Secret Betting Club. The good, the bad and the ugly of the tipster world revealed! How to make money from betting tipsters.

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1 How to make money from betting tipsters. Hi there My names Dan Jones and I m the author of this Secret Betting Club report that details how you can make money from betting tipsters. The aims of this report are: To dispel the negative myths about sports betting. To demonstrate how professional sports tipsters can help you beat the bookmakers. To show just how good returns from sports betting can be. To provide the tools to find the right sports betting professional to follow. To give you a sense of how you can professionally balance risk and reward in pursuit of profit. Let me introduce myself. I am a lead editor of the private members site called The Secret Betting Club. Along with my partner Mike Bishop, I formed The Secret Betting Club as a mutually supportive community of punters sworn to share the essential secrets of successful betting the secrets that the bookmakers, unscrupulous tipsters and betting sceptics want to remain hidden. As a member of SBC, these are the secrets that will set you apart and put you in that hallowed two per cent bracket of punters who actually make their betting pay. To find out more, visit: I firmly believe that following truly professional sports betting tipsters is the best way to start on your quest to make money betting. This short report is a brief guide on how to do this. REPORT CONTENTS: What are betting tipsters? Page 2. How Betting Tipsters Find a Profit: Page 3. How much money you make? Page 6. The advantage of betting tipsters: Page 7. Top tips for following tipsters: Page 8. Money Management & Compounding: Page 10. About The Secret Betting Club: Page 13 1

2 YOU CAN MAKE MONEY BETTING Secret Betting Club Not everyone makes money gambling, let s face it; it has to be that way otherwise bookmakers would go out of business! However, there are a small number of smart punters who turn over a regular betting profit year in and year out. The amazing thing is that many of these people know next to nothing about the sports they are betting on. They simply check their s or SMS alerts, when instructed to do so, then place their bets online or over the phone. So what are these people doing? These people are using professional sports betting tipsters. WHO ARE PROFESSIONAL SPORTS BETTING TIPSTERS? A professional tipster does not give you tap on his nose and state with clear conviction that a certain horse is going to finish first or that a particular football team cannot lose. And anyone offering such guarantees should be avoided at all costs What makes a professional sports tipster different is that they don t actually focus on winners, they focus almost exclusively on prices. Indeed, the difference between a mug punter and a professional is that the professional knows what the price (the odds) should be on an event and only bets when those odds are weighted in their favour. By contrast a mug punter will look for winners regardless of the betting odds on offer. You might hear people say things like It doesn t matter as long as it wins, or I d rather have a winner than a value bet that loses. If you believe that then rest assured sooner or later, probably sooner rather than later, the maths associated with probability will come back to bite you. It s true you need winners, but over the course of a football season or horse racing calendar, you won t go very far if you don t also find value prices. In the short term the professional might lose money, but in the long run they are able to turn their edge into a sustainable profit. 2

3 HOW DOES A PROFESSIONAL SPORTS BETTING TIPSTER BEAT THE BOOKMAKER To spot value, a professional has to know when a bookmaker has made a mistake with the odds they are presenting. This might be putting up Chelsea to win away at odds of 1.80, when they really should be Spotting this pricing error doesn t mean you are going to win, but it does ensure that if it does win, you are winning more money than you should be. Surely bookmakers don t make mistakes? Let s be clear, the bookmakers get their prices right most of the time, but this still leaves plenty of opportunities where they have taken their eye off the ball. With betting, you re not dealing with certainties, only probabilities and quite often perceived value is subjective. A professional gambler makes money by betting, when their best guess is better than the bookmakers. Here are just five reasons how they can make a profit in the long run. 1) The crowd: If a big weight of money comes in on a player, team or horse, the bookmaker is obliged to shorten the odds and control their liabilities. In order to balance their books and maintain interest on the event, the bookies might then push up the odds on the opposing player or team. The skill is knowing when the crowd is wrong and when to go against the flow to snap up the juicy value on offer. 2) Early information Bookmakers aren t always as quick as they should be. Often they can be slow to react to injury news that you might hear about before they do. You might get a more up to date paddock report from a certain trainer before the bookies catch wind of a horse s real potential. As in all professions, the employees are under-resourced, underpaid and often ill-qualified to be the all things to all men that their roles demand. The fact is that it is the margin that bookmaker s build into their prices, along with the simple vagaries of chance, protect them far more often than they would willingly admit in public. 3) Niche markets In their quest to take more money and increase their betting turnover, bookmakers have expanded into sports and leagues that they cannot hope to cover fully. There are usually well over 100 horses running in UK racing on any given day and thousands of matches taking place across Europe every month. Over worked and underpaid odds compilers simply can t always price everything with 100% effectiveness and accuracy. A bookmaker s odds compiler might be obliged to select the odds on football leagues they have barely seen in their life. If you use a sports betting tipster who specialise in niche markets, they may be able to price up games better than the bookmaker. 4) Better pricing model (Finding value) Bookmakers mostly use mathematical models to price their odds which are tweaked when team news or jockey changes are announced. Some tipsters have developed ways to accurately price up an event by coming at things from a different angle. 3

4 A professional soccer tipster might first use their mathematical model to assess how likely each outcome is in a football match, allied to their specific inside knowledge. As a result they will only bet when the bookie s odds are in their favour. Implied probability is what the available odds are telling you about the likelihood of a team winning or losing in a football match. To work this out, you take 1 and divide it by the decimal odds with the answer then converted to percentage. The classic example is odds of 2.0 (evens money): 1 divided by 2.0 is 50%, which means that the bookies implied probability of that event winning is 50%. If you think the outcome is more likely than this then you ve got a value bet. The table below shows a professional football tipster might use a system he has created for pricing football matches. Your Estimate is the tipsters estimated probability of that selection winning. Bookies Implied Probability is implied chance of success of that selection going by the bookie s odds. For example with the Everton vs Sunderland game, the tipster s model might have said Everton were 66.7% likely to bear Sunderland, while the bookmaker s odds implied they only had a 57.14% chance. This represents a 14.33% edge on backing Everton. The odds are relatively short at 1.75, but the tipster s model seems to be saying the price for Everton ought to be even shorter than this. In the West Ham Liverpool match, the tipster s model says West Ham were just a 29% shot, but this is still better than the bookmaker s chance of 26.67%. All things being equal, you would still expect West Ham to lose this match around 70% of the time. But if the tipster s model is accurate enough, this advantage will turn into a profit over the course of a season. Backing all the selections in the example above would have produced a small profit over time. But small increments over time add up and are the cornerstone of annual or seasonal betting profits. 5) Riding Randomness. Luck plays a big role in a tipster s success. The skill is knowing what part luck has played in a tipsters results to date for good or for ill. For example, there might be a tipster who is excellent at spotting bookmaker errors for big priced horses in the region of 20/1 (21.0). They might accurately state that such horses should be 10/1 (11.0). The tipster might be absolutely correct, with the horse being twice as likely to win as the odds Imply. However, even if the horse should be 10/1 (11.0), it would still only win less than 10% of the time. 4

5 Over 1000 bets, this edge will convert into a profit, but in the short term over 100 bets, there will be a lot of random noise so the tipster may not convert the value into a profit. Experience can teach you to tell the difference between luck and judgement. Luck can produce stunning results on any given day, week, month or even year. However, as in every walk of life, good judgement rather than lucky or flawed judgement is both the road less travelled and also the only road to be trusted long term. A truly professional sports tipster will be able keep faith in strategy because they understand that short term results can be random at best. By contrast, most less hardy souls would drop such a model at exactly the wrong time, losing money by missing out on future winners. At the opposite end of the scale, a professional tipster also understands that luck works both ways. If they hit a string of winners, luck is playing an equal role here. A true professional will keep things steady and not let success go to their head, while a bad gambler might get ahead of themselves and become over confident. The true pro knows the difference between a lucky bad bet and a good bet where the strategy was correct despite the fact that it did not garner the correct result on the day. And, with the benefit of their experience, they well have the courage of their conviction to ditch a bad winning strategy (with an eye on the long term) and give a sound plan the air and financial resources it needs to bear fruit. A true sports betting professional understand the role of luck in betting success and is able to ride the randomness for sustainable profits. 5

6 HOW MUCH MONEY CAN YOU MAKE FROM BETTING TIPSTERS? How much you make depends on how much you put in, but here are some ideas from the top 10 sports betting tipsters that we track at SBC. If you had set aside 5000 and followed every tip from these sports betting tipsters, your profits since their inception would have been remarkable. For the top ranked tipster, the total profits on a 5,000 investment since they launched would have been 95,520. *ROC = Return on Capital Your profit on your initial investment in percentage terms. These profits have been made over a number of years, but good returns can be made in the short term as well - as the table below shows. This tracks the performance of the top seven soccer betting tipsters that we track between July 2010 and December ROI = Return on Investment, otherwise known as yield. It is your total profits divided by your betting turnover used to make those profits. The Profit column shows your return in points, the basic unit of stakes (usually representing 1/25 or 1/50 of a total betting bank at any time). In this instance one point might be 10, 100, even more and the real money returns can be gauged by multiplying the number of points profit by the value of your 1pt stake. So, if you have a bank of 5,000 and 1pt is equivalent to 100 (5000 divided by 50) then a tipster making 32 points profit, as per Service 1 above, will return a tax free cash windfall of 3,200. You can see that substantial returns can be made by following the picks advised by professional sports betting tipsters like this. 6

7 THE ADVANTAGE OF BETTING TIPSTERS Diversified profits Making money from a professional sports betting tipster is by no means risk free, but with sensible money management, the returns on the money you put at risk can be remarkable as the tables above show. Many people are now adding sports betting to their speculative investment activities as a way to diversify their returns. Financial markets are becoming increasingly similar, making it harder and hard to manage risk using the traditional approach of diversifying across asset classes. By contrast, sports betting professionals use a variety of approaches to find an edge, which is why an increasing number of in the know investors are running their own sports betting portfolios as a compliment to traditional stock market investments. Of course, following a sports tipster is not the only way to make money betting, many people use their own strategies, systems and specialist knowledge to make good profits. But, for those without the time, expertise or inclination, sports tipsters can be an excellent way to start. Let them do the hard work for you A professional tipster will send you their tips in advance of the event taking place, giving you time to get the bets on yourself. The best tipsters will have backed the tips themselves first and only then pass on the information to a restricted number of subscribers. Tips are usually delivered via or SMS with clear instructions on what horses, football teams or tennis players to back and at what price. You then log into your bookmaker accounts, or phone them up in order to place the bet. You don t need to do any analysis, there s no need to read the form book and you don t even need to understand or even watch the sport you are gambling on. Sustainable profits You may have been tempted by one of the many gambling systems that are put forward by affiliate marketers on the internet. Such systems are made available via an ebook with all the rules spelled out for you. These are often low cost, but usually lead to disappointing results. The problem is that even if a betting system was profitable (which few are), because the author is giving the rules away, the system s potency is unlikely to last very long once the bookmakers act to protect their margins. By contrast, sports betting tipsters are able to keep their cards close to their chest. By only passing on their selections, they don t reveal their methods increasing the lifespan of their edge. 7

8 TOP TIPS FOR FOLLOWING BETTING TIPSTERS 1) Proofed results Are they for real? Let s be frank, the betting world has more than its fair share of rogues who flatter to deceive, or indeed simply downright deceive, with their results. The most common trick is to advertise their big winners only, and not mention the thousands of losing bets they also put up. The good news is that there are a substantial number of honest and reliable betting professionals out there. The key is knowing how and where to find them. At The Secret Betting Club, our number one rule with sports betting tipsters you do not know is to never trust headline results unless those bets have been proofed in advance to a trusted third party. Check out for more details. 2) Have there been enough bets? Another tip is to ensure that the sports tipster you are looking at has a long enough track record for you to make a realistic assessment of their abilities. If they have less than 100 bets, then be very wary of reading too much into their results. Just by making selections on a coin flip alone, you could probably make a good profit over 100 bets especially at short odds. The best tipsters have maintained a profitable service over time and have survived short term down trends. Indeed, it s often best to follow a tipster only once they have shown they have the temperament to keep a level head during a losing run. Sometimes a tipster can lose their head during a bad run and chase losses in a downwards tailspin or simply clam up and be unable to bet with confidence. Our records are full of seemingly bright star tipsters that crashed and burned spectacularly with the first brush with adversity. When assessing betting tipsters, you might want to be more wary if a tipster hasn t yet had a bad run because you don t know how they will react, when inevitably one comes along. By contrast a battle scarred tipster who has had one or two blips and still come out fighting on the other side, and ahead of the game, might be a better longer term option. 3) Know your tipster: Can you realistically follow them? While a tipster s results might look good on paper, you need to ensure that you can practically follow them yourself. Some tipsters are rightly feared by the bookmakers, so can move available odds within minutes. Some tipsters send out tips during the day, while some only send them during the evening. Make sure you ask any tipster about these practical matters before joining - so you do not regret it later. While the proofing sites mentioned above are useful, they do not tell you some of the more important things about following a sports betting tipster, such as the availability of the advised odds, whether bets come through at a reliable time or whether that tipster has a chequered history or a reputation for poor customer service. 8

9 Get in contact with the tipsters before you join to make sure you have your questions answered. This vital step could save you a lot of time and hassle in the long run. 4) Managing your bank: stakes and betting strategy Make sure you have a betting fund (a so-called Betting Bank) that you set aside for betting only. This will help you to keep your betting separate from your day to day finances and treat your activities like an investment rather than a bit of fun. Next you need to manage your staking per bet so that you can manage your risk effectively. Most mug punters, if they don t just bet from their pockets, will simply bet a set amount each time such as 10 or 50 euros per bet. They will stake in this ad hoc fashion regardless of the odds or number of bets they ll be making. While this might pay off in the short term, in the long term you need to make sure that rash staking won t blow up your betting fund before it has had the chance to mature. There s no point betting 100 euros on every bet if it means you run out of money on a 10 bet losing run. Examine a tipster s past record to look at the worst case scenario and ensure that your staking per bet means you would be able to survive a short term dip in form. In this respect, some of the old heads on our forum at The Secret Betting Club can advise on these kind of issues as they relate to specific tipsters. Staking and bank management issues have also been well covered in a number of SBC articles that are available to members. Generally, tipsters weight each bet with reference to points or units, with the most common stake being 1 point = 1 bet. However if a tipster has more confidence in a selection they might advise a more heavy 2,3,4 or even 5 units on a particular recommendation. You can manage risk by applying a points betting bank for each tipster that we follow. This might be range from 25 points up to 500 points. You then divide your dedicated betting fund by the points betting bank to fix your staking per bet. The easiest way to manage your money is to open a dedicated bank account to use exclusively for betting. That way your betting fund will not become enmeshed with your household finances and vice versa. For example, if you have 1000, divide this by the points betting bank you will be applying such as 50 points. So if you are following a tipster with 1000 with a 50 point bank, your stake per point would be 20. This way you can balance staking so you can both make a profit with be able to ride out any losing runs. 9

10 TO COMPOUND OR NOT TO COMPOUND PROFITS? Once you have decided on how much you can safely follow a tipster with initially, you then need to decide what you will do as your financial betting bank (hopefully) increases. If you start of betting at 100 euros per point with a 2,500 euro financial betting bank, what should you do if your bank increases to say 4,000 euros? Should you compound your profits by increasing the amount you bet per point, or should you keep it steady at 100 euros? There are pros and cons with this as we shall explain. Compound vs flat staking Flat staking is relatively simple; you follow a tipster using the same amount per point and don t change it even if your betting bank doubles in size. For example you might start following a football tipster with 100 euros per point and still follow him at 100 euros per point 3 seasons later even if your bank has doubled. Compounding on the other hand can be done in many different ways. The most aggressive method is to bet a percentage of your account per point which means you are continually increasing or decreasing your stakes based on the outcome of the last few bets. As your betting account increases, so do your stakes. The simplest method is to continually re-invest your profits back into your original bank. Thus, your average stake size will increase as your bank increases (that s the theory anyway). Effectively the more you make, the greater your stakes and thus the greater your profit. For example, let s say I start with a 1000 betting bank. I then decide to risk 5% of this each day as my stake on a number of bets. At the end of each day, I then recalculate my total bank and get a new 5% stake figure. Day starter bank. 5% stake (1000/50) = 50 I risk 50 per pt on each bet on Day One and win 100 profit. Day 2 Bank is now 1100 ( 1000 original bank profit) 5% stake (1100/50) = 55 I risk 55 per pt on each bet on Day Two... This then continues each day whereby I recalculate my bank and adjust my staking accordingly. When it works it is fantastic but the problem is that it is often a high risk strategy, which when applied wrongly can cause all kinds of difficulties. The example below demonstrates the pros and cons of various compounding methods. 10

11 Here we have a successful tipster which has made a sustained long term profit. In all cases you start with a 2,500 betting bank and 100 per point initially which is 1/25 th (4%) of your available betting bank per point. The data shows the monthly returns. There are then different options for how you increase stakes as the profits increase. i) Flat stakes Keep betting at 100 each month, never increase. ii) Compound annually Start at 100 per point but up stakes at the start of each new football season at 1/25 th (4%) of your betting bank iii) Compound monthly Start at 100 per point, but increase stakes every month at 1/5 th (4%) of your betting bank. As you can see the more aggressive compounding method compounding every month produces the biggest profits, but it is also the most volatile. It works incredibly well when the tipster is on a good run, but can work against you on a bad run. If you compound your bank every month like this, you never lock in gains because the bank effectively re-started every month. By contrast if you increase stakes only once per season, you have past profits as a buffer against future losses. Here we can see that the monthly compound method was going great guns, turning the bank into over 23,000, but one bad month saw this shrink to around 13,000, a near 10,000 swing. By contrast, the annual compound method s swing was less than half of this. Don t just look at what you can make but also what you could lose. Could you cope if during a losing run you lost 30%, 40% or even 50% of your bank? When considering compounding its important you ensure you are happy with the scenarios that may play out before you. It s very much a case of if the cap fits as what one person is comfortable with may not be the same for someone else. As in all things, your particular psychological make-up will determine your strengths, weaknesses and prejudices as a betting investor and you have to ask yourself some harsh questions at the outset to ascertain what kind of punter you are going to be and what kind of money management/staking approach is right for you. Ask yourself questions such as... How would you feel if you lost 40% of your bank at any one point? 11

12 Would you prefer to risk more to win more or risk less to win less? You may also want to consider some of the practicalities of compounding such as... Will you be able to stick to a strict staking plan? Will you be able to get large sized bets on? Will you keep a thorough record of performance to track stakes? Will you have the patience to plough through quiet periods? Above all be honest with yourself and don t allow any headline profit figures to sway your judgement. Very often the best approach is to simply follow a service to simple level stakes with incremental increases at set intervals. Be aware as well that although we can make estimations based upon the historical facts of drawdown s and losing runs, that is no guarantee that longer periods of loss wont kick in during the future. The more stats we have to hand the better, but there still remains an element of risk. In summary, utilising profit compounding methods can work, whether it s using staking that changes every bet, every 100 bets or every time your bank grows. Our advice is to not rely on it to make headline profits for your betting but to consider it as an alternative way to maybe build up over time. SUMMING UP Following a sports betting tipster can be an excellent way to sustainable profits without the need to develop your specific expertise yourself. However there are some people who fail to make money betting despite having some of the key building blocks in place to succeed. Even with access to a professional sports tipster, some people do not have the right attitude to succeed or the stamina to stick to a plan as outlined above. By applying the steps outlined in this report you can increase your chances of making a sustainable long term profit from sports betting. 12

13 About The Secret Betting Club Secret Betting Club In April 2007 two determined punters, with a background in internet marketing and statistics founded The Secret Betting Club. Like all good ideas, Dan Jones and Mike Bishop s vision was the product of personal curiosity. As Dan explains: We wanted to find independent reviews of betting tipsters but couldn t find anything reliable or trustworthy so we decided to do it ourselves. Other people felt the same way and SBC has grown in popularity every year. In an industry shrouded in myth, hype and downright deception, the choice of company name was very deliberate. Dan and Mike wanted to create what is literally a secret betting club that four years on is still unique in the world of betting. The Secret Betting Club is a mutually supportive community of punters sworn to share the essential secrets of successful betting the secrets that the bookmakers, unscrupulous tipsters and betting sceptics want to remain hidden. These are the secrets that will set you apart and put you in that hallowed two per cent bracket of punters who actually make their betting pay. As such, whether you are new to betting or an old hand, a tipster follower, someone who prefers to back their own fancies or one of the new breed of alternative investors that see betting as a potential lucrative arm of their portfolio then SBC is for you. The Secret Betting Club is the one place where you can get the info and tools you need to turn a loss-making hobby into a second income and in many cases a sole income. Dan says: We are very proud of our 100% independent service here at the Secret Betting Club and the huge amount of reviews we do on all the latest tipping services. This is especially the case when we know that our work has helped countless numbers of our member s to actually make money from their betting. Most of these members are just normal everyday people with an interest in betting, who through the information we provide have learnt exactly how to turn a profit from the bookmakers. Testimonial In our roles as editors at The Secret Betting Club we have worked with the respected betting journalist and professional punter Greg Gordon for a number of years. Here is what he says about SBC: "Working in a largely unpoliced and unregulated area of the betting industry, The Secret Betting Club are at the forefront of a drive to create a recognised universal standard of evaluating tipsters' performance and customer service. Their work is exhaustive, scrupulously fair and insightful and because SBC are funded by subscribers, rather than through advertising or affiliate commission, they can be relied upon as a 100% independent arbiter with the objectivity and experience to see behind all the hype and bluster, favoured by the crooks and conmen. Sadly, most people trying betting tipsters for the first time fall prey to this industry's unscrupulous elements with their compelling sales pitches. Thankfully there is an alternative to unfulfilled expectations and costly and painful hard-won experience. If you value your time and money, you should set aside the cost of a Secret Betting Club subscription before you part with a single penny for a tipster's fees. I'd consider joining SBC as an essential first step for anyone looking to take the gamble out of betting and treat it as a serious money-making proposition." Greg Gordon - Creator of The Observer Tipster Experiment and 13

14 How Much Does it Cost to Join SBC and What Do You Get For Your Money: For the annual fee of just 69 you get access to all this: The industry standard 65 page monthly SBC magazine featuring exclusive tipster analysis, system reviews and editorial features that can arm you with all the tools you need to make your betting pay. Access to all SBC s current and past tipster reviews on our members only website. SBC s monthly tipster ranking tables with unique performance statistics. Access to SBC s vibrant private members forum packed with friendly expertise - and profitable free tips. You also get: Profitable bonus systems including the acclaimed 4 Pronged Attack strategy designed to help you find big priced winners from the Racing Post. A Personal Invitation from Dan and Mike Join Today We would like to invite you to test our service and see how easy it is for you to also make money betting. Whether you re a seasoned betting professional or total novice, there is something for you. After reading all our reviews and statistics on the tipsters to follow, we firmly believe you too can open up the possibility of being a professional gambler. By joining today not only will you receive a full 12 months worth of future issues but also our full back catalogue and access to our membership website and a forum that is populated by friendly, helpful and knowledgeable expert punters who have been in the position you are now as you contemplate how to take your betting to a whole new level. To join our service costs the equivalent of just 20p a day for a year. When you consider the money you could make with the right information and the money you will save by avoiding the scams, we like to think we are providing excellent value for money. You can also join with confidence as we offer a full 12 month money back guarantee if at any time you are not satisfied with our service. No strings attached so if you re not 100% pleased with what we do for whatever reason, we will refund you in full. Seriously, no small print and no hidden conditions and that s a promise. Best Regards, Mike Bishop and Dan Jones Co-editors, Secret Betting Club 14