First Month Following The Flat Racing Master

How We Started

From Our Kid in the 2:30pm at Musselburgh on the 1st of October to Laieth in the 5:10pm at Wolverhampton on the last day of the month, we followed the advice of Betting Gods’ pro horse-racing tipster, the Flat Racing Master, religiously.

This article is a brief discussion of our experience over the period.

Curiosity piqued by the service, time was taken to decide which of Betting Gods’ numerous tipsters would be worth following. On the site, it is possible to view stats which lay out what sort of performance can be expected from each expert.

The Flat Racing Master, it was stated, could boast an average monthly strike rate of around 24.9% and brought in around 33pts in profit from £10 bets (this equates to £330 a month).

A Change In Figures

Visiting the site now, these figures have been revised downwards slightly for reasons which will become apparent.

It should also be noted that, generally speaking, a “1 point” stake is taken to mean a £10 bet.

Most of the Flat Racing Master’s tips suggested “2 point” stakes which could have ensured bigger wins if the tips proved successful. Knowing that flat racing is less unpredictable than the jumps, we decided that this was the guy to follow.

Some Caveats

As we move on, it is only fair to acknowledge that some caveats must be applied to our findings.

Our eventual outcome for the month was affected because we only sometimes obtained the odds it was suggested each selection would attract.

This meant that when there were winnings, they were not always as high as they could have been, which had a noticeable knock-on effect in the “profit/loss” column.

Furthermore, we were following just one of the service’s many tipsters, some of whom will have had an excellent October. But we can only report on what we experienced.

A Disastrous First Week

The first week was nothing short of a disaster. Of 21 tips received from the service, only three were successful.

This fell some way short of the claimed strike rate.

While I should reiterate that the sums advertised for each tipster on Betting Gods are monthly averages, it was quite a shock for things to be so bad in the first week following the service. More alarmingly, we were down £228 (or 22.8 points) after that one week.

This led to the view that following the service might be “A Very Bad Idea”. Such losses would likely be unsustainable for most average gamblers. Especially since, as one of us later remarked, it had seemed in that first week that the Flat Racing Master ‘couldn’t pick his nose’.

All this said we were aware of two things which persuaded us to continue.

First, it would be unfair to review based on such a small sample size of data. Secondly, Betting Gods recommends having a starting bank of 100pts to ‘cover any losing runs’. Thus, it seemed correct that the service should be tested in line with its suggestions and claims.

Nonetheless, if losses carried on at the rate of the first week, the starting bank would be exhausted within the month!

It should also be highlighted that there is an implication here that the losing runs will be temporary, and you will be in the money soon enough. Indeed, this is likely how many visitors will view it. That is, if they see this at all, since the starting bank recommendations are towards the bottom of each tipster’s page.

A Change Was Coming

From here on out, our experience was that the ship was steadied somewhat.

In fact, with 17 winners from 68 for a strike rate of 25%, the Flat Racing Master exceeded his average in the last three weeks of the month. This included an entertaining couple of days on the 27th and 28th when four winners from 9 rolled in.

However, as this better spell in the latter period of the month included several horses which were placed rather than victorious, it was not enough to drag us back into credit. We ended the month £284.45 (or around 28 points) down.

To reiterate, this small additional loss came in a relatively good spell of winners. For his part, the Flat Racing Master claimed a loss of around £161 (or 16 points) at the month’s end. As mentioned above, this is likely due to differentiated odds meaning that, where there were winners, the tipster had greater success in clawing more money back.

Lessons Learned

So what lessons were learned from this first month that should be passed on to would-be users of this service or similar ones?

First, where possible, try to get the best odds by being off the mark earlier and shopping around. This will reduce any losses. But the main lesson is this: do not begin using such services believing you are guaranteed to win money.

It is apparent that even professionals cannot be sure of that in any given month.

Be careful of language designed to convince you that an immediate return is, if not certain, highly likely. The response from pro tipsters would likely be that winnings come over time, and things even themselves out. They would also undoubtedly state that it’s possible to bet a smaller amount per point (for instance, £1 per point stake suggested). Perhaps.

However, you may have to be in a position to lose a lot before there is much prospect of winning the big profits suggested in the headline numbers.

Our Bets To Date

The graph below shows how successful (or unsuccessful) our betting was over the course of 90 bets.

As you can see, we still have some way to go to get back into the black. You can download the PDF here if you want to view the detail of the bets we placed as research to this blog post.