Who’s your Tipster

Ever asked youself how a tipster works?

Cyril's Betting Advice
Cyril's Betting Advice

Do you have a favourite tipster to help you with your selections? Many punters do but I’m happy to rely on my own efforts. Having someone else to rely on can be fine but if nothing else it takes away a sense of achievement.

It also raises many questions. The first and probably most important question being, “What is the tipsters “mind set”? How does he function? A funny enough question really but one you need to ask yourself.

Many years ago when I was on “relief work” I often accepted bets from a chap that worked for a local newspaper. He was quite successful, with his tips in the newspaper, too.

In fact he finished one flat season in first position in the nap stable of one of the Sporting dailys.

Of course his success didn’t go unnoticed and the next flat season he was giving tips in a National Sunday paper. Unfortunately his successful run didn’t carry over to the current season and he was quickly dropped by the Sunday paper.

Not much here to set the mind buzzing. However had his followers known about his own betting flutters I doubt he would have had many followers even when he was being successful, locally.

Of all the bets I accepted from him I doubt if 5% were WIN bets. Almost every bet he placed was a PLACE ONLY BET. And he was being paid by his employer to make WINNING selections meeting by meeting on a day to day basis and we must assume some readers were following his advices. Was he conning his followers? That’s open to debate. Is the papers tipster who also sells his services to a private clientele also conning his readers and/or his subscribers? Again, that’s open to debate.

What I’m trying to get across is that you really need to know how your tipster thinks and what are his protocols.

Fortunately with football bets there isn’t really much space for any skullduggery. The tipster gives his answer in 1, 2, X form and it’s rather easy to follow his success or otherwise on a regular basis.

Is it really necessary to follow tipsters? Whether as a cash paying subscriber or just by choosing one from a newspaper?

With the number of betting options available today and the amount of space devoted to betting on various options I am inclined to think that the average punter can make choices which could rival most of the “professional brigade”.

These days more and more people are relying on STATS as the basis of their methods of selections. Why not, indeed? There is so much information to be had, at the click of a mouse button that we’re really spoilt for choice. This applies equally to horse racing and football and even tennis.

There are plenty of statistic sites on this site, Soccerway and Soccerstats jump to mind. Anyway, you only have togGoogle something like… soccerstats sites and you’ll find more pages of them than you have fingers on each hand.

Another thing which is becoming a firm favourite with the bookies is Enhanced Prices.

However if you have a sharp eye there are chances to really benefit from these offers.

I recently saw one bookmaker offering ‘Spurs 2.75. Draw 3.50 and Liverpool at 4.00. This was a clear opportunity to make a few bob. Had it been possible to back the three situations with the firm offering these odds it would have made a little over £ 11.00 when “dutching” £100.00. However it would have been impossible to get such a bet on with the firm. However the odds for the Home and draw were available from other bookies and with one of them offering Liverpool at 9.00 but only to £10.00 stakes. A little bit of maths twiddling and the following bet was possible. ‘Spurs £32.70 @ 2.75, Draw £25.70 @ 3.5 and Liverpool £9.99 @9. A total stake of £68.39 with a guaranteed return of £68.40. A much smaller stake with a much larger return.

As with all good things, Sos’s law poke it’s head up. I didn’t realise the match was an early kick-off.

And I missed out on this good thing. Ah well, there will be plenty more occasions like this. You just have to keep an eagle eye on the newspapers.