Lies, damned lies and statistics in the tipster world

In the crazy world we live in currently, the collection and analysis of data is never far from the headlines.

Whether it be examining political polls, interest rates and inflation or the spread of Covid-19, the ability to interpret complex data and make informed decisions from it is key.

As we have seen from the different approaches to Covid-19 across the world, many ‘experts’, especially the uninformed ‘sound-bite’ variety, struggled to interpret data correctly and made often perhaps well-meaning, yet flawed decisions.

Yet, what you may ask – does that have to do with betting?

The reality is that whatever field you work in, interpreting data and its outputs is vitally important, including in SBC’s world of tipster reviews and recommendations.

Yes, we can review a tipster from the basics of data. Pick out what they made over the last 3 months or simply pile in on one that made the most money in 2021, but would that be right?

That is what many simpler tipster review sites do though. Follow a tipster for 3 or even 6 months and say “Yep, this one is good – click this link to join them and we get a 40% share of any memberships you purchase”

The issue with this approach is two-fold.

Firstly the fact these affiliate review sites get paid for who they refer to a tipster (a topic for another day), and secondly, because they are simply recommending those who are hot or enjoying a purple patch over a short-term period.

These is no guarantee that any bettor or tipster enjoying a good 3 or even 6 months, will also be the best option for years to come. They might have simply got lucky.

Let’s be clear on this point because the goal of what we do here at SBC is to outline the tipsters that can make you money betting not just tomorrow, or next month, but for years to come.

Hence why we never go overboard on say just 3 months of results or small sample sizes – or even for that matter use affiliate links in our review, which financially compel us to give positive reviews to something we might not believe in.


Digging Really Deep Into A Tipster

Our quest to get the most detailed, accurate data on a tipster, has informed what we term our ‘Advanced Tipster Analytics’ that now form a standard part of every SBC tipster review.

Much of the work in these Advanced Tipster Analytics has been ported over from other investment worlds and the outputs provided help us make more informed decisions on just which tipsters offer the best chance to make you a profit betting.

To explain briefly how they work – effectively when the SBC team reviews a tipster, alongside reviewing the live, proofed data we have, we also run ‘Monte Carlo simulations’, which replicate the profile of the service over many million data points.

So rather than calculate what might happen when analysing 1000 or 2000 live bets from a tipster, we do so over say 90 million – a much more useful data set.

The results of these simulations can help to answer key questions for any given tipster such as:

  • Is a betting record more likely to be based on luck or skill?
    Getting to the heart of whether you want to risk your money following them…
  • What kind of losing runs or drawdowns might you realistically expect?
    Helping you cope with them when a bad run hits!
  • How do their live results compare to their simulation results?
    Very useful in identifying a tipster that might be lying about their live results
  • Have they benefited from some freak results and outliers that are unlikely to be replicated?
    I.e. Have they got really lucky with a big 100/1 winner or 500/1 each way double?
  • What size betting bank do you REALLY need?
    Because betting professionally is about building a bank!

No Complex Maths Knowledge Required

The good news is that you DO NOT need to understand any complicated mathematics to benefit from exploring these advanced outputs or ‘scores’ we publish as standard in each tipster review.

All you need to do is to simply follow the easy to understand explanations we give and the context to the scores published.

To further help with this, as an SBC member you can also read the Advanced Tipster Analytics Guide we have published that explains things in a simple manner.

Again – no difficult maths knowledge is needed beyond an understanding what each rating means and how a tipster scores in context and if this is good or bad (or in-between)

And naturally, the scores we see from a tipster, then directly contribute to whether or not the SBC team deems them worthy of a Hall of Fame recommendation.

I.e. The tipsters we advocate you should follow based on all the evidence in front of us.

Detailed Tipster Analysis As Standard

All SBC tipster reviews now undergo the Advanced Analytics treatment whereby we run a Monte Carlo simulation to really get to the bottom of just how good they actually are (or not!)

Ultimately though, whether you use this extra detail or not and simply just follow the SBC team’s recommendations, you can have peace of mind that no stone has been left unturned in our quest to make the most accurate predictions of which tipsters you should follow.

So, if you are interested in learning more on tipsters including the ones we recommend following and all of our reviews, reports and analysis on the tipping world, why not sign-up for a SBC membership today!

See you on the inside…

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.