Betting on the footy is a favoured pastime of millions around the globe, with huge amounts wagered on the sport each year. Of all the money that is gambled on soccer however, very few punters actually make a profit on the game. Winning is very hard and only an elite few actually manage to do it. Is there a way you can join them? 

Potentially, yes. We will set out some strategies below showing how you can bet on soccer and win over the long run. It isn’t easy so we don’t want to give any illusions but with hard work, discipline and the right tools it can be done. 

Getting the Basics Right

Before we get into the specific strategies, it’s important to make sure you get the basics right. Without a firm foundation in issues like bank management, staking and proper record keeping you will be doomed to fail. It would be like tying one hand behind your back before you started. 

The cold hard stats reveal that less than 2% of footy bettors actually make a profit, so in order to succeed you want to give yourself every advantage. Use every tool you can to help you, benefit from the knowledge of others and stick to a plan. 

These are the fundamental ground rules we would advise you to follow if you want to be a winning football gambler:

1. 1. Set a staking plan – it is crucial to have a clear staking plan at the outset. For example if you have $1,000 to bet with, you could divide that into $10 units and bet 1 or 2 units per match. That way you are only risking 1-2% of you bankroll on each occasion, which is easily manageable and isn’t exposing you to undue risk. Whatever staking plan you choose, it is important to stick to it and not go changing your stakes erratically based on a whim or short-term fluctuations.
2. 2. Keep records of all your bets – no successful bettor would expect to not keep a record of their bets. First and foremost it will help you to establish if you are making a profit or a loss. On a more granular level though it will enable you to analyse where you are going wrong – and what you are getting right. Perhaps you make a profit in certain leagues but not others – or on certain markets like both teams to score, over/under etc. From there you can look to improve the things that aren’t working and build on those that are working. 
3. 3. Use “sharp bookies” as well as “soft” ones – these days there’s quite a difference to how bookmakers operate. The traditional bookmakers are typically referred to as “soft,” which means they are often slow to update their odds. The “sharps” are typically bookies like Pinnacle and those based in Asia who are quicker to change their odds and don’t tend to restrict their customers. They see huge amounts of money come in on various matches, which then causes them to adjust their odds. Although access to these sharp bookies varies depending on where you live, if you can access them you will often get better odds, as well as being able to place larger bets. Here is the excellent Trademate Sports explaining the difference between the two types of bookie:

1. 4. Use odds comparison sites – it should go without saying, but it’s amazing that some punters still don’t use odds comparison sites like Oddschecker, Oddsportal or Easyodds. Your chances of making a long-term profit will be virtually non-existent if you don’t ensure you’re getting the best value on your bets. That difference between odds of 2.2 and 2.1 might not seem much, but it really adds up over time and could well make a difference between you making a profit and a loss. Using an odds comparison site doesn’t take long – just a couple of minutes to find the relevant match and market. Definitely worth doing.
2. 5. Make use of the exchanges – in addition to using the bookies, it should also go without saying that you should use the exchanges if you have access to them, particularly if you are betting in-running where the odds on the exchanges tends to be significantly better than with the bookies. Of course it is important to take into account the commission you have to pay the exchanges like Betfair and Smarkets, but even taking that into account you will normally beat the the returns at the bookies.
3. 6. Stay disciplined – it sounds obvious but it’s amazing how hard it can be to stay disciplined at times. We’ve all probably been there at one time or another – had a long losing run, a lot of bad luck and just feel like we need to win it all back. Chasing losses is the fastest way to the poor house though. Stick to that staking plan and the strategies you have selected, giving them a chance to play out. If changing strategy, it should only come after careful thought and analysis and enough results to warrant it. 
4. 7. Adopt a long-term mindset – we talk a lot here at HBR about adopting a long-term mindset but it really can’t be overstated. Most punters have such a short-term approach, jumping from system to system as soon as they hit even a modest losing run. This kind of short-termism is guaranteed to fail and is the exact opposite of the professional gambler, who looks at results over long timeframes of a year or more and hundreds or even thousands of bets. They understand natural variance and that ups and downs are part of the game. If you want to join them, this is the kind of mindset you need to adopt too. 
5. 8. Only risk what you can afford to lose – this final rule is the golden one. Never risk more than you can afford to lose. Set aside some funds that you would be happy to lose the entire lot. Hopefully that won’t happen of course and you’ll end up in profit, but the key thing is to ensure that it wouldn’t cause you any problems if you did lose it all.

OK, so following these ground rules should stand you in good stead and put you ahead of the vast majority of punters who don’t follow these rules. It is like trying to build a house without a foundation – you just won’t get anywhere. You need a solid base to work from and then you can look to build something special. 

Top Five Tips for How to Bet and Win in Soccer

Right, it’s time to get on with looking at those strategies that can help you win more of your football bets. These are some approaches that have proven themselves to be effective under live test conditions here at Honest Betting Reviews so you can sure they will put you ahead of the game.

Here are our top five tips for how you can bet and win in soccer:

1. Concentrate on niche leagues and markets

Making a profit on the major European leagues – the Premier League, Serie A, Bundesliga, La Liga and Ligue 1 – can be tough. Huge amounts of money are wagered on these markets and finding an edge is very difficult.The prices by the time of kick-off are highly accurate over the long-term, meaning that betting on them at the final prices is likely to lead to losses overall. 

An alternative approach is to look at more niche leagues and markets. There is so much attention given to the Premier League for example, with countless column inches devoted to discussing the top players, their injuries, form and so on that gaining an advantage in terms of having extra information is pretty tough. All the info, stats and analysis is already out there for punters at the click of a mouse. On smaller leagues however this isn’t necessarily the case.

Take a service like Scottish Football Income Booster for example. It focuses solely on Scottish football, including the lower divisions which don’t tend to get much coverage. Learning about team news and such information in these lesser-known leagues, as well as knowing the form of the teams and their relative strengths and weaknesses, can leave you with a distinct advantage. This is exactly what Scottish Income Booster has done, racking up  over £18,000 profit to £100 per point stakes or £3,600 to more modest £20 per point stakes by betting solely on football north of Hadrian’s Wall.

The long term return on investment stands at more than 11%, which is excellent in football betting terms. The win rate is nearly 50% as well which means a high proportion of winning bets. It is run a guy who worked at an investment syndicate and hedge fund, who clearly knows what he is doing. 

You could decide to follow this service if you wanted to benefit from their in-depth knowledge and skills, or you could select your own niche leagues and markets to focus on. Either way though you are likely to do better than betting in the big leagues. 

2.  Make Use of Statistics

You don’t have to be a stats whiz to make use of the host of football statistics that are available online these days. In fact if you aren’t using some stats to at least guide or assist you in your betting, you are probably missing a trick. 

Even just using a simple stats site like Soccerstats or Flashscores can give you valuable information on things like home/away form, number of games over/under 2.5 goals, the times teams score their goals, records vs top sides and bottom sides and so on. Even just utilizing these stats at their basic level can give you some valuable insights if you are betting on markets like HT/FT, both teams to score, over/unders etc. There may be a side that scores the vast majority of its goals in the second half – or very late on in games. By studying these stats, you can find the best time to place your bet, which could be at half time or the last 15 minutes for example.

If you don’t have the time to pour over stats in that way, you could make use of a site like Goal Profits. It has a vast stats database of over 200,000 matches that provides vital info for betting and trading on football. There are team stats that cover things like:

– Percentage of games for each team with over 0.5 goals, over 1.5 goals, over 2.5 goals etc
– Matches where the teams scored at least one goal
– Average goals scored and conceded per match
– Goals per half
– Matches ending with a chosen target score 
– And much more

They also have league tables that let you see form based on factors like how teams have done when going 1-0 up or 0-1 down, results vs bottom half, home attack v away defence, when level at HT and much more. You can analyse almost any feature of form using their tools and there is even a live stats module. 

With all this it’s not hard to see why Goal Profits is so popular and has won so many awards, including our very own Best Football Service 2019! A number of their members have gone on to become professional football traders as a result of Goal Profits’ tools, which are second to none. Here’s one member with their own testimonial: 

To improve your footy betting and win more of your wagers, Goal Profits is an excellent resource.

3. Find In-Play Opportunities

Most punters tend to concentrate on betting before a match kicks off. That’s fair enough as this is where the majority of media attention is focused. However, some of the best opportunities to profit come from betting in-play. The reason for this is that a game can unfold in a very different way from expected, for example with a game expected to be very defensive actually being quite open and vice versa. Or a team playing much better than had been expected. 

Often in the in-play markets won’t adapt at all to these in-play dynamics or will only make slight adjustments. This presents an opportunity for sharp minds out there to exploit these situations and generate a profit. One such system to do this is Trade on Sports, which we have reviewed extensively here at Honest Betting Reviews. They have developed a number of strategies that use a Bot to crunch the stats across various leagues and teams and work out where there is good value to be had on in-play under and over goals markets.

The best of these is their HT Overs Bot, which made over £5,000 to £100 stakes during our live trial. Basically the Bot looks at games at half-time where there is likely to be at least one more goal – normally in the over 1.5 goals market. The best time to place your bet is after 70 mins, as this is where there the odds start to rise significantly and the Bot finds games with a high proportion of late goals. 

Here’s an explanation of what it’s all about and how it works:

Another Bot looks at the unders markets in the same way, looking for games where there is value to be had in backing the unders (but two goals ahead – e.g. backing under 3.5 goals when a game is 1-1 at half-time). This Bot is newer than the HT Overs Bot but has produced promising results so far. 

Trade on Sports is not the only service to focus on in-running opportunities. The aforementioned Goal Profits, also has a live trading forum run by professional traders Kevin and Steve where you can follow along with their live bets and trades. 

4.  Follow a Professional Tipster

One way to win more of your footy bets is to follow a professional tipster. After all, if you don’t have the time to study stats and form, monitor team news, watch loads of matches and do all the other hard work that goes into finding value bets, why not let someone else do all that for you? 

There are a number of very good tipsters out there who have passed live trials here at Honest Betting Reviews, demonstrating their ability to beat the bookies and make their members some extra tax-free cash. Some of these include:-

• – Bookie Insiders Football – a long-running service having been in operation since 2013 and having made over 400 units profit in total, which equates to £20,000 at the advised £50/unit stakes. A very respected and successful service with a loyal following and with those results you can see why. 
• – Football Advisor Lays – as the name suggests, this is a service that provides lay bets to be placed on the exchanges (or you can use Double Chance and Asian Handicap markets if you don’t have access to exchanges). In our two live trials of the service they made a combined profit of 44 points, which is very good going. 
• – Banker Bets –  a service we have been following right since the early days of Honest Betting Reviews way back in 2015. Their original accumulators made a total of 410% profit between 2014 and 2018. They now have a variety of strategies including Value Bets and Draw Bets, in addition to the original Banker Bets.   

Some good options to choose from there and there are plenty more we are testing all the time to try and find other high quality tipsters. 

5. Bet on the Draw

An underappreciated aspect of soccer betting is the potential to profit from betting on the draw. After all, nearly a third of matches finish in a draw. This proportion is greater in low-scoring leagues like France, Greece and a number of the South American leagues. The reason for this is that a game is more like to finish in a draw if it is low-scoring, particularly with the 0-0 and 1-1 scorelines. 

There are now a number of betting services focusing on backing the draw in football matches, but the original and best in our opinion is still JK Diego’s Draw Betting System. We ran an extended 15 month review of it and the service generated over 100 points profit at level stakes, which would be $10,000 profit at $100 per match stakes. It’s a service for high-rollers only though with subscription costs being substantial. 

Alternatively you could try studying draw trends yourself and hope to find some profitable angles. As we say, it is probably best to focus on the low-scoring leagues and teams who tend to draw a lot of matches. Not a lot of money is normally wagered on the draw meaning there is value to be found in it. Backing the draw can definitely be a way to win more of your soccer bets.

Conclusion – Many Ways to Win at Soccer Betting

The bottom line is there are many ways to win at soccer betting. We have highlighted some of the major ones above but no doubt there are others and sharp bettors will never stop innovating in their attempts to find an edge over the market. We haven’t even mentioned matched betting, which for those in the UK and Ireland offers another way to win their footy bets – with very low risk. 

The key to success is to adopt a strategy you are confident has an edge over the market and to follow the ground rules we set out at the start like remaining disciplined and following a clear staking plan. If you can do that you will be well ahead of most other punters. 

We hope you have found this guide useful and it helps you to win more of your soccer bets. If you are going to bet on the beautiful game, please gamble responsibly and only risk money you can afford to lose. 

Having previously taken a look at the best tipsters in various sports – including horse racing, football, tennis and golf – we thought it was about time we produced a list of the best tipsters overall across all sports.

This is obviously much more competitive and we are talking about the very best tipsters out there – the real creme de la creme across all disciplines.

We have reviewed hundreds of tipsters here at Honest Betting Reviews since we started up back in 2015, so in theory there should be no shortage of contenders to choose from. 

The vast majority of tipsters we have reviewed have failed to make the grade though, or after passing an initial trial have then lost their edge and in some cases stopped tipping altogether.

So that leaves a fairly select group of elite tipsters who have managed to show an ability to beat the bookies again and again, year-in-year-out.

These are the ones we will be focusing on today and whittling them down to a list of our top ten best tipsters. Here are the factors we have looked at in compiling our list:-

• – Return on investment (ROI) – how much “bang for your buck” are you getting? Or in other words, how much would you have gotten back for every £100 invested?
• – Strike rate – otherwise known as “win rate” – how many of a tipster’s bets win? Are you likely to have long losing runs while you wait for that one elusive long-shot, or does the tipster regularly generate returns?
• – Profit/Loss – the key metric of how much profit they have made in a given period (e.g. a year), normally expressed in points. 
• – Bank growth – if you had started with a £1,000 bank, how much money would you have now? 
• – Longevity – how long has the tipster been tipping?

The last of these points is perhaps the most important – any tipster can have a lucky run over a short period of time – a few weeks or a few months. Some might even manage to produce a profit for a year purely through luck. But it would be impossible to keep beating the bookies year after year if you weren’t very good at what you do and have a clear edge over the market. 

It takes a special skill for a tipster to consistently produce a profit over the course of many years and only a select few manage it. The longer a tipster has been producing a positive return, the more likely they are to continue doing so. And ultimately that is what we are all looking for – a tipster who can go on beating the bookies long into the future. 

The Top 10 Best Tipsters

OK, so now we have set out the criteria, let’s get on to looking at the list of the best tipsters out there. These can be in any sport and include some well-known names in addition to those who are more “under the radar.” 

All of these tipsters have been tested by us here at Honest Betting Reviews and all their results have been proofed over an extended period of time – some over a number of years. This means they are all of the highest quality and their results are fully verified. 

So without further ado, here is our list, from ten to one, of the best tipsters out there.

10. Bet Alchemist

Key Stats:

• – Running since: 2012
• – ROI: 14%
• – Strike Rate: 33%
• – Total Profit made: +640 points
• – Average annual profit: +80 points
• – Bank Growth: +640%

The Bet Alchemist is a renowned horse racing tipping service run by a guy called Nicky Doyle. It is primarily focused on jumps racing but does cover some flat racing as well for the big races like Royal Ascot. We reviewed the service back in 2016 and have continued to follow it since then, during which time it has remained the model of consistency. Each year since 2016 has been profitable and Nicky has excelled in the festivals like Cheltenham. 

It’s quite a low volume service with an average of just one or two bets per day which makes it easy to follow, although the volume does increase at weekends and during the big racing festivals. With an advised betting bank of 100 points, the initial capital would have grown 640% since the start of the service, which is very good going and beats the returns of most tipsters or investment schemes you could think of.

Bet Alchemist is a popular service with a loyal following and it’s easy to understand why with its excellent, consistent results.

9. Bookie Insiders – Football

Key Stats:

• – Running since: 2013
• – ROI: 7%
• – Strike Rate: 51%
• – Total profit made: +410 points
• – Average annual profit: +59 points
• – Bank Growth: +410%

It is extremely rare in football betting to find a  tipster who manages to make a profit betting on the big European leagues and competitions. There is supposedly very little value to be found in these leagues due to the sheer volume of money being wagered on them that creates a very accurate market. Most football tipsters tend to look at more niche markets like corners or cards or at smaller leagues which get less attention. 

However, Bookie Insiders Football is one of the very few services to tip in the main leagues and still make a very healthy profit. Tending to focus on the goals markets – over/under and team goals – but also on Asian handicaps, match odds and others, they have produced a handsome 410 points profit since starting up in 2013. To the advised £50/point that works out at over £20,000 profit. That has been achieved with a strike rate of over 50% – so over half of the bets to date have been winners.

Having achieved such consistency tipping in the big leagues for over seven years is almost unrivaled in football tipping so we feel Bookie Insiders deserves a place on this list and it’s a service we are happy to follow with our own money. 

8. Loves Racing

Key stats:

• – Running since: 2017
• – ROI: 27%
• – Strike Rate: 22%
• – Total Profit made: +828 points
• – Average annual profit: +276 points
• – Bank Growth: +330%

Loves Racing is a service provided by a guy called Brett Love (see what they’ve done there?) whose family have long been involved in the gambling business, primarily as bookmakers. After his career as a footballer got cut short due to injury, Brett decided to use his immense knowledge of the gee-gees to go the other way and become a professional gambler.  

After initially supplying his tips to a private group of investors, Brett went public with his tips in 2017. He hasn’t looked back since, notching up substantial profits every year. 

The great thing about Loves Racing is that it’s actually four services in one. There are four separate strategies provided as part of the service: the main selections, festival selections, system selections and the horses to follow (which you have to sign up to separately but are free). Each one has contributed over 100 points profit to the overall total of over 800 points profit made so far, with the main selections leading the way with over 350 points profit. Brett has a knack for picking out long-shots, with a number of 50/1 and 40/1 winners. 

With an excellent return on investment of 27% and such a sizable amount of profit built in just three years, Loves Racing is a class service and is establishing itself as one of the best in the business. 

7. Premier Greyhound Tips

Key stats:

• – Running since: 2014
• – ROI: 11%
• – Strike Rate: 27%
• – Total Profit made: +715 points
• – Average annual profit: +119 points
• – Bank Growth: +715%

Greyhounds may not have the glamour of some other sports or grab the headlines like horse racing and football, but they should not be discounted as a source of potential profit. One service in particular that is worthy of attention is Premier Greyhound Tips, which we have followed since 2015 and is one of the most consistent tipsters out there in any sport.

With a profit of over 700 points made since starting tipping, they have made a profit in over 70% of the months they have been operating. The advised starting bank of 100 points would have grown over 700% since inception, which would equate to over £35,000 from starting capital of £5,000. 

It’s a very simple service to follow with just one or two bets per day, which are accompanied by full write-ups and analysis. Michael who provides the tips clearly knows his dogs and this is backed up by the rock-solid results. Premier Greyhound Tips is an apt name – this is the premiere greyhound tipping service out there.

6. JK Diego’s Draw Betting System

Key stats:

• – Running since: 2018
• – ROI: 7%
• – Strike Rate: 44%
• – Total Profit made: +450 points
• – Average annual profit: +150 points
• – Bank Growth: +450%

Ever bet on the draw in a football match? Perhaps not, after all it’s not the first thing most people think of when looking to place a bet on the footy. Most punters want to back one side or the other to win, which is natural. The draw tends to be a neglected option, but that means it can present value to the shrewd punter as there is a lot less money gambled on it.

One such shrewd gambler is the self-styled JK Diego, a dynamic individual who spent a number of years devising a strategy for betting on the draw in football matches. There are eight key factors he identified as being crucial in predicting whether there is likely to be a draw in a match. Using these factors, JK Diego designed a strategy that has produced superb profits, over $100,000 in fact to his recommended staking.

Even just to flat staking the service has produced over 450 points profit since starting up in 2018. That is one of the highest totals we have seen from a football tipster and is worthy of a great deal of respect. During our own 15 month trial of the service, it made over 100 points profit to 1 point flat stakes, also very impressive.

One thing to be aware of though is that this is a service for high-rollers only as the subscription costs are high. We would suggest a minimum starting bank of $5,000 is required to make it worthwhile once you have paid the monthly fees. If you can do that though JK Diego has undoubtedly found a profitable edge on the football and has exploited it to the max.

5. Back Lucrative

Key stats:

• – Running since: 2013
• – ROI: 15%
• – Strike Rate: 16%
• – Total Profit made: +1645 points
• – Average annual profit: +235 points
• – Bank Growth: +823%

Next up we have a renowned horse racing tipster called Back Lucrative which is run by chap called Michael Carr. It is one of the most established racing tipsters on the internet, having been running since way back in 2013 and has racked up huge profits since then. 

The average yearly profits have been tremendous at over 230 points and a healthy return has been made every year the service has been operating – just the kind of consistency we love to see. In our own trial Back Lucrative made over 100 points from its two systems, but it was really the Value Bets that produced the goods with 180 points profit made versus a loss for the Banker Bets.

Indeed, it’s by focusing on value that Michael really finds his edge as a tipster, picking some horses at big prices that might not be obvious to the everyday punter but stand out to an expert form analyst like him. 

For a record of consistency and overall profits of more than 1600 points made over the course of seven years, Back Lucrative must surely rank as one of the best tipsters in the game. 

4. Russell Blair Racing

Key stats:

• – Running since: 2015
• – ROI: 28%
• – Strike Rate: 9%
• – Total Profit made: +2010 points
• – Average annual profit: +402 points
• – Bank Growth: +804%

How would you like to win a 180,000/1 accumulator? Pretty awesome eh! Well that was what members of Russell Blair Racing had the chance to do when he tipped four winners in one day back in July 2019 at prices of 33/1, 11/1, 33/1 & 12/1. Although not recommend as an accumulator, that is what the odds added up to if you had done an acca. Even as singles the bets landed 170 points profit in a day, which is not a bad return! 

That wasn’t just a fluke though. Russell has been plundering the bookies over and over again since he began tipping back in 2015 and his record of having made over 2,000 points profit – or £20,000 to £10/point – speaks for itself. 

We began following the service in 2016 and have conducted two independent reviews of it since then, both of which performed excellently producing 214 points profit and 305 points profit respectively. At Betfair SP the results were 121 and 198 points profit, which is very encouraging for those restricted by the bookies. 

Following Russell Blair does come with a health warning however. You may have seen the 9% strike rate in the key stats above – that means there can be long losing streaks and big ups and downs with this service. So it is really only for the patient gambler with a large betting bank – at least 250 points in our view. 

If you have a long term mindset though and a large enough bankroll then there are few better tipsters to follow than Russell Blair Racing. 

3. Racing Intelligence

Key stats:

• – Running since: 2017
• – ROI: 19%
• – Strike Rate: 38%
• – Total Profit made: +1093 points
• – Average annual profit: +364 points
• – Bank Growth: +547%

The next service on this list isn’t a tipster in the classic sense of the word. When you normally think of tipsters, you probably imagine someone studying the form, crunching stats, watching past races etc. Racing Intelligence is a little different however.

The service is based on information that come from a guy who works on the inside at one of the UK’s top bookies. He gets to see where certain big players are placing their bets, on so-called “marker accounts” that the bookies use to assess where money is being placed in the market. These marker accounts signify the smart and professional money and represent high value bets. This info is then passed onto members as tips.

It’s an approach that’s been remarkably successful, with over 1,000 points profit made to advised prices with the bookies if betting each-way or over 1,500 points profit if betting win-only. And encouragingly for those backing at Betfair SP, Racing Intelligence has made over 620 points profit if betting win-only and 500 points profit backing win-and-place at BSP. We saw similarly impressive totals during our own trial of the service. 

Those are very strong results and have produced one of the highest average annual profits we have seen over a period of three years or more. Like many tipsters, there are ups and downs with this service so you need to be prepared for that and have a long-term mindset. It is not for the faint-hearted and is a service we view more for the professional/serious gambler. 

If that is you though Racing Intelligence is definitely up there with the very best tipsters in the business. 

2. Golf Insider

Key stats:

• – Running since: 2014
• – ROI: 15%
• – Strike Rate: 16%
• – Total Profit made: +2242 points
• – Average annual profit: +374 points
• – Bank Growth: +897%

Betting on the golf is generally not seen as a path to big profits by most punters. Perhaps due to the fact that it is a more sedate, gentlemanly game without the instant thrill of sports like racing and football, it often goes under the radar from a betting perspective. 

That is not necessarily a bad thing however and it opens up possibilities for sharp bettors to exploit chinks in the bookies’ armour. Particularly when it comes to the longer-odds players, the bookies’ prices can be wildly wrong and present chances for significant gains to be made. All of the focus is at the top end of the market on players like Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and co. whilst those lurking a little further back tend to go unnoticed. 

One tipster who has exploited this bookies’ weakness remorselessly and very successfully is the Golf Insider. A service that has been running since 2014, it is one of the very few tipsters to have amassed over 2,000 points of total profit, or £20,000 to £10/point stakes, putting it in a very elite club. The average yearly returns are superb at over 370 points and the bank growth is closing in on 1,000%. 

Some of the winners the Golf Insider has hit are quite phenomenal, with successes like Martin Laird at 250/1, Rasmus Hojgaard at 200/1, Corey Conners at 175/1, Marc Warren at 150/1 and many more at monster prices. The thrill of hitting one of these massive winners is quite something – as we can personally attest to! The service also performed superbly during our live trial, proving its quality over an extended period. 

Without question then the Golf Insider deserves a place right towards the top of this list and is one we can personally recommend. 

1. Quentin Franks Racing

Key stats:

• – Running since: 2014
• – ROI: 17%
• – Strike Rate: 23%
• – Total Profit made: +1520 points
• – Average annual profit: +253 points
• – Bank Growth: +760%

To be a successful tipster takes a huge amount of hard work, discipline, knowledge and an ability to think outside the box and not just do what most other punters are doing. It is rare to combine all these talents in one tipster and is perhaps why there are so few really good tipsters out there.

One tipster who combines all those attributes – and more – however is the venerable Quentin Franks. This is a tipster we started proofing in 2015 and have continued to do so ever since. His results throughout that time have been outstanding, with over £15,000 profit made to just £10/point stakes. Amazingly that works out at £200 profit per month on average, which is phenomenal consistency. The return on investment for his career is 17%, which is an excellent level to have maintained for a period of more than six years.

What really wins it for Quentin though in terms of the accolade of best tipster is not just those results, but the additional profits he has made for his sister service, QF Value Tips. For that service he provides tips the night before racing, where as for the main service it is the morning of racing.

Mr Franks has added another 500 points profit through his QF Value Tips service at a return on investment of just under 20%, which when you add it to his main results puts him over the 2,000 point mark – or £20,000 profit to £10 stakes.

Even if you don’t have time to follow Quentin’s tips every day, you could do worse than just follow his ante-post selections (part of his main service), which in themselves have made nearly 300 points profit. These selective bets are in the big races and prices tend to hold up fairly well. Oh, and did we mention the return on investment on these bets stands at over 50%?!

Whichever way you follow his tips however, the bottom line is that Quentin Franks is a tipping genius and fully deserving of his place at the top of this list as the best tipster out there. We have run out of superlatives to describe Quentin Franks Racing so instead we will simply say this: if you are not already a member, we strongly suggest you sign up today.

Conclusion – Weighing it All Up

Choosing the best tipster out of the hundreds we have trialed here at Honest Betting Reviews was never going to be easy. What should you place the most importance on – overall profit made? Return on investment? Or perhaps bank growth? 

Inevitably it has to be a combination of these factors, but as we mentioned at the start of this article the most important of all is longevity. That’s why all the tipsters on our list have been going for at least three years and many of them much longer. It’s that ability to beat the bookies year after year that separates the men from the boys in this game. 

There are of course a few honourable mentions we would like to make of those who were close to making this list. Ben Coley of the Sporting Life has an excellent record and very nearly made it into our top ten. The only negative point against Mr Coley is that he had one year (2019) when he lost over 100 points, which isn’t something any of the tipsters on this list have done. His overall record is worthy of high praise though and we know lots of people who follow his tips religiously. 

There will be those who argue that the likes of Hugh Taylor should be on this list aswell. Whilst we have great admiration for Attheraces’ tipster-in-chief, as our own review discovered it is virtually impossible to make a profit from his tips as Mr Taylor has sadly become the victim of his own success, with prices being smashed the instant tips are released.

At the same time there are tipsters like the Golf Betting Expert who at one time was part of the 1,000 point club (having made over 1,000 points profit in total) but after a rather lean time in 2020 dropped below that level…but we are sure he will bounce back again soon.

There are surely many others we could mention aswell…Master Racing Tipster, Betting Bias, Premium Boxing Tips and quite a few others. Suffice to say they are all top tipsters and would easily have made the list if we had expanded it to a top 20. 

And of course there are probably many more we haven’t mentioned here who you feel are worthy of recognition – if so please let us know in the comments below. Otherwise thanks for reading and well done for making it to the end! We hope you enjoyed our discussion of who the best tipster is and some of them have made you a few bob over the years, or if not will do in the future!

Wow. Well that was quite an election!

Over £500m gambled on the outcome just on Betfair, some wild swings on election night and a few anxious days waiting for the final results to be tallied. 

Earlier this evening though Joe Biden was finally declared the winner and elected the next President of the United States. 

It was a relief for me and very welcome, but a bit more of a roller-coaster ride than I was expecting! Before I get into my thoughts on the election betting, here is just a quick summary of the advised bets:

• – Joe Biden to be the Next President: 10 points MAX bet @ 1.58 and 5 point additional bet @ 1.64 (also advised at 1.5 if not already backed) 
• – Kamala Harris to be Joe Biden’s Vice Presidential pick @ 1.92 
• – North Carolina Senate – Democrats to win @ 4/7  
• – Montana Senate – Democrats to win @ 8/11  
• – Democrats to win Maine @ 1.33 – 5 point bet 
• – Democrats to win Iowa @ 1.73 – 2 point bet 
• – Back Biden with Electoral College handicap of -48.5 at 1.74 – 3 points 
• – Hedge Biden Electoral College Votes of 330-359 at 5.8 & 360-389 at 8.0 – 1 point each 
• – Back Biden to win Arizona at 1.7 – 1.5 points  (result not final but Biden down to 1.18)
• – Back Biden to win Florida at 1.85 – 1.5 points 
• – Back Biden to win Michigan at 1.4 – 5 points 
• – Democrats to win the Senate – traded out for 1 point profit 
• – Trump to get 70 million or more votes at around 3.0-3.2 in the popular vote tally 
• – Dutch Biden’s vote percentage at between 49-51.99 and 52-54.99 @ 4.4 and 2.94. 
• – Joe Biden to win Georgia @ 2.36 (result not final but Biden down to 1.06) 
• – Lay the Republicans to win Texas @ 1.38 
• – Biden to win Wisconsin @ 1.42 

So overall it was a great night with the big bets on Biden winning in the next president market and in Michigan and Wisconsin, plus a couple of nice plays on Trump winning over 70m votes at 3.1 and a Dutch of Biden’s vote percentage coming in.

Where I didn’t do so well was in the Senate betting, where Democrats fell badly short. But I will cover that further below when sumarising my thoughts on the election. 

Overall though I was very pleased and hope you managed to grab a bit of the value on Biden and some of the other bets above.

Thoughts on the Election

Once again the polls were way off and this time it was actually worse than 2016, which itself was famed as an epic polling miss. 

When all the votes are counted it looks like the national polls will be 3-4 points off the final result, which is pretty poor. But that pales into comparison with how bad some of the state polls were:

Polling avg. vs actual results:

Florida: Biden +2.5, Trump +3
Wisconsin: Biden +8.4, Biden +0.8
Ohio: Trump +0.8, Trump +8
Texas: Trump +1.1, Trump +6
Michigan: Biden +7.9, Biden +3
Iowa: Trump +1.1, Trump +8

So some massive misses there, by nearly eight points in some cases! Whether people were lying to pollsters about how they were going to vote or pollsters just aren’t able to sample a representative group of people who knows, but either way it looks like the polls are broken in the US. 

Although most of my bets still landed and the main market still correctly predicted a Biden win, it looks like polls may not be the best way to predict elections (in the US at least, other countries still have accurate polls). Interestingly, the predictions right at the start of the campaign based on fundamentals like demographics and past votes actually proved quite a lot more accurate. So in future it might be better to look at them, plus a bit of “gut instinct” in calling the result rather than relying on polls.

Polarisation

Another element to be aware of is that you are seeing increasing polarisation in America. This is reflected in the red states staying red – Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida and Iowa, amongst others, all stayed in Trump’s column pretty comfortably. The blue states in the North-East and West all remained blue and the former democrat “rust-belt” states went back to Biden after flipping to Trump in 2016.

The only exceptions to this were Arizona and Georgia which have undergone significant demographic change in recent years. 

And once again the states that voted Trump for President also voted for the Republican Senate candidate and vice versa, with the one exception of Maine which stuck with Susan Collins as Senator whilst voting for Biden for President. 

This really demonstrates how the red states are staying red and blue states are staying blue – or in other words that there is extreme polarisation. It’s a very strong trend and in future elections it could pay dividends to follow this rule of President-Senate going the same way in a state, even when the polls and odds suggest otherwise. 

In-Play Opportunities

I remarked in one of my earlier updates that there could be in-play opportunities, with the early vote favouring Trump before the mail-in votes which would favour Biden were tallied. I tweeted on the day of the election that I expected Biden would hit over 2.0 in-running.

Well that’s just how it turned out but I was amazed by how wild the swings were. Biden actually hit over 4.5 in-running at one point as the early vote favoured Trump. A shrewd trader (with strong nerves) could have profited very well from this as there was always a high chance things would swing back in Biden’s favour later. Certainly Nate Silver was never persuaded the early results were that good for Trump, even after he won Florida and North Carolina. If you ignore all the noise and follow those in the know it can really pay off in these events. 

Final Thoughts

Other than that it is too soon to unpick the election without more data – and all the votes being counted of course. Why did Trump outperform the polls so much again? Why did Biden outperform downballot Democrats? Why were the polls quite accurate in some places but way, way off in others? It gives serious food for thought as this election did not go the way most pundits were expecting and there is much to be learned going forward once we have more info and the dust has settled.

Until then though, hopefully like me you had some winners and can enjoy those successes for a little while. 

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US Presidential Election Betting – 10 Days to Go

2nd November 2020

Here we are folks…just one day until the US Presidential Election. Finally all the talk, punditry and speculation will be over and we’ll have some results at last. And I can stop obsessing about the polls for the first time in months… 

I’ve covered the betting quite extensively below in previous updates so this is just a final check-in with any notable trends or changes with one day to go. 

Nevada – Good News for the Dems

I remarked last time that if we were in for a shock we might see signs of it in Nevada. Trump has been polling better with Latinos this time and Nevada has quite a large Latino population.

Well the signs aren’t good for Trump. Elections expert Jon Ralston has an excellent record of following the early vote in Nevada and I’ve seen him call a number of previous elections there pretty much spot on. Here is what he says about the early vote in Nevada:

“It already was very difficult for Trump. Now he has less of a chance to win than he does of getting a gaming license in Nevada.”

Early voting blog is updated.

With Clark Dem firewall approaching unprecedented 90K voters after overnight update, Trump's path in NV leads off a mail ballot cliff.

The dice are cast, and they look like snake eyes for the GOP.

Brief post, more later:https://t.co/QaEyq6FUeb pic.twitter.com/XyEaQnGr2g

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) November 1, 2020

His blog is quite technical for the non-expert but essentially he looks at the early vote by party registration and extrapolates from there based on various scenarios. He believes whichever way you crunch the numbers Trump’s chances of winning Nevada are extremely low. 

So I would recommend cashing out of the Nevada bet on Trump recommended last time (a lay of the Democrats at 1.28). Fortunately the odds have only moved down from 1.28 to 1.23 so it would only be a very small loss there.

Bigger Picture

The bigger picture is that if you plug a Democratic win in Nevada into the models, Biden goes from a 90% chance of winning the election in Fivethirtyeight’s model to a 95% chance and from a 95% to a 98% chance in the Economist’s model. 

Even without that bump the odds are still completely out of whack with the polls and models. Biden is remarkably still available at 1.52 whilst the models suggest he should be around 1.10 right now. Bear in mind Barack Obama, who had a smaller polling lead going into election day in 2008 than Biden does now, was a 1.10 shot at this stage twelve years ago.

Over 90 million Americans have already voted and over 100 million are likely to have voted before Election Day tomorrow. That is likely to be around 66% of the total vote, pretty much around what I expected – i.e. more than 60% of people voting early. It also means pollsters are able to count people who have already voted, making their polls more accurate.

Biden’s national polling lead is currently 8.5 points, which is well ahead of where Hillary Clinton was at this point in 2016 (just 3.2 points). 

The bottom line is that the only way Trump can win is if the polls are all completely and utterly wrong in a way they never have been before. The votes actually cast in Nevada give me additional confidence this will not be the case. So I would still recommend Biden as fantastic value at 1.52. 

Additionally the trends look strong for Joe Biden in Georgia, where he now leads by a point in the polling averages and has been campaigning recently, yet is available at 2.36.

I am also following Texas closely, where something quite remarkable is happening. More people have already voted in the Lone Star State than voted in the entire 2016 election, meaning turnout there is through the roof and like nothing that has been seen before in Texas.  Trump does lead the polling averages there by a point so is rightly favourite, but with sky-high turnout leading to added uncertainty, there is a chance of an upset in Texas so I am happy to lay the Republicans at 1.38 and at least give myself a good potential trading position if it looks close on Election night and the odds move towards evens. 

That’s all for now but will be back with any additional value I see over the next day and into Election Night. 

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US Presidential Election Betting – 10 Days to Go

24th October 2020

It’s now just 10 days until the US Presidential Election…and things are hotting up…but to be honest not much has actually changed.

In our last update a week ago we remarked on what great value we thought Biden was in the main Next President market at 1.58 – only for his odds to then drift out all the way to 1.7 over the next couple of days! 

We couldn’t really see any substantive reason for the drift, but it did seem to coincide with the “news” of Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine. The chances this will actually influence the election seem slim – if people were going to place importance on this then they would also question all of Trump and his family’s dodgy business dealings over the last few years. In reality people don’t care about these so-called “scandals” and are much more interested in the coronavirus, the economy and healthcare. It did seem enough for Trump supporters to pile into the market at that point though. 

It was another good opportunity to back Biden in my opinion and that’s what I did. His odds have now fallen back down to 1.5 so that seems like a good choice. 

Since last weekend we have had the final Presidential debate, which was seemingly Trump’s last chance to really change the direction of the race and land some punches on Biden. However, that didn’t really seem to happen, with independent polls concluding Biden had won the final debate. The margins of those polls were roughly the same as his overall lead over Trump though so perhaps they just reflected people’s general preferences. 

In any event, with nothing dramatic happening either in the debate or over the last week it favours Biden given his lead in the polls. As we said before, Trump badly needs something to shake up the race and just isn’t getting it, yet anyway.

The other problem for him as we remarked before is that votes are piling up – over 53 million of them so far in fact – whilst Biden has this big lead, which isn’t good news for the current President either. 

So in summary the closer we get to election day without some big move towards Trump, the more likely it is that Biden will win. 

Hence whilst Biden’s overall lead according to Fivethirtyeight.com has narrowed slightly from 10.5 last week to 9.2 at the time of writing, his chances of winning remain the same at 87% with Fivethirtyeight and 91% at the Economist. 

So whilst the odds have reduced a little from last week they still look like very good value at 1.50. 

Other Markets

There is some good value to be had in other markets as well, particularly when looking at the betting on individual states. 

Some people have remarked that state polls last time showed Hillary Clinton winning and that they could be off again this time. That is of course possible, although last time the state polls were primarily carried out by notoriously poor quality pollsters where as this time you have high quality pollsters doing state polls (e.g. NYT/Siena, ABC/Washington Post, Monmouth, all A+ rated and Survey USA, Suffolk University etc, A rated). These pollsters could all be off as well, but the chances this time are a good deal lower. Indeed pollsters such as NYT/Siena were very accurate with their state and district level polling in the mid-terms of 2018. 

So moving on to state level races, there have been a series of good polls from high quality pollsters recently for Joe Biden in Iowa, so much so that he now leads in the Fivethirtyeight polling average there. Yet the Republicans are still odds-on in this market. Unfortunately as with quite a few of these markets on Betfair, the liquidity isn’t great and there is quite a large spread in the odds. But if you can get anything around 1.7 to lay the Republicans to win Iowa it looks value. I have layed from 1.4-1.67 and feel those are decent odds. 

Similarly Florida has seen numerous, consistent polling leads for Biden lately and he heads the polling average by 3.1, as well as being rated a 74% chance to win the state by the Economist’s model. Yet the odds have him as pretty much even money or slightly odds-against, which again looks value. The Sunshine State has been trending Republican in recent elections which in theory makes it a heavy lift for Biden, but there are signs of a “senior revolt” in Florida from older residents angry about Trump’s handling of covid. I have backed from around 1.9 and would be happy with the current price around 2.04.

Michigan was identified last time as a rock solid 1.4 chance for Biden and I would add Wisconsin to that at 1.42. These are states with high quality polling showing a lead of 7+ points for the challenger, outside the margin of error and both of these mid-west states have good demographics for Biden compared to Hillary Clinton last time – i.e. white working class voters who are more favourable to Biden than they were for Clinton. 

Dutching Biden’s vote percentage at between 49-51.99 and 52-54.99 also looks good at 4.4 and 2.94. 

A couple of hedges you may wish to consider with so many bets on Biden are Trump to get 70 million or more votes at around 3.0-3.2 in the popular vote tally . This is looking like being a super high turnout election, probably record turnout in fact of 150m plus voters. If Trump does pull off a shock it could be in getting a lot of extra voters to the polls on election day and breaking through this mark. Let’s say turnout is 152m, then Trump would need just over 46% of the vote to get this mark. There is also a chance you could win both this bet and the Biden to be elected the next president, if Biden was to win say 54-46.

The other potential hedge would be the Republicans to win Nevada (i.e. by laying the Democrats at 1.28). One of the few positives for Trump is his improvement in polling with Hispanic voters so if that translates into actual gains, coupled with a polling error you would probably see Trump win Nevada. Keep an eye on Jon Ralston’s blog there on the early voting though which is one of the very few reputable and accurate pictures of how a state race is going based on early voting. 

So that’s this week’s update. There may be a few surprises yet so we will update this post with any other opportunities that crop up between now and the election – and on election night itself.

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An Updated Look at the US Presidential Election Betting

17th October 2020

A couple of months ago we put together our own look at the betting on the US Presidential Election (see below) and now that it’s just over a couple of weeks until the election, we thought we would take another look at the markets.

First up we hope you took our tip on Kamala Harris to be Joe Biden’s Vice Presidential pick at 1.92 as that bet has already won. 

Next President Market

Moving onto the main market of the Next President, it is looking like being the most gambled-on market in Betfair history, with over £137m already having been matched. 

Back in our August preview we remarked on what great value we felt Joe Biden was at 1.64 to win. Two months on and quite incredibly, despite the polls moving more in his favour and a series of missteps from Donald Trump, Biden is still available at 1.58 at the time of the writing. 

Frankly we find these odds almost unfathomable and cannot believe the value on offer. Let’s have a look at the various forecasters’ average national lead for Biden, at the time of our August preview and then today:-

As you can see, the average lead for Biden has grown since August. If you look at the forecasts of Biden’s chances of winning, they have also grown:

So again, a strong 7% move in Biden’s favour in terms of his chances of winning, which now average 91% amongst the forecasters. On that basis, Biden’s odds should be around 1.1, not 1.58.

Finally, looking at the swing state polling from Fivethirtyeight.com compared to August you have:

Biden is now further ahead in the swing states than he was in August and importantly he is well clear in the three key Mid-West states of Michigan (+7.8), Pennsylvania (+6.8) and Wisconsin (+7.7). Win those plus the states carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden would be elected President. He wouldn’t even need any other states, but a number of the other swing states are also looking good for him including Arizona, Florida and North Carolina.

Crucially now there is a lot less time until the election for things to change and polls become much more predictive the closer you get to election day. 

We mentioned last time that the other advantage for Biden is that due to the coronavirus pandemic a lot of people were likely to vote early to avoid standing in long lines on Election Day. Well that is exactly what is happening, with a staggering 25 million people having already voted with still over two weeks until Election Day.

Map of early voting from the US Elections Project

So far the Democrats have a big advantage in terms of who has voted already according to party registration data, although in reality we shouldn’t read too much into that. What is more important is that forecasters predict over 60% of people are likely to vote before November 3rd, meaning Joe Biden’s 9-10 point advantage could already be baked in before the day of the election, giving Trump a mountain to climb on the day itself. Having more of your supporters vote early also allows the party to allocate resources more accurately in their get-out-the-vote efforts on election day itself.  

Back in August we said that this election was all about the coronavirus pandemic and whilst a few other issues have popped up in the intervening period, essentially that still remains the case. It is the number one issue for most voters in polls and Trump’s bungled handling of it has greatly hindered his chances, particularly with seniors (those aged over 65). Whilst Republicans have tended to win this group by around 10 points over the last few elections, polling points to Biden being at least tied, if not ahead with seniors this time. Given that voters under 40 overwhelmingly vote Democrat and are looking like voting by a 2-1 margin for Biden this time, losing seniors all but dooms Trump’s hopes in this election. 

We also said last time that other than a coronavirus vaccine being found before the election we couldn’t see how Trump could win reelection and we suspect even that wouldn’t be enough to save him now, as the impact both economically and politically would take time to be felt by the electorate and there is just so little time left now.

So barring some other earth-shattering event or monumental scandal involving Biden, it really does get tough to see how Trump could move the needle enough to be competitive again. 

As we say, the odds for Biden should be around 1.1 right now rather than 1.58, so this represents exceptional value. We really can’t understand why the odds are so high. Clearly there has been a reaction to 2016 and people are scared it could happen all over again. But this is not 2016. Biden is well ahead of where Hillary Clinton was at this point, he has much better favourability ratings than she had, is consistently polling above 50% which Hillary Clinton very rarely did and there are far fewer undecided voters this time. 

The only question left is whether the polls could be wrong. People point to the polls being wrong in 2016, but in fact the national polls were only one point off the actual final result according to the Real Clear Politics Average going into Election Day. On most occasions polling averages are only 1-2 points off, so we would have to be talking about something unprecedented and frankly crazy for the polls to be off by like 7-8 points to give Trump a chance. 

The 2016 polling average from Real Clear Politics was only 1 point off the actual result.

There are some (perhaps justified) fears that Trump will not concede the election and will claim (without evidence) that there has been massive “voter fraud” over mail-in voting. However, if he loses by anything like as much as current polling suggests, that line just won’t be sustainable and we can’t see how Biden won’t be declared President and installed in the White House, even if they have to literally drag Trump out – which ultimately we don’t think he will want the humiliation of. 

The odds on Biden may be so high primarily because of Trump supporters piling into the betting markets in the vain hope that another huge upset occurs.

Barring some earth-shattering event occurring (e.g. WW3) however, we just can’t see it happening and think there is great value to be had in a number of markets right now. 

Recommended Bets:

Back Biden to be elected the Next President at 1.58 – 10 points (or 15 points if not backed already at 1.64)

Back Biden with Electoral College handicap of -48.5 at 1.74 – 3 points

Hedge Biden Electoral College Votes of 330-359 at 5.8 & 360-389 at 8.0 – 1 point each

Back Biden to win Arizona at 1.7 – 1.5 points 

Back Biden to win Florida at 1.85 – 1.5 points

Back Biden to win Michigan at 1.4 – 5 points

Senate Majority Market

We remarked back in August on the favourable odds of a Democratic majority in the Senate, but unfortunately we didn’t notice Betfair’s absolutely ludicrous rules for this market. For some ridiculous reason we cannot fathom, they have decided to make the rules so that Democrats’ total won’t include Senators Bernie Sanders and Angus King Jr, who are officially “independent” but for every practical purpose are Democrats – they caucus with the Democrats, vote with the Democrats, raise money for and from the Democrats – hell, Bernie Sanders even ran to be the Democrats’ candidate for President, twice! 

Lord knows what has possessed Betfair to do this. It has completely screwed up this market and I can see an endless series of complaints and anger from Betfair customers who may not have realised. Completely and utterly ridiculous. 

Anyway, the good news is that if you did hedge the Democrat Majority/No Majority following our advice last time you can still trade it out for a small profit and that is what we recommend you do. Essentially to back a “Democratic Majority” on that market you are now betting that they get 53 seats or more. That looks a bit of a stretch to us and it’s tough to call if they will get there – we think 50-52 is the likely mark, barring any big upsets on election night. 

Strangely very few bookies have priced up this market either and given the vagaries of it you may be best leaving it alone. 

If you want a bet, check the bookies’ terms and conditions first as to how they will count the two “independent” senators who caucus with the Democrats. 

Recommended bets:

No bets – cash out of Betfair market (for small profit) if you hedged the Dem majority/no majority recommended previously.

Senate Races:

The betting in individual Senate races is more straightforward thankfully, and the Democrats are poised to pick up some key seats. We like their chances in Maine, Iowa, North Carolina and Arizona. 

Plus there are some interesting “long shot” bets worth considering, in South Carolina (current odds 2.75 in a race that is essentially tied) and Alaska (the Independent is 3.0 in a close race). We wouldn’t have those as official bets but in the scenario of a Biden landslide (v much possible) these could be in play.

Recommended Bets

Democrats to win Maine at 1.33 – 5 point bet

Democrats to win Iowa at 1.73 – 2 point bet

Democrats to win North Carolina at 1.57 – 4 point bet

(Previously recommended Montana and North Carolina for the Dems – do not back again if you already backed them. Montana could be worth a small interest for the Dems at 2.25 if you haven’t backed it already). 

House Betting

The Democrat price of 1.13 still represents value if you wanted to back at those odds, but sadly there is not enough liquidity in any other markets to make it worthwhile betting in them.

In-Play Opportunities

There may also be some in-play opportunities on election night itself. Basically there is a chance that the early returns will favour Trump, as it will take states longer to count the mail-in votes that will heavily favour Democrats. So it may look like Trump is winning early on, causing the odds to move in his direction and representing a good trading opportunity.

However, the potential snag in this theory is that Florida will be one of the first to report results and they count their mail-in votes as they come in. If Biden wins Florida then the race is all over – Trump cannot win the election without Florida. So the result may become clear early in the night.

Anyway, it will be something to keep an eye on. If the early returns favour Trump there could be a trading opportunity, as long as Biden isn’t clearly ahead in Florida.

Final Thoughts

Biden is fantastic value currently and we are keen to find some more bets on markets backing to him to win in a landslide, which we believe is very much on the cards. We will keep a look out for any value that pops up and may post some more bets before election day.

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An Early Look at the US Presidential Election Betting

6th August 2020

It is now less than three moths until the US Presidential Election when Donald Trump faces off against Joe Biden. It is sure to be a hotly contested election and being held in the middle of a pandemic makes it unprecedented in modern times. 

We have done very well with our political betting predictions in the past so thought it would be a good time to take an early look at this year’s betting. 

We will preview a number of different markets in turn and see where the value lies. 

Next President Market

First up is the biggest market of all: who will win the Presidential Election. At the moment we think Joe Biden represents excellent value at 1.64 to win. 

Looking at the various forecasters’ models, you have Biden with average national leads of:

• – Fivethirtyeight: +7.6
• – Economist: +10.6
• – JHK Forecasts: +8.5
• – Real Clear Politics: +6.4
• – Leantossup: +12

So quite a wide spread of forecasts there but Biden’s national lead varies between six and twelve points, which would be a landslide either way. 

Of course the election isn’t decided by the national popular vote but instead at a state level via the Electoral College. Looking at the key swing states, according to Fivethirtyeight we have the following leads:

• – Arizona: Biden +3.5
• – Florida: Biden: +5.1
• – Georgia: Trump: +0.9
• – Iowa: Trump: +1.4
• – Michigan: Biden: +7.7
• – North Carolina: Biden +2.3
• – Ohio: Biden +0.2
• – Pennsylvania: Biden +6
• – Texas: Even
• – Wisconsin: Biden +7.4

It is a very positive picture for Biden, in particular that he has big leads in the three key Midwest states that he needs to win the election: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. What is even more encouraging is that his lead in those states is pretty similar to his national lead – suggesting that Trump may not have such a commanding Electoral College advantage in those areas as he had over Hillary Clinton last time. 

An alternative route to the White House for Biden would be to simply take Florida plus Michigan, which again he looks in a good position to do right now. 

In addition to the polling-based forecasts, history professor Allan Lichtman, who uses an entirely different model for forecasting elections and has correctly predicted every presidential election since 1980 (if you allow him an adjustment for the electoral college/popular vote divergence in 2000), also called the Election for Biden yesterday.

JHK Forecasts currently has Joe Biden with an 82.7% chance of winning the election.

So given Biden’s commanding lead in the both national and state-level polls and some forecasters giving him a 90%+ chance of winning, why the odds of 1.64? 

Well there’s a simple answer to that question: 2016. 

Yes, pollsters, forecasters, pundits and especially gamblers are still haunted by the ghost of 2016 when everyone (well, almost everyone) predicted a thumping Hillary Clinton win. Remember those NY Times models showing her with a 95% chance of winning? 

It is worth pointing out however that most pollsters have adjusted their modelling to give more weight to voters’ education, which they failed to do in 2016. In simple terms voters with low levels of education voted more strongly for Trump in 2016 than expected and this accounted for a large degree of pollsters’ error last time. This has supposedly been adjusted for this time.

The other factor of course is that there are still nearly three months until election day and a lot could happen between now and then. This is true, although short of a vaccine being found for coronavirus or some other earth-shattering event, we find it difficult to see how things could turn around dramatically enough for Trump to emerge victorious.

The covid crisis is only getting worse in the US, particularly in many of the key swing states where the election will be decided. Even if these states went into complete lockdown, it would take up to three months for the virus to be contained, as we have seen in Europe. However, it doesn’t appear these states are going into full lockdown so it is likely that covid cases and sadly deaths will continue to be high, which is bad news for Trump who surveys show is perceived to have handled the crisis poorly. The consequent economic damage of the ongoing pandemic will also hamper his chances of reelection. As we say, it seems only a vaccine being found could conceivably change the mood enough and create economic optimism to the extent that Trump would be back in with a chance. 

Even worse for Trump however is that a number of the key swing states have early voting. This means people can vote up to five weeks before election day, either in person or by mail. Surveys suggest over 60% of people are intending to vote early, meaning Trump has even less time to turn things around – less than two months now until early voting starts in some states. 

On the flip side, one small note of optimism for Trump is that polls have started to show a small improvement for him over the last couple of weeks, so it could be worth watching if that continues.

Without a dramatic move in his favour though we can only see one result at the moment and that makes the 1.64 on Joe Biden look very good value right now. If his polling leads are anything like this going into October/November then the odds are likely to be in the 1.2 to 1.3 range.

Recommended Bet: Joe Biden @ 1.64 (Betfair exchange)

Vice Presidential Pick

Biden will pick his candidate for Vice President soon and it looks likely it will be Kamala Harris. Biden has already said he will pick a woman and more recently said he would like to choose a woman of colour. 

The field has narrowed down to a shortlist of three or four and the frontrunners in the market are Harris and Susan Rice. It seems unlikely Biden would pick someone for Vice President who hasn’t been elected before so that casts doubt on Rice and leaves Harris as the clear and obvious choice. The only question mark against her is that she launched scathing attacks on Biden during the Democratic Primary TV debates, which caused some bad blood between them. 

Senator Kamala Harris is the favourite to be Joe Biden’s running mate in November.

Short of other credible candidates though who would be “ready for the job on day one” as Biden has put it, he may be forced to overlook their previous tensions and go for the safe pick of Harris for his running mate.

Recommended Bet: Kamala Harris to be Biden’s pick for VP at 1.92

Senate Markets

The race for Senate is very interesting this year as it is so delicately poised. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 advantage in the Senate but are playing defence this time.

Of they key races, we currently see the following contests as likely Democrat pick-ups:

• – Colorado
• – Arizona

  Then the Republicans are likely to pick up:

• – Alabama

There are then the following races that look pretty good for Democrats, what we would rate as “Lean Democrat”:

• – North Carolina
• – Maine

So if those races go as we expect it leaves the race tied 50-50.

However, there are a number of toss-up races that could go either way, including:

• – Georgia
• – Montana
• – Iowa

Kansas would have been on this list too if Kris Kobach was the Republican candidate but he lost his primary race earlier this week which means the seat is likely to remain in Republican hands. 

So essentially as we see it at the moment Democrats need at least one of these toss-up races to win a majority in the Senate. How it goes will likely depend on how the Presidential race turns out. Should Biden win by five points or more nationally then Democrats will almost certainly win back the Senate, as voters increasingly vote “down ballot” (voting for the same party in all races in their state, from President on down) these days.  

The race for control of the US Senate is likely to be a closely-run contest.

If Biden wins by around 2-3 points, then the race for the Senate will become incredibly tight and we expect it may end up 50/50. Anything less than that though and the Republicans would be expected to hang on to the Senate. 

At the moment the odds on Democrats winning the Senate look very appealing at around 3.0, although it might be prudent to also hedge on No majority at around 2.4.  You may also want to wait to see how polls are shaping up a little closer to the election.  

In terms of individual races, we like the following ones currently:-

• – North Carolina – Democrats 4/7 (Betfred, Betway)
• – Montana – Democrats 8/11 (Betfred)

As we say with overall Senate control though, it may be best to wait a little while to see how the national Presidential polls are shaping up because they will have a significant bearing on Senate races. 

House Markets

In terms of the House of Representatives, the current odds of 1.14 for the Democrats look about right. There aren’t enough odds on individual races at the moment so we will have to wait until nearer the time for that. 

Conclusion

So there are our early picks for the upcoming US elections. Unless something dramatic happens like a vaccine for coronavirus being found before 3rd November, it looks like Donald Trump is heading for defeat – and quite possibly a heavy defeat. The markets are still scarred by what happened in 2016 however so there is value to be found in backing Biden and the Democrats to do well in November. 

Loves Racing is a service we reviewed last year and it came through our trial with flying colours, notching up 65 points profit from its main tips plus 19 points profit from its festival tips, making a total of 84 points profit for our review. 

We have carried on following the service since our review ended and it has continued to go from strength to strength. 

Loves Racing is a portfolio of betting selections, with four strategies employed. The results for those four strategies this year are as follows:-

• – The main service is 78 points up so far this year, or +£3,903 to £50 stakes.
• – The systems selections are 154 points up this year, or +£7,720 to £50 stakes
• – The Festival selections are 97 points up this year , or +£4,840 to £50 stakes
• – And the FREE Horses to Follow are 86 points up to Betfair SP this year, or +£4,281 to £50 stakes, at over 30% ROI.

That’s a total of +415 points so far this year, which is +£20,744 to £50 stakes, or +£4,150 to more modest £10 stakes.

So some fantastic results there and some of the best we have seen from a horse racing tipster in 2020. 

The really great news is they currently have a special offer to get your first month for just £10, which when you consider the results looks like great value to us (offer expires 31st October 2020). 

If you’d like to try Loves Racing for just £10 use the coupon code HBRTEN when you sign up.

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