When you think of a dream list of professional gamblers, especially horse racing gamblers, you have to include one of the very best of them all: Barney Curley.

Early Days

Bernard Joseph Curley, known more familiarly as Barney Curley, was born in County Fermanagh, Ireland, in 1939. After finishing his boarding school education, and working in a factory to pay off his family’s debts (his father was an unlucky dog race gambler), Barney trained as a priest.

He gave up studying for the priesthood after four years and went through several jobs trying to find his niche. He was a bookie, a band manager, a pub manager, and a smuggler (he smuggled razor blades and tyres into the Irish Republic). He finally settled on professional gambling when he was in his 30’s. Horse race gambling has never been the same since.

One of Curley’s first successes took place at a small race course in Cork. He hired 40 “putters-on”, at a cost of £4,000, to place small bets on a horse named Little Tim in which he owned a share. The scheme was a success and Curley won £40,000. Not bad for his first attempt using this scheme.

Yellow Sam and the Single Phone Line

Curley was 36 years old when he made his first big coup betting on a horse named Yellow Sam. He entered Yellow Sam in a hurdle race for amateurs in one of Ireland’s oldest race courses at Bellewstown. It was a calculated risk because Curley knew the horse. He also knew Yellow Sam was capable of winning a race with a firm course, a good jockey, and not so good competition. This time, Curley set his putters-on to placing bets in 300 bookie shops.

One of the critical steps was an associate he hired to block the telephone box which was the only method of communication between the betting shops and the race course bookies. The scheme cost him £15,300 and he won more than £300,000. That was in 1975. Today, those winnings would be worth £2.5 million! Of his win, Curley said “…[Some say] ‘Oh, you can’t beat the bookies.’ Mostly that’s true. But I proved that you can”.

Today’s modern communication technology would prevent Curley’s scheme from achieving success. But Curley was not through designing tricks to beat the bookies. A young man named Martin Parsons determined that the betting shops do not watch out for multiple bets by a punter who bets on the winner of more than one race. With this information, Curley planned his next coup.

The Coup to End All Coups

By now, Curley based his activities in Newmarket where he had about 50 horses he was training. For his new scheme, Curley had to match four horses to four races in one day in which they had good odds of winning. He had to carry out his plans in complete secrecy because the bookies were on the look-out for any bets having to do with horses from his stable.

He worked with a man named Jack Lynch to hire 30 putters-on. This time, they used foldable bikes and mobile phones (untraceable of course) to place bets in as many betting shops as they could on that one day. It was a huge undertaking that required the putters-on to look nonchalant and disinterested in each betting shop so they would not arouse unwanted attention.

When Curley made the final selections, it was the horses Agapanthus at Brighton; Savaronola and Sommersturm, each running in successive races at Wolverhampton; and Jeu De Roseau at Towcester. Only Savaronola had ever won a race in Britain and he came up lame two days before the race. But Curley went ahead with his plan anyway.

Curley’s putters-on this time laid down bets totaling £100,000 on various multiples and in small amounts to avoid detection. They made treble bets on three of the four horses, in different combinations. They also placed bets known as Yankees, a multiple bet on four horses which require at least two horses to win in order for Curley to win any money at all.

Sommerstorm was the only horse to lose, coming in sixth place. Just the same, Curley’s scheme netted him £3.9 million. If Sommerstorm had won, the payout would have been £15 million.

Retirement – sort of…

Barney retired from training in 2013. He said at that time that no organized gambling coup would take place for the rest of the century. Good thing no one bet on his prediction because on January 22, 2014, Curley organized another coup that cost bookies £2 million.

 

It may not be possible for the average punter to match the feats of the legendary Barney Curley, but you can get one over on the bookies and take £500 per month off them risk-free using Profit Accumulator. Grab it whilst you can! 

 

Bet Angel is a trading tool for trading markets on Betfair and here we take a look at some of its features and how it may help you.

What is Bet Angel?

Bet Angel claims to be the first piece of software that brought a whole range of features from the stockmarket to the Betfair markets. This included tools such as technical indicators, fill or kill orders, charting, ladders, trading via multiple screens and many other key aspects.

It apparently now accounts for over a billion pounds worth of bets traded, so makes up a significant portion of the market on Betfair. If you are a trader, having a piece of software like Bet Angel is pretty much obligatory.

Is it any good?

Bet Angel is a great tool for trading the markets on Betfair and has all the tools you could possibly need. If you are thinking of becoming a trader, then you will be at a significant disadvantage if you don’t have software like this. 

In fact, we would say it is almost impossible to be successful without something like Bet Angel.

Overall Rating:

 

Bet Angel Features

Here are some of the main features that come with the Bet Angel software:

 

Guardian Watch List

Nothing to do with the Guardian newspaper or website, this is in fact a means to view a number of different markets at one time. Just select the markets you want and they will form a list on your screen like the picture below. 

Useful if you want to be able to see a number of different markets without having to switch between tabs on your browser all the time.

 

Automation

These days concepts such as “bots” are fairly familiar to all users of betting exchanges and Bet Angel allows you to automate your bets in a bot-like fashion. 

For example you can set up the software to back every favourite if their odds are above a certain level, automatically “lay the draw” and then trade out at half-time, or set it up to any number of things you choose.

So you can usefully do all manner of other things whilst Bet Angel works for you in the background.

 

Soccer Mystic

One of the more interesting tools on Bet Angel is Soccer Mystic. This is nothing to do with Mystic Meg (whatever happened to her?) but is actually a tool for finding out what will happen in a particular soccer market if a certain event happens in a game.

So for example you may want to know what would happen to the draw price if the home side scored first, or what would happen to the underdog’s price if they went behind after 20 minutes.

Soccer Mystic uses data from thousands of past matches to calculate all this and tell what should happen to the prices at any time during a match.

Of course, you cannot always be sure the market will react in the exact way that Bet Angel predicts – sometimes one team may be dominating and the market won’t react as much as predicted to them going a goal behind.

But all things considered it gives you a very useful guide to what can happen to the markets during a match.

 

Tennis Trader

 

Very similar to Soccer Mystic but for the tennis markets is Tennis Trader. The tennis markets are some of the most highly traded markets in the world and there is usually excellent liquidity on any major men’s or women’s match.

So in the same way as with Soccer Mystic, you can see what should happen to the odds if a certain event happens in a match. You can see what will happen if the underdog wins the first set for example, or if the underdog breaks serve early on.

The same proviso goes with Soccer Mystic in that markets are inherently unpredictable and sometimes odds will move quite a bit differently to how you would expect, but this gives you the best estimate based on masses of past data on how they should move, allowing you to plan your trading.

 

Charting

Those familiar with technical analysis on the stock market will know all the terms like MACD, SAR, relative strength and so on, which are provided as part of the Bet Angel package. Whether it can make you money is up to how you use the information of course!

 

How much does it cost?

There are a number of different packages available if you want to trade Bet Angel, from just 99p for 1 day’s use, to £29.99 for a month, £39.99 for two months, £59.99 for three months, £99.99 for six months and £149.99 for a year. 

Click here to sign up and try it out.

There is also a more limited free version you can try called Bet Angel Basic – see more below.

 

Bet Angel Basic – The Free Version

If you fancy getting a feel for what Bet Angel is all about before taking the plunge and paying for the main software, you can try out the free version, called Bet Angel Basic.

It features one-click betting, momentum trading updates and a greening up option that allows you to equalise your profit across all selections before a race has even started – if you are clever (or lucky) enough to have traded it that well of course!

 

 

Everyone who goes to the track has dreams of winning big. They want their horse to take first place and the odds be high enough that they walk away rich.

In the past, dreaming of a big win hasn’t been enough for some. These people have actively tried to skew the odds in their favour through a coup. Some coups are out and out illegal while others are legal even if they are on shaky moral ground.

Once uncovered, these coups quickly gain legendary status because people seem enthralled by these men who play such a high stakes game between right and wrong to win big. Here’s a famous betting coup that falls in the illegal category.

Gay Future, an Imposter Horse

This is the story about a horse called Gay Future and how it was the centre of a huge betting sting in the 1970s. 

The Players

Tony Murphy was an Irish millionaire who made his money from construction. He worked closely with Antony Collins who trained the horse in question, called Gay Future. Tony Murphy was considered the leader of the group that numbered five people and later came to be called the Cork Syndicate or the Cork Mafia.

Over the period of a year, Murphy carefully planned what should have been the perfect betting coup and might have been if not for some small mistakes. Gay Future was born and raised at the stables of Edward O’Grady.

Ahead of the Big Race

Over the course of a year, these two men had sent an inferior horse to races in Scotland to ensure Gay Future would appear to be a long shot. This helped to establish reviews of Gay Future as a poor performer and raise the odds of him winning.

Both horses were chestnut colored and shared similar marking. You have to remember that this was the 1970s, and there weren’t a lot of circulating photos of the horses. On race day at Cartmel, the odds of Gay Future winning were 10/1.

Race Day

On race day in August of 1974, these men used soap to make it appear that the horse was sweating up and keep betters uninterested in the horse. They bet on Gay Future as part of a double or triple ticket with Opera Cloak and Anderwyke who were later withdrawn from the race, making it a single bet as per the custom of the time.

Murphy had six friends circling throughout the United Kingdom, making small bets of around £5, £10 and £20. These were small enough not to arouse suspicion. Since all of the bets were made off site, the bookies that determined the odds – i.e. at the track – didn’t notice the flutter of activity around Gay Future.

Suspicions Aroused

The trainers claimed the reason for Opera Cloak and Anderwyke removal from the race was that their horse trailer had broken down on the side of the road. This was one of the first things to unravel when a reporter called the horses’ home stables to find that the horse had been at the stable all day long. The reporter’s curiosity had been roused when news of the big winnings for Gay Future turned out to be linked to bets with these two horses.

Viewers at the racetrack were shocked when Gay Future won the race by 15 lengths. His reviews in past races had made this seem almost impossible. Of course, the viewers didn’t know that they were watching a different horse race than the one who had been reviewed.

Initially, the coup worked and the men collected an equivalent of $3 million in today’s money although some bookies refused to pay out when they learned of the scam. Eventually, Murphy and Collins were brought up on charges of trying to defraud the betting establishments. Both men were fined and banned from racing in Britain for a period of 10 years – although some might say they were lucky they weren’t convicted of attempted fraud. Just goes to show the fine line between a clever legal betting coup and stepping over that line into the unlawful.

 

Fancy making £500 risk-free every month? Well check out our full review of Profit Accumulator to find out how. 

 

We take a look here at the Pro Betting Club, a website offering a variety of tipsters and betting systems that you can subscribe to.

They are a team of professional gambling experts who offer you the chance to benefit from their tips and make a tax-free second income. All their results are provided on the website for transparency and are recorded at Betfair SP with 5% commission included.

Their main services are as follows:

 

Win Form Pro

 

During our three month trial of Win Form Pro they amassed 56 points of profit at an amazing return on investment of 42%. It got a firm thumbs up from us and has performed well since our trial ended. 

Quite remarkably, Win Form Pro has only had three losing months since it started tipping three years ago. That has been achieved with an impressive strike rate of 40%.

The service is quite unusual in that it advises backing selections only if they are below 3 at Betfair SP. In order to make sure you only back the right selections, it is best to use a bot to automate things. The one recommended by the Pro Betting Club is Bet Engine but you can use a bot of your choice.

Win Form Pro has been a very consistent service and comes recommended from us.

 

Strand Each Way

 

The second of the Pro Betting Club’s services that we have reviewed, Stand Each Way is (unsurprisingly) a tipster that focuses on each way selections and has been tipping since the beginning of 2015 and in its first year made 191 points profit.

That has been achieved with a strike rate of 40% and 10 winning months out of 12. 

Strand Each Way uses a selective approach to coming up with its bets, using a set of filters to narrow down selections. Bets are provided via a log in to the website at around 1pm each day. All bets can simply be backed at Betfair SP and then forgotten about.

 

Galileo Racing

 

Galileo Racing is a professional racing tipster that provides selections which are a mix of value tips and short-priced horses. 

They averaged a 25% return on investment in their first year of tipping with a strike rate of 30% and 9 of their first 10 months were profitable. Between 1 and 4 tips are provided on average per day. 

We have not reviewed Galileo Racing yet but if their promising form continues, it may be one to consider for the future.

 

CK Rating

 

This is a backing service from the Pro Betting Club providing between 1 and 4 tips per day. They only started tipping in May 2015 but made over 200 points profit in that time. That was achieved with a strike rate of 40% and five winning months out of eight.

 

Target Tips

 

A straightforward horse racing advisory service, Target Tips began tipping in March 2015 and made sixty points profit in its first year, with six winning months out of ten and a strike rate of 41%. 

Selections are often favourites, so there is a good deal of liquidity in the markets and there shouldn’t be a problem getting bets matched. The average odds of selections is 3.49. 

 

Services Currently Full 

The Pro Betting Club also has services that are currently full in terms of membership so cannot be joined at this time. They include:

• Sequence Lays
• Premium Naps
• The Lay Analyst

It is reassuring to know that they have membership limits for successful services, as it means prices will be protected for members. Sometimes tipsters become oversubscribed and then become impractical to follow because prices are pushed in too much. That shouldn’t be the case here.

You may even find some of their tipsters on our best horse racing tipsters list, so don’t forget to check that out!

 

 

 

Today we take a look at Mike Cruickshank, the man behind some of the very best betting systems we have come across during our time operating Honest Betting Reviews.

In fact, the genius of Mike’s systems is that they are generally not “betting” systems as such, but systems for making money risk-free or with very low risk using a combination of the bookmakers and the exchanges such as Betfair.

Here we have a look at the man behind the method, the systems he has devised, their advantages and disadvantages and how you can learn from the man himself.

 

Who is Mike Cruickshank?

Mike was apparently working in a minimum wage job as a lad when he first became interested in betting. He started looking into free bets and discovered the concept of “matched betting” – the idea of using the bookies’ free bets to make money risk-free.

From there he slowly built things up, making a few hundred quid per month, which represented very handy extra income and inspired him to research risk-free systems further.

After a great deal of hard work, Mike developed a portfolio of systems that made considerably more cash than he was earning in his day job and allowed him to go full time as a “matched bettor”. From there he has never looked back.

And he graduated from using the systems himself to selling them to the public in very thoroughly-designed system packages.

Mike is renowned for first class customer service and has built a well-earned reputation as one of the top developers of betting products out there. Now we look at his products one-by-one.

 

MIKE’S PRODUCTS

 

1. Profit Maximiser

Profit Maximiser is the product of Mike’s we have given the highest rating to, giving it a full five stars. It is basically a fully-blown system for making the most of all forms of free bets and bonuses – from not only the bookies, but also online casinos, bingo sites and spread betting sites. The great thing about the product is that it allows you to make money not just from the introductory offers for opening new accounts with betting sites, but the ongoing offers as well.

So you can pocket a nice tidy sum of money from opening lots of new accounts, but then when that is done you can still make at least £200-£300 per month on an ongoing basis. You do have to take steps to ensure your bookie accounts remain open though – but the good news is Mike provides a full video explaining how to do that.

Over the course of our review Profit Maximiser made over £1,732 from the introductory offers and £737 from the ongoing offers. Not bad going for a payment of just £97!

 

2. Accumulator Generator

Accumulator Generator is the newest of Mike’s products and is based around the accumulator offers that a large number of bookies provide these days. Basically in these offers, if one leg of your accumulator goes wrong, the bookies will refund your stake as a free bet. So Mike has designed a simple method for making a risk-free profit from these accumulator offers.

He has created pretty amazing software that brings together all of these offers and allows you to select each offer you want to play with a respective bookie, then plan each leg of the accumulator, how much you need to stake and how much you will win.

As we point out in our review, you should make around £10 out of each offer, which is pretty decent as there are over 20 bookies with these acca offers so there are loads of offers to choose from.

This is another very good product from Mike Cruickshank and one we thoroughly recommend.

 

3. Bonus Bagging

Bonus Bagging was the original Mike Cruickshank product and is a kind of mini version of Profit Maximiser.

It does the same thing as Profit Maximiser in terms of making risk-free profit from the bookies’ offers, but focuses mainly on the introductory offers rather than the ongoing ones (although there are some ongoing offers included) and includes just the bookmakers rather than the casino and bingo sites.

The product made a nice £572 during our review from a payment of just £27 and is a welcome addition to any portfolio of betting products. The original “matched betting” product.

 

4. Each Way Sniper

Another of Mike’s products is Each Way Sniper, a tool that helps you identify value selections in the each-way market, so that you can back them with the bookies and lay on betfair for a guaranteed profit. 

It doesn’t produce selections every day and on days where there are selections, you are normally talking about just one or two races. 

But there can be some good opportunities to make money from these selections when they do crop up. This is a sound system for adding some extra cash to your kitty. 

Check out our review of Each Way Sniper here.

 

5. Bookie Blowout

Unique amongst Mike’s products is Bookie Blowout, in that it is the only one that doesn’t guarantee you profit. It is more of a trading system that identifies horses that are likely to steam (reduce in price) from the evening before racing to the morning of racing.

There are a large number of selections each day and you have to be at your PC in the evening to get the bets on quickly because the prices disappear fast in many cases. 

It has shown remarkable consistency during our trial however and is pretty accurate in predicting which horses will be steamers.

 

6. Arbitrage Software

Mike also has arbitrage software that you can purchase for identifying arbitrage opportunities. As is well known with arbing however, the bookies also have systems for monitoring arbing and there is a major risk of account closures or limitations if you follow this route.

 

Are there any disadvantages to using Mike’s systems?

The only thing you have to be aware of when using Mike’s systems is that the bookies may limit your accounts if you are just using free bets and bonuses and not placing any other bets.

There are steps to avoid this however, so if you are careful and place a good number of “mug bets” then it is possible to keep your accounts open. There are full instructions for how to do this in a video Mike has made for Profit Maximiser.

Equally if you are using Each Way Sniper and Bookie Blowout, the bookies may well become aware that you are exploiting the best odds to create profits, so it best to spread your bets around and don’t overdo it.

As long as you are careful though, you can make a very nice steady second income from Mike’s products and we are happy to say these are some of the best betting products on the market. They are some of the few products we can say that actually work!

Good luck if you do have a go with any of Mike’s products and please let us know how you get on.