About the Tipsters' Leagues

Sports-Tipsters' league tables now rank monitored tipsters according to their TipIQ, a statistical estimate of a tipster's skill level (over and above chance) for the period in question. Further information about what this is and why it is used to rank tipsters can be found on Analysing a Tipster.

4 league tables are presented:

1. Full records of all proofed tips
2. Records over the last 3 months
3. Records over the last 6 months
4. Records over the last 12 months

An important change on 13th June 2011

Some tipsters proofing to Sports-Tipsters were already operating their service prior to the commencement of proofing to Sports-Tipsters. Sports-Tipsters also used to show a 5th table including all tips, proofed and unproofed, combinded together. As of 13th June 2011 this table was removed, along with all pre-proofing records for any tipsters that had them.

Sports-Tipsters has taken the view, based on experience of proofing over 200 betting advisory services, that too often tips records that predate the time of proofing frequently outperform the proofed record and give a false impression of the quality of the tipster. In this way, tipsters' admission to Sports-Tipsters proofing services became a self selecting process with only those tipsters that started well going on to request their service be independently monitored. One can make the assumption, then, that many Tipsters which started badly never chose to ask for independent monitoring of their tips because they concluded that there was little point in continuing to operate a service. As such, then, pre-proofed tips may very well be disproportionately better than one might expect, with the element of luck dominating that of skill. Read more about the importance of distinguishing luck from skill.

For this reason, Sports-Tipsters now considers only proofed tips to be relevant for public consumption and analysis. Some tipsters have had tips proofed by other monitoring services prior to coming to Sports-Tipsters, and where appropriate this has been identified on the tipster's analysis page on this website. Nevertheless, in the context of the results, profits charts and analysis that are presented through this website, Sports-Tipsters will be applying a strict definition of "proofed" to mean proofed to Sports-Tipsters only. Whilst punters can frequently request pre-proofing records direct from the tipster, Sports-Tipster would nevertheless advise that any punter looking to purchase tips from any of the tipsters publishing their records here consider only the proofed tips as a reliable representation of betting performance.

Sports-Tipsters records a profit/loss on the date a bet was settled, not the date a bet was advised. Discrepancies may arise between monthly statistics published for each tipster and those presented on the tipster's website where ante post or long term bets have been advised in one month but are not settled until another later month.

Small discrepancies between the record shown by Sports-Tipsters and that shown by the tipster's own website may also arise due to rounding of betting odds and profits, the omission of tips not received, and the ommission, by the tipster, of commission deducted from winning exchange bets (and lays) Bets advised at an exchange price and all lays are proofed at acceptably "gettable" prices and with 5% commission deducted. Any other discrepancy will be due to manual error either on the part of Sports-Tispters or the tipster themselves, and it is the Tipster's responsibility to notify Sports-Tipsters of any ommissions and errors that he believes exist.

IMPORTANT:

1. Note that with many services, particularly those with more than just a handful of members and those which are more successful, the proofed record presented by Sports-Tipsters is likely to represent the best possible return on investment. In practice, because punters are unlikely to always be able to get the advised price for every bet, the actual return on investment will probably be a little lower than the one recorded, although there will be occasions where a punter can actually find a better price than the one advised. If a punter choses to follow a service on the basis of the information presented here then this feature should be recognised and understood.
   
   
2. Additionally, some tipsters advise bets and/or lays with betting exchanges, most typically Betfair. Whilst it is Sport-Tipsters policy only to accept a price for proofing when there is sufficient volume available to trade at the price advised, given the number of tipsters and bets advised, it is not always possible to check whether every price advised could be considered acceptable.
   
   
3. In addition to studying the published yields, profit trends and league rankings, Sports-Tipsters advises all readers who are considering a purchase of tips from one of the advisory services to check the return on investment for that particular service to level stakes. This can easily be down by downloading the CSV record from Sports-Tipsters and setting all stakes to 1. Unless a service returns a profit to level staking, no specialised staking strategy of any kind will be able to deliver success over the long term. Non-level staking plans can improve profitability (although usually the expense of risk) but no staking plan can turn a losing system into a winning one.
   
   
4. When deciding on whether to purchase a membership from any of the services, the punters should consider exactly how much the subscription fee is likely to eat into potential profits. Obviously there is no way of knowing what future profits will be, but one can use the past as a guide. From the availble record of tips and the analysis presented by Sports-Tipsters the punter should be able to dertermine roughly how many bets he can expect to place over a given period (for example a month), what the projected return will be from those bets assuming the service performs as well as it has done in the past, and consequently how large his average stake size should be. Clearly, purchasing 100 tips with a 20% betting yield at £300 per month will be of little value if the average stake size is £10.
   
   
5. Punters should also consider when tipsters send out their advice in relation to start times of the events advised, and the geographical location of the tipster in relation to their own. Some tipsters will sumbit a tip perhaps only 30 minutes before start time. If a member following such a service will not be able to receive the tip at the time it is advised he will not be in a position to take advantage of it. Equally, it might be the case that a member based in a European time zone will receive tips from as US based tipster during the night hours when the member is not online.
   
   
6. Any claims by a tipster to be "The Best", or to "Guarantee Profits" (without actually offering money back or a free subsequent subscription in the event of losses), should always be treated with sceptism.
   
   
7. And finally, every punter should understand that past success is no guarantee to future porfits, and that they should NEVER bet what they can't afford to lose.

The tipsters' leagues are updated every Monday.

Last update: 31/05/15