Tipsters, love or hate em, they are here to stay and depending on your own experiences, this is either a bloody good thing or something that wakes you up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.

Fact is, the tipster industry is like any other ‘investment’ area with its own set of good egg’s balanced out by the occasional downright scoundrel. Indeed, just this week we saw the very worst of the industry with a £5 million tipster fraud scandal in the news, something which we warned SBC members about back in 2006.

This is in direct contrast to many well run professional tipsters that we report upon here at SBC, many of whom continue to make genuine profits for our members.

Therefore, it is well worth being aware of some of the good, bad and ugly practices about tipsters to make sure you are as informed as possible.

After all, our role here at SBC is to help guide you through the tipster maze, so let me reveal to you a few of the best and worst in my own somewhat dubious Clint Eastwood accent!

Bad Tipsters– Fast Cars, Women & Swimming Pools!

 Starting off with the worst, we have some exceptionally bad characters out there. Very often these are the glossy leaflet brigade – the type who send you a convincing sounding brochure of guaranteed big winners and life-changing amounts of money. Nearly always it includes a picture of a fast car, woman in a bikini and a swimming pool.

Subtlety though these characters can be very convincing, especially if speaking to them on the phone or when they tip a winner or two. It’s easy to be taken in.

Which is why it was horrifying to read about a series of ‘tipsters’ who were found guilty of horse race betting brochure investment fraud over a near 6-year period. In total they took £5 million off vulnerable people from dishonest claims relating to betting services. You can read about this here.

We originally featured a major warning about a number of those found guilty such as Jock McCracken back in October 2006 and hopefully in doing so saved a number of SBC members from being one of his victims. In many ways though, it’s a real shame it took 6 years for anything to be done by the authorities.

Ugly Tipsters –Unclear & Out Dated

Moving on to the ugly, we have a similar old school brigade of tipsters who are far from transparent and about whom you never know exactly how good (or bad) they are.

Very often these are the likes to be found advertising in the Racing Post, offering Premium phone-line tips and tales of recent betting coups at big prices.

One such character who fits this bill is Channel 4 racing presenter Derek Thompson (Tommo) who’s tipping line was allegedly once  outperformed by the tips selected at random by a tortoise. In 2001, this Observer article also recalls how Tommo managed to tip loser after loser at short-prices on his premium line with 72 out of 89 tips losing during a period of testing without a hint of shame.

Tommo can still be found advertising his tipping wares in the Racing Post on a regular basis, despite their being zero proof available of his actual performance standards. It’s not just him either, open up today’s copy and you will find plenty more adverts for other tipsters, yet nothing available on overall results.

Thankfully though, this type of tipster is also fast becoming an endangered species (none of our SBC members will use them!), let me show you why…

Good Tipsters – A New Breed Of Professionalism

After reading all of the above, you might think you are best running a mile and leaving tipsters well alone! It would be shame if you did however, as there are some exceptionally profitable and very genuine services out there.

Take for example, the tipsters we feature here at the Smart Betting Club for each of which we keep a full set of transparent results and put them through a intensive review process.

With each exhaustive review, we consider many things when it comes to weighing up how good they are including the likes of…

• How quick to you have to be to get the odds? Is it practical to follow?
• How are bets delivered? Many send via SMS direct to your phone for free.
• What sort of strike rate does the service have? How often can you expect to win?
• Have results been proofed? Is their past record ‘made-up’ or accurate?
• Are results down to luck or actual talent? Our results analysis finds this out.
• How long have they made a profit? A minimum of 12 months needed for a Hall of Fame rating
• Customer service – Do they treat their members professionally?

This new way of operating is 100% more professional and its why so many new people are investing their money in betting using these tipsters.

The very best tipsters that meet all our criteria make it into our Hall of Fame, of which there are now 18 we fully recommend to members.

You can access all of our Hall of Ratings and find out a lot more about each of our top-rated tipsters by taking up a risk-free subscription today to our Smart Betting Club service.