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,
We are also tracking results by the best closing price (or “CBP”- i.e. just before kick-off) and that continues to perform notably better, with 30 points won since our last update, putting them 15 points up for our trial overall at CBP.
There has been a significant change to the system to our last update. Essentially they concluded that the previous strategy was only performing pretty close to expectation, with 418 winners having been produced this season against an expectation of 414.
The idea behind the strategy was to find selections where the model indicated higher odds than the market, therefore supposedly providing value. However, that approach did not work.
So they are taking a different approach and actually following what the market is telling them. This “contrarian” betting strategy has been performing very well so far since it started on 13th May, with over 30 points profit made.
It’s early days but is encouraging so will be interesting to follow and see if it can prove profitable in the long run.
We are also tracking results by the best closing price (or “CBP”- i.e. just before kick-off) and that continues to perform slightly better, with 8 points lost since our last update and 15 points lost for our trial overall.
Just a reminder that this is an Asian handicap betting strategy with a very high volume of bets. As they say though, it is okay to miss some bets as overall the EV (expected value) should even out over time.
Hopefully results pick up for them but they have warned that running all these models for various leagues requires alot of time and if they have very few members left then the effort required doesn’t match up to the return.
We are also tracking results by the best closing price (i.e. just before kick-off) and that is doing slightly better, with just 7 points lost so far.
Just a reminder that this is an Asian handicap betting strategy with a very high volume of bets. There have been over 380 bets for our trial already! As they say though, it is okay to miss some bets as overall the EV (expected value) should even out over time.
Anyway, a bit of a slow start for this one but let’s see if they can get things back on track by the time of our next update.
We are starting a new review today of a service called EV Football.
This comes from the Bookie Insiders tipping team, who regular followers may recognise. We have trialled two of their services – their Football and Golf tips – and both have passed our trials with flying colours. The football service made £2053 profit duringour trialand the golf service made 438 points profit, or £4380 profit to £10 per point stakes during our trial.
So we were pleased to hear they were launching a new service and have been eager to test it out.
Essentially this is a data-driven model based around goal ratings and expected goals (xG), which are used to create a goal supremacy for each match.
Using their own team and league-specific data they then estimate what the odds should be for a game. If the odds represent value on this model then it becomes a bet.
It only started up a few months ago, but the results so far look promising with 30 points profit made to advised prices and 43 points profit made to best closing price.
That has come with a high strike rate of 59% and a return on investment of around 5%.
Bets come from across the European leagues and are all Asian handicap bets. The nice thing about these kind of bets is there is normally very good liquidity with lots of bookie options and exchanges can be used as well.
There is a high volume of bets so that is something to be aware of, although they say “don’t worry about missing bets because over a large dataset/timeframe each members ROI% will be more or less the same. As an example say one member backed all 3000 bets over a 12 month period and another member only backed 1500 bets I would expect the ROI% for both members to be similar enough (barring some crazy variance in the missed bets).”
That makes sense to us and is a point we have made in other settings before.
Anyway, without further ado let’s get cracking with this trial and see how it gets on. We started proofing bets from 30th January so will record results from then and will update things as we go along here.
CH Footy Tips is a football tipster from the Betting Gods tipster platform. The tips are provided by a guy called Chad from Atlanta in the US.
Most of his bets are handicap bets, involving using the -1.5 handicap line (so sides that are strongly fancied) and then putting the bets into singles and doubles.
We followed the service for seven months, which gave us a good sample size of over 500 bets.
Sadly though the trial did not go as hoped and in the end it finished 109 points down, more than wiping out the recommended betting bank of 75 points. Even extending the bank to 100 points would not have avoided a wipeout.
Midway through the trial the service was removed from the Betting Gods website and the service was closed to new members, with just existing members receiving the tips.
We would imagine there aren’t many existing members still following the tips though given the results.
So it’s probably no surprise to learn that it’s a FAILED rating from us for CH Footy Tips unfortunately.
Service Breakdown
Ease of use: The tips are sent out by e-mail at various times of day, sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon UK time.
Availability of prices: Prices are generally available and we didn’t see any problems obtaining the recommended odds.
Strike rate: The strike rate for the trial was 28%, which is clearly quite a bit below where it needed to be to make a profit.
Advised Betting Bank: A 75 point betting bank was recommended for the service but that was completely wiped out and even expanding that to a more standard 100 point bank would not have been enough to stave off a bank wipeout.
Subscription costs: The service is not currently available to new members.
OVERALL VERDICT: FAILED
After losing 109 points in our trial and blowing the entire recommended starting bank, unfortunately there can only be one outcome for CH Footy Tips and that is a FAILED rating.
As mentioned last time, CH Footy Tips has been removed from the Betting Gods website for the moment as the service is closed to new members for the time being.
We will continue the review for the time being and see if results pick up, but unfortunately it does look like this service is heading for a failed rating unless there’s a dramatic turnaround.
As mentioned last time, CH Footy Tips has been removed from the Betting Gods website for the moment as the service is closed to new members for the time being.
We will continue the review for the time being and see if results pick up, but unfortunately it does look like this service is heading for a failed rating unless there’s a dramatic turnaround.
Just in case you were searching for CH Footy Tips on the Betting Gods website, please note the service is closed to new members at the moment. Betting Gods do not want to accept members at the current performance levels so they’re keeping an eye on it for the moment.
We will continue the review for the time being and see if results pick up. And of course if they allow new members again we will let you know.
This is a service that focuses on the -1.5 Asian handicap market and bets in singles and doubles.
We haven’t noticed any problems with odds availability so far and in fact you can normally back the bets on Betfair and sometimes beat the advised odds.
Today seems to be a strong example of that, with the advised odds of one of the tips being 3.4 but over 4.1 available on Betfair currently.
So from that point of view it all seems good but obviously need the results to pick up as soon as possible.
Today we are starting a new review of a football tipster called CH Footy Tips from the Betting Gods tipster platform.
The tips are provided by a guy called Chad who is a professional football gambler from Atlanta in the US. Although he is from America, having grown up around Europe his betting is mostly centred on UK and European leagues.
Most of his bets are handicap bets, involving using the -1.5 handicap line (so sides that are strongly fancied) and then putting the bets into singles and doubles.
It’s an approach that’s worked well for Chad so far, with a profit of 170 points made since joining the Betting Gods platform in December 2020.
The strike rate is good at a shade over 36% whilst the return on investment is solid at 8%.
We tend to like tipsters who stick to a systematic approach and have a niche angle, which this tipster seems to do with their focus on the handicap markets, so we are interested in seeing what kind of results they can produce under a live trial.
We will kick things off today then and post results updates here as we go along.
The Goal King is a football tipping service run by a guy called Steve Hudson. He has been a professional tipster for 6 years and has been betting for 13 years. He also runs another tipping service, AccaTipster, which has been going for a few years.
The Goal King focuses on the Both Teams to Score (BTS) and Over 2.5 goals markets, with some bets in the Asian handicap market too.
We followed the service for an extended 12 month trial, which gave us a good sample size of 388 bets.
It’s a fairly straightforward service, with bets normally sent out twice per week by e-mail – one for the midweek fixtures and then one for the weekend games.
At the end of our trial they finished with a solid total of 43 points profit, which came at a strike rate of 59% and a return on investment of 3%.
The trial got off to a slightly rocky start but gradually improved as it went on, as you can see in the profit graph:
One of the elements of the service we remarked on a few times during our review was the staking, which started off at 5 points per bet, then reduced to 1 point over the Summer before settling at 2.5 points per bet for the 2021/22 season.
We prefer services that just use one point level stakes, or at least if they are going to use larger stakes then it would be for more confident selections. Here though it just seemed to be a way of slightly inflating results, as all selections over a given period used the same staking.
Not that it makes too much of a difference in the grand scheme of things – that is why we have stats like ROI so you can see how the returns compare to the stakes used.
And in the end a solid profit was made which is never to be sniffed at, so we are happy to award this service a narrow PASSED rating after a 12 month trial.
Service Breakdown
Ease of use: The tips are sent by e-mail, usually twice per week (if there are midweek fixtures). There is usually plenty of time to get the bets on and recommended bookies are included with the best prices.
Availability of prices: We didn’t notice any particular issues in terms of the prices, with the markets tipped in (BTS & over/under 2.5 goals) being very liquid normally.
Strike rate: The strike rate for the trial was 59%, which is close to the long-term average of 61% and meant a steady stream of winners throughout the trial.
Advised Betting Bank: We didn’t see any bank being advised but used a 100 point betting bank for the trial taking into account the staking per bet and high strike rate of 59%.
Subscription costs: The subscription costs at the time of writing are very reasonable at £14.95 per month or £67 per year.
OVERALL VERDICT: PASSED
The Goal King is a football tipster who focuses on the Both Teams to Score and over/under 2.5 goals markets.
We ran an extended 12 month trial of the service and it made a solid 43 points profit. Whilst that wasn’t a huge return in the grand scheme of things, any form of profit is not to be sniffed at so we are happy to award the service a narrow PASSED rating.
We have discussed in previous updates how staking has varied over the course of our trial, but it seems to have settled at 2.5 points per bet for the time being, having been 5 points at the start and then dropping to 1 point over the summer.
Anyway, let’s see if they get back to winning ways by the time of our next update.
The staking has varied quite a bit recently. It had been five points per bet for most of our trial, then dropped down to one point during the off-season and is now at 2.5 points per bet, presumably as we are in the early part of the season whilst they wait for the form to settle down.
In any event it has been good to see the steady upward progress made over the last few months by this footy tipster.
As previously mentioned, the staking is inflated at 5 points on most selections, so in reality the returns would be quite a bit lower if using 1 point level stakes. Although during the off season they were using just 1 point stakes and made a decent 11 points profit whilst doing so. Now the season is getting going again they are back to using 5 points once more.
The action should really crank up now with the all the European leagues kicking off again, including the Premier League tomorrow.
As mentioned previously, the staking is inflated at 5 points on every selection, so in reality they would be just 6-8 points up at one point level stakes.
However, since the end of the main season they have reduced staking to one point per bet and since then they are 3 points up.
Will probably be a bit of a quiet phase for them now as the Euros come to an end and we wait for the start of the new season.
With the footy season finishing in a couple of weeks we will look to wrap up our review there when the action has come to a close. Let’s see if they can put in a good end to the trial and finish in the green.
As mentioned last time, the staking is inflated at 5 points on every selection, so in reality they would be just over 5 points up at one point level stakes.
Still, it’s been good to witness the fightback here to get themselves into the green so let’s see if that continues.
As mentioned last time, the staking is inflated at 5 points on every selection. This is actually doing them a disservice at the moment, as at 1 point stakes they would only be 6 points down, which isn’t too bad in the grand scheme of things.
Hopefully this will be a lesson to this and other services that unnecessarily inflate their staking to make their results look better that it can also go the other way and make your results look worse. Stick to one point staking and everyone is happy.
There are a few things that have given us concerns about this service.
Firstly, there have been quite a few instances of the website not working and we know a number of you have found this issue as well, with just a blank screen appearing and nothing happening. Sometimes it can be worth trying it in a different browser if you are getting this issue.
Secondly, the headline on the website states: “Football expert reveals secret goal betting system that makes £24,367 in 7 months,” but we are yet to have any “secret system” revealed to us. So far it’s just a straightforward tipster service offering tips on the BTS, over/under and Asian handicap markets.
And thirdly they stake 5 points on every selection. This is a real bugbear of ours when tipsters do this as it just looks like they are trying to inflate their results. Why not just stake 1 point on every selection? Essentially you need to divide the total by five to give a proper reflection of their results.
Anyway, these niggles of ours could recede somewhat if results were to improve so let’s see if that happens over the next month or two.
Today we are starting a new review of a football betting strategy called the Goal King.
It has been designed by a guy called Steve Hudson who claims to have made £20,337 profit from it in 7 months, with a 64% win rate and 19.04% ROI.
Every month has apparently been profitable with the longest losing run being just 5 bets. And you can start with just £10.
We will be running a live trial of Goal King at Honest Betting Reviews and are quite intrigued by this one. It claims to have found a “secret goal betting system” which sounds interesting.
As ever the proof of the pudding will be in the eating though!
This offer will close at midnight (GMT) tomorrow 5th December.
https://www.honestbettingreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/Goal-King-pic.png4671103Danhttps://www.honestbettingreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/hbr-logo-new-300x145.pngDan2021-12-17 08:52:462021-12-17 16:39:02Goal King – Final Review
We are having to discontinue this review as Mercurius Tradr has been acquired by a European fintech company and they don’t want the software made available to the public.
Please note they are refunding any unused percentages of the yearly maintenance fee.
The refunding procedure will end on Dec 29th, after that date they say they won’t be able to refund you anymore and any credit will be lost. So any members please remember to send them your information with enough time to complete all the operations needed.
It is a shame this is being closed to the public as it looked like quite an interesting project, but we understand they have to make whatever decisions are best for them commercially.
So this review will cease now and go into the defunct pile.
Mercurius Tradris an Artificial Intelligence application that analyses thousands of data points on football matches to find value on the Betfair Exchange. It places bets automatically on your Betfair account via the cloud.
Unfortunately it has continued to struggle during our trial, with a further £147 lost since our last update.
That means it is now £199 down for our trial from a starting bank of £1,000.
Mercurius Tradris an Artificial Intelligence application that analyses thousands of data points on football matches to find value on the Betfair Exchange. It places bets automatically on your Betfair account via the cloud.
So far it is £51.64 down for our trial from a starting bank of £1,000.
The bets come in a variety of leagues, with quite a few coming in the Portuguese league but also France, Argentina and others.
The software was easy to set up and has been operating smoothly, with no input required on our side which is good. Just need the results to pick up now!
Today we are starting a trial of a new piece of auto-betting software called Mercurius Tradr.
This is an Artificial Intelligence application that analyses thousands of data points on football matches to find value on the Betfair Exchange.
It looks at the quality of chances created by each team and simulates matches over 10,000 times. From that data it identifies where the real value lies on Betfair.
Here is a short video explanation of Mercurius Tradr:
Terms like “AI” are thrown around like confetti these days, often without much basis and in the hope of making something sound more sophisticated and cutting-edge than it actually is.
However, having been given a lengthy presentation by a member of the Mercurius team (Carlo) about how it works, the brains behind it (PhDs in mathematics) and their plans for developing it further, we have no doubt that the use of such a term is warranted in this case.
It’s a very impressive piece of software and runs automatically in the background so you don’t need a VPS or to leave your computer on day and night.
Since it went live at the start of 2019 the Mercurius bot has made 32 points profit, all at the Betfair exchange and including commission. That is a 32% return on capital, which is not bad at all for something that runs on autopilot and places the bets for you.
That’s the least you would have made as well, as they record the minimum odds achieved but some members may have got better odds.
At the moment they use just the match odds and Asian handicap markets and focus on the main European leagues, but aim to add more leagues and markets in future. Just recently for example they added the Swedish league. The more leagues and markets they use, the more chance there is to make profits – that’s the idea anyway!
We are starting with a £1,000 bank and using 1% stake per bet, so that means £10 per bet.
At the moment all bets are pre-kick off, but they may add in-play betting in future.
The costs are structured in such a way that you pay a maintenance fee of 2% per annum and a 30% performance fee per quarter, but only if they make you a profit of more than 5% ROC for that quarter.
Anyway, we are really looking forward to testing this out as it looks like a very innovative piece of betting software and we think it has great potential.
As ever we will provide updates here as we go along.
We are going to wrap up this review as there have been no tips since 2nd October so it looks like this service has been discontinued.
The tips had been getting less frequent, although we were still getting some sales emails from them – which is never a good sign!
The service wasn’t going great guns anyway, sitting 4 points down for our trial.
So it’s another one in the FAILED/DEFUNCT pile unfortunately. Seem to have been quite a lot of them lately…but thankfully there have been some good ones too to balance it out.
Laysonthefootball has gone very quiet lately, with just four bets issued since our last update. There has been no change in their overall position, with a break-even return posted over the last month.
That means they are still 4 points down for our trial overall.
If things don’t pick up soon we will probably wrap up this review shortly as they seem to have lost interest in tipping but are still sending out spam emails about other betting services.
There have been some slightly strange goings-on at the service recently. They had been sending an e-mail each day to provide the tips or report that there were no bets.
Then there was a period of no emails for a while, but they said “Sometimes I don’t send out an e-mail, but the page is still updated daily with the bet.”
It would have been preferable to let members know beforehand they might not be sending out emails but could be updating the tips page, but anyway we won’t dwell on that and hopefully things will settle down now into a more stable routine.
We have attempted to record the available odds where we can, and there have been some quite big price fluctuations from the advised odds. That’s not unusual of course, as the odds can fluctuate quite a bit on the football markets in the hours before kick off.
Just a reminder that this is a simple tipping service with one or two lays bets per day on the footy. The main markets used are match odds and over/under goals.
In any event, as we say not the best start here but it’s still very early days and plenty of time to get back on track.
We are starting a new trial today of a football betting service called Laysonthefootball.
This is a service that lays in a variety of soccer markets on Betfair including match odds, first half goals, over/under 2.5 goals, half time result and more.
It claims to have made £1038 profit in two months from 71 bets using £25 lay stakes.
There isn’t much information about what the strategy is or how they go about finding the bets, but there are some screenshots from Betfair of their bets which show the results.
Of course these things aren’t always genuine and it’s a small sample size so we shouldn’t be getting carried away.
The sales page talks about previously being a “mug punter” whereas now they are acting like a bookmaker by placing lay bets.
That’s all pretty obvious to regular bettors but for those new to betting it provides some background to how lay betting works.
In any event, it looks interesting enough to test out so we will set up a review and report back soon on how things are going.
The tips are provided by a guy called Tony who likes to keep things as simple as possible. He provides bets in markets such as over/under goals, both teams to score, and the match outcome. He says he’s not into laying or Asian handicaps and instead prefers bets where you can actually follow the game and understand what’s going on.
Tony focuses very much on value bets, and has been betting this way personally now for several years – it’s apparently his main source of income and what he does full-time, according to the information on the Betting Gods website.
Judging by the results of our trial, we hope he has some alternative source of income because he would be struggling to live off his gambling returns lately.
After a seven month trial he finished 30 points down, which represented 40% of the advised betting bank of 75 points.
Things just never really got going for Tony – he went down early on in our trial and never recovered. It was just a steady move downwards over the course of our review.
With over 27 bets proofed over an extended seven month period, it was a reasonable sample size of tips to get a feel for the service.
The return on investment was negative 8%, which is quite a disappointing level. The strike rate wasn’t too bad in itself at 48%, but wasn’t enough to generate a profit during our trial.
So it is perhaps no surprise that this service receives a FAILED rating from us. As ever with tipsters, it is of course possible that we just caught the service at a bad time. But there would need to be a substantial improvement in performance for us to reconsider our rating here.
Service Breakdown
Ease of use: The tips are provided by e-mail, normally around 6-7pm UK time the day before matches, so plenty of time to get the bets on. There are an average of around 1-2 tips per day so it’s a pretty straightforward service to follow.
Availability of prices: We didn’t notice any issues in terms of obtaining the advised prices.
Strike rate: The strike rate for the trial was 48% which is pretty solid in itself but wasn’t enough to generate a profit during our trial.
Advised Betting Bank: A 75 point betting bank is recommended for the following the service, which seems fairly reasonable to us, although a 100 point bank might be more advisable given the results achieved during our trial.
Subscription costs: The subscription costs at the time of writing are £1.99 for the first 15 days then £27 per month.
OVERALL VERDICT: FAILED
Sadly the Master Football Tipster failed to live up to their name during our extended seven month trial, finishing with a loss of 30 points.
Things just never really got going for them and with nearly half of the betting bank lost during our trial, unfortunately it is a FAILED rating for this service from us.
Although the results so far have been disappointing, it’s worth bearing in mind that the loss of 24 points only represents just under a third of the recommended 75 point betting bank, so it is certainly no wipe out yet.
But obviously they will need to turn things around soon to make it viable for members to follow the service with subscription fees to pay etc.
We hope everyone had a good Xmas and you are now settling in to watch a great day of sport on Boxing Day!
In terms of this review, it’s been something of a step backwards over the last month for Master Football Tipster, with a loss of 12 points made since our last update.
That means they are now 19 points down for our trial overall.
As mentioned previously, most of the bets are in the Both Teams to Score and over 2.5 goals markets, which are normally available on Betfair for the selected matches. Sometimes you can beat the advised odds which is good.
Anyway, let’s hope to see some improvement for this tipster over the next couple of months as it’s been a bit of stuttering start to their time as a tipster since going live.
They seem to be hitting their stride now with a nice run of seven winners in a row recently, which came just after a run of seven winners out of eight.
Most of the selections are in the “Both Teams to Score” (or BTTS) market, with a few in the over 2.5 goals market. The odds are generally obtainable and you can use Betfair to place the bets, which has good liquidity for these markets.
Not an ideal start then but very early days so plenty of time for them to turn things around.
The tips are provided by a guy called Tony who likes to keep things as simple as possible. He provides bets in markets such as over/under goals, both teams to score, and match outcome. He says he’s not into laying or Asian handicaps and instead prefers bets where you can actually follow the game and understand what’s going on.
Tony focuses very much on value bets, and has been betting this way personally now for several years – it’s apparently his main source of income and what he does full-time.
The results to date suggest he knows what he’s doing, with a profit of £672 made to £10 per point since starting proofing to Betting Gods back in May.
That has been achieved with a return on investment (ROI) of 22%, which is very impressive in football betting. The strike rate is also high at 62%, so the numbers stack up very nicely for the Master Football Tipster.
He is also in great form with ten winning bets in a row!
So it’s a nice time to kick off a review with the football season having just got underway and a feast of action coming up over the next few months.
We will update results here as we along so you can see how the trial is going.
https://www.honestbettingreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/footballer-kicking-ball-2.png399700Danhttps://www.honestbettingreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/hbr-logo-new-300x145.pngDan2021-04-13 09:35:402021-04-13 16:50:30Master Football Tipster – Final Review
Given the news about Football Index, which we covered in some detail in a post the other day, it obviously makes sense to wrap up this review now.
In case you missed it, essentially Football Index are in financial trouble and have had to cut dividends by over 60%. That led to a crash in users’ portfolio values and a storm of understandable bitterness and anger on social media from people who felt they had been misled by the company. Our view is that Football Index is living on borrowed time in its current form and barring a miraculous turnaround or buyout and restructure, will have to face closing its doors at some stage with so little revenue coming in.
This obviously leaves Football Index Trader (run by a chap called Adam) in a sticky position and you have to feel for him given this was his main occupation. Adam is soldiering on for now whilst Football Index is still going, although members have been given the option to pause their subscriptions.
In terms of the Football Index Trader (or FIT for short) service itself, as we commented in the review below we thought it was excellent. The research was always in-depth and the analysis high quality. There were a high proportion of selections picked out in scouting who went on to perform very well and whilst there were a few who didn’t quite hit the mark, you are never going to have a 100% success rate but on the whole members would have done well following FIT’s advice.
It is obviously no fault of Adam’s that Football Index has got itself into this mess so all we can do really is wrap up this review and say if Football Index had been a well-managed platform and achieved the potential it had, then FIT would have been an excellent resource for people wanting to get the most out of the platform.
If as we say there is some miraculous turnaround or a buyout and restructure, then perhaps it could be once again, although trust with Football Index has been so thoroughly destroyed it is difficult to envisage a way back for it from here.
In any event, we imagine Adam’s skills could be easily transferred to one of the other platforms like Footstock or Sorare should he choose, but we could understand full well if he wants to take his career in another direction after what has happened at Football Index.
So alas all we can say really is that Football Index Trader would have received a resounding PASSED rating, but sadly that looks like rather a moot point now.
Football Index Trader (or FIT for short) is a site designed to help traders maximise their gains on the “Football Stockmarket,” Football Index.
In our last update we covered some of the key features of FIT including “Scouting,” “State of the Market” and the live blogs. Those are really the core of the service but there are some other features as well which we will take a look at today.
Before getting onto those however, it is worth reporting that there has been a bounce back in the market following a recent announcement from Football Index regarding a change to the dividend structure that removes in-play dividends and replaces them with “match day extra” dividends.
This announcement seems to have restored confidence in the platform and got it back to its USP of being more of a long-term trading platform where you are betting on players’ careers (or three years of their careers, at least).
In addition to the general market improvement there have been some really good picks from FIT lately which have been winning dividends and increasing in price, including:
– Mason Mount
– Joao Cancelo
– Bukayo Saka
– Harry Maguire
– Riyad Mahrez
– Thomas Muller
And plenty more besides. As mentioned last time however, it is whether you have the funds to buy all these players, or any of them for that matter if you already have your funds invested.
So there is also the question of portfolio management and availability of funds when following the service. Presuming you do have some funds to buy new players (perhaps from ongoing dividends you are receiving) then FIT has been very adept at picking out players likely to win dividends soon and therefore increase in price.
Anyway, let’s move on to looking at the other aspects of the service:-
Player Ratings
This is where players are given star ratings based on their current performance and potential performance. Ratings are organised by position – goalkeeper, defender, midfielder and attacker and can be sorted by club or ratings top to bottom.
Five stars is for “elite” players who are expected to challenge for performance dividends 10-15 times per season, four stars is for “very strong” players likely to challenge 7-10 times per season and so on.
It’s a useful way of ranking players and comparing them against each other, allowing traders to narrow down their selections and concentrate on the top-rated players.
Transfers
This section of the site is devoted to upcoming transfer windows and where you might find potential bargains. These are players that could either rise in price (and pick up some dividends) purely off transfer speculation or those who could do much better at a new club where they might get more game time and be more comfortable etc.
The transfer section is only really relevant during the run-up to transfer windows so is not something you need to regularly follow, but is worth checking out when a window is coming up.
Wrapping Up
We have covered most of the main site features now in our updates so will look to wrap up soon with the final bits and some closing thoughts.
Overall though we have been very impressed with the service and found the advice indispensable for those involved in the Football Index.
Football Index Trader is a site designed to help traders maximise their gains on the “Football Stockmarket,” Football Index.
Last time we commented that it was very difficult to do an update on Football Index Trader because the market on Football Index had crashed, making it almost impossible to sell shares and therefore making any kind of advice or guidance somewhat obsolete.
Well the good news is that the market has settled down a little over the last month and whilst prices have still been falling, there is at least more liquidity in the market and most players can be sold now. That gives us a more viable basis on which to conduct our review of Football Index Trader (or FIT for short).
So what is FIT exactly?
In essence FIT is more of a guide than a tipping service as such – there aren’t “tips” on which players to buy and sell at particular times, instead there is research and advice that a user can follow to help guide their decision-making. As such we won’t be able to record results for this review in the normal way, but thought we would still take a look at the information provided and our thoughts on it.
How have we found it so far?
Overall we really like the service. Although in many ways we would prefer a straightforward tipping service, the guy who runs FIT says that is against the rules so has constructed his site in the way he has, i.e. as more of an information resource. That means more work on the part of members, but there is very valuable information to be had with a little bit of effort.
Scouting
The real hub of the site is the “scouting” section, which provides updates on the latest round of matches across the leagues and competitions covered by FI and identifies any players who are currently value propositions based on recent performances.
Generally this information is excellent and there have been a number of players we have bought on the basis of being highlighted in scouting – e.g. Theo Hernandez, Angelino, Thomas Lemar, Andre Silva, Andrew Robertson – who we would have been unlikely to buy otherwise but have produced good returns.
At the same time of course there are some players we have bought based on the scouting who haven’t done so well – yet anyway – so it hasn’t been all winners so far, but patience is a virtue with FI so we expect at least some of those players will come good eventually (ahem Dybala, Coutinho).
The danger as well is that there are so many players highlighted in scouting you can end up trying to buy too many players and find yourself with a rather verbose portfolio – something we have definitely been guilty of!
A possible solution to that is to only buy the players on his “explosion imminent” list, which is more selective list of around 20 players he really expects to do well soon.
The point we really value from the scouting and across the site in general though is the focus on value and ignoring the over-hyped, over-valued players who are actually quite poor performers in FI terms, even though they may be good players. It can be just as important knowing who not to buy as who to buy.
And by focusing on the value at the lower end of the market – from 50p up to £2 per share, you start to see how lucrative the returns can be on those “out of favour” players who are genuine quality but have just had a slight dip in form lately or have happened to not hit a dividend win in recent weeks.
We have also utilised the “IPD rotation” strategy very successfully so far, which involves refreshing shares on those players who return a lot in IPD (in-play dividends) but are cheaply priced, either due to age or not being likely to win the Performance Dividends very often. As FIT has said a few times, this is like “printing money,” so we are grateful to him for highlighting that strategy.
Live Blogs and Market Sentiment
Another aspect of the service we really like is the live blogs, when FIT provides a running commentary on the latest developments at Football Index, with very astute insights and an ability to see the wood for the trees – which many supposed “FI experts” on social media seem to lack!
There are also regular updates on the “State of the Market” in which he presents the overall sentiment governing FI at the current time and the reasons for that prevailing mood. This is helpful again in understanding the bigger picture and reminding traders not to panic when things go awry, as well as noting the things that do need to be improved on the platform.
Caan Berry Video Response
It would be remiss of us not to also mention FIT’s response to a recent video by renowned Betfair trader Caan Berry. Basically Caan made a Youtube video explaining the problems (as he saw them) with Football Index in its current form and why he wouldn’t be joining the platform at the moment.
Whilst he made some good points in that video, we felt there were some misunderstandings of the mechanics of FI and some other issues that whilst on the face of it look like problems, when you delve into them more deeply either aren’t actually much to worry about or could easily be dealt with by FI.
These points were dealt with in an excellent and very in-depth blog post by FIT which you can read here. It is a long post but well worth reading for those either on Football Index or thinking of joining.
To be fair to Caan, he has addressed some of the points in a follow-up video looking at why prices are crashing and what FI can do to fix it, which is also worth a watch.
For what its worth from our point of view, without wanting to get too bogged down in the debate over the mechanics of the platform and market dynamics etc, we think the most important thing for FI is to improve the functionality of the platform and to make it slicker, simpler and more user-friendly.
If they do that then it will be easier to attract new traders and new money, liquidity will increase and everything else will fall into place. The platform will be able to grow organically and any money they spend on marketing will be more effective in attracting new traders.
They should also not announce things and then not be able to deliver them, which they have done numerous times recently (Nasdaq anyone?). It should be the other way round – under-promise and over-deliver.
As Steve Jobs and Elon Musk have said in the past (to paraphrase them) – just have a relentless focus on making your product better and then it will sell itself and people will keep coming back for more.
Offering gimmicks or just increasing the spend on marketing without improving the product would not be advisable in our view.
Overall Thoughts
In summary then we would say we really like FIT and feel it’s definitely worth the cost of membership for anyone serious about trading on Football Index. There’s some great info on there and the overall strategy/mindset of focusing on value is – well, invaluable!
We would like it to be just a little bit simpler/quicker to use – perhaps a summary of the top players found in that week’s scouting for instance, or a “hot players of the week” with a value price band could help.
And whilst there is advice on building a portfolio and the overall strategy, a bit more clarity on how to use scouting and avoiding the pitfalls we have experienced of buying too many players would be of benefit (although perhaps that’s just us!)
At the same time it’s fair to say it has not been an ideal time to do this review with Football Index having been in a state of turmoil recently but with a guide like FIT it’s been easier to stay level-headed and not to panic about the market fluctuations.
It would be nice to be able to talk about some big gains we have made based on FIT’s advice, but unfortunately with the market crash that isn’t possible currently. Hopefully if FI can get their act together and focus on improving the platform though, that’s something we can do in future updates.
We had hoped to provide an update on Football Index Trader, a site designed to help traders maximise their gains on the “Football Stockmarket” known as Football Index.
However, sadly things have been going a little pear-shaped for Football Index lately. They say a picture speaks a thousands words so here is a look at the top 8 players on the platform at the moment:
You might notice a problem…there is a sell price on only one of the players. Of the top 20, there is a sell price on only four players.
What is happening here?
Essentially lots of people want to sell their shares but no-one wants to buy. Confidence in the platform is shot and lots of people are trying to exit…but at the moment they can’t. Not a good situation. Not good at all.
Why is this happening though?
Well a few months ago Football Index changed the way the platform operated. Previously, they had a system whereby Football Index themselves would buy up shares of people who wanted to sell, in a queue system.
In doing so, they were able to maintain tight spreads (the difference between the buy and sell price) and everyone was happy because traders knew they could sell shares of players they didn’t want anymore at a reasonable price – or sell players they had made a good profit on.
We say everyone was happy. Well, not quite everyone…
No, it appears the regulator – which we assume was the UK Gambling Commission – stepped in and said they didn’t like this system as it was an artificial market. In essence Football Index were propping up the market and creating a false sense of security.
So Football Index were forced (as far as we can tell) to adopt mechanisms more akin to a normal stock market – i.e. that other traders would have to buy the shares of those who wanted to sell, not Football Index.
In order to facilitate this, Football Index introduced “Order Books.” We won’t get into the technicalities of how Order Books work, but in essence this is a bit more like a proper market, but with various limits in place in terms of what prices you can buy and sell at, to stop wild fluctuations in the market.
The problem with this forced change is that it came far too early in the life-cycle of Football Index. There just aren’t enough active traders on the platform to provide liquidity. At the moment there are around 3,000 active traders per day. Compare that to Betfair or one of the bookies who have millions of customers and you start to see the problem.
So what you had were huge spreads between the buy and sell prices – or what you have now, no sell price at all!
Football Index are making some changes later this week in an attempt to address these issues, for example by removing the restriction of only being allowed to make an offer (i.e. to sell) 1p below the buy price.
This is welcome and may help to reduce the size of the spreads. However, it does not address the more fundamental problems that FI has – the lack of traders and liquidity.
The fundamental issue is that Football Index is a long way from being a liquid platform. Around 3,000 traders per day is nothing in the grand scheme of things. We imagine they would need to treble or even 10x that to make it reasonably liquid. They say they are searching for “liquidity providers” or market makers but so far this search does not appear to be going well and we are not surprised. At the moment it would look like a big risk to any market maker.
In our own view there are three ways out of this for FI:
– Go back to Instant Sells – which could mean asking the regulator to give them some leeway by temporarily allowing instant sells with Football Index themselves buying the shares again for say a year or two whilst they add more traders to the point where they can remove instant sells and have a liquid platform.
– Get bought out by Betfair or one of the bookies, who could easily bring on board thousands more traders and create the necessary liquidity.
– Provide the liquidity themselves – probably via a separate company but in effect spend a few million propping up the market again until they have more traders and better sentiment.
Without this kind of action we can’t see an easy way out of this for Football Index. Without traders paying commissions on trades, Football Index can’t pay the dividends. And without dividends there is no value in the shares and it becomes pointless. And if they cut the dividends it would send the whole platform into a death spiral.
Anxieties are high at the moment among users of Football Index as evidenced by sentiment on social media. People are worried they could lose all their money if Football Index collapses. How likely is this? It’s very difficult to tell without access to FI’s books and how much capital they have available. But clearly things are a mess at the moment and we don’t see just trundling along without some meaningful action as a viable way forward for them.
We also worry all the current mechanisms and moving parts are making FI just a bit too complicated for the everyday gambler, thus making it more difficult to attract new traders to the platform – which they desperately need and are spending lots of marketing money on. They could do with simplifying things and fixing the bugs on the platform for a start. A new competitor, Sports Stack, has a platform that already feels slicker and more user-friendly to us.
In terms of our review of Football Index Trader, obviously it does leave things in a tricky position as what use is good advice if you can’t sell any players?! Or can only sell them for a big loss, which is what we expect will happen after the changes later this week.
This is slightly compounded by the fact that Football Index Trader highlights a lot of players who are “under the radar” at the cheaper end of the market and potentially represent bargains. So we have added a number of these players to our portfolio. The trouble is these players are now harder to sell as if people want any players, it’s those at the top end who are regarded as safer and more likely to return dividends.
That is not their fault and if the market was operating properly then these players would no doubt do very well and represent value. And indeed the advice has proved accurate on many occasions in terms of highlighting players likely to perform well. It’s just at the moment it doesn’t mean a jot because you can’t sell any shares! (or not at a reasonable price, anyway).
So at the moment we couldn’t recommend anyone to put money into Football Index – and concurrently Football Index Trader. We will see what effect the changes later this week have – but we are not confident they will radically improve things, rather they are likely to cause a big drop in prices but the fundamental issues will remain.
If Football Index are able to take substantial action to improve the platform, or somehow find a market maker to provide the much-needed liquidity, then this could all change and we would at that stage recommence our review of Football Index Trader and go through what it has to offer.
For the time being though it seems best to just keep monitoring the situation until FI is in a better position and there is a realistic prospect of profiting from the platform.
We previously completed a long-term review of Football Index, a platform where you can trade futures (like shares) in footballers.
Having completed our review of the platform itself, we thought it would be a good idea to have a look at some tools to help traders maximise their gains on Football Index.
We mentioned in our final review that we had recently come across a website called Football Index Trader and found it to be a very useful resource.
It seemed only right then to expand on that brief mention and give the service a proper review of its own here on the site.
So what exactly is Football Index Trader (or FIT for short)?
Well it’s more of an advice and information resource rather than “tips” or “trade signals” in the traditional form we normally test out here at Honest Betting Reviews.
The website’s main elements are:
– Scouting – match reports on players, with analysis of their FI scores, potential and if they are value
– Player Ratings – organised by position and out of five stars, based on number of performance wins expected in a season
– Market Analysis – a look at the current state of the market, sentiment, outlook etc.
– Transfers – players with potential transfers coming up that could add to their value, including in media dividends, plus those players to avoid where rumours are unlikely to come to anything
– Guides – general articles and guides on getting the most out of the platform.
As there aren’t any tips as such we won’t be able to record results for this review in the normal way, but thought we would still take a look at the information provided and note some of the trades we make based on that info. Members of the service will all have different results depending on how exactly they use FIT, but our results should at least give some ball-park figures of what you might expect as a member and whether the advice is helpful in achieving returns over and above the average returns of the market (normally termed “alpha” in stock market terms).
We’ve been a member for a few weeks now and have already been using the information to make some buys, so will record our findings from when we joined up rather than from today.
We will update things here as we go along and will break down the different aspects of the service during our updates.
https://www.honestbettingreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/Football-index-trader-pic.png4491200Danhttps://www.honestbettingreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/hbr-logo-new-300x145.pngDan2021-03-11 10:54:302021-09-21 19:13:00Football Index Trader – Final Update
Bookie Insiders Footballhas been going since 2013 and is a very respected football tipping service. The tips are provided by a guy called Neil Macdonald who has been betting professionally for close to a decade.
He specializes in the top five European leagues (England, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France) as well as the major international tournaments and the Champions League/Europa League.
Normally speaking it is presumed to be very difficult to make a profit from betting on the big European leagues but Bookie Insiders have been proving that idea wrong for quite a few years now.
Tips are provided via Telegram and come with detailed write-ups, analysing both sides and their relative strengths and weaknesses, with a particular emphasis on expected goals (xG). You can see the in-depth research Neil does incorporating team news and the impact of key players and his extensive knowledge of top-level football.
Here is an example from the Porto v Juventus Champions League match:
The results coming into our trial reflected Neil’s extensive knowledge with an impressive 400 points profit made (proofed to the bettin.gs site), which would be over £20,000 profit to £50/point stakes.
So how did Bookie Insiders Football get on in our review?
We are pleased to say that for a change the results in our trial lived up to the pre-trial billing, with an excellent £2053 profit made at £50/point stakes. That works out at a 41 point profit, which is very good going for a football service.
The strike rate was high at 54%, meaning over half the bets were winners and the return on investment was decent for tipping at low odds, at 7%.
Over the course of our review the recommended betting bank of 50 points grew by over 80%, an impressive return.
The only drawback we found – which we covered during our updates below – was with the availability of prices on some of the bets. Neil tends to tip a few days before the match for some of his tips and prices can go pretty quickly. This was particularly the case for team goal bets – e.g. Atalanta to score over 1.5 goals in the match.
These markets are strongest on Pinnacle so if you are outside the UK and have access to that bookie it is certainly an advantage.
Although prices do tend to get hit on these bets, we would stress that the team goal bets only make up a small proportion of the total bets. So far this month for example there have only been three such bets and the other tips are in major markets like match odds, Asian handicap, over/unders etc which have excellent liquidity in these big leagues.
So even if you do have to take a price a few ticks lower on the team goal bets, you should still be able to do very well with this service overall given the levels of profit achieved. Having a decent number of bookie accounts and use of the exchanges, along with being quick off the mark in placing the bets, should stand you in good stead to make the most of the service.
Overall we think this is a high quality service and one of the best football tipsters we have come across in over six years of running this site. To make a profit betting on football – and on the top leagues and competitions in particular – is a very rare feat and highly commendable. Even missing the odd price here and there should not stop you making a handsome return from being a member.
So it’s a definite PASSED rating from us and a service we would say is well worth adding to your portfolio.
Service Breakdown
Ease of use: The tips are sent out via the Telegram app and come in at different times of day. It is advisable to have alerts turned on so you get a message as soon as tips are posted. There is an average of 1-2 bets per day, although the volume tends to increase around weekends when the majority of matches are played.
Availability of prices: As covered above, there is quite a bit of pressure on prices, particularly in the team goal markets. If you have access to Pinnacle that is certainly an advantage. If not then using a variety of bookies plus the exchanges and acting quickly should enable you to get at or close to the advised prices in most cases. Sometimes prices also bounce back nearer the match.
Strike rate: The strike rate for the trial was 54% which is good to see and meant consistent returns throughout our trial.
Advised Betting Bank: A 50-60 point bank is recommended for following the service, which seems about right to us given the staking and strike rate. We used a 50 point bank for this trial and it was never in jeopardy.
Subscription costs: The subscription costs are fair given the excellent results achieved and are €134.99 per quarter, €259.99 for six months or €499.99 per year at the time of writing.
OVERALL VERDICT: PASSED
In over six years of running this site we have reviewed countless football tipsters but have found less than a handful that are consistently profitable. Beating the bookies on football is, alas, extremely tough.
So when we came across Bookie Insiders Football, an established and respected footy service that has been running since 2013 with strong-looking results, we were hopeful we may have found a hidden gem.
They didn’t disappoint us either, amassing an excellent £2053 profit, or 41 points profit, during our seven-month trial, with an impressive strike rate of 54%.
There can be issues obtaining the advised prices on certain bets, but there are steps you can take to mitigate this and even taking a few ticks lower on some of the bets should not stop you from doing very well from this service. We are happy to award it a PASSED rating as one of the best football services we have reviewed here at Honest Betting Reviews.
It’s been somewhat of an up-and-down month for Bookie Insiders Football, but at the end of it not much change to the overall total, with a loss of £83 made since our last update.
With the previous profits however they are still £1933 up for our trial overall at £50/point stakes – or 39 points up in other words.
We have mentioned in previous updates the difficulties in achieving the advised prices on occasion. In some instances the prices bounce back later, as Neil often advises tips a few days before the game meaning there is an initial hit on the price before it rebounds closer to kick-off.
In other instances prices stay low, however on balance it is still clearly profitable to follow the service based on the results of our trial, even if on some tips you have to take a few ticks lower than the advised price.
We have now been following the service for five months so will be looking to wrap up the trial soon and barring a disaster this looks headed for a strong passed rating.
We mentioned last time that there can be difficulties in obtaining the advised prices if you don’t have access to Pinnacle (i.e. if you are based in the UK). A couple of positive developments on this front recently though.
Firstly, Betfair now offer the team goals markets on Serie A, Premier League and Champions League matches. This is a market frequently used by Bookie Insiders so having Betfair as an option greatly enhances the chances of getting decent odds on those bets.
Secondly, Neil (who runs the service) has advised UK members to try Asian Connect 88, which is a broker offering access to Asian bookies normally closed to UK punters (although not including Pinnacle it seems). So we will try and check that out and see if it presents a viable alternative.
Overall though Bookie Insiders Football has been performing strongly during our trial and we are really impressed by it.
As mentioned previously, there can be difficulties in obtaining the advised prices if you don’t have access to Pinnacle (i.e. you are based in the UK).
The next best price can be 5 ticks or more lower than the advised price on Pinnacle, meaning you are missing out on value by not being able to get the Pinnacle price. However, a good proportion of the bets are available with Betfair or other bookies at the advised prices, so it does not affect every selection by any means. Just be aware though if you don’t have access to Pinnacle that you may miss out on advised prices on some of the bets.
What’s really impressive about this service is that selections come in major leagues and competitions, which are notoriously hard to make a profit in. They have managed it so far though which is great to see.
Prices tend to move quite a bit after tips are sent out though so you need to be quick on the draw. Not all selections are available on betfair despite the matches being in the major leagues. This is because some of the bets are on team goals, which is a market betfair don’t normally quote.
Other markets are available on Betfair though so if you use the exchanges you should be able to get a good proportion of your bets on with them.
Anyway, it’s been a really good start here and we are very much enjoying the service.
Today we are starting a new trial of a football service from a team of professional gamblers called Bookie Insiders.
The Bookie Insiders team provide tips in a range of sports, but first up we are taking a look at their football tips. They specialize in the European leagues (England, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France) as well as the major international tournaments.
Normally speaking it is presumed to be extremely difficult to make a profit from betting on the big European leagues but Bookie Insiders’ results suggest otherwise.
Since starting up in 2013 they have made over 400 points profit according to their official results, which would be over £20,000 profit to £50/point stakes.
That has been made with an ROI of 6.8% which is very good over such a long period of time and when you consider the strike rate has been 51% it is even more impressive.
As you can see from the graph below, it’s been very steady progress over the time they’ve been tipping:
Just the kind of graph we like to see! (the yellow line is the monthly P/L whilst the green is the overall P/L).
Their bets have been proofed to the bettin.gs site and we have been following them for over a month in a personal capacity and have been mighty impressed with them. The results are exactly as recorded and we have made a nice profit of around 10 points so far.
Most of the bets come in the team goals, over/under, match odds, Asian handicap and BTTS markets, so generally very liquid markets although prices can move quite quickly sometimes after the tips are sent out.
Anyway, as we say have been impressed with this service so far and are looking forward to doing a formal review of it. We will update results here as we go along.
https://www.honestbettingreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/Bookie-insiders-pic.png403800Danhttps://www.honestbettingreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/hbr-logo-new-300x145.pngDan2021-02-18 09:48:452021-02-18 15:40:25Bookie Insiders Football – Final Review
Predictology is a database of resources and statistics for football betting, allowing you to quickly and easily build your own profitable football betting systems or use those developed by the Predictology team.
We previously had a look at Predictology last year but they have made considerable improvements to it since then, including adding an AI prediction engine and doubling the number of leagues and markets covered so we thought we’d take another look at it.
There are a whole range of systems and strategies you can use with Predictology, but for the purposes of this review we just used the “System Predictions” from their Daily Digest e-mail to keep things simple and have something any member can follow.
These System Predictions are derived from various systems including lay the draw, laying home/away favourites, backing overs, league-specific strategies and more.
We are pleased to report that these selections performed very well during our three month trial netting 38 points profit at a return on investment of 11%.
That would be £1900 profit at £50 per selection, a very nice bit of extra income.
For some reason we came out with slightly different results to the official ones, which is unusual. We didn’t manage to figure out exactly why in the end. It may have been down to different settings and leagues used, but either way it didn’t make much difference as we ended up with 90% or more of the same selections and similar results to the official Predictology ones.
There were quite a large number of selections with over 350 during our trial, which is a good sample size.
The advised staking is a little unusual, with one point risked on the back/lay selections apart from the lay the draw selections which are just one point lay bets, so the risk can be quite a bit higher (depending on the odds).
Anyway, it all worked out well in the end with an impressive profit made so we are happy to award Predictology a PASSED rating after our three month trial.
Service Breakdown
Ease of use: There are quite a few bets with this service, particularly at weekends when there can be ten or more per day. You can use Betfair or the bookies to place the bets and of course you can develop your own systems using the software so there is great flexibility in how you can use the service.
Availability of prices: Most of the time the prices held up well and we didn’t experience any problems in matching the advised odds on the whole.
Strike rate: The strike rate during the trial was 52%. It’s always to good to see a higher than 50% strike rate meaning a nice steady stream of winners.
Advised Betting Bank: We used a 100 point bank for this trial, which we think should be more than comfortable given the strike and staking used.
Subscription costs: The subscription costs are reasonable at $1 for the first 7 days then $37 per month or $277 per year.
OVERALL VERDICT: PASSED
Predictology is a database of football statistics allowing you to build your own football betting systems or use those developed by the Predictology team. Following their “System Predictions” made an impressive 38 points profit during our trial.
That equates to over £1900 profit to £50 stakes so we are pleased to award Predictology a PASSED rating and it’s a platform we will be utilizing more going forward to aid our football betting.
Just a reminder that these results are from following the System Predictions in their Daily Digest e-mail.
We noted last time that our results differ from their official ones, with the official results having made 35 points compared to the 26 points we have proofed. We are not sure why this is the case – we think part of the reason is that we are following slightly different leagues (e.g. Japan J League), but even for the leagues we are both following we are getting slightly different matches and selections. Hopefully we can figure out why this is happening soon.
Anyway, either way the results have been positive which is the main thing.
It’s been a bit of a quiet start to our trial of football systems-builder Predictology, with a small loss of 2 points made so far from following their System Predictions in the Daily Digest e-mail.
Please note this is from risking 1 point liability on the lay selections, so the most you can lose is one point whatever the odds are.
Our results are also a little different to the official Predictology ones, we are not sure why but they are investigating at the moment. We have recorded the results as per the e-mails we received which seems the fairest way of doing things.
Anyway, a bit of a quiet start here as we say but hopefully things will pick up when the main leagues get underway shortly.
We ran a review of football systems-builder package Predictology last season and recorded the results for the three free systems that came with it on launch. Those just about broke even, with a loss of two points made during our trial.
Predictology is basically a database of resources and statistics that will show you how to supercharge your football betting, allowing you to quickly and easily build your own profitable football betting systems or use those developed by the Predictology team.
Our aim was to come back to Predictology this season and take another look at it, but we had limited time and then of course covid hit which rather put paid to our plans.
However, it has gone through some major enhancements during the break in the football and it is apparently getting a great reception from the membership. To name a few of the improvements:-
– New multi-layered server
– AI Prediction engine which assesses and highlights value in pretty much any match taking place globally
– More than doubled the number of leagues and competitions covered
– Again more than doubled the markets and variables that systems can be built around
– 5 profitable strategies included in all memberships
– Daily Digest email to members’ inbox every morning which includes:
– All of the predictions summarised in one place
– Key betting insights and trends for the day’s football
It’s been the last part that is really grabbing attention and since it was rolled out to members (late May) it is sitting at 42 points profit.
This is also what we will be concentrating on in our review as the results look very promising and it should make it more manageable in terms of workload.
Just to note as well that they are currently offering a $1 trial for 7 days for new members which is pretty decent and gives you a chance to check out the service first for a couple of weeks.
Anyway, we will kick off the re-review today and report back soon on how things are going.
Just a reminder that these results are for the three free systems that came with the initial relaunch of Predictology, although there are a number of other systems you can use or you can even build your own systems using the database.
Ideally we would have liked to wrap up our review at this point with the footy season having finished, but we don’t have quite enough bets to give a fair verdict on the system so will put the review into abeyance until the new season and pick things up again then.
Just a reminder that these results are for the three free systems that came with the initial relaunch of Predictology, although there are a number of other systems you can use or you can even build your own systems using the stats package.
Hopefully we will have more news to report by the time of our next update.
We have had to reset this review due to a bug in their system which was sending different selections out by e-mail to those generated by the system within the Predictology site.
So where as previously we were using the e-mail selections to proof results, it turns out those selections were not the correct ones, so now we have gone back to using the system to generate the selections.
On that basis, the three free systems provided at the launch of Predictologyare currently 1 point down.
The discrepancy hasn’t actually made much of a difference to the results and it was mainly System 3 – Winless which was affected.
For the purposes of the review we are just concentrating on the English Premier League, although you can use the systems on other leagues as well (specified for each system).
Anyway, let’s hope the problems are sorted now and we can settle down and get on with the review.
Predictology is a database of resources and statistics that allows you to build your own profitable football betting systems or use those developed by the Predictology team.
We have been following the free systems that were available with the re-launch of Predictology that happened about a month ago.
So far it has been a quiet start for these systems, with only 12 bets given out and a small loss of 2 points incurred so far.
Predictology is a long-running football systems builder package that has recently had a revamp and is now being relaunched. It comes from the same team behind the successfulFootball Advisorservice we have reviewed elsewhere on the site.
Predictology includes a database of resources and statistics that will show you how to supercharge your football betting, allowing you to quickly and easily build your own profitable football betting systems or use those developed by the Predictology team.
To celebrate the launch they are giving away three top systems completely FREE which have made a combined profit of over 300 points!
One of the systems even has an ROI of over 38%, which is pretty incredible stuff in the world of football betting.
In terms of the revamped Predictology package, here is what it now includes:
– The first and most comprehensive football betting strategy builder and analyser.
– 10 in-built and profitable strategies provided to all members
– 22 Leagues, 200,000+ matches and more than a 100 variables
– Custom built server allowing for strategies to be assessed in seconds
– Automated bet alerts to members inboxes
– Three custom rating models
– A value rating tool which produces profitable ‘value’ bets each week
– Custom built stats hub for easily assessing and finding profitable betting angles globally
– Launching soon – AI bet generator
– Launching soon – 47 more leagues and 100 more variables and betting markets
– Launching soon – iOS and Android App
So that all looks very impressive and given that the original Predictology system was held in high regard we are looking forward to testing this new one out with all the upgraded features.
After having taken a look at it we will report back with our views on it in a full review.
It’s been over four years since we originally reviewed football trading service Goal Profits and they’ve added a whole host of new features since then so we thought it was high time for an update.
After having to take a break for coronavirus which disrupted our trial, we have been able to get back in the swing of things and complete our review.
So here we are with our thoughts on Goal Profits having taken a look at all the new features they’ve added since our original review back in 2016.
Goal Profits – Opening Thoughts
When we started the re-review process, we had wanted to produce some results for our trial, much like we do for the other reviews we do here at Honest Betting Reviews.
However, having looked at the platform and discussing it with the Goal Profits team, it became apparent that the tools and approaches available to members are so varied and wide-ranging that for us to give results would be pretty much meaningless, as they would be completely different to the results of any other member. Everyone will be using the platform to find different trades in different matches and leagues so a comparison wouldn’t be very meaningful.
And that really leads on to a more general point regarding what Goal Profits is all about – and what it is not.
In essence Goal Profits is a platform for people to learn how to trade football matches and to then provide them with the tools to find potential trades. It is an educational resource rather than a “tipping” platform in the traditional sense of churning out selections for you to copy.
You have to take the initiative and do some work yourself. Those who are prepared to do so clearly derive a great deal of benefit from the platform – hence all the awards Goal Profits has won, including our very own Best Football Service 2019 as voted for by our members.
If on the other hand you have limited time to learn how to trade and just want bets or trades sent to you, this probably isn’t the service for you. So it’s important to bear that in mind heading in, but now let’s take a look at the various features of the Goal Profits platform.
Goal Profits Members’ Area
After you have signed up to Goal Profits and logged in, you enter the Members’ Area which looks like this:
You have the latest news which covers any additions or changes to the platform, new leagues they may have added and upcoming games.
There is also an update on Chat Room Trades, telling you when professional traders Kevin and Steve will next be trading in the chat room. Finally there are e-mail addresses for you to request support, something Goal Profits is very strong on and are always on hand to offer help and assistance whatever your query.
Getting Started – Launchpad
OK so you’ve signed in and taken a look around. The next place to go to really get started is the Launchpad. This is a training guide where they go through all the essentials of how to trade, discuss the tools on the Goal Profits platform including the Live Stats Module, Custom Shortlist Pro, Team Stats and introduce you to their trading strategies.
It’s a good idea to take a good deal of time going through the Launchpad – whether you are a complete beginner or an experienced trader. Understanding exactly what’s on offer and how to use it is crucial to getting the most out of the service.
The Launchpad is broken up into the following sections:
1. Trading Basics
2. Trading for Beginners
3. Intermediate Trading
4. Advanced Trading
As you can see in the example of Trading Basics below, you simply click to get started and are then taken through everything step-by-step:
There’s quite a lot of info in here on trading mindset and discipline as well, which is a key part of becoming a successful trader and is well worth reading.
Next up is the nuts and bolts of the platform – the trading strategies. These are the foundation of everything really as they are how you make use of the vast stats databases and other info in the site.
The trading strategies are covered in the Launchpad section but are also explained in great depth in this section, with any potential trades for the day indicated by the software, a full strategy guide and then an example video at the end. What more could you ask for really!
There are currently 14 trading strategies included on the platform and without giving too much away most of them revolve around correct scores, trading certain parts of a game if given criteria are met, laying the draw in a particular half if conditions are right and so on. There are also some more advanced strategies involving tactics like going against the crowd and utilising the Asian handicap markets.
Here’s an example of what the CS3 strategy looks like on the platform:
Most of these strategies don’t involve having to sit in front of your PC for the whole game – in the main they are either strategies just for a specific part of a game or involve closing out a position once a certain score is hit. So you don’t have to worry that it will take up 90 minutes plus for each trade.
Team Stats
OK, so you’ve gone through all the manuals in Launchpad, learned the trading strategies and now you want to start trading.
Well the place to start is to look at the fantastic stats databases Goal Profits provide. They have made major additions and improvements to these databases as well as adding whole new ones since our original review in 2016 and these are a considerable improvement in our view. They now cover over 60 leagues worldwide.
First up you have the Team Stats database, which is the overall guide to the day’s fixtures and all the stats on them you could need.
So for example for today we have a fixture coming up between Inter Zaprešić and Dinamo Zagreb. Clicking on the game presents us with a whole host of stats, including:-
– 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 target score of the strategy CS3 referred to above
– And much more
So from that you could easily start finding games you want to trade if they have stand-out stats that show a very strong trend on one of these parameters that isn’t reflected in the odds.
Following on from Team Stats is Custom Shortlist Pro. This is where you can filter matches by a range of different criteria and build your potential trades from there.
So for example you might want to know matches today where the home team has won the first half at least 50% of the time and the away team has failed to score in the first half more than 50% of the time.
You can enter these criteria and then the tool will find any matches that meet these specifications:
The great thing about it is you can add rows to create additional filters and sort by a whole range of different criteria. It really is a great way of narrowing down your potential trades for the day and saving a lot of time compared to sorting through all the stats manually.
There’s so much else in the stats section too, including:
– Compare Teams – pick any two teams and compare them as per the team stats section above
– Database – the overall numbers analysing over 200,000 matches to give average stats on scores, over/unders, home wins etc
– Form and trends – by last 5, 10 or 15 games
– Tim’s Shortlist – GP member Tim’s picks for the day according to his own shortlist filters
So it’s really a treasure trove of info and a real geek’s heaven!
This is one of our favourite features of Goal Profits and really sets it apart from most of the other footy offerings out there.
It shows you league tables based on a range of factors you can choose from and then shows you that table, with each team compared to their position in the actual league table.
So for example you might want to know how teams tend to do when going 1-0 up in games. Well you can sort the table by exactly that – here’s the Premier League for example:-
So as you can see from the table, Crystal Palace for example are 6 places above their normal league position in terms of their results when going 1-0 at home, where as Leicester are 4 places worse off and Chelsea 6.
This is great info for those in-running trades where you might want to take a contra position to the market if you think a team is a weak 1-0 leader in a game and will probably concede.
You can get league tables by criteria such as results vs bottom half, home attack v away defence, when level at HT and much more – amazing!
Most of what we have seen so far concerns looking at stats from completed matches to get a sense of how matches may go. But what stats from matches in-play?
Well Goal Profits have that covered as well!
They have a Live Stats Module which provides in-running stats on games including shots, corners, possession etc and even alerts when it’s a good time to enter a trade based on the stats.
This is similar to some other in-play trading scanners but to have it included as part of Goal Profits in addition to everything else you get is very impressive.
Finally on to perhaps the most important part of the platform in terms of where you can really learn – the Chat Room. This is where you can follow along with the professional traders Kevin and Steve. As mentioned above, they normally mention on the home page when they will next be trading so you can schedule when to be in the room.
Once in the chat room, they say which strategy they are following for a match and any moves they make during a game. Other members also chip in with comments and ideas and it’s also a chance to ask any questions you may have.
This is where you can see the trading strategies in action and how the pro traders trade them, so as we say it’s a great way to learn and improve your own skills along the way.
OVERALL VERDICT – PASSED
As you can see then the Goal Profits platform is incredibly comprehensive and we haven’t even covered everything here – there are also calculators, a forum, FAQs, Team Twitter lists and more! You would need to write a book really to do it justice.
Given all the improvements they have made since our original review and the vast offering that’s available to Goal Profits members, we have no hesitation in upgrading this to a PASSED rating. For anyone contemplating becoming a serious football trader, this is the place to start.
As stated at the outset of this review, this is a service for those who want to put in the time and effort and learn how to become a better trader. It provides you with the education, tools and guidance to do so, but how you use all of that is up to you. Those who put in the work and understand what is on offer clearly love the platform – hence all the awards Goal Profits has won. Its members really value everything they are provided with and derive great benefit from it.
The only thing we would like to see added is perhaps some alerts sent through Telegram (like Trade On Sports), for those who don’t have the time to study the platform, learn everything and follow matches in-running. That is just our own personal preference and others may argue that is not what Goal Profits is all about.
Either way though what you can’t argue with is the quality and depth of everything on offer from Goal Profits. It’s the most comprehensive football trading platform out there and has set the benchmark for others to follow.
It’s now nearly four years since we reviewed football trading service Goal Profits (see below) when we awarded it a neutral rating.
In that time the service has changed almost beyond recognition, with a whole host of new features and tools added. In addition they have also won numerous awards since our original review, including our very own “Best Football Service 2018” award voted for by you, our members!
So we thought it was only fair to the Goal Profits team that we had another look at the service and checked out all the new features they’ve added to see if we should reevaluate our original rating.
There is no doubt this is the most popular football trading service on the internet and the community seems to absolutely love the offering, so we are really looking forward to getting stuck in and testing it out.
Today then we are launching a “re-review” of Goal Profits and will report back soon on our findings. There is an awful lot to get through so it may take some time but hopefully it will be worth it and we’ll be able to provide some decent insights into what the service is all about and whether it can make you some profits.
We have completed our trial of the much-heralded Goal Profits, a suite of systems for trading football matches on the exchanges such as Betfair.
We have to confess to being slightly underwhelmed at the results after three months of testing.
Following the trades of Steve (who runs the service) exactly for 3 months has yielded just 12 points profit over the course of 63 matches traded.
So that would be nearly 100 hours of trading time to make 12 points profit, which at £10 per point doesn’t quite cover the subscription fees.
Now of course it wouldn’t quite have been 100 hours of trading because you would have been out of some matches before the 90-minute mark, but you get a good idea that lots of time needs to be invested here.
And for that amount of investment, we would like to have seen better results to make it worthwhile.
Here you can see the results for the trial in graph format – a good start followed by a long period of steady decline and then a big jump at the end.
What do you get with Goal Profits?
As we said previously in our results update, there are essentially three different types of trading system included in the Goal Profits package:
Lay the Draw strategies
“Matrix” systems
Correct score strategies
In total you are given 28 potential strategies to trade with Goal Profits.
There are some bold claims made on the Goal Profits website that people trade these systems full-time for a living.
That may very well be true, but for us there needs to be much clearer direction given before we are convinced that anyone who joins can make such profits – or even just good profits.
We would expect there to be very clear instructions given for live trades. For example, an e-mail sent out prior to kick-off saying:
“Lay HT Draw in Liverpool v Chelsea at 2.4 for 1 point”
Then another e-mail after a goal saying:
“Trade out of Liverpool v Chelsea HT Draw market for 0.6 pts profit.”
If they did this across say at least half a dozen systems and these averaged a decent profit of around 5-6 points profit per month each, then we would be more convinced that following their systems can deliver a solid profit each month.
But as is, you can follow Steve’s trades in the forum for the most part and some of Kevin’s, but not the kind of clear, testable service outlined above we would like to see.
So the subscriber is left to test all these other systems for themselves and see what they can achieve.
For us there wasn’t anything in their 28 systems that jumped out as having a clear edge. And some of them are available elsewhere on line for free.
The “Lay the draw” system is well covered for free on the internet and we have our own strategy laid out here.
Plus we detail the “lay the draw at half time” strategy in our Football Betting Secrets manual which is available here.
So for us, whilst this made a profit over the trial, it wasn’t enough to merit a recommended ratingand that is likely to remain the case for us unless they set up the kind of service we outlined above.
Service Breakdown
Ease of use: This is a heavy workload service to say the least. You will have to dedicate a considerable amount of time to firstly learning the systems and how they work and then to trading them.
Availability of prices: The prices Steve records for his systems are generally readily available. The correct score market is the main market you will trade following his methods and it has very good liquidity.
Strike rate: The strike rate for the trial was 33%, which is good and you shouldn’t have too many losing trades in a row here.
Advised Betting Bank: We used a 40 point bank for following Steve’s trades which we felt with a fairly good strike rate and 3.2 points risked per trade, would be comfortable and that proved the cae here. However, for each system that you trade you will need either a separate bank (recommended) or to increase the overall size of your bank if using one for all systems.
Subscription costs: The subscription costs are £37 + VAT per month, which are a little on the high side and there is no introductory offer for people to try for a period (e.g. 1 week or 14 days).
OVERALL VERDICT: NEUTRAL
Overall we can see that a lot of work has gone in to creating a suite of trading strategies here and the owners of the service, Steve and Kevin, are dedicated to their cause.
We would not deride any system that can turn a profit and Steve has managed to do that with his correct score trades, gaining 12 points over the course of our trial.
However, we feel that there is not enough here to give this a passed rating.
There are 28 systems provided, but excluding the correct score systems, we could not see that the other systems would guarantee a profit over the long term.
If there was a more systematic approach to providing live trading advice for those systems and they proved profitable, we could well be persuaded to change our view on this.
But until then, this goes into the neutral list for us.
It has taken a little longer than normal to get our first update done on Goal Profitsand we apologise for that if you have been waiting for it.
This one has been trickier to review than most systems we trial here at Honest Betting Reviews as there is an awful lot of information to take in – including a number of manuals to read, lots of videos to watch and about 30 potential systems to trade!
So that is probably the first thing to warn you about – if you do sign up to Goal Profits, be prepared to devote quite a lot of time getting to grips with it.
What is Goal Profits actually all about then?
Well Goal Profits is a set of systems for trading football matches on the exchanges such as Betfair. There are essentially three different types of trading system included:
Lay the Draw strategies
“Matrix” systems
Correct score strategies
In terms of the lay the draw strategies, these are widely available for free online – in fact we have done our own guide to lay the draw for your perusal here!
Looking at the Matrix systems, we had a look through each system but struggled to find anything that either wasn’t available for free elsewhere or had a clearly identifiable “edge” as such. Why would they make you money? That is the question we always ask with a trading system. There wasn’t an obvious answer for us when looking at those systems.
So that leaves us with the correct score strategies. These are probably the mainstay of Goal Profits and what the service is really about.
There are different methods for trading the correct score markets outlined, but basically they all centre on hitting certain “target scores” where you make a profit if a game finishes in certain scores like 2-3, 3-2, 3-1, 2-2, etc but a loss if it finishes 0-0, 1-0 or 0-1.
We have recorded the results for the main “Batman and Robin” trades that Steve, who runs the service, uses for his own trading.
After two months of trading and 50 matches traded, we are 4 points up overall.
Given the amount of time invested in having to be at the computer for the duration of those 50 matches, 4 points seems like quite a low return.
Plus, those are the official results if you have traded just like Steve and got exactly the same results as him. We have not managed to get as good results as these, but have been learning and are getting closer now.
It does take a bit of getting used to and knowing what you should do in each situation when a goal is scored.
So in summary the verdict so far is that the jury is still out on Goal Profits. We have struggled to make a profit after two months and a huge amount of time invested – and even following Steve’s trades exactly you would only be 4 points up.
We have a month to go in the trial so will be interesting to see how things turn out and if we can extract some more profit from this.
Today we are commencing a review ofGoal Profits,a popular football trading product that focuses mainly on the correct score markets on Betfair.
This is a sister product to Value Football Betting, a service we have reviewed and originally gave a passed rating to but downgraded to a neutral rating after a disappointing run of results.
There are some fairly bold claims made on the sales page of Goal Profits – such as that they can “turn beginners into full-time professionals” and that some of their members “now work part-time because their trading profits provide enough income.”
The guy who runs the service, Steve Brown, also claims that “my correct score trading strategies and exclusive Team Statistics software have changed the way football matches are researched and traded for profit.”
Well that is perhaps the boldest claim of all, because it is one thing to say people make a living out of trading systems and another thing to say you have changed way the market is traded, particularly with a massive worldwide website such as Betfair!
Their claims appear to be backed up by something though, as they have won a number of awards for being the best trading product in their field.
So we are intrigued to find out what all the fuss is about and whether they can live up to their bold claims. At the end of the day, when you strip away all the hype and layers of theory and padding, any system ultimately comes down to results.
A lot of trading systems we have come across rely on either unrealistic amounts needed to trade on markets without enough liquidity, are so ridiculously complicated that it would take a degree in trading to comprehend them, or rely on super-fast trading out.
Hopefully that won’t be the case here and trading strategies will be more sensible.
Anyway, the key question is can they produce consistent profits month-in month-out. Well our trial will endeavour to find out.
