Explaining the Tipster League

Racing Proofing's league tables ranks monitored tipsters according to their Rating value, a measure of overall record performance given by the betting yield multiplied by the number of bets, for the betting history. Further information about what this is and why it is used to rank tipsters, along with other statistics used to analysis these betting records, can be found on the Proofing & Analysis page.

LAYING PRICES

BACKING PRICES

5 league tables are presented for advisory services supplying bets to be backed to win or each way.

1. Outright or overall records including proofed tips only
2. Outright or overall records including all tips, proofed and unproofed
3. Records over the last 3 months
4. Records over the last 6 months
5. Records over the last 12 months

Racing Proofing records a profit/loss on the date a bet was settled, not the date a bet was advised. Discrepancies may arise between monthly statistics published for each tipster and those presented on the tipster's website where ante post or long term bets have been advised in one month but are not settled until another later month.

Small discrepancies between the record shown by Racing Proofing and that shown by the tipster's own website may also arise due to rounding of betting odds and profits, the omission of tips not received, and the ommission, by the tipster, of commission deducted from winning exchange bets (and lays) Bets advised at an exchange price and all lays are proofed at acceptably "gettable" prices and with 5% commission deducted. Any other discrepancy will be due to manual error either on the part of Racing Proofing or the tipster themselves.

BACKING PRICES

IMPORTANT:

1. Some tipsters began proofing to Racing Proofing after starting their advisory service. Unproofed tips are marked on a service's profit chart by means of a black vertical line. Anything to the left of this line has not been verified by Racing Proofing. Unverified tips for the "all tips" league are, however, included for the purposes of analysis. For performance including only proofed tips, readers should refer to the "proofed tips only" league . Consequently, it should also recognised that some tips counting towards the 3, 6 and 12-month performance league rankings may not have been proofed by Racing Proofing. Readers should always therefore keep these considerations in mind when deciding whether to purchase tips from one of the advisory services proofed by Racing Proofing.
   
2. Note that with many services, particularly those with more than just a handful of members and bets with boomakers that regularly shift prices in response to punter interest, the proofed record presented by Racing Proofing is likely to represent the best possible return on investment. In practice, because punters are unlikely to always be able to get the advised price for every bet, the actual return on investment will probably be a little lower than the one recorded, although there will be occasions where a punter can actually find a better price than the one advised. If a punter chooses to follow a service on the basis of the information presented here then this feature should be recognised and understood.
   
   Additionally, some tipsters advise bets and/or lays with betting exchanges, most typically Betfair . Whilst it is Racing Proofing's policy only to accept a price for proofing when there is sufficient volume available to trade at the price advised, given the number of tipsters and bets advised, it is not always possible to check whether every price advised could be considered acceptable.
   
3. In addition to studying the published yields, profit trends and league rankings, Racing Proofing advises all readers who are considering a purchase of tips from one of the advisory services to check the return on investment for that particular service to level stakes. This can easily be down by downloading the CSV record from Racing Proofing and setting all stakes to 1. Unless a service returns a profit to level staking, no specialised staking strategy of any kind will be able to deliver success over the long term. Non-level staking plans can improve profitability (although usually the expense of risk) but no staking plan can turn a losing system into a winning one.
   
4. When deciding on whether to purchase a membership from any of the services, the punters should consider exactly how much the subscription fee is likely to eat into potential profits. Obviously, there is no way of knowing what future profits will be, but one can use the past as a guide. From the available record of tips and the analysis presented by Racing Proofing the punter should be able to determine roughly how many bets he can expect to place over a given period (for example a month), what the projected return will be from those bets assuming the service performs as well as it has done in the past, and consequently how large his average stake size should be. Clearly, purchasing 100 tips with a 20% betting yield at £300 per month will be of little value if the average stake size is £10.
   
5. Punters should also consider when tipsters send out their advice in relation to start times of the events advised, and the geographical location of the tipster in relation to their own. Some tipsters will submit a tip perhaps only 30 minutes before start time. If a member following such a service will not be able to receive the tip at the time it is advised he will not be in a position to take advantage of it. Equally, it might be the case that a member based in a European time zone will receive tips from as US based tipster during the night hours when the member is not online.
   
6. And finally, every punter should understand that past success is no guarantee to future profits, and that they should NEVER bet what they can't afford to lose.