Welcome to Part 2 of my guide to spotting those scams relating to matched betting out there. This week I want to focus on an area surrounding Tipsters and the tactics they use to draw you in.

Incase you didn’t know, a Tipster is someone who posts a series of bets which they recommend you bet yourself. They might claim to have insider knowledge or some type of statistical model which they’ve used to identify good betting opportunities and are sharing this knowledge with you (sometimes for a price).

While the paid-for Tipsters are obviously easier to spot; requiring you to part with some cold hard cash in order to gain access to their unique knowledge, it’s the free ones who gain the largest following.

 

Here’s one of the most basic type of Tipster out there. They will chuck out a seemingly (because it is!) random list of bets with an affiliate link to a bookmaker website for you to signup and bet with. Sometimes bookies will pay out purely for each person who signs up… other times they will pay out a % of the profit they make from a customer. This second type of affiliate scheme means the tipster makes money when you lose*. They have an actual financial incentive for you to lose money into the bookmaker which probably highlights why this particular tipster is pushing such high odds.
Unlike financial advice, giving out gambling advice like this is completely unregulated. There is no requirement for them to highlight their affiliate relationship with the individual bookie or that they will personally profit if your bet loses.

 

 

Here’s the second type of Tipster who I like to call the “Selective Tipsters”. These folks will post alot of tips, many times throughout the day and they’ll always go back to reference their winning tips from previous days. This creates a feed showing someone with an extremely high hit rate from their tips and encourages you to believe they may have the winning formula.

Of course that they are actually doing is highlighting the winning bets while deleting a majority of their losing ones. If you notice; their screenshots of tips are unplaced betslips showing the selections.. they usually won’t actually place any bets themselves and the ‘winners’ usually won’t show any settled bet slips. This again is because a majority of their bets will lose and they only want to highlight the winning ones. By posting multiple selections every day they increase the chances that at least 1 is a winner leaving the followers to believe it was their mistake for not selecting the right tip of that day.

 

 

This is the “Ladder Climb Tipster”. They’ll post various challenges all seeking to grow a very modest sum of money into a large target through a series of bets. I’ve seen tonnes of variations all starting from small amounts such as £1/£5/£10/£20 and usually growing to £1000.

The trick behind these is more psychological than the other 2 Tipsters. They’re relying on you jumping on the bandwagon and following along for the journey of growing your money each day/week that they tip. If one of the bets lets you down then it doesn’t really matter because you’ve ‘only’ lost that starting £20 so no harm, right? Time to start again with another £20!

Sometimes these guys will combine it with the Selective Tipster trick and remove references to their previous failed ladder climbs. Another trick is to split their followers into groups so when a ladder inevitably crashes down they can instead highlight the other 3 which won that week and encourage those on the first ladder to climb back on board again.

 

There’s no shortage of Tipsters out there desperate for you to signup with their affiliate links and start losing money into the bookies. Before following one, think to yourself why someone who is able to spot winners so easily would be giving away that information instead of chucking huge amounts on the un-gubbable exchanges.

*While I use affiliate links on this site I do not partner with any which would reward me for you losing money. All of my links are paid per sign-up and so I have no conflict of interest in wanting you to take as much money from them as possible! A small number of bookies have blocked my affiliate status because they’ve realised the customers I’m sending to them are costing them money, however I still keep the links up to their offers because I still want you to profit from their offers.