How to make a profit from horse racing tipsters

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There are many punters who battle to make money from tipsters. Usually the tipster is held responsible for not providing enough winners, and there is no question that there are a lot of tipsters out there who should not be in business. However, gamblers also have to hold themselves responsible a lot of the time.

Many gamblers have unrealistic expectations when joining a service, and become dissatisfied very quickly when they don’t immediately start winning a pile of money. Some tipsters have even had new subscribers quit after their first day, even when that day was profitable!

The objective of this article is to try and clear up some of the misunderstandings, help us set genuine objectives and actually make money by using tipsters.

When subscribing to a racing tipster we have to bring a lot more to the desk than the tipster does, even if the tipster is successful, and provides good selections. What they can’t provide is the correct attitude, bank roll and capacity to learn from experience.

Here is what we must supply…

1. A bank roll we can afford to lose
2. Commitment for enough time to compute whether the tipster’s picks make money or not
3. A knowledge that the right attitude is needed to bet profitably

Let’s go through the actions. Let’s assume that we have already invested time analysing various tipsters, and established one that we believe is sincere and successful. Don’t do this depending on results from a few days, we want at least several months of selections to examine.

Before we start to bet on the selections these are the factors that we MUST consider:

How much bank roll can we manage to lose?

Set aside a sum of cash and then add to it the price of a 3 month membership to a racing tipster service. We must be honest with ourselves. If it is going to create problems if we lose this money then it is too much to risk. It is essential to be emotionally unattached to this cash.

How much should you bet on the selections?

Usually a tipster provides us with guidance on how to divide our bank roll. This is not necessarily best for our purposes. Just because a tipster is relaxed with a certain level of staking, does not mean that we will be. Our scenario is different from the tipster’s, and they have presumably been making money from punting for longer and are more experienced than us.

We look at all the horse racing tipster’s results and figure out the greatest losing run so far. We should bear in mind that there can always be a longer one. To be on the safe side, we would be well advised to double this losing run, making that number the least amount of units in our betting pot for gambling. For example if the greatest losing run was 25, then we would divide our bank roll into 50 units, which we would call our ‘safety allowance’.

We now divide the bank roll by the number of units just determined. Thus, if our total bank roll is $500 and we have a 50 units safety allowance then we would be wagering $10 per bet. Are we relaxed with this amount? Are we going to want to be betting more? Can we adhere to the tipster’s selections if we have lost 50% or 60% of our betting bank?

If we are not satisfied with any of these questions then we need to re-assess our bank roll.

How much are we anticipating making?

If we are anticipating starting with$500 and becoming full time within a few weeks then we should seriously consider quitting gambling now. This is just not possible. Our objectives must be realistic. If, over a period of three months or a few years, our bets are creating more than 10% revenue, then we are doing well.

Starting with a $500 bank roll and placing $10 wagers, this means that if our tipster is providing us 3 choices a day we are gambling around $900 monthly. If we are creating $90 or more revenue from this then we should be satisfied. Anything above this should be regarded as a bonus.

After all we will be increasing our betting pot every six months: how many other investments are capable of doing that?

An unrealistic expectation is one of the greatest negative points for a lot of gamblers. Many are anticipating hitting 10/1 or greater priced winners almost every day. This will not occur.

Are we ready to try the tipster for a reasonable interval of time?

Statistically, trying a horse racing selection service for less than 3 months is not worth it. We will not have had enough data to actually figure out whether or not the tipster’s choices are successful.

All tipsters go through upswings and downswings. The length of these will vary. Referring back to the safety allowance (based on the tipster’s longest losing streak so far), every length of sequence up to that maximum will eventually appear, and sometimes consecutively, if we follow the series for long enough. We have no way of knowing just when we have entered this theoretically endless sequence. By stopping using a service after a couple of weeks we are not getting enough details to figure out how the losing run was doing and whether the winning runs are going to protect our failures and generate profitable revenue.

Gambling results go up and down in cycles. Any tipster’s profit/loss information will contain highs and lows. We have to go through enough of these periods to be able to figure out if the revenue periods overcome the losing periods.

Are we ready to lose with of most of our bets?

This is perhaps the most challenging emotional step to accomplish in successful gambling. Just because we aren’t getting more winners than losers does not mean we aren’t creating revenue.

A tipster with a great success rate may win 30% of their wagers. However, it is more normal for a tipster’s strike rate to be between 20% and 25%.

If a tipster is successful in 20% of their wagers then they are LOSING 80% of their wagers.

THIS DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE NOT PROFITABLE

That phrase is in capital letters because it is one of the most significant factors we can comprehend. Just because we have lost 10 wagers in a row does not mean that the tipster will not be successful by the time we’ve completed our preliminary 3 month trial run.

In the past, we have profitably followed, for well over 1000 bets, sequences with winning percentages of only 10-15%, meaning we have successfully negotiated losing streaks of up to 45. Provided the dividends are good enough when we win, we follow a sound staking plan and we stick tightly to our program, we continue to make profits even with such low strike rates, on some of our plans. But as you can imagine, if we start to get cold feet after 30 losses in a row, and bail out, all we do is kiss our money goodbye.

Do we realize we are joining a tipster at the start of a losing run?

Most tipsters promote and advertise their service when they are doing well. Of course, this is when punters want to get their selections. However the winning run is followed by a down swing. If we join a tipster when they are promoting the service on an upswing, then we have also registered with them at the beginning of a down swing.

We need to recognise that when joining a tipster we could get several weeks of bad results. There is nothing we can physically do about this: it is just how the Laws of Probability perform. The only way to cope with this scenario is to adjust our own attitude, just as it is with any other undesired event in our lives.

Suppose for example that we suffer a serious accident, and are partially disabled in some way. For some people, this would break their will, leaving them permanently unable to cope with life as effectively as they did before. Others, like British air ace Sir Douglas Bader, who lost both his legs in an aircraft crash, resolved to become a scratch golfer, playing on artificial legs (which were nowhere near as good around the Second World War era as they are now). He succeeded, whereas the vast majority of fully-fit golfers never get anywhere near this level.

If we have done our analysis on the tipster, and followed everything in this article then we have nothing to fear because we are going to be getting their choices for several weeks whatever happens.

Summary

Above are some of the most important factors that cause many gamblers to fall short of profiting from tipsters who are effective. We must take all of this into consideration to generate knowledge of how a professional punter performs.

We all would like to create immediate earnings instantaneously. Unfortunately this is just a dream. We cannot earn cash without some work and even when using a tipster we still have to perform. As we get more experience we learn how effective punters perform, becoming disciplined in our strategy.

Estimating conservatively what returns we should anticipate, and not performing on emotion, are the vital keys.