THE SECRET TIPSTER FINAL REVIEW SUMMARY
25th April 2011
Admin Gordon-Reviews The Secret Tipster
Hello Everyone,
The review of the Secret Tipster started on the 4th January 2011 and finished on the 20th April 2011, this covered a total of 84 “betting ” days
Trying to analyse the performance of The Secret Tipster has proved to be extremely difficult, but this is what I have come up with.
Firstly, what is The Secret Tipster?
Well, it is a lay selection tipping service, run by John Romane. Everyday he send an email to subscribers with the days selections, which are layed to a max price of 9.80 Subscription currently is £57 per month, although when you visit Paypal to subscribe the price is $87 per month, which at the current exchange rate may be a bit less than £57.
Although John records results to level stakes, he also has a staking plan which ranges from 1-4 pts. If a loss is made on any particular day then stakes increase by 1pt to 2pts for all selections the following day. If the day ends with the loss recovered then stakes revert to 1pt, if there is still a loss then stakes increase to 3pts for the following day. Having reached 4pts per selection, stakes would remain at this level until losses have been recovered, before reverting to 1pt again.
One of the main problems with trying to review The Secret Tipster is that John records his results using the prices that he quotes in his daily email, rather than Betfair SP, as is generally accepted to be the fairest way. I should add at this point that John lays each and every one of his selections himself everyday, and says it is his main source of income, and that all the prices he quotes in his email are the prices that he has actually achieved prior to sending the email out to subscribers. So, if you subscribe you would probably want to get your bets on as soon as possible after receiving the information from John. During the review period there were some big variations in quoted prices and Betfair SP’s, both higher and lower.
As I could not guarantee to be able to do that, and it is our policy, I opted for using Befair SP odds instead. This in fact compounds the problem. Because John has matched on all selections before sending out his email, he will never have a no bet. However, using Betfair SP, I recorded a total of 87 no bets during the trial. So, it could be argued that an additional 82.65pts of profit were missed, but, of those 87 no bets, 5 actually went on to win, so would have lost 51.63pts at Betfair SP odds, again it could be argued that at the max odds of 9.80 this would have only been a loss of 44pts. This means that we could perhaps include an additional 35.37 or 43pts to the level stakes profit achieved during the review period.
Another difficult area is the staking plan. I did at one point try to apply the staking plan based on our results since the review started as opposed to simply following the staking recommendation of the day. It was a total disaster! Quite simply, to stand any chance of achieving anything like the results that John gets, you would be best advised to simply follow the staking advise from the day you subscribe.
Laying horse at odds of up to 9.80 is not going to be everyones cup of tea, and indeed this service would not be for the faint hearted. During the review there was one spell where there were 12 winners in the space of just 15 selections, with a run of 5 losing bets closely followed by a run of 6, that sort of run will test the resolve of the best of us. To be fair to John, he did make some alterations to his selection process in an attempt to avoid these kind of runs in the future.
Hopefully I have managed to explain the main reasons as to why a totally accurate reflection of The Secret Tipster service was not possible.
So, what were the results, using Betfair SP odds?
There were a total of 300 selections, with 2 non runners, leaving 298 selections
Of these, 87 were no bets due to Betfair SP odds being over 9.80, leaving a total of 211 bets.
There were 53 winners, so this gives us a Strike rate of 74.9%
The starting bank of 150 pts at level stakes finished at 140.24 pts, a loss of -9.76 pts.
The starting bank of 300 pts for the staking plan finished at 316.10 pts, a profit of +16.10 pts
Using the total of 298 selections, with no “no bets” and the additional 5 winners, giving 58, we would get a Strike Rate of 80.54%
John Romane is a very helpful and genuine man, he is always quick to respond to any questions, and will tell you anything you want to know. As I said he puts his money where his mouth is everyday, and he is proud of what his service has achieved since he started it, albeit using prices other than Betfair SP to publish results. The service is not a “bells and whistle” service, you get the information you need, there is never any BS of any kind regardless of results. John just gets on with it, even after a bad day, if there were no selections, it would be a no bet day, so definitely no chasing losses.
There is a negative in that the results on his website are way behind, hence I have been unable to give you ROI, but to be honest I dont think that would have impressed you much, based on our results during the review period.
However, following the scenario of earlier, if we added the 43 extra points to the level stakes profit due to the no bets, we would actually get a ROI of just over 11% If and buts, which we dont deal in, I am afraid the fundamental difference of John using his prices for results means it is simply impossible for me a or any subscriber to accurately compare our results with John’s.
In summary, I hope that we have managed to do the service some sort of justice in terms of the review we have conducted. John himself would admit this has not been the best period for The Secret Tipster, and it left me with a huge problem as to rating.
Based on the results we have achieved, a loss at level stakes, and a small profit using the staking plan, The Secret Tipster has to be a fail. However, if we simply took the results using the email prices then it could be a different story.
Personally I feel this service may well have more to offer than we have seen here. Therefore I have spoken to John, and he is going to continue to send me the selections each day. I am going to lay all the selections at £2 per point, and I will report back every month with details of how I am getting on. If results are positive we may well repeat the review, with a reviewer who can guarantee to be waiting for John’s email to get the bets on.
Regards,
Admin Gordon
[Click here to see The Secret Tipster]
