FREE BETTING INFORMATION

Many new, seasonal and experienced punters have successfully utilised tipping services to compare approaches and increase their winnings. If you are one of them, we are sure that you’ve found a handful of so-called professional tipping services that offer or even promise great results. And oftentimes, it’s difficult to spot which ones are credible especially because everyone promotes themselves as a winning punter.

If you’re someone that has been consistent in following a tipping service but still unsuccessful, you might be following the wrong tipsters. https://www.winningedgeinvestments.com/posts/building-an-investment-mentality

In this article we’re highlighting many  of the red flags when looking for a tipping service, regardless of whether it’s a paid tipping service or a free one.

1. The tips are free

You really have to ask yourself, why would any truly successful punter provide quality betting tips free of charge - what’s in it for them? Sure, they may be starting out and attempting to grow a base, but for most, why would they ever do it? Do you really want to trust someone that’s just starting out?

Here’s an article that explains some of the differences between free and paid tipping services.

For any serious investment of hard earned dollars, do you trust an apprentice, or a professional? With any good or service, the market generally pays what it’s worth. If it’s free, that usually means it isn’t worth anything. And like what we always say to our members, winning on the punt requires hard work. Punters who’ve put in that hard work value the time they’ve spent on it – many have dedicated their professional careers to it. Economic reality states that they can’t do it and then just give the tips away, free of charge, and allow others to eat into their dividends. If somebody isn’t charging for their tips, they generally either haven’t done the hard work, in which case the tips won’t win over the long-term, or they’re getting paid via other means. Such as…

2. They promote corporate bookmaker links

As you would likely expect, any website that advertises bookmakers on their site receives a payment for this. You would have seen the ads offering bonus bet incentives in exchange for a sign up to the corporate bookie.

What you may not know is that this is not a one-off marketing payment. What actually happens is the websites are paid lifetime commissions of anywhere between 20-40% on the LOSSES incurred by punters who signs up through their link.

It is called an affiliate agreement.

There are some good free informational websites out there that provide plenty of information and data that helps to grow racing, but for most, the bookies pay them monthly. If the punter wins for the month, then there is no payment to the website. But if the punter loses for the month, the website receives 20-40% of those LOSSES. Forever – as long as the punter is using the account. Think about that for a minute. The world works on incentives. That’s why employees of companies are offered bonuses for achieving certain KPIs or objectives aligned with the business’s interests. So any website advertising corporate bookmakers is therefore INCENTIVISED for you to LOSE.

Think about how free tips websites operate. Websites of any decent quality are very costly to build and maintain. Plus you must consider the time spent on the website by all of the people paid to create the content.. This is all funded by advertising corporate bookies.

is the reality is they are funded by losses, so there’s no incentive for these companies to turn you into a winning punter.  Instead they provide you with ‘content’, ‘information’ and ‘education’ that’s designed to fool you into believing you have some edge over the market, but in reality is designed solely to encourage you to bet more, when really you are receiving information that will keep you trapped within the 98% of punters who lose long term. 

Hard to believe? Check out this article: Here

Again, there are some good free tip providers out there. But keep in mind that the information they provide is readily available to everyone, and is henceforth already ‘baked into the market’.

What that means is there is little to no edge using this information to place bets, as the market has already considered all of this free information into the odds of the horses. You still have to beat the significant percentage take-outs of both the Totes and Corporate Bookies.  The rapid production of this data and information hasn’t changed the simple fact that 98% of punters lose long-term.

Consider paid tipping services who also advertise bookmaker affiliates on their websites. In this situation, they can’t lose. They get paid for the tips they provide, but then get paid far more should the tips lose.

The incentive is for the tips to lose, and once they have you as a customer having signed up to the bookmaker link, they receive 20-40% of your losses each month, even if you stop paying for their tips. Most people aren’t aware of this fact, making the whole situation quite unethical and unpalatable to many. If the industry was regulated in the way Financial Services is, it wouldn’t be allowed to occur.

At Winning Edge Investments, we do not offer bookmaker links or receive affiliate payments for this reason. That way, you can be 100% sure that our sole goal and motivation is for you to profit handsomely from following our information. If you don’t, then we don’t have a business! We are unlike the 99% of other tipping services who continue to flourish and receive substantial payments long after all of the people have stopped paying for their losing tips.

3. Their results aren’t posted on their website regularly - or at all

Some sites post their results on their website… but only every now and again, certainly not with any consistent regularity. Without consistent review, websites that do not consistently post their results are not giving their followers or paying subscribers an opportunity to critically assess whether the results are accurate or not.

There are many ways services can ‘fudge’ their results, or ‘cook their books’. They could include winning bets that were never sent, delete losing bets, change the unit staking advised, record at odds that were never available in the first place, or use a methodology that essentially records at the best available price, making the results completely unachievable.

Earlier this year we noted many social media 'tipsters' post their annual results, however these results were never transparently provided or posted regularly at any time through the year, and hence were most likely fabricated.

Some websites don’t even post their results at all. Some that we have seen ask you to contact them, and they will e-mail you their results sheet. If the results sheet is available, why not make it publicly available at any time on your website, rather than only sending it out when requested? It is glaringly obvious that any site not wanting to put their results on public display has something to hide.

Quite possibly, when you request a results spreadsheet, it will be completely fabricated, and probably different to the real results sheet sent to actual subscribers if they ever requested it.

Lastly, some websites have results on their website - but not in Excel form. Often the results sheet is missing critical information such as the date, horse number etc. Sometimes the sheet is protected with columns or rows missing information. Without an unprotected excel sheet it doesn’t give anyone the opportunity to thoroughly review and analyse. Dodgy services love to post their results in PDF so that no-one can critically analyse or reconcile them in any meaningful way. If you see any of the above, we suggest you run for the hills!

4. They only quote short term results based on the day / week / month

Betting should be treated as an investment, with a long-term perspective. Most questionable tipping services shout from the rooftops whenever they have a winning day, week, or month, with no reference to their overall results. Anyone can record big wins over a short period. Even a monkey or octopus randomly pointing at horses will strike it lucky over a short-term period.

The real test is whether profits are made over a statistically significant period, which frankly is a minimum of 1 year. Any service that only ever promotes results over any period less than this is in the game solely to attract losers and suckers. 

5. Their testimonials are all from short term members talking about a great day / week / start

With most tipping websites, you will see testimonials from subscribers talking about having a good day, or week, or ‘start’ since the subscriber recently joined the service. Generally, this is simply because they don’t have long term members to provide testimonials about any long-term success. These websites simply aim to attract new suckers to their service each week to replace the ones who have quickly left.

6. There is no clear Odds Recording Policy stated publicly

All services like to talk about their results, but results are meaningless if the basis upon which they are calculated is not made clear upfront, before the results are recorded or claimed. If an Odds Recording Policy is not stated upfront, it allows the dodgy services to state “if you had done this” or “if you had bet this way” you would have achieved a certain result, when this information wasn’t provided before the tips were sent and hence no-one who followed the tips would have actually achieved the results.

An Odds Recording Policy ensures clarity for members and non-members alike to critically assess and compare each service’s performance.

This is a trick that dodgy operators use to ‘backfit’ results, by saying if you had backed every horse at fixed odds, or at Best Tote/SP etc, then you would have achieved said results. The fact remains that no-one would have actually achieved those results, because there was no information given before the fact. Back-fitting usually results in the ‘system’ being exposed in the long run as non-profitable, leading the suckers who followed in a financial hole.

7. There is no explanation of the betting bank required for the service

‘Unitised’ betting has become commonplace in the tipping industry. Many services now offer information on how many units to bet on the horse they are tipping. Many neglect to include the betting bank that’s required for the selections. This defies the whole point of unitised betting, which is designed to make clear how much you are investing to protect your betting bank and capital -  a point missed by services who advise huge unit investments on their selections.

In our experience, genuine services advise a 100-unit betting bank, and their average bet is usually somewhere between 0.5 to 2.0 units. However, we’ve seen some services advise members to bet 20, 30, 50 or even 100 units on their selections! This is a trick which they use in their marketing to then attempt to drown out all other tipping services, by shouting from the rooftops whenever they have a winning day, stating the enormous unit amounts won.

When it comes to tipsters advising these huge units, we’ve never actually seen them make clear the total betting bank required. In our experience, the higher the average units advised to bet on a horse, the more dishonest the tipping service is.

8. Results are unachievable

Many services record their odds at unachievable prices, including the following tricks: 

• • Odds only offered by one bookie in early betting markets 
  • Odds only offered by a bookie which most punters are banned from
  • Odds recorded at the highest possible price achieved in the market, whether the horse firsm or drifts, with no advice given on how to back the selections (you know who!)
  • One of the worst services even records at the highest price out of the highest fixed price when the tip is sent, or Best Tote, Top Fluc or Betfair SP (without deducting commissions), despite not offering any advice or guidance on when or how to bet. They then try and compare their unachievable results to the benchmark (us). Can you believe it? 

9. They have no social media profile, or no website

This one is too obvious. Plenty of tipsters these days have no social media profile whatsoever, and either no website, or a very, plain, simple website that provides no educational information, insight, or updated daily results.

This raises red flags quickly.

10. The recorded results are not from when the service started publicly

A good move is to check the histories of a tipster by looking for any inconsistencies online. You might be surprised what you find! If a service boasts it’s been around for a certain length of time, then the published results should reflect that entire period. If not, why? There’s no point to hiding this information especially when you’re claiming that you’re an expert in the field.

If someone has been running a tipping service for 5 years, but only shows 1 year's results, what happened to the rest of the results? It’s far too easy for tipsters to just delete prior losing periods from their results to make them look better overall.

11. The tipsters have no public profile, or you’ve never heard of them

If somebody is selling tips publicly, then it stands to reason they’ll have some level of public profile. The racing and punting community is very active online, and news of a solid tipster who is winning money for his clients travels quickly.

If there’s no information at all to be found, then they might not have many (or any) clients. Why? Also see whether they are featured in any respected publications or websites on podcasts, webinars or interviews. If not, it is hard to believe they are anything but a junior apprentice. Do you want to risk your money on that?

12. The tips are based predominantly on ‘inside information’

“Inside info” is a funny thing. Yes, in isolation, a small piece of information about a horse that they like can be valuable for any punter. But those who claim they win long-term based on their access to “inside information” are generally being less than honest.

The key question is, of course, where the “inside information” is coming from?

Most people have been tipped into a horse by a trainer or other connection at some point, and sometimes it might come off! But logically, it can never be a long term winning solution. The structure of the horse racing industry means that no one person has “inside information” about every horse. To find winners, and find them at value, you need to be across the form of all the horses in a race. Simple tips like “horse x is going really, really well in trackwork” might be useful for that horse, but there might be up to 20 others in the race – how are they going? To win on the punt you need to have a very well formulated opinion on each horse’s chances of winning and hence how it should be priced. There’s only one basis for that: proper, educated form analysis.

If you are new to punting, we recommend you to sign up to our newsletter to receive a copy of our free 130 page Betting Information Pack. We send out a weekly newsletter full of free Horse Racing and Sports Betting tips, education, and information to help you become a far more profitable punter.