Welcome to the Honest Betting Reviews blog. Here you can find the latest updates on betting systems and tipsters currently under review as well as our tips on how to beat the bookies with the best winning betting systems we have profited from,

Jibber Jabber – Update

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Well we are sounding like a bit of a broken record at the moment, but yet another service has decided to put a halt to their tips. It seems quite a challenge just to get to the end of a three month review at the moment!

In this case it is potentially just for a break rather than jacking it in altogether, but on 4th January Jibber Jabber decided to call time on his tips for the time being.  

To give them credit, Jibber decided it wasn’t fair ethically to charge people for tips when he hit a losing run – although for our trial the tips were still actually ahead at advised prices, 11 points up in fact. 

For what’s it worth, you can view full results here.

He was also suffering health issues which were exacerbated by the strain of running the service, so all in all it sounds like the right decision to take a break. 

So we will place this review in abeyance for the time being and wish Jibber all the best with making a full recovery. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Jibber Jabber – Results Update

15th December 2018

It’s been a solid start to our trial of Jibber Jabber Racing, with a profit of 5 points made so far after one month. 

You can view full results here.

The Betfair SP results however are doing quite a bit worse, with a loss of 16 points made for our trial to date. 

This is an interesting service on a number of fronts: firstly, there are incredibly detailed write-ups that come with each tip – probably some of the most detailed we have seen from a tipster in fact. So you know they (should we be calling them Jibber?) are really putting in a lot of work and love their racing.

Secondly, the tips don’t just come in one e-mail for the day but normally two or three, often either late at night or very early in the morning, so watch out for that.

And thirdly a lot of the prices get smashed in (as you can see from the difference between the advised prices and BSP results), which is probably testament to the following they have amassed and finding value. 

Anyway, as we say a solid start to our trial and let’s hope they can kick on from here. 

 

 

 

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Jibber Jabber – New Review

13th November 2018

Well this one definitely wins the award for most interestingly-named tipster we have reviewed for a while.

Yes today we are starting a new trial of a horse racing tipster called “Jibber Jabber.” 

We honestly aren’t sure where the name comes from, but the tipster in question has amassed quite a following for himself.

Until very recently they operated on OLBG and were the number one horse racing tipster on the platform by quite some margin, racking up over 419 points profit over the last 12 months, with the next best making 242 points. 

Following the tips to advised prices would have increased your starting bank from £1,000 to over £45,000 (using progressive staking), which is quite a result to say the least.

As you can imagine with such an impressive record, Jibber Jabber has amassed a huge following on Twitter, with over 39,000 followers at the time of writing. 

A quick glance down his Twitter feed reveals tweets from all kinds of excitable punters celebrating their winnings from his tips. But then with the kind of returns he has delivered, why shouldn’t they really?

The stats on the results look very respectable too, with a solid strike rate of 20% and a return on investment of 22%. 

It is not surprising with results like these that have been verified on OLBG that demand for the service is very high and we expect membership places to fill up quickly. 

As ever though, we will be running our own trial first before delivering our verdict so stay tuned to see how they get on over the next few months. 

In the meantime you can check out Jibber Jabber here.  

 

 

 

 

 

horse jumps

How to Search for an Online Tipster with Credibility

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There is an increasing number of online tipsters providing selections on a daily basis and it’s impossible to follow every single one of their tips without breaking the bank. A number of these sites have sprung up on social media over the last decade with many of them posting so-called profit margins and winning sequences hourly and it is extremely tempting to jump on the bandwagon. With so many options at our fingertips, how do you start to narrow down the field and find a tipster who will genuinely help increase your betting balance?

 

 

Unfortunately, some tipsters cannot be trusted and are simply looking out for themselves and these sites will often be incredibly vocal on social media such as Twitter and Facebook. However, if you conduct thorough research and take a long-term approach to finding a tipster, you’ll soon realise that there are hundreds of good guys making regular profit across a number of different sports. 

Long Term Results 

Every tipster should log their results on a daily basis and if you can’t find evidence of a profit/loss sheet on their website then this should immediately ring alarm bells. Message the site directly and ask to see evidence of recent bets and they should be able to provide a comprehensive list of weekly totals. If they can’t produce this or they make constant excuses, it is advised to walk away. Also, ensure that their results have not been edited or amended to reflect favourably on the tipster. Keep a separate list of their daily selections and ensure that all of these are logged at the end of the day on their page. If not, they cannot be trusted. It is also a good idea to check if the results have been verified on an independent review or proofing site, much like this one!

 

 

Explanation and Context

Tips will come in many different forms. Some sites will simply send a list of horses or teams without any further explanation whilst others will produce detailed write-ups and analysis of their thought process. Of course, it’s down to personal preference but it’s always better to see some working out and allows followers to agree or disagree with their rationale. Experts who produce free daily horse racing tips for sites such as betting.betfair will always detail their working out and offer reasons for their pick and this is a tactic which should be deployed by all tipsters. If you’re serious about making a profit, you should be able to use your own initiative and decide whether to agree or disagree with a selection. If you find that the tipster has given very few details about the horse in question, this makes it incredibly difficult. 

Communication 

Finally, communication is absolutely key to running a successful tipping service on social media. If you have a query, it should be easy to get in touch and customers should expect to receive a helpful reply within a few hours. Some services will block users who question their tips or ask for a breakdown of recent profit margins and that is a very bad sign. Accounts should treat each of their clients with respect and should offer a transparent service and make it easy to follow each of their tips. If you receive a brush-off or no reply at all, they probably aren’t worth persisting with. 

Don’t fall into the trap of signing up for the first service that you stumble across. Every punter will have different needs and it’s imperative that you match the right tipster to your preferred way of betting. Take your time, speak to them directly and ensure that they have a solid set of recent results to back up their claims – ideally independently verified by a site like ours – and you will soon find yourself narrowing down the field and being able to sort the wheat from the chaff. 

 

 

 

 

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Members Choice Awards – Best Horse Racing Tipster 2018

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As we move towards the end of our awards season here at Honest Betting Reviews, it is time to honour the Best Horse Racing System/Tipster of 2018, as voted for by you. 

This is the perhaps the most competitive category of all, with the largest number of tipsters and betting systems to choose from. It is also the sport with the arguably the greatest number of professional gamblers and the tipsters with the best returns. 

So it was no surprise that the vote for the best horse racing service was hotly contested and very close, with so many strong contenders to choose from. Here is how the voting went down:

In third place was the excellent Quentin Franks Racing, a service that has amassed an incredible £12,000 profit to just £10 stakes at an ROI of 19% since starting up four years ago. It is no surprise to see Quentin on the list and to be honest we would have been shocked if he hadn’t made the list!

In second place is a betting system we reviewed some time ago and gave a passed rating to. It’s extremely popular and has won numerous other awards, so again we are not surprised to see it make the higher echelons of the voting.

Yes you may have guessed it, in second place was the betting system Little Acorns. It’s a very simple system that looks to churn out small but consistent monthly profits, building a betting bank over time and many people report great success from using it. 

So well done to Little Acorns on finishing second but now we move on to the service you voted the Best Horse Racing System/Tipster of 2018.

And the winner is…

…Bet Alchemist!

A big congratulations to Nicky Doyle and the whole team at Bet Alchemist on scooping the award. Here is what Nicky had to say when we informed him about the win:

“Great news to hear Bet Alchemist has been awarded Best Horse Racing Tipster of 2018!

“Honesty, Value and Educational advice are just some of the qualities we like to bring to the table while being 100% on the punters side of the fence. Thanks very much to everyone who voted for the Bet Alchemist service.”

It’s a richly deserved award for a service that has delivered just shy of 900 points profit for its members since 2010. We originally reviewed Bet Alchemist  back in 2016 and gave it a resounding passed rating and it is continued to perform strongly since then. 

The service specialises in National Hunt racing and has delivered 44 points, 58 points and 74 points profit in each of the last three NH seasons, which is very good going indeed. They regularly churn out winners at juicy prices of 16/1, 20/1 and higher for their members. 

And the great news is they are offering a special deal of just £10 for the first month of the service, which you can check out here.

So there you have it, well done again to the Bet Alchemist on winning Best Horse Racing Tipster of 2018 and thank you to all of you who voted. 

We’ll be back soon with the final two awards of the season. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Members’ Choice Awards – Best Sports System 2018

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Next up in our series of the HBR Members’ Choice Awards is the accolade of Best Sports System 2018. 

So far we have had the award of Best Football System which went to Goal Profits and Best Matched Betting Service which went to Profit Maximiser. 

Now it is the turn of those services that either focus on sports other than the “big two” of horse racing and football, or combine a range of sports into one service.

There are a wide selection of other sports tipped on including golf, tennis, cricket, NFL, darts and many of the other almost limitless other sports you can gamble on these days. So it is quite a wide playing field and this was a competitive category. 

It is often in these more niche services that you find the best value and some of the most successful tipsters, so we were intrigued to see how the voting would go in this category. 

Well it turned out that the cream rose to the top and some top quality services made it to the “medal positions.”

In third place was the very popular and successful Golf Betting Expert, a tipster who continues to deliver stellar returns for his members, averaging over £280 per month profit to just £10 stakes and over 30% ROI over the course of three years tipping. And not to mention he just bagged a 22/1 winner last week to get 2019 off to a great start too!

Then in second place we have Robert Fraser’s Tennis Tips, proving that tennis is a popular but often overlooked sport to bet on. Robert has returned over £2,500 profit to date at a respectable return on investment of 10% and no doubt members are gearing up for the 2019 season with the Australian Open just about to get underway. 

So now we move on to the winner of Best Sports System 2018. 

It is perhaps no surprise to long-term followers of Honest Betting Reviews that we had a runaway winner in this category, with the winner garnering nearly twice as many votes as the second place service. 

Yes, the resounding winner of the award was Sports Spread Betting!

Well done to Max who runs the service on the success and much warranted recognition of his hard work.

Since the service began in August 2017 Max has made just shy of 4,000 points profit, including over 2,000 points last year which is an outstanding return. 

It remains the only spread betting service we have reviewed but just shows that finding your own betting niche can be a very profitable approach. Max certainly seems to have done that with his own statistics database which he uses to identify value in the spread betting markets.

The service is reasonably priced too at just £25 (+VAT) per month, which is a snip considering what some tipsters charge for results nowhere near as good as Max’s. 

You can check out Sports Spread Betting here. 

So there you have it, the Best Sports System of 2018 as voted for by you, the members of Honest Betting Reviews.

We’ll be back soon with the next award shortly. 

 

 

 

 

 

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“Lay to Lose”/Minimum Bet Guarantee – What It Means For Punters

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One of punters’ biggest gripes at bookmakers over the years has been their predilection for closing or limiting the accounts of winning customers. 

This has led to many bettors feeling the whole game is rigged against them, as not only can bookies set the odds in their favour but they can also shut you down if you win. 

As a result there has been a backlash against the practice of closing or limiting accounts in recent years, led in part by groups such as the Horseracing Bettors Forum. 

Such efforts have led to a successful campaign in Australia for example for the implementation of MBL (Minimum Bet Limit) of between AU$1,000 and AU$2,000 per race, depending on the class of race. 

That means bookies have to accept bets with winnings up to those amounts, regardless of whether the punter has had their account restricted in the past.

This is great news for punters in Australia and we are starting to see a move in the same direction in the UK and Ireland, with a few bookies offering minimum bet guarantees (or “lay to lose” as it is also called) on horse racing.

Let’s take a look at which bookies have started to guarantee to lay bets on UK and Irish racing to win up to a certain amount.   

 

Minimum Bet Guarantees UK Bookmakers

 

Here is the current state of play:

Bet Victor – A very comprehensive bet guarantee offer, Bet Victor will accept bets to win up to £500 on all UK and Irish races, from 11am on the day of the race.

This applies to both win and each-way bets and is provided as a separate Guaranteed Bet market alongside the normal markets.

Betfair Sportsbook – Similarly to Bet Victor, Betfair Sportsbook will accept bets to win up to £500 on all UK and Irish races, from 10am on the day of the race.

This is win-only though and does not cover each-way bets. 

Skybet – This is a little more restrictive than the above two at the current time, with only class 1 and 2 races covered, but they will accept bets to win up to £500 from 10am onwards on the day of the race.

Coral/Ladbrokes – These two bookies currently only provide a minimum bet guarantee in their shops and not online. 

They will accept bets to win up to £5,000 per customer (from 9am) – to include all Channel 4 races and up to £2,000 per customer (from 11am) – to include all non-televised Class 4 and above handicaps, Listed and Group/Graded races in the UK.

William Hill – trialed allowing bets to win up to £5,000 in shops and £1,000 online for races shown on ITV only. Further news is awaited as to whether this will become permanent. 

[Please note all of the above are correct at the time of writing and subject to change. Please see the individual bookmakers for the terms and conditions of each offer]. 

 

Dawn of a New Age?

With a number of UK bookies now offering a minimum bet guarantee, it would appear to herald the dawn of a new age for the punter. Restricted accounts have been the bane of punters for years, ending the budding career of many successful and professional bettors and wrecking otherwise effective betting and trading strategies. 

However, whilst the minimum bet guarantee is a welcome development, a number of questions about it still remain. 

Firstly, it should be noted that with Bet Victor for example, sometimes the odds for the Bet Guarantee market are not as good as for the normal market. This does rather devalue the offer and we would hope that in time they will move to eliminate any difference and offer the same odds on the minimum bet market. 

Secondly, will the bookies allow punters to use the minimum bet guarantee to arb, match bet and do other low-risk forms of betting/trading? There appears to be some contradiction in this, as whilst they say they will accept all bets, the bookies also have T&Cs saying they have the right to ban anyone who is arbing.

So what will they do? The evidence from forums we have seen is that so far the bookies seem to be allowing arbing, but it remains to be seen if that will continue to be the case. 

Thirdly, will this expand to cover a wider timeframe? Much of the value in horse racing is in the evening before racing, but it is questionable whether bookies would be willing to offer a minimum bet guarantee for early prices. If they did it would be a very positive development for punters. 

And will other sports be offered too or will this just be restricted to horse racing? In Australia they have recently moved to expand the MBL to cover greyhound racing, which is encouraging. It would be great to see it expand to cover sports like football, tennis and golf too. 

Ultimately it will take some time to see how this all plays out and whether it will herald a new age for the punter, but the fact that a number of bookies and offering a “lay to lose”/minimum bet guarantee is very welcome news and hopefully is a sign of more to come. 

Tired of losing money betting? Check out this top quality horse racing tipster who has more than doubled the betting bank. 

 

 

 

 

footballer goal celebration

Members Choice Awards – Best Football System 2018

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During December we gave members of Honest Betting Reviews the chance to vote for their favourite betting systems of the year. 

The first winner was announced last week with Profit Maximiser capturing the title of Best Matched Betting Service by a wide margin. 

Now it is the turn of the Best Football System and this was a close run thing with a number of runners getting a high amount of votes.  

In a tie for third place were Football Advisor and Banker Bets, two popular long-running services which both gathered around 10% of the votes. 

In second place was the respected Chloe’s Football Focus, which racked up a very nice 83 points profit in 2018 and was well deserving of the runners-up spot. 

So which service grabbed the top spot?

Well the service in question has won quite a few other awards so it’s probably not too much of a surprise that it won our award for Best Football System too. 

Yes, the winner was the hugely popular football trading service Goal Profits!

A big congratulations to the whole team at Goal Profits then for scooping yet another award. 

And to celebrate the win, the great news is that they are offering a huge discount to join their service so you can get the first week for just £2.49! 

That’s great value for a service that’s so popular with hundreds of football traders. 

Here is what Steve Brown from Goal Profits had to say on receiving the award:

Thanks Dan and thank you to all of your members who voted for Goal Profits. This is fantastic news! We especially enjoy winning awards which are voted for, rather than randomly handed out. This is our third award win in 2018 alone and it spurs us on to create even better learning resources and trading tools for all of our members.

During the summer, we launched our Live Trading Module and it has been a massive hit! It tracks in-play stats, identifies which teams are actively trying to score, provides trade alerts and much more. We have plenty of new features planned for 2019 and work has already begun on the first of them.

Our 16-week ‘Launchpad’ football trading course was fully updated this year too. All members have full access to Launchpad from day one plus, of course, unlimited support by email, on the forum and in the live trading chat room. We’ve even brought a new team member whose job is to make sure that Goal Profits members receive any help they need as quickly as possible. We’re fully committed to helping as many members as possible reach their trading goals, whether it’s a full-time career or just a steady second income.

As always, there’s plenty to keep us busy as we constantly improve and innovate. Thank you again to everyone who voted and we look forward to trading with you soon!

So there you have it, well done to Steve and the team at Goal Profits for the win and we hope to take another look at the service ourselves over the coming months.

 

 

 

 

 

Men trading stocks

Tradescape – A Trading Revolution

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If we said there was a fully automatic horse trading system which selects the horses, places the bets and then lays them locking in the profit and has made over £800.00 per month without you lifting a finger, would it interest you?

Well there is something just like this and it’s called “TradeScape”

Using advanced proven mathematical algorithms TradeScape identifies steamers in the market, then using a unique Auto Bet Technology, places the bet at the bookie offering the highest odds, and at the right time lays on Betfair locking in pure profit.

It’s Trading but not as you know it.

The team behind the software have been developing TradeScape and the Auto Bet Technologies for over 18 months and the system is now in live testing mode.

Below are the results since going live based on £50.00 bets over 42 days making a total of 871 bets and a profit of £3,319.

If you would like to know more, they are holding a free webinar explaining what Tradescape is all about and how you can become a beta tester.

The webinar will be held on 3rd January 2019 at 19.30 GMT.

You can sign up for the free webinar here.

This is the first time we have seen software that can place bets automatically both at the bookies and betfair.

We think it heralds a revolution in trading and is a very exciting development.

So don’t miss out on finding out about Tradescape – places will be limited and on a first-come-first-served basis.

Sign up for the free webinar here.

 

 

 

Man celebrates betting win

Does Betfair Ban Winners?

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It is a frequent complaint from successful gamblers that their accounts at high street bookmakers frequently get closed down with the only explanation given that is it was a business decision.

Other bettors find that their accounts have been capped, with bets reduced to small amounts. Ultimately bookmakers are in the game to make a profit, and when they come across unprofitable accounts, they tend to close them down. The don’t like customers who bet to make a living; they very much prefer to deal with ordinary punters rather than the professionals.

But Betfair is very different from a high street bookmaker. It is so different that many professional gamblers shun high street bookmakers and instead concentrated on betting exchanges such as Betfair. Betfair does not restrict or exclude winning customers; doing so would be contrary to their business model.

When you bet at Betfair, you are not betting against a bookmaker; you are betting against other customers. The only income Betfair receives is the commission it charges on bets. These charges are based on net winnings; losing bets are not charged.

The basic Betfair commission is 5% of winnings less a discount. Discount rates vary from zero up to 60%, with the rate an individual receives being determined by how many Betfair points they have. For instance, if you hold between 1,000 and 2,499 points, your discount rate will be 2%; if you hold over 150,000 points you qualify for the maximum discount rate of 60%.

Betfair awards points depending on the amount of commission that has been paid by the individual to date plus the amount of commission that he would have paid had unsuccessful bets won. You receive one point for every £0.10 of this combined commission.

You don’t keep your points forever. Once your discount has been awarded, your point holding will be reduced by 15% which Betfair refers to as “weekly decay”.

Betfair Premium Charge

So far so good; big winners will receive a substantial discount off their fees, so will only pay an effective 2% charge on their winnings. But there is a catch. There is another tier in Betfair charges known at the premium charge. While Betfair claims that fewer than 0.5% of their customers pay the premium charge, for those few customers who do it can amount to a substantial payment that might seem unfair.

The premium charge is levied on people who have: bet or laid bets on more than 250 markets; have been in profit for the life of their account, and have paid under 20% of that profit in total charges.  

Customers who meet these criteria will face a potential weekly charge calculated to ensure their total charges for the lifetime of their account is 20%. The charge will be applied to balances automatically, though each customer is granted a £1,000 premium charge allowance. Also, if any single win accounts for more than 50% of lifetime profit, that win will be excluded from the calculation.

In a nutshell, the premium charge will ensure that professional gamblers will be charged at least 20% of their winnings. If you happen to be one of these and are discovered attempting to avoid the premium charge, for instance by having multiple accounts, you will face a ban.

Higher Rate Premium Charge

There is even a more painful sting in the tail called the higher rate premium charge. This applied to punters who have bet in over 1,000 markets, have lifetime profits of over £250,000 and have paid less than 40% of your profit in commission charges. Depending on how much commission you have paid, you will face a premium charge rate of between 40% and 60%  of your lifetime profit.

Finally

Betfair does not ban winners, though the premium charge is a significant disincentive for professionals, and the higher rate premium charge, an effective 60% tax on winnings, is punitive. Betfair claims that fewer than 0.1% of their customers pay the higher rate, but given that Betfair has over 4 million customers, that still amounts to 4,000 individuals.

—————–Make up to £500 per month tax-free with this top-rated betting product—————–

 

 

 

Betting App pic

Members’ Choice Awards – Best Matched Betting Service 2018

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We hope you had a great Christmas and are enjoying the festive period. 

As the year draws to a close, we are running a series of awards for the Best Betting Systems and Tipsters of 2018.

The difference this year though is that the awards have been voted for by you – the members of Honest Betting Reviews. 

The voting has now closed and thank you very much to those who voted – it’s been great to see so many of you taking part. 

Looking at the results, it’s interesting to see that quite a few of the winners tallied with our own views – but there were some surprises in there too. 

So turning to the awards themselves, we will be announcing the winners in each category separately. 

First up, we have the award for Best Matched Betting Service of 2018.

For those of you not familiar with it, matched betting is the process of using the bookies’ free bets and bonuses to set up risk-free (or low-risk) betting opportunities to make a long-term profit.

It’s become very popular over the last few years and some people have even turned it into a full-time profession. 

Not surprisingly, a number of different matched betting services have sprung up in recent times too, providing complete packages for wannabe matched bettors. 

It’s become quite a competitive field, with services offering great features like video tutorials, live matched betting software so you can see opportunities in real time, calendars with all the daily offers and calculators so you can work out the stakes to place. 

Voting Results

We know lots of you are keen matched bettors and this would be a popular category in our betting awards.

So how did the voting go?

Well it turned out there was actually a runaway winner that blew away the rest of the competition, receiving more than three times the number of votes of the runner-up, with over 40% of the vote. The next best received just 10% of the vote. 

Yes it was no contest really. 

And the winner was…

Drum roll please…

Profit Maximiser!

 

A hearty congratulations to Profit Maximiser and a well-deserved winner.

Profit Maximiser is run by Mike Cruickshank, known as the doyen of matched betting and it’s clear lots of you love his service. 

You can read our original review of it here. 

Here is what Mike said when we informed him of the award:

“Awesome News, I’m made up. Thanks to all the Honest Betting Reviews members who voted.

Profit Maximiser has been running since 2013 yet we are still finding new edges to exploit all the time.

I can’t take all the credit for this award. We have a lot of helpful forum users who share offers and strategies. It helps turn a good product in to an amazing one.

Over the next 12 months I plan on increasing the amount of strategies and offers on the Profit Maximiser site to give my clients more opportunities to profit.”

As Mike alludes to, much of the appeal of the service is its large and active membership who contribute via forums such as the Profit Maximiser Facebook group, which has over 50,000 members and is where people share the latest offers and the best ways of exploiting them.  

You can see on the group some of amazing amounts of money people have made from matched betting, with £10,000+ totals regularly posted. 

And the great news is that if you aren’t already a member of Profit Maximiser, you can get a 14 day trial for just £1 here.

So you can join all those very happy members who have been using it to make great profits!

[Please note that Profit Maximiser relies on using bookies’ free bets and bonuses, so if these are not available in your country then its effectiveness will be limited]. 

Well done to Profit Maximiser then on winning the Best Matched Betting Service of 2018. We will be announcing the next award winner shortly.

 

 

 

 

Does Brain Power Have Champion Hurdle Case After International Success?

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Brain Power is one of the more enigmatic horses in British champion jumps trainer Nicky Henderson’s stable.

After landing a couple of top-class handicaps over hurdles in 2016-17, even bigger things were expected of the seven-year-old Kalanisi gelding out of an Old Vic mare when he went chasing.

Although Brain Power could not have been more impressive on his debut over fences at Kempton last season, nothing has gone right for him in that sphere since.

He failed to complete in the Henry VIII Novices’ Chase at Sandown and then again when stepping into open company for the Clarence House at Ascot in January.

Brain Power was then ridden to pick up the pieces in the Arkle Challenge Trophy at last year’s Cheltenham Festival after Petit Mouchoir and Saint Calvados set a breakneck gallop they just couldn’t maintain up front.

He passed those exhausted rivals one by one, nabbing the runner-up prize behind hot betting favourite Footpad, but posed absolutely no threat whatsoever to the impressive winner.

Another fall at Aintree ended a disappointing campaign for Brain Power and his seasonal comeback in the Shloer Chase back at Cheltenham in November saw him finish a well-beaten fourth.

At that point, owner Michael Buckley reportedly told Henderson to take his horse back over hurdles and that proved to be an inspired decision.

Brain Power found the winning groove again in the International Hurdle – a key trial for the Champion Hurdle – when coming with a strong run to lead turning for home and running clear up the Cheltenham hill.

Many have been quick to dismiss this form, highlighting it was a poor renewal of the race and that there is a lack of top two-mile hurdlers around in National Hunt horse racing at the moment.

Bookmakers Paddy Power reacted to Brain Power’s cosy 1 3/4 lengths victory over Silver Streak with a 14/1 quote in the latest Cheltenham horse racing futures betting on the 2019 Champion Hurdle.

He has beaten an improving young hurdler who – like Brain Power himself just a couple of years ago – has caught the eye in top-class handicap hurdle races.

Henderson can also call on dual Champion Hurdle winner Buveur D’Air, who is a short-price red-hot favourite with oddsmakers to make it three consecutive wins and emulate legendary past stable star See You Then.

 

With his regular second string for the race My Tent Or Yours recently retired alongside Nigel Twiston-Davies trained contemporary The New One, Brain Power is now a legitimate hand Henderson could play come the Cheltenham Festival.

Summerville Boy, the gutsy winner of the 2018 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, has been out of sorts in two runs this season – including when last of the seven to finish in the International behind Brain Power.

The leading Irish contender for the Champion Hurdle is now unbeaten mare Laurina for Willie Mullins, with Samcro getting easily outclassed by Buveur D’Air in the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle.

For all the naysayers who argue Brain Power is better suited by a flat racetrack and running clockwise, there really is a lack of opposition to the favourite.

Value bets lie in the each-way or win or place futures market, then, and for all he needs to reproduce the International form to demonstrate it wasn’t just a good piece of race placement by connections, Brain Power fits the bill simply because other rivals have as much or more to prove.