank Example – Top Racing Tips

To show how the PBB and FBB come together, let me use a real life example as taken from a recent Tipster Profit Report.

This example tipster is very profitable indeed, although as its identify is reserved for SBC members only, for the purposes of this email, l will call them ‘Top Racing Tips’.

Our points betting bank recommendation for Top Racing Tips is 100 points.

This figure takes into account historical losing runs, and the current method of staking that Top Racing Tips investments utilises.

If following Top Racing Tips over the past 12 months this service would have made you 336.44 points profit to their advised staking.

Let’s say we decide to follow Top Racing Tips with a FBB of £2,000 in real money.

We then divide the FBB by the PBB to get our staking per point.
2000/100 = £20. Therefore £20 is our stake per point.
As this tipster made 336.44 points over the past year, we multiply that by your stake of £20 over the past year.

That brings an actual real world profit of £6,728.80

This particular tipster charges £135 per quarter or £450 for annual membership so even if deducting a full year’s subscription, you still would end up nicely in profit.

After fees, a £2000 betting bank over these 12 months would have made you a clear profit of £6,278.80

Profit Figures To Smaller Banks

Of course, you don’t need £2000 to follow this tipster.

You can make a tremendous profit with much lower financial betting banks as follows:

£500 bank = £5 per point. Annual profit of £1682.20 (before tipster subscription fees – we recommend the £450 lifetime membership option)
£750 bank = £7.50 per point. Annual profit of £2,523.00 (before tipster fees)
£1500 bank = £15 per point. Annual profit of ££5,046.60 (before tipster fees)

All of which just goes to show you don’t need to break the bank to get started betting for profit.

After all, there is absolutely no harm in starting small with your betting and developing it as a platform for long-term success.

You should never feel pressurised to instantly start making thousands of pounds in your first few months. Instead, simply allow the returns to gradually evolve over time.

Many of the tipsters we recommend have been making their members money for several years, so there is no rush to make large sums quickly.

More In The Pro Gambler Blueprint

If you are after professional guidance on the right betting banks to use – then the Smart Betting Club service can help you.

Firstly, for every tipster we rate, review and recommend we provide a tailored Points Betting Bank recommendation. So you know exactly what you need to get started.

We also provide more detailed advice on betting banks via the in-depth Pro Gambler Blueprint we supply to you as a new Smart Betting Club member, which provides everything you need to set up your betting properly.

This 100-page blueprint features advice and guidance from seasoned professional gamblers in seven easy to follow sections:

Part One: Solid Foundations – Avoid common newbie mistakes by getting your betting off on the right foot.
Part Two: Money Matters – Betting bankroll management and how to maximise your profits
Part Three: Mindset and What Makes A Winner– Key lessons on what really matters from betting pro’s
Part Four: What To Bet On – Football and Horse Racing absolute essentials
Part Five: Being Realistic – Tipsters or Systems? How to decide what suits you best
Part Six: You’re The Boss – How to develop your own betting niche and become your own expert
Part Seven: Bookie Bashing – How to keep under the bookmaker’s radar

Access to all of this and more is available the instant you join us at the Smart Betting Club.

Best of all, you can currently save up to £38 on the cost of subscription so don’t delay, sign-up right now and let us help you get started betting better right away!

<< JOIN THE Smart Betting Club TODAY >>

See you on the inside.

Peter Ling
SBC Editor

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Randomness – Value – Edge.

To Be A Good Punter You Need To Understand ‘Randomness’

Value Betting Is No Guarantee ‘Something Will Happen’ (Or A Bet Will 100% WIN)

Value Betting – The Odds In Your Favour

VALUE is backing something with a 50% chance of happening at odds of 11 to 10.

There is a neat, simple mantra for any professional investor to adhere to; Decisions Not Results.

Win only betting returns the highest points profit

Next step – analysing the worst ‘drawdowns’

The method with the biggest ‘bank growth’

Individual tipster analysis required

What’s better, strike rate or profit?

Which is more important… the number of winners or how much you win?

“What’s the strike rate of your best racing tipster?

“How much profit did your best football tipster make last week/month?”

Stupid question, it’s obvious…

You can’t handle the truth!

“You can’t handle the strike rate!“

But strike rates aren’t everything

Is it all down to your risk profile?

Get The Professional Betting Fundamentals

High Volume & Patience

Don’t Go Overboard on Short-Term Form

Guided By The Goal of Long-Term Profits

High Risk: High Reward

See Also – The Stock Market

A Classic Tipster Example

Why Are They Jumping Ship From This Tipster?

Eyes On The Long-Term Prize!

In my blog post last week, I spoke about the importance of patience, emotional detachment from your bets and a long-term vision and today I want to expand further on this with more professional punting advice.

A different betting bank for each tipster

Real-life example

Adding in extra cushion should the worst happen!

The power of betting banks

Betting Bank Advice Across Every Tipster

A Big Dirty Word

Huge Profits From This Recommended Tipster

Don’t throw in the towel too soon

The power of hindsight

“You can’t make money backing favourites”

Major Benefits Of Backing Favourites

Read All About It In SBC 104

That is the question I was posed recently by a punter intrigued by what we do here at SBC, yet ultimately unsure on just how much they could make betting with our help.

A World Away From Backing 5/4 Horses Each Way

The ‘Suggested Profits’ You Can Make With Tipsters

Realistic Profits AFTER Fees Are Deducted

You Don’t Need Huge Sums To Get Started

Give Us A Try – Risk Free For 90 Days

One of the simplest, yet most important things you can do when following a tipster, system or even your own betting – is to setup the right betting bank.

What Are Betting Banks?

How To Setup A Betting Bank

1. Points Betting Bank

2. Financial Betting Bank

“I have made around 20k per year extra”…

Real Betting Bank Example – Top Racing Tips

After fees, a £2000 betting bank over these 12 months would have made you a clear profit of £6,278.80

Profit Figures To Smaller Banks

More In The Pro Gambler Blueprint

“90-DAY 100% SATISFACTION MONEY BACK GUARANTEE”……