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Guide

How to check a tipster's record

A list of winners proves nothing. Before you trust or pay a tipster, there are five questions a real record can answer, and most cannot. This also works in reverse: if you are a good tipster, these are the questions you want to be able to answer.

Five questions for any record

1. Was every pick public before kick-off?

A screenshot can be edited, and a post can be deleted. Ask for something the tipster could not have changed afterwards: a time stamp from a third party, a sealed pick, or at the very least a public channel where edits and deletions are visible.

2. Are the losers still there?

Send winning tips to one list and losing tips to another, and one list looks brilliant. Ask for the complete record from day one, including every void, and check that bets are not missing around bad weeks.

3. Could you have got those odds?

A record at 2.20 means little if the price was gone a minute after the post, or was only available at one small bookmaker for a few euros. Compare the stated odds with the market at that moment.

4. Do the picks beat the closing line?

This is the strongest single test. If the picks are good, the market tends to move towards them after they are posted. Compare the stated odds with the fair price at kick-off: that is closing line value. It shows skill long before profit can.

5. How many bets is it based on?

Even at even odds, a bettor without any edge lands beyond plus or minus 6 % yield after 1,000 bets about one time in twenty. At higher odds the spread is larger still. A great month means almost nothing, and fifty bets mean nothing at all.

Red flags

  • Guaranteed wins, "fixed matches" or inside information for sale. These are scams.
  • Yields of 30 % and more over hundreds of bets, with no closing-line figures to support them.
  • No losing months at all.
  • Mainly long-odds combination bets, where a single big win hides a long run of losses.
  • Results shown in units with changing stakes, so that big winners happen to carry the most units.
  • No answer to the five questions above.

What a record nobody can fake looks like

The clean technical answer is a pick that cannot be read before kick-off and cannot be changed after sending. That is what Manometer's referee does for signal sources:

  • Picks are sealed with a time lock to the kick-off round of the public drand beacon. Before that round nobody can open them, including us.
  • Every pick gets a signed receipt, anchored hourly in Bitcoin, so that it cannot be removed or back-dated later.
  • It is scored against the Pinnacle closing line, at the second it arrived.
  • Anyone holding a receipt can check it in the browser, without our server.

Public scorecards show weekly totals; individual picks stay with the source. Are you a tipster or syndicate who wants a record like this? Registering is free, and nothing here is exclusive.

Next: Betting bots: how automated betting works. Past results do not predict future results. Betting is for adults only and can be addictive: responsible betting.