Advantage Play Secrets has been launched recently. The name Mike Cruickshank might not mean a lot to most people reading this. In fact, I would not be surprised to find out that it doesn’t mean anything to a lot of people. What they may well have heard of however is the culmination of his hard work and the name that remains from his first product, Bonus Bagging. I am referring of course to matched betting.

If you haven’t heard of matched betting and have an interest in gambling, welcome to the show. You’re rather late. I think that it is fair to say that matched betting is arguably one of the most important developments from a punters point of view in the last decade. The almost zero risk betting approach made a lot of people a lot of money and Mike Cruickshank has continued in this vein for some time.

It has been a while since Mike Cruickshank has released an entirely new product however, so it is with a fair amount of excitement that I sit down to look at Advantage Play Secrets. This applies doubly so as I had heard some rather positive things on the grapevine about it. Truth be told, I think that whilst matched betting was an incredible thing, the bookies are getting savvier, more people are offering their take on it, more people are getting involved and the waters are slowly starting to muddy.

Let’s Start The Review.

Product Name: Advantage Play Secrets

What you get: See content below (too much to put here!)

The price: £1 14 Day Trial

Money Back Guarantee: 30 Day Money Back Guarantee

Author: Mike Cruickshank

Where to Buy: Click The Link: Try-Advantage-Play-Secrets

With all of this in mind, I want to start to take a look at Advantage Play Secrets and whether or not it can deliver the same quality that I have come to expect from Mike Cruickshank.

What is Advantage Play Secrets?

Advantage Play Secrets is an entirely new product which brings together several different low risk betting strategies, each developed by Mike Cruickshank. Now I have to be upfront from the start. Using Advantage Play Secrets is not like matched betting products which you may be familiar with.

What Mike has actually done here is packaged up 4 of his very lastest income generating products, and offered them as a membership.

For example, the main products in the Advantage Play Secrets product, he was offering to entice customers on another product recently, and I know for a fact that customers and new members came flocking, with the feedback on these new products being extremely positive.

Therefore I suspect that this is the very reason that Mike has now decided to offer them as a package, and I cannot blame him for that.

This is what Mike Cruickshank himself claims the product contains:

With the Advantage Play Secrets Course & Software Package,
it’s almost like STEALING money from the bookies!

In fact, they’d consider you to be a QUADRUPLE THREAT…
Imagine This Is All Yours:

• 4 Brand new strategies you can execute back-to-back to progressively increase your earnings, and build your betting bank!
• Time-saving tools that take ALL the guesswork out of betting (because all of the research and calculating has already been done FOR you!)
• Intelligent software that quickly and easily finds you the BEST bets. (No more researching bets for hours!)
• A world-class Online Betting coach – watch over my shoulder as I use these strategies to place low-risk, profitable bets in REAL TIME that you can mimic.

Whilst Mike Cruickshank does a very good job of explaining everything with Advantage Play Secrets, this is not the “paint by numbers” approach that you might be used to with other products. By this I mean that there is a bit of work involved. Fortunately, there are a number of tools included with Advantage Play Secrets to help you.

As an overall package, Advantage Play Secrets is made up of 4 different systems, each of which I will look at in detail in their own section. What I can say now is that all 4 are actually very capable of working and ultimately making you a profit. Ultimately, you can expect very comprehensive training showing you live examples of how to bet using a given method.

These are recorded by Mike Cruickshank and he talks you through the process, step by step, of what each betting strategy involves.

The whole thing has clearly been designed to be user friendly and I feel like Mike Cruickshank is to be commended for this. In fact, I was able to navigate round the members area with absolutely no problems and everything did what I expected it to do.

The content that is contained within Advantage Play Secrets is concise and too the point whilst Mike Cruickshank is very informative and helpful in his videos.

With this in mind, I will now look at each of the different systems that comprise Advantage Play Secrets.

The Golden Parachute Method

This is recommended as the starting point of Advantage Play Secrets and I can definitely see why. Mike Cruickshank refers to it as one of his favourite beginner methods and it isn’t hard to see why.

First of all, the nature of the method behind The Golden Parachute Method is incredibly straight forward. You don’t really have to have any understanding of betting to get started and in a rare but welcome move for a product aimed at those starting out betting, you don’t need to invest a lot of cash to get started.

As always I am loathe to go into detail about how The Golden Parachute Method works. This is a product if Mike Cruickshank and to publish the details simply isn’t fair. Betting isn’t too difficult which is mostly down to a rather comprehensive piece of software which calculates your bets and stakes for you.

I don’t think that I am giving away anything in saying that The Golden Parachute is based around dutching and taking advantage of pricing movement from bookmakers.

In Mike’s Own Words:

At this point I feel the need to point out that I have been somewhat critical of most products which claim to use this as a basis for a service. With The Golden Parachute Method however, you are not simply looking at odds and pricing movement based on a criteria of your own design. This is often the case with tipsters and frankly, it is the problem that I have with their methods.

There is no verifiable way of monitoring their reason for predicting price swings outside of “I think this horse will be faster on the day”.

The method that The Golden Parachute Method employs is however steeped in a very logical, almost machine like process.

This means that it will work the same way every time and that is something that I always expect when looking at a betting product. Combine this with a piece of software which helps you to place your bets and calculate where your profits lie and there is little denying that this first element of Advantage Play Secrets is a winner.

The Golden Parachute Method is a decent low risk system however it is important to keep in mind that it is “only” low risk. Truthfully, I can see how if you lack discipline and start betting erratically there may be an increased risk. Generally, though, there are a large enough number of decent bets available each day that you shouldn’t find yourself in this position.

Everything about this introductory aspect of Advantage Play Secrets has been geared towards those who are starting off and this doesn’t just show, but it is appreciated. It is clear that there are some decent returns to be made (Mike Cruickshank logged a profit of 27% on just one bet) and you really don’t need a lot to get things started. Even the software that you use in order to calculate everything is deceptively simple.

Putting all of my cards on the table, I would go as far as to say with the exception of a very small handful of other betting methods, The Golden Parachute Method is one of the strongest beginners betting strategies I have ever looked at.

There are a number of reasons for this, and they are points I have raised before, but they bear repeating. Advantage Play Secrets is low risk, simple and doesn’t require a substantial betting bank to get started. These are ideal conditions for those at the beginning of their betting journey.

The Dutching Bounty Method

As the name of this particular aspect of Advantage Play Secrets implies, this method is a dutching strategy. Like The Golden Parachute Method, the focus here is very much on minimising risk whilst also maximising profit.

Where the previous method is based more on volume of bets, the Dutching Bounty Method can generate much higher profits on a “per race” basis, however there is a notable dropping off in the number of races that you will be able to identify.

Once again, I won’t go into too much detail about The Dutching Bounty Method as I don’t believe that it is fair to Mike Cruickshank to have his system available in the public domain. Essentially you are looking for certain dutching opportunities to appear on a very specific betting market. The first thing that you have to do however is find a race.

There is a very clear indicator as to which races do and don’t fit the criteria for The Dutching Bounty Method which goes a long way to keeping things simple.

In Mike’s Words:

As with almost all aspects of Advantage Play Secrets, there is a full calculator which is included for use with The Dutching Bounty Method. When you have found a race, the next thing that you need to do is to identify what the best possible stakes are.

This may sound like an odd statement to make (surely more is better right?), however there is a very strong balance between the risk and reward. Fortunately, The Dutching Bounty Method calculator comes with a “simulator” which shows the potential profits and losses from your bets. By consulting this, you can place the correct bet. There are also options to further boost your profits and further minimise that risk.

Truth be told, there isn’t a lot more that I can say about this aspect of Advantage Play Secrets without giving it away. What I can say is that whilst you won’t necessarily be finding races every day with this, there is a lot of potential for big profits.

This isn’t however an entirely risk free betting strategy, something that Mike Cruickshank is open about and actually provides examples of where it can go wrong (a very sure indicator of how consistently The Dutching Bounty Method actually works in my eyes).

All of that having been said, the losses that you face might be at most £10-12 compared to realistic profits of £50 plus per bet. From a purely mathematical point of view, this represents a very good opportunity. Especially given the fact that the losses themselves are actually unlikely to occur as they rely on very specific outcomes.

Acca Booster

Acca Booster is one element of Advantage Play Secrets that doesn’t come without risk. In fact, I think that it is fair to say that you will lose a lot using this method, however, there is something at work here that means that it isn’t a system that should be dismissed out of hand. In fact, I think that it is reasonable to say that it is one of the more interesting betting strategies that I have looked at recently.

As the name suggests, Acca Booster is all about betting on accumulator bets. More importantly, it involves finding examples that have been “boosted” by bookmakers that also have value. By using a strategy which I won’t divulge for obvious reasons, Acca Boosters is very good at identifying value accumulators, something which Mike Cruickshank has provided a number of videos that show you want to do.

Acca Booster is a bit of a dark horse, especially when compared with the other products that make up Advantage Play Secrets. It is also one that I am least sold on. Because of how Acca Booster works, Mike Cruickshank says that the law of big numbers means that you will eventually profit if you follow the rules of finding value accumulators (so much so that Mike Cruickshank recommends that you record results over at least 250 times.

In Mike’s Own Words:

This means that you have to have a lot of discipline and the patience to manage your betting bank over the long term. It also means keeping staking don to a minimum. In fact, Mike Cruickshank says that you should only stake between 0.25 and 0.5 on any one Acca Booster bet.

This highlights to me just how strong the possibility can be for things to go wrong, particularly in the shorter term.

As with the other systems that make up Advantage Play Secrets, there is a piece of software which will help you to identify when Acca Booster bets are available. This is incredibly easy to use which is by far and away one of the strongest points for me.

Betfair Matched Bettors Exploit

I find it rather fortunate that Mike Cruickshank is so open about what his Betfair Matched

Bettors Exploit involves as I would have a very difficult job trying to convince you it can work otherwise. I also have to credit Mike Cruickshank for turning one aspect of his betting industry into yet another way that you can find value and as a result, decent profits.

Essentially, Betfair Matched Bettors Exploit does exactly what it says on the tin. It exploits Betfair matched bettors. Because matched bettors are only interested in using betting exchanges to hedge their bets, this can be in turn leveraged to find value in backing these same bets. This is not a straight forward method however and I would even be inclined to say that it is the riskiest method of betting included in Advantage Play Secrets.

In Mike’s Own Words:

Truthfully, this particular method definitely isn’t going to suit everybody and it is a far cry from what I was expecting coming into Advantage Play Secrets. This doesn’t however mean that it is a bad strategy.

Truth be told, it is a fantastic way of identifying value bets quickly and easily. If you are comfortable being in the red for extended periods of time and are content to keep a long term approach to betting, then Betfair Matched Bettors Exploit will likely turn you a profit. You may well just have to wait for it.

Advantage Play Secrets Members Area Log In

Here is an image of the actual logged in page to Advantage Play Secrets:

As you can see it is quite a simplified log in area, but that is what Mike Cruickshank does – he makes it simple. There is no point is over-complicating such things, because what is really important is learning how to make a profit.

Advantage Play Secrets Software

Where required, there is software assicated with each of the 4 areas (as described in this review), and Mike is the ‘Don’ of software products, so rest assured that the software you need to be able to work out your trades is all valid, present and correct.

Here is an example of the software on the Acca Booster:

So What Do I Think of Advantage Play Secrets as a Package?

I am actually rather surprised by the content of Advantage Play Secrets as an overall package. If I am completely honest, Mike Cruickshank has thrown in a number of approaches that I wasn’t expecting given his track record. This doesn’t mean that it is bad however; it is just different. I will try to get into detail to explain what this means below, but for now, I will say I am a little bit on the fence about Advantage Play Secrets.

The reasoning for this is perhaps down to my own prejudice more than anything else. There are certain things that you expect from the Mike Cruickshank brand and frankly, only half of Advantage Play Secrets delivers on this.

Where I think it is important to be up front about this is precisely because of the kind of thing that people associate with Mike Cruickshank.

The truth is that on a long enough time scale, I believe that all aspects of Advantage Play Secrets will prove profitable. The Acca Boosters and the Betfair Matched Bettors Exploit use some pretty sound principles for identifying value.

The thing about value based betting is that when it is done properly (as Mike Cruickshank has), it will eventually turn good. The Golden Parachute Method and The Dutching Bounty Method are both much more in line with what I was expecting. These produce decent yields with low risk.

Really, I would say that Advantage Play Secrets is the start of moving into more intermediate betting strategies. Mike Cruickshank has a clear approach to his products with each generally leading into one or another in a roundabout fashion. In Advantage Play Secrets I feel like the last vestiges of low risk betting have likely been plundered and this means that inevitably, things have to change. This change is what makes for intermediate betting.

I cannot stress enough how difficult it can be to manage a betting bank and keep a long term approach to betting. This is in part because I think most people simply don’t have the financial freedom to make their money make money for them. Of course, Mike’s earlier products can definitely help you with that and if you are new to his work, go pick up those before you look at Advantage Play Secrets.

The truth is that it takes a certain resilience to watch yourself losing money week on week and a lot of people don’t have that. In fact, this is one area where I would have really liked to have seen more from Mike Cruickshank.

He has been in this game for years and I know that he has written about the topic before now. Something that reassures you about a long term and value based approach is sorely needed given the Acca Booster and Betfair Matched Betting Exploit strategies.

It might sound like I’ve been giving Advantage Play Secrets a bit of a hard time so far and to some degree this is true. As a reviewer, it is my job to point out the good and bad of a service. The fact is that despite these negatives, there is a lot to Advantage Play Secrets that is more than worthwhile. I just think that you have to be aware of exactly what you are getting when you sign up to the service.

If you can keep what I have already said in mind and are able to take the correct approach to Advantage Play Secrets I actually think this is a decent product. It is definitely not what I was expecting from Mike Cruickshank but I don’t think that this move is a bad thing. The fact is that there is only so much you can do around matched betting and low risk betting before you have to look elsewhere.

There are a number of directions that you can go, but I think that finding quantifiable value and using that as a basis isn’t terrible.

Does Advantage Play Secrets Represent Value for Money?

This is a bit of tricky question as it very much depends on who you are and where you are in your betting career. If you are starting out or are still using some of the more basic matched betting techniques that Mike Cruickshank has developed, then you are going to struggle with Advantage Play Secrets.

As such, it isn’t really worth paying anything out; never mind the cost of Advantage Play Secrets. If however you are looking for the next logical step from matched betting, then Advantage Play Secrets is a solid option.

Obviously all of this leads me on to the price. There is only one option which is available if you want to sign up for Advantage Play Secrets which is a single payment of £99 (plus VAT).

This buys you full access to the training, videos and the related software for a full 12 months At the time of writing, you can also get full access to Advantage Play Secrets for 14 days for just £1 in order to trial the service. Payment for both of these options is handled via Cickbank. These are famous for offering a no quibble 60 day money back,

As far as I am concerned, you are getting 4 very solid betting systems for £100 (after the £1 trial).

This is definitely a fair price and more than in line with what you would pay for much lesser offerings. Yes it is quite a substantial initial outlay, however given that you only pay once I think it is justified. With that in mind, if you are able to handle the risks that come with Advantage Play Secrets, I think it represents excellent value for money.

Conclusion on Advantage Secrets Play

There are two ways of viewing Advantage Play Secrets. The first is in the same light as Mike Cruickshank’s previous offerings. In this regard, I think that it possibly pushes people’s expectations of what is on offer a little too much.

Truthfully, most matched bettors and low risk bettors (which I feel it is safe to say make up most of Mike Cruickshank’s audience) are very unlikely to be happy with the risks that come from  Acca Boosters and The Betfair Matched Bettors Exploit.

It is important to discuss these risks as I feel they are perhaps more prominent that any aspect of Advantage Play Secrets really makes out. Looking at Acca Boosters, the fact that you need a minimum sample size of 250 bets is a hell of an ask. Even if you are only staking small amounts, this can still cause a fair amount of trouble for your betting bank.

The second way of looking at Advantage Play Secrets is as a new chapter in Mike Cruickshank’s journey as a “betting guru” and this is the way that I want to look at it. I am quite certain that if you are reading this article, you have probably seen and heard some crap.

I however practically eat, breathe and sleep it. As such, I know when there is something genuine and when somebody is trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Mike Cruickshank is definitely genuine. One look at the methods he employs for extracting value in bets tells me this.

This makes Advantage Play Secrets a winner in my book, albeit not necessarily a typical example. There is a hell of a lot on offer and whilst there is risk in the systems, Mike Cruickshank has done a good job of minimising it as much as you can expect. The fact is that really, the only real risk that I could perceive is the costs but with the trial and the money back period this is negated.

Would I rush out to buy Advantage Play Secrets? If I were serious about building a long term betting system portfolio then absolutely. If however you are looking for  something shorter term or that will turn around a quicker profit, I would look at Mike’s more “traditional” products, as we have reviewed many times on this website.

Advantage Play Secrets Update 13th November 17

Now that Advantage Play Secrets has been launched a few weeks, more and more people are emailing in to report their profits, as well as documenting their profits on Mike’s Facebook page.

As you can see from the screenshots below, some excellent profits are now being made:

As you can see, these are excellent profits being made. The above profits were made with just one aspect of the whole series of products, these profits were made using the Golden Parachute method that is included.

Recommended

Click Here To Claim Your Advantage Play Secrets £1 Trial

Related Content:

Profit Maximiser Review Mike Cruickshank – Plus Special Bonus

Betting Mastermind Review, A Complete Spectrum of Profit Generation

Accumulator Generator Review From Mike Cruickshank

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Most people have heard about Bitcoin, but BitConnect is probably a new name for you. Many cry scam when something comes out that they do not understand, and I am always on the lookout for new ways of generating a passive income online. Why passive income? Passive income is the dream. Simply logging into a site and withdrawing your profits is the dream of many an online entrepreneur.

With this dream however comes a large number of questionable and less than ethical services which also claim to offer just that. One such site which was very recently brought to my attention is BitConnect. Initially, I set out to carry out a standard review but once I began to dig a little deeper, it became clear that BitConnect warranted more than this,

As you can probably tell from the name, BitConnect is a part of the increasingly popular crypto currency craze. For those who aren’t aware of this term, a crypto currency is a form of currency which exists solely online. These have become massively popular in recent years as their value has grown exponentially with Bitcoin currently being the best known and most valuable.

Interestingly, this growth is only linked to the intrinsic value which is placed upon it by those who are buying the currencies.

The scope of different services that have sprung up in the wake of this increasing popularity is massive. As such, I have watched companies spring up that promise to show you how to trade bitcoins, how to mine bitcoins, how you can invest in bitcoins for the future, collectives and so on and so forth. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the business that surrounds bitcoins is now probably worth more than the value of the coins themselves.

Truth be told, the industry that has been built around Bitcoin as a brand is rife for scamming and there are a number of reasons for this which I will explore over the course of this article. Of course, that isn’t to say that BitConnect is a scam product.

In fact, at the time of writing this I know that a number of people are making money from the service. The smart ones amongst them are willing to accept that this revenue stream may collapse in the immediate future.

Now that I have painted a picture of how I have come to find BitConnect, I want to get down to the nitty gritty. This may turn out to be rather substantial, but truth be told I am yet to find a website that has really got in depth on the subject of BitConnect.

A Brief History of BitConnect and Why It Has to be Brief

In early February 2016, the domain Bitconnect.co was registered. This was carried out entirely anonymously and the website registrant continues to remain anonymous. That is about all that your brief history of BitConnect can include, largely down to the fact that this is all the information that I am able to dig up.

I would at this point love to say that having explored around I am not the only one who has struggled to tie down information on BitConnect.

If there were any one place where I wanted to start highlighting the vulnerabilities that BitConnect has in terms of its legitimacy, this is as good a place as any. There is some speculation surrounding who may be behind BitConnect including listings on company house, but these aren’t explicitly tied to BitConnect either.

The only thing that is of note in the very brief history of BitConnect lies in the relatively recent past which is an expansion of the service from UK and American audiences to also include a large quantity of Asian versions of BitConnect. This includes Vietnam, Indonesia and South Korea.

This is what the website claims:

What is bitconnect?

A self regulated Financial system

BitConnect is an open source all in one bitcoin and crypto community platform designed to provide multiple investment opportunities with cryptocurrency education where it is entirely possible to find the independence we all desire, in a community of like-minded, freedom loving individuals who, like you, are seeking the possibility of income stability in a very unstable world.

What is BitConnect All About?

With the worrying lack of history covered, I feel that it is important to look at what exactly you are getting yourself into with BitConnect. There is rather a lot of ground to cover here and many of the services which are offered by BitConnect deserve a detailed look under their own header. With that in mind, I don’t want to go into too much detail, but instead provide an overall summary of what is available.

Now I must say at this stage, that trying to view the BitConnect website immediately started to flag on my MalwareBytes software as a problem:

So the above was a red flag immediately, as I have found MalwareBytes over the years to be highly reliable is weeding out websites that have flaws. But let’s continue with this review…

The BitConnect website perhaps best tells the story of what you are getting with BitConnect referring to it as a self regulated financial system. Whilst I can’t help but feel that this is supposed to reassure, I find it to be massively concerning for more reasons than I care to list. I will however get to these over the course of this article.

Truthfully, the website for BitConnect isn’t very clear about things here and I cannot find anywhere near all the information that should be available so stick with me here. BitConnect say that they have a number of different coin supply channels. This includes mining coins (which is the same process as any crypto currency mining operation). It also appears that when you purchase BitConnect, they release coins for you to use.

This isn’t explicitly stated, but is rather implied at various points.

Let’s allow the website to say what it is all about, as this is what it states on the BitConnect website:

BitConnect is also bitcoin and cryptocurrency news site that allows you to keep up to date with new businesses that accepts bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, and bitcoin regulations news. We also report on latest crypto currency news, prices, talks and new start up related to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

There is also a coin demand channel which includes the lending platform and once again, the staking comes into play here. Presumably (but again, never explicitly stated), it appears that as demand increases, more BitConnect coins are simply pumped into the “ecosystem”. There is also the concept of lending which I have gone into greater detail about below.

What is interesting is that I don’t see how lending increases demand of BitConnect coins as it appears to me that you are pumping more into the market

Finally, there is the BitConnect coin distribution channel. This is simply a self contained exchange in which you can buy and sell BitConnect coins.

In terms of how you make money through BitConnect, there are 5 core ways each of which will get a detailed review. For now however, I simply wish to provide a rough approximation of what you can expect as a BitConnect user. Once again, I wish to highlight that there is very little clear information on this side of things which remains a key concern.

The first method of monetising BitConnect is to literally just purchase some coins. When you make a deposit into BitConnect, the service will supposedly make consistent returns through the price of coins simply going up. This is the crux of the passive income that I have discussed before now and is most likely what the majority of bettors will be aiming to achieve with BitConnect.

Secondly, we have the lending arm of BitConnect. This isn’t really lending in any traditional sense of the word. Instead when you “lend” to BitConnect, you are really opening some of your accounts up to a trading bot. This supposedly trades on the volatility of the BitConnect market and is used to boost the profits that you make through method one.

The third method that BitConnect uses is straight up trading. This involves purchasing your own BitConnect coins and trading them on an exchange. This is arguably the most traditional way of using the BitConnect platform to generate a profit.

There is also the option to mine BitConnect coins. This can be done simply by using your CPU/GPU which means that theoretically, it can be used on any home computer.

Finally, there is a multilevel marketing aspect to BitConnect as well. This is something which isn’t really discussed in the sales material however I know from research that this is in place.

Obviously, all of these different methods are interchangeable, and you can use as many of them as you want. If you believe what BitConnect say, if you want to maximise your profits then you should look to combine as many of these different methods as possible.

I would like to have a bit of a final word on BitConnect here before I try to decipher what passes for information on the service. Truth be told there is very little about BitConnect that is concrete.

The English of whoever is behind the service is atrocious with a large number of mistakes that range from typos to grammatical phrasing that seems to change what is supposedly on offer. Truth be told, I think that this is in part an attempt to clearly obfuscate information and make it difficult to understand exactly what you are getting. That way, it is harder for BitConnect to be held accountable.

Investing in BitConnect

As I have mentioned, the core premise behind BitConnect is simple. You leave them with your money and in return, you get dividends paid out on a regular basis. BitConnect say that “the moment you acquire BitConnect coin it becomes an interest bearing asset”.  This sounds fantastic and as I have mentioned is in many ways the ideal platform for those who are looking for a passive form of income.

There is however a lot going on behind the scenes of BitConnect that make me question how legitimate this all really is. The sales material says that all that you have to do is pay into your BitConnect wallet and this is enough. This is all well and good, except that you essentially buy BitConnect with Bitcoin.

This means that the developers of BitConnect are selling you their own product in exchange for a much more tangible asset. This would be akin to buying Disney Dollars as a financial investment.

It isn’t difficult to see how an economy which is controlled by the sole creators of the currency is a risky investment. Especially when you consider the terms of depositing your Bitcoin in exchange for BitConnect coins. To quote the BitConnect website:

“You will receive daily profit based on your investment option. Upon investment term completion you will receive your CAPITAL BACK to take out from the BitConnect lending platform or optionally reinvest back in lending platform to continue receiving daily profit”.

Reading through this there are a few things that stand out here. The most important is that you can only get your investment capital back after an allotted amount of time. This means that any money that you invest in BitConnect is tied up with them for a length of time dictated by them. I have said it before now, but I cannot stress enough.

Any investment which doesn’t allow you an option to withdraw your investment capital or sell on your assets, especially when it is for something as intangible as BitConnect, is not an investment worth making.

BitConnect on YouTube

I had to put a section here about the affiliate marketers who are promoting BitConnect on youtube. And as with any product, even if it does not work as advertised, you will get affiliate marketers saying it does. Here is a section (an image) of just some of the claims on YouTube:

Some quite crazy claims as you can see, so let’s see a video which shows an entirely different angle on this:

Lending

Lending is a very strange concept in BitConnect. The sales material says the following:

“You can invest BitConnect coin in Bitconnect lending platform exclusively from the BitConnect Dashboard. This investment option involves profiting from Bitconnect trading bot and volatility software. You will receive daily profit based on your investment option.

Upon investment term completion, you will receive your CAPITAL BACK to take out from the Bitconnect lending platform or optionally reinvest back in lending platform to continue receiving daily profit.”

This is essentially what simply owning some BitConnect coins does as well, the difference apparently being that you are choosing to incest your current BitConnect coins in order to boost your return on investment. Really though, as you can see above there is that seeming attempt to obfuscate information again.

This did however lead me to the BitConnect volatility software. Using this supposedly provides a safe way to earn a high rate of return on your investment. There is supposedly a guaranteed interest rate in place, however this is also calculated by the BitConnect price volatility software?

What this actually appears to mean is that your investment is subject to a rate of interest which is determined by tracking the volatility of Bitcoin vs USD and the volatility of the USD against “major world currencies”. In 365 days, this has supposedly never been a negative number.

From what little I can gather I stand by the assumption that this is an extension of the core staking service. It simply happens that you choose how much of your assets you choose to leverage in order to increase your returns.

Trading

The trading aspect of BitConnect is welcomingly straightforward. You are able to buy and sell BitConnect coins as you please in line with the self contained BitConnect exchange. From what I have seen and can fathom, this is one of the more convenient ways of transferring your BitConnect coins directly into Bitcoins. It is important to keep in mind however that there has to be somebody looking to buy your BitConnect coins first.

Mining for Bitcoin Currency

For those who don’t now, mining a cryptocurrency works by getting your computer to make large numbers of calculations that unlock small amounts of said currency. To successfully mine Bitcoin now there are companies that employ massive server farms which have been constructed solely to focus on this task. These work 24/7 in order to successfully mine coins. This is important to create some context as mining with BitConnect simply requires a home computer.

Not surprisingly I you want to mine these coins you have join a pool of other miners. This is common place however what is less common is the fact that one of the required mining pools that you have to connect to is operated by BitConnect. This type of approach is seen everywhere with BitConnect seemingly wanting to manage all aspects of the economic value of their coins.

Multi Level Marketing

On top of all these different ways of making money through BitConnect, there is of course a multi level marketing aspect. This is sold as you having an affiliate status but truthfully, you are recruiting new people to bring new money into BitConnect. Interestingly, in order to be an affiliate, you have to be actively lending with BitConnect.

This is supposedly because you “earn bitcoins from lenders you refer through your affiliate link”. In other words, you have to have people signed up and paying into the lending pool in order to get paid anything.

There doesn’t appear to be any direct downlines with BitConnect however I have seen people who use it talking about being several levels deep with affiliates. This suggests to me that this is definitely a thing.

This All Sounds a Bit Suspicious Surely?

I don’t think that I have looked at something as divisive as BitConnect for a long time and I have to be honest and say that there is good reason for this. Put bluntly, that reason is that people are definitely making money through this service. I have even looked at well respected review sites who are happy to recommend the service on the grounds that it is paying out, and if something is making you money it isn’t necessarily the best thing to question it.

That is a valid point however on the flip side of that coin is that this is exactly how a Ponzi scheme works. There is a focus on getting people on the bottom level to keep paying out. With their money, you pay the people who are further up the pyramid (hence the other name, pyramid scheme) who continue to glow about something because they continue to make money. Of course this isn’t to say that BitConnect is a pyramid scheme, however I do think that it would be naïve of me to overlook the similarities.

So, What Are the Pros and Cons of Bitconnect?

More than anything else there is currently one big positive to BitConnect and that is that it is paying out. Making money with something like this is the bottom line and I have known of people who have been aware they are involved in pyramid schemes but have been content as they have continued to make money.

I also have to say that if there is another positive to BitConnect it is that the returns are not just consistent, but are seemingly rather high. One reputable website that I know of have made an ROI of just under 10% making $121 off an investment of just over $1,500.

Elsewhere I have seen numbers which are much larger than this as well as claims of winning sports cars etc. for being top promoters. It is interesting to note however that these extreme cases are only really touted by the same people who are trying to get you to sign up (and earn them a commission).

As I have been writing this I think that I have covered the cons of BitConnect rather well. In fact, I would be inclined to say that I have been overly cynical with this service although I find that this is often the best way. Let us address the two biggest concerns that I have with BitConnect however. The first one is that neither I, nor anybody else online, can appear to find who is behind the service.

I can find limited companies registered in the UK however the broken English in the sales material makes it seem more likely that this is a foreign run operation. This is unfortunately all speculative however and this helps to highlight how much of a problem this actually is.

This brings me onto the next big problem with BitConnect which is the lack of tangible assets. I know that a Bitcoin is a none tangible asset, as is an BitConnect coin. On paper, there should be no difference between the two in so much as both exist online and only have a value that is ascribed to it by those who are using it as an investment platform.

There is one key difference however and it is a biggie. With Bitcoin I can go online and find hundreds of reputable exchanges. I can see millions of people all of who express an interest in the currency.

Whilst I don’t think the bubble will last forever, Bitcoins remain an asset of interest for a very wide collective. With BitConnect coins however, the only people that are interested in them are those who are currently within the fold. Despite this, I have traded an asset that has “real world” value for these coins.

This has a twofold effect on the potential future value of your BitConnect coins. First of all, if interest from the community dies out, then there is no wider interest and your assets could be rendered valueless. More concerningly is that the unknown figures behind BitConnect could choose to pull the plug on the whole operation and disappear into the sunset. This means that again, your assets have no value.

Conclusion on BitConnect

There are a lot of reasons that I wouldn’t invest in BitConnect. More than I care to count if I am completely honest, however I will none the less look to cover them here. To start with, the whole concept of BitConnect is fatally flawed if you are an investor. The bottom line of what you are doing is trading an asset for a product which only has value within the context of BitConnect. This means that if BitConnect turns out to be as questionable as it appears, you may well be left with a currency which is entirely valueless.

The other thing for me is that your assets are tied up in BitConnect essentially until they say that you can cash them out. Were you to invest a single bitcoin into BitConnect, that remains in the wallet of the unknown creators until a certain time has elapsed. Yes, you have had returns on that investment and when the time comes to pull it out, you might have had generous returns, however it doesn’t alter the fact that if your circumstances change, you are stuck.

I will try not to tread old ground too much here, but the lack of genuine information surrounding BitConnect is very concerning. As I have touched upon, everything that I have seen that is positive comes from those who are embroiled in the service. Whilst this can look good at first glance, I am yet to see any long term evidence that I would say is truly conclusive that BitConnect is genuine.

This is in direct contrast to being able to see the whole set up from the outside and identify that it is on inherently shaky grounds. Whenever I look at something like BitConnect I like to look at the product that you are buying. Putting aside the interest and returns for a minute, what you are buying with BitConnect is nothing, and it is an expensive nothing at that. You are then going to pay for this nothing to nobody using a method of payment that whilst not untraceable, is difficult to follow.

My personal recommendation for BitConnect is to avoid it like the plague. For a minute, let us remove the crypto currency factor and play BitConnect’s pitch out as an “on the street” encounter.

A complete stranger approaches you and asks you for £100 cash, for which they will give you £125 in Monopoly money. They tell you that there are plenty of other people in the area who want to buy that Monopoly money for real money. Once you have it, you can go and find one of those people and trade them your £125 Monopoly money and make yourself a tidy profit. Life is good.

But if you ask yourself honestly, would you have let it get that far? Or would you have stopped this at the point where somebody asked for your real money in exchange for Monopoly money. I don’t see BitConnect as being any different.

I will be balanced here however and say that this is a big operation and I think that if BitConnect is going to collapse under its own weight, this will be some time off. With that in mind, if you want to get in on the ground level and start making some money whilst it is still there to be had, then you should probably try and get involved with BitConnect sooner rather than later.

Furthermore, there is enough evidence to say that at the moment it is paying out something. Again, I wouldn’t like to speculate too much on the long term future, but people are definitely making money, and it is easy money at that.

Final Thoughts on BitConnect

BitConnect isn’t for me. I have looked at enough products along similar lines to this that are no longer about. Despite this, I can’t help but think that BitConnect is just an incredibly high risk investment. You may well take a decent amount of money out of it and that potential is there for now. Perhaps to best way that I can close this rather lengthy look at BitConnect is by comparing it to the Schrodinger’s Cat though experiment.

Just as the cat is both alive and dead until we open the box and check, BitConnect retains a sense of being both legitimate and a potential dishonest scheme by paying out and also hiding a lot of information.

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The post BitConnect Review, The Bitcoin Craze Continues appeared first on Money Makers Reviewed.

Are you a lottery user? Been scammed by a fake lottery? I try to keep politics and current events out of the things that I write about and that will continue to be my mantra. I am here to inform, not to tell you how to think.

Recently however, there have been a few events that have come together at the right time to make me think that maybe there is an article on the subject of lotteries and more importantly to you as a user, lottery scams.

I’ve sat down at my desk today following a beautiful day spent lounging about the garden and catching up with a few chores I needed to do (the bags in my shed weren’t going to take themselves to the tip). I have caught up with the news and one of the bigger stories is that the Euro Millions jackpot is likely to exceed £100,000,000.

It has been said many times, that playing the lottery is a tax on the stupid

We’ll dissect that though, and see if it is really of a benefit to the average person, or if it really is just a ‘tax on the stupid’. By the way, I have played the lottery a few times, epsecially in the early years when we all though we had a chance

Now I could turn this article into a fantasy about what I would spend that kind of money on (I’ll start by definitively stating that I wouldn’t be taking my own bags to the tip!), but that isn’t what I want to talk about. I was recently linked to a product and I was asked by an associate what I thought of it. I ended up looking at the product which was being marketed as Free Money Plus and LottoSpring. It was crap.

My detailed review on LottoSpring was here.

With the jackpot getting as high as it is through official marketing channels however, I thought back to LottoSpring. More specifically, I thought about the number of people who are drawn into questionable arrangements on the back of very real opportunities. Now I should preface all of this article really by saying that I don’t generally play any sort of lottery.

I’ll talk about the why’s behind that a little later, but I will have an occasional punt when the numbers get crazy big (I’ll be out to have a fiver on tonight for example).

What I will do to have a go on the lottery is to head to a licensed lottery seller here in the UK, and purchase tickets from them (actually, I’ll probably buy them online, but the point is that my entrance ticket is coming from the organisational body).

That way, if my numbers come in, I know that I can claim my £100 million and never be heard from again. What I wouldn’t do is head online to the multitude of stores offering discounted and cut rate lottery tickets.

What Is So Bad About Cut Rate Lottery Tickets?

I, like many reading this, can remember when Lotto first started, or as it was called back then, The National Lottery. It was a pound a ticket and being a millionaire really meant something. Times however have changed. It is now £2 per ticket, or £2.50 for the EuroMillions and yet, there are resellers online claiming to sell tickets for much cheaper.

Some are sold through clever affiliate and multi level marketing schemes, however I have increasingly seen these sites appearing on services such as Groupon. Like anybody who is browsing Groupon, I like to save a few quid here and there, but I have also been stung before now (restaurant vouchers that could only be used on a weekday Afternoon and on a fixed menu or a clear Chinese knock off immediately spring to mind). However you hear about them you should exercise caution.

The big problem with a lot of these companies that claim to provide subscribers with cheap cut rate lottery tickets is that you are very rarely buying tickets. Going back to my point in the introduction, I said that I would only ever purchase a ticket through an authorised dealer or through the lottery website. Truthfully, almost all of the bargain lottery service that you see use something called Lotto Betting.

What Is Lotto Betting?

Fundamentally, lotto betting is exactly what it says. Rather than entering a lottery, you are betting on the final outcome. This doesn’t seem like much of a distinction to make however it is an absolutely massive one. When you enter a lottery, your agreement is with the lottery company and your payment, should you win, is essentially already paid for by everybody else who has bought a ticket.

When you buy a ticket through Lotto Betting, you are buying a ticket directly from the company in question. If you win through them, then you receive the same jackpot as the lottery is offering. In and of itself, this sounds relatively straight forward with the companies simply piggy backing on the better known lotteries. By this I mean that they will use the numbers from actual lotto draws.

The problem with piggy backing like this for you as a consumer is that there is often a lot of overlap. Especially in terms of what it is implied you are getting and what you aren’t. Take for example a TV advert by Lottoland, one of the larger companies that operate this kind of service (and also one of the more trustworthy in my opinion). You have Chris Tarrant talking about how you can bet on the outcome of lotteries. Something that is only mentioned once and never explained, despite it being massively important.

Immediately after saying this, there are images showing giant lottery balls for various lotteries from across the world including the US Powerball, the Australian Lottery and EuroMillions. All of this makes it look like you are partaking in those lotteries. Once again, I have to stress that you aren’t in fact entering lotteries.

So how does lottery betting pay out if they match the same jackpots that have been accumulating over weeks and even months? The short answer s through very well measured insurance policies. If a lotto betting company ever actually has a big winner (which has monumentally smaller odds, arguably more so than a lottery, something that I will go into a little later), then it will ultimately be an insurance policy that pays out the jackpot rather than the company themselves.

So Is Lotto Betting a Scam?

Lotto betting is no more or less of a scam than lotteries are in and of themselves. For example, using the EuroMillions as an example, the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 139,838,160. To put this into context, there is supposedly a 1 in 10,000,000 chance that you will be hit by a falling plane part. What is interesting is that these odds are also supposedly the same as being fatally struck by lightning.

Some people call the lottery a scam but the truth is that it is an entirely random event and as such, it is probably one of the fairest methods of gambling that you can employ. Unfortunately, something being fair doesn’t necessarily equate to something that is winnable. In fact, the number of large scale rollovers only shows how few people really win.

In actuality, between 1994 when it launched, and 2014 which was its 20^th anniversary, the British National Lottery claims to have made more than 4,400 millionaires. Keeping in mind that this is across things like scratch cards etc. and you can see that the actual number of jackpot winners really isn’t that high.

Moving back onto lotto betting specifically, if you are using a reputable company then I can’t see any reason why you would expect the service to be a scam. I can find no examples of bigger companies not paying out and I have little reason to believe that they would. Unfortunately, these aren’t what you have to look out for.

Unfortunately, as with any market where there is a legitimate operation, there will be shadier examples copying the same model, without the regard for a customer. Using the EuroMillions as an example again, the odds of winning are around 1 in 140 million. You as a lotto betting operator are privy to 25% of the number of people who actually play the lottery (I am working with entirely hypothetical numbers here to demonstrate a point), however your ability to charge less per ticket means that the 25% of users buy twice as many tickets.

This puts you at half of the users, which means that in real terms, you are half as likely to have to pay out. Less tickets means less combinations covered, less combinations covered means less chance of there being a match.

An unscrupulous person could very easily set up a lotto betting company on those odds of not having to pay out and enjoy a decent income every month from it. Again, I have to highlight the fact that this isn’t the case for a lot of companies, however I have looked at some smaller ones researching this article and I would not be surprised to find that it happens.

Syndicates and Lotto Betting

One of the main selling points that I see from lotto betting websites is that they are somehow a better thing as you can sign up to a larger syndicate. There is some truth to this as bringing together large numbers of people together into a syndicate from around the world clearly means more tickets and more chances to win.

There is also the managed aspect of syndicates which supposedly enhances the syndicate experience for users. Lotto betting companies will tell you that you can buy as many tickets as you want on recurring payments and that pay outs are automatically spread out amongst those in a syndicate. Truth be told, the only aspect of this that real lotteries don’t offer is paying out to all syndicate members.

Also, if you do join a lottery syndicate then make sure that you have a signed agreement between all the players, as there have been many reported instances of major fallouts between syndicates who thought that ‘good will’ would last after they have come into the spondoolies, money changes people you see

Here is how a lottery syndicate works:

So What Should You Look out For?

It is easy to say that a healthy dose of common sense will help you to no end in this kind of thing but truth be told, it is easy to be led astray online. Many of the more questionable lotto betting operations that I have looked at have been operated through social media. Think about Facebook groups, promotions taking you to very basic websites etc.

Another thing to look for is to ensure that the company in question is registered with a gambling commission. Certain conditions have to be met in order for a company to get a license and key to this is they have to demonstrate the ability to pay out in the event of a win. This means that if you do happen to have won on a draw, the company has to have the funding and ultimately, they have to pay out to you.

If there is one piece of advice that I would offer to anybody who is looking into lotto betting, it is to look out for any product or service that requests more of you than buying tickets. I say this with things like LottoSpring in mind which had a large multi level marketing aspect. In fact the lotto betting aspect of the service appeared to take a back seat to the multi level marketing. This meant paying an expensive monthly subscription and dedicating a lot of your time to recruitment rather than the core product.

Are There Other Lottery Scams?

There are more types of scams built around lotteries than I know what to do with, however there are a few ones that are worth exploring.

If at any point you receive a notification that you have been deemed a winner in a lottery, draw or competition that you don’t remember entering, somebody is trying to scam you. This kind of scam is very crude and involves you getting to pay a fee in order to release your prize, usually under the guise of an administration fee.

Of course, where big money is concerned people also start to get greedy. Just watch this lottery scam which I thought was quite amusing during my research for this article:

So What Are My Final Thoughts on Lotto Betting?

Personally, I don’t see why lotto betting exists as a concept. I understand that for a small minority of people, mostly large scale syndicates, it may work out easier or better. Truth be told though, the National Lottery website now allows you to run everything online which means that creating a syndicate is just as quick and easy through official channels.

Despite my opinions and thoughts, lotto betting companies continue to grow and for legitimate operations, I don’t think this is of any consequence. The problems come with the numbers of fraudulent services that use very similar marketing methods.

If I hold up my hands however, they may not be as common as they appear to me. After all, I spend a very fair amount of my time immersed in the world of making money online and as such, see more than the average person.

Once again, I do feel that I must reiterate if you are going to use a lotto betting site rather than an official lottery, make sure that this is all that they do. Anything that talks about other ways of making money or even talks about buying tickets for you is highly suspect and I would recommend avoiding them, for obvious reasons.

Are Lotteries a Viable Method of Gambling?

The odds of winning anything on a lottery is inherently very low. Using the Lotto (which has arguably the “best” odds of winning), even the odds of winning a free entry into another draw stand at 1 in 10. That means that for every £20 that you were to invest, mathematically, you would receive a free £2 go on next weeks lottery. The lowest cash prize is £25 however just 1 in 97 tickets wins this. This would mean investment of £194 and a loss of £169.

All of that having been said, there is the potential for a truly life altering amount of money and if you are lucky enough, it may well be you. I have always been of the mentality that when it comes to the lottery, you have to be in it to win it. Statistically, you will never win and over 30 years, playing £4.50 per week (a Lotto and a EuroMillions), you would have spent over £7,000.  That having been said, the actual amount spent is negligible.

So in answer to the question of the viability of lotteries, they are statistically a very bad bet. That having been said, your actual real world outlay is quite small, around the cost of a large coffee at most high street chains. It is a very personal decision to make and one that I don’t generally partake in, however I can also very easily see why people would.

Can You Improve Your Odds of Winning The Lottery?

I have looked at a few products before now that have explored this very question. The short answer is no, and whilst it is rather dry, I will explain why. None the less, you should be wary of anything that claims to be able to increase your chances of winning the lottery. Some of the methods that I have seen before now have ranged from looking for the most common numbers (presuming some kind of bias), avoiding sequences and not choosing numbers that have been drawn in the last month.

The thing about a random number generator is that it is entirely random, and that is what the machines that choose the balls are. If there were an algorithm or edge to be had, I feel like somebody would have spotted this by now. Honestly, a lot of products that claim to improve your odds are reliant on a gambler’s fallacy rather than any genuine pattern that has been discovered.

To answer the question of why the odds can’t be changed on a lottery draw, consider the following.

Let us presume that there are 49 balls and 6 numbers must be matched in order to “win”. Each ball has a 1 in 49 chance of being selected. The inherently random nature of lottery machines means that they should be fair and so this is a reasonable statement to make. The second ball has a 1 in 48 chance of being chosen, the third 1 in 47 and so on and so forth.

What this demonstrates is that each time a ball is selected, the probability resets on each subsequent turn. In the grand scheme of things, this means that 1,2,3,4,5,6 has as much chance as winning as 3,9,14,23, 31, 45 (1 in 13,983,816). But if someone were to tell you one of those numbers were the winning lottery numbers for next week, which sounds more likely?

Let’s see what somebody in the know thinks about the odds of winning the Lottery:

So there you have it. Your chances of winning the National lottery are:

1 in 45,000,000 (1 in 45 million)

Despite knowing that mathematically, both outcomes have the same chance, we favour those that look “right”. Any product that claims to help you to win on the lottery will only give you patterns that appear to have some truth to them.

The Lottery Compared to Other Methods of Gambling

The big difference between the lottery and other methods of gambling in my opinion are the numbers. Put simply, they are astronomical. A rank outsider in horse racing may have odds of 500/1 and unless there is something that you know that other people don’t, these odds will not often be taken up. Even when Leicester City won the Premier League their odds were 5000/1. The lottery is miles away from even this.

There is one simple reason that people prefer other methods of gambling too and that is because it is much easier to predict outcomes. The fact that lotteries are entirely random is one of the biggest factors in deciding whether or not they are a good investment. On the one hand, you genuinely have the same chance as anybody else of winning. On the other, you can gain an edge when looking at other gambling methods.

The traditional gambling approach, that is sports betting or horse racing is all about a more balanced approach. It is about winning some weeks and losing others and, it has to be said, investing significantly more capital than your average lottery player would. For example, the £7,000 figure I mentioned earlier in this article, some professional bettors will easily clear in a matter of months. Their wins will also not be as high as the lottery jackpot, but the important bit to focus on there is that there will be wins.

Conclusion on Using Lotteries

I’m actually settling down to write my conclusion on Saturday morning, post breakfast. The fact that I am doing so tells you that my few tickets were not lucky. I am fortunately just a fiver down though and as I have already said, I won’t miss it.

Lotteries are a difficult thing to judge from the position of somebody who wants to make money as they are a terrible idea on paper. But as has often been said, you have to be in it to win it.

This brings me onto the concept of luck. I don’t want to wax philosophical about luck and whether it is or isn’t a real thing. Honestly, I’m not really sure what I think (although we’ve all felt lucky some days more than others). If you subscribe to the concept of luck then seeing a lottery as a method of making money is something worthwhile. If you are a pure numbers man (which I tend to be), you won’t. Even if I do still throw caution to the wind and have the odd bet.

I think that the best way that I can possibly describe the in order to justify it being a part of any business strategy would be to see it as an incredibly high yielding and high risk investment that requires minimal capital. Put that way, it certainly sounds better however the reality doesn’t change.

Of course, joining a syndicate is one way of increasing your chances of winning however the odds remain astronomically against you. Even if your syndicate has 100 tickets, each with different numbers, your odds are still well outside the boundaries of what you will find in other methods of gambling. Furthermore, when in a syndicate the prizes are also watered down as well.

With all of this in mind, I maintain my stance that the lottery is not a viable method of gambling at all. I can however see the appeal.  I know that I have said this multiple times throughout this article, but for my money, the lottery is only worth entering if you don’t mind losing the money, and in fact, many people don’t.

Moving away from the concept of lotteries and onto lotto betting, this is a very curious niche. As I have said before now, I don’t really see the point in it when there are actual lotteries that you can enter, and yet there is a clear interest in the products and the concept. I can also see this sector growing as people become disillusioned with paying out as much as actual lotteries are charging.

The biggest concern for me in this regard is that consumers are going to end up worse off in the long run. Not because the business model is in any way illegitimate, but because there is so much room for illegitimate business to be founded on the model. I have already seen questionable multi level marketing operations (one of which has been examined in detail in the shape of LottoSpring.

There is also massive scope for out and out scamming people as the lotto betting model grows into the public conscience, something that at this point seems inevitable. It is clear from the odds that wins aren’t going to happen often and with this high profit business model, I can see people exploiting it for quick and easy cash.

All things considered, I don’t see anything inherently wrong with playing the lottery. I might doubt the rationale behind it but there is clear appeal. If there is one thing that I want people to take away from this article however, it isn’t so much whether or not you can make money through lotteries or not (although I am all for a debate on the subject).

My concern is that I can see this being an area in which there will be increased questionable activity. With this in mind, I feel like it is my duty to notify and inform with a view to helping people protect themselves in the long term.

The post Make Money from the Lottery, Lotto Betting and Avoiding Lottery Scams appeared first on Money Makers Reviewed.

Geeks Toy is trading software for the betting exchanges, but how good is it? There are a large number of different pieces of software online that are designed for trading on Betfair’s exchange.

Frankly, there are so many that a recent investigation into the major examples on the market took me 3 weeks of research. In spite of that time spent, there weren’t really many examples that I felt really warranted a more in depth look, however one that does, is Geeks Toy.

Having had a chance to trial Geeks Toy during my recent research, I realised that the software probably deserved its own more extensive review.

After all, it is one of the highest rated pieces of trading software on the Betfair app store. This may not necessarily be the best metric however, as almost all software that is rated on the Betfair website is almost universally positive.

All of that aside, if you try to examine the market for Betfair trading software, you can almost guarantee that Geeks Toy will crop up somewhere. This is a highly competitive market and any software that can garner a name for itself deserves to be looked at in detail.

Let’s Start The Review…

Product: BetTrader Trading Software

What You Get: Access To The Product/Software

Price: £60 a year

Guarantee: No Money Back Guarantee

Support Offered: Yes

 Where to buy: www.geekstoy.co.uk

In spite of the overwhelming acclaim that Geeks Toy has received elsewhere, there is ultimately very little that it does differently to other pieces of Betfair trading software. So with this in mind, is Geeks Toy actually a worthwhile purchase? In order to answer this question there is rather a lot to consider and it is over the course of this review that I intend to do just that.

What Exactly is Geeks Toy?

Geeks Toy is a piece of specialist software that allows you to place bets on Betfair’s (and others) betting exchange rather than using Betfair’s proprietary interface that comes with the website.

This offers a number of unique advantages when compared with “vanilla” Betfair (that is to say the standard Betfair exchange), all of which I will explore over the course of this review.

There are several main reasons that somebody would want to use Geeks Toy rather than the vanilla exchange.

The most prominent of these is that software is generally much faster and more efficient than Betfair. On average, Betfair refreshes its markets around every minute automatically. Software such as Geeks Toy allows you to set the refresh rate which means that you are constantly receiving the most up to date information.

Here is one Betfair trader using Geeks Toy:

For those who aren’t familiar with this, I suggest that you head to the Betfair website. This grid based layout is also the most popular in terms of how most software present the data by default. With Geeks Toy however, there are a number of different additional options available, all of which hypothetically allow you to be more successful.

The final thing that is worth mentioning about Geeks Toy is that it is one of the few pieces of software that isn’t just tied down to Betfair. In fact, Geeks Toy can be used on Betdaq (which is arguably the second largest betting exchange on the market) as well as Matchbook.

Furthermore, the software for trading on these alternative betting exchanges is entirely free.

What Are the Different Features of Geeks Toy?

Geeks Toy has a number of features and unique selling points listed for it. Some of these are much more useful than others, however I do feel that all of them deserve something of a mention and a brief look at what they bring to the table.

All of these key features are the ones that are listed on the Geeks Toy website, however I aim to cut put the sales pitch into some proper context.

The one feature that the Geeks Toy team appear to be most keen on using to get people on board is the supposed “lightning fast” and “responsive interface”. Realistically, this means features that I have come to expect from almost any piece of Betfair trading software. This includes things like one click betting and significantly faster monitoring of price changes.

The next two features in my eyes are one and the same and these are multi market trading and enhanced market navigation. The multi market trading is mostly about being able to bet on any market (as you would well expect from a piece of trading software), however it also talks about how you can arrange the markets.

The enhanced market navigations most useful feature is the ability to set up customised cards that only show markets relevant to your betting.

The Trading Ladder

The trading ladder on Geekstoy is similar to that which you will find on most such applications. Easy to navigate and the usual settings can also be applied, reversing the ladders, matched liquidity colouring, and more.

Geeks Toy comes with a number of different ways that you can configure both the charts and the in play interface. By allowing users to display information and odds in different ways, it can provide an edge during trading.

The charting allows you to identify market trends earlier, something that is very valuable to traders whilst the different in play interfaces allow you to quickly monitor and take advantage of odds changes.

This customisation doesn’t simply end at the display of graphs and charts. You can actually customise the way that Geeks Toy looks in a variety of different ways. These range from the very superficial to quite in depth changes to the user interface.

Geeks Toy also comes equipped with built in functionality to allow for easy dutching and bookmaking.

These help you to calculate figures etc. quickly and easily, something that both of these methods of betting require. Whilst there are plenty of tools available online that do this for free, the fact that Geeks Toy allows you to do it within the software really helps to streamline the process..

For me however, one of the main selling points that is overlooked with Geeks Toy is the ability to trade on different betting exchanges. Whilst I don’t really see why anybody would go outside of Betfair (given the fact that it is the biggest and most liquid betting exchange), I have to credit Geeks Toy as being one of the few examples of software that is set up this way.

What Else is on Offer With Geeks Toy?

Aside from the software, one of the main focuses of Geeks Toy is the claimed after sales experience (this is also discussed by their users online). There is a lot here to discuss and it really isn’t a bad thing. If anything, it is arguably one of the strongest points of Geeks Toy as a whole.

The first thing that is on offer is a comprehensive user manual. This shows you how to take full advantage of all of the features that Geeks Toy comes with. Personally, I find that you shouldn’t really need this to much as the software isn’t really that difficult to follow along.

The only time you may need to refer to the user manual for Geeks Toy is when you are using some of the more complicated features.

There is some video training provided for Geeks Toy customers however the vast majority of this simply ties in to using the software. Whilst this isn’t an inherently bad thing, some other Betfair trading software that I have looked at before now comes with betting guides and in some cases, full video training courses on different betting methods.

As mentioned, the crown jewel for Geeks Toy however has to be the user forum.

This is massively comprehensive and covers a number of different subjects. These range from support and help with using the software to announcements and updates. The majority of this side of things comes from the team behind Geeks Toy and in many ways, it simply functions as a support desk.

Where the Geeks Toy forum really stands out is when you start to look at the volume of bettors, all of whom share a common goal.

There is advice on a huge array of topics. These include things like betting strategies (all broken down based on the sport and Betfair market), betting technology and even a special area for newbies. Geeks Toy also has sub forums for a number of topics unrelated to betting.

So How Much Does Geeks Toy Cost?

When you first decide to sign up for Geeks Toy, the service comes with a full 14 day free trial. This is no obligation and doesn’t require you to provide any payment details for a full subscription at a later date. The 14 days is one of the more generous free trials that are on offer when compared other examples of Betfair trading software.

Once your free trial has lapsed, you will find that options for Geeks Toy are unfortunately rather restrictive, as you would expect.

The software also comes with a discount for a yearly purchase. You can purchase either a 3 month license to the software for £20 or alternatively, you can pay for a whole year for £60. Whilst the annual option is pricier, it does equate to essentially a free 3 months of usage. This is all at the time of writing, and subject to change.

As is standard for software of this nature, Geeks Toy doesn’t offer any money back guarantee.

So What Are the Pros and Cons of Geeks Toy?

Trying to weigh up the pros and cons of a piece of Betfair trading software can be a very difficult thing to do. This is mostly because there isn’t a lot of difference from one example to the next. Almost all of the software that I have trialled (which is a pretty substantial amount) has a large number of similarities and the differences are generally rather small.

This means that in order to judge Geeks Toy against other pieces of software, you have to look at some of the finer details.

The  first thing that has to be said when looking at Geeks Toy is that it is a very well balanced piece of software. There is very little that I have to say about it that is necessarily bad.

The Geeks Toy Market Overview

One main advantage I would say that Geeks Toy has over some of it’s rivals, is that the Market Overview screen is actually quite detailed and is easy to view.

For example on Bet Angel, the market overview feature seems to be somewhat of an after-thought, and the zoom features when trying to actually set up the viewing is quite tricky, and limited. Geeks Toy does not have that issue.

There are two things that you must compare a piece of software to in my optionion. The first of these is Betfair’s own exchange. Making this comparison however is almost redundant as I can’t think of very many pieces of software which aren’t better than the vanilla Betfair exchange.

With that having been said, there is the comparison to other pieces of software and this is where Geeks Toy finds itself in tougher ground.

First of all, I want to look at what Geeks Toy gets right. As I have touched upon, it does everything that you would expect. Features like a ladder interface and customisable graphs and charts are par for the course with any piece of Betfair software. It is also quick enough piece of software with refresh rates that are more than acceptable.

Geeks Toy Forum

The real big positive for me when it comes to Geeks Toy rather doesn’t actually come from the software itself. Instead, the biggest strength that Geeks Toy has lies in the community. For many products, a forum is a tacked on after thought that the product creator uses to communicate updates and the like. Geeks Toy however has a thriving and active community with this comes a wealth of experience, knowledge and betting insight.

In terms of the cons, the biggest one for me lies in the fact that Geeks Toy doesn’t really have a specialty over and above what is already out there. There are a lot of different examples of software on the market that fall into this “Jack of all Trades” category.

Not neccessarily a bad thing, because at the end of the day we are talking about trading software, and they all pretty much do a similar job. Some look different, and some have dedicated features. For example on Bet Angel you have the in Play Trader which is very useful if you cannot watch streams for example.

Regarding Geeks Toy, there are examples that are much less expensive and much more flexible in terms of pricing, whilst there are also examples of software that are much more complete (albeit at a higher price). So this comes down to price, and what you actually need the software to do.

Conclusion on Geekstoy

It is important to acknowledge that Geeks Toy is a very popular and a pretty decent piece of kit. As I have mentioned numerous times, it doesn’t really do anything wrong. It is also reasonably affordable.

One of the biggest problems that I noticed across the board with all Betfair trading software is the lack of variety.

There is a vast expanse of middle ground where everything is more or less the same. This is an area that it is very easy for any software to lose its identity in. Whilst some choose to go really far out with their approach to what a software can do, most choose to try and create a specialised niche. A feature that perhaps other software doesn’t have.

There is nothing really about Geeks Toy that stands out from the crowd regarding specific tools, but what it does, it does very well indeed.  Cymatic Trader also falls into this category for me, not really doing anything to stand out, however it is very reasonably priced. This is reflected in how the software looks however.

Bet Angel on the other hand goes the other way and is quite expensive (£150 a year!), however it does have a few features that you don’t see elsewhere. It is also really easy on the eye and frankly, a joy to use.

Then you have Gruss Betting Assistant which is what I would call the more basic of all the software applications. Although it looks great, it does not have the detail of say a Geeks Toy, or a Bet Angel.

Most of these software applications come with a trial, so it may be best to trial all of them and see what suits you best.

For me, I suppose that the biggest compliment that I can pay to Geeks Toy is that it is a safe option. You won’t go far wrong with it and it will appeal to a wide variety of traders.

Geeks Toy is extremely popular with many traders, and well worth a look at.

Related Content and Resources:

Bet Angel Review, Is Peter Webb’s Betfair Trading Software The Best Out There?

BetTrader Review, Sports Trading Software for Betfair

Gruss Betting Assistant Review, Betfair Trading Software Made Simple

The post Geeks Toy Review, How Good is This Betting Exchange Software? appeared first on Money Makers Reviewed.

There are now many Betfair trading courses online, and some are obviously better than others. About 6 weeks ago one of our researchers came across The Exchange Trader, which is a series of YouTube videos on how to use the Betfair Exchange using Geeks Toy.

The video tutorials are also offered together with a horse racing analytical service, at an additional cost, both of which we will discuss on this review.

We have reviewed a few Betfair trading products on this website, some of which have passed the test, and some were not as easy to follow as they were advertised, so it is always interesting to see new products in this niche.

What I usually focus on with such Betfair courses is firstly the structure of the training. Secondly, I look at the way that the course is taught, and how easily it is to follow. For example last year we looked at Sports Trading Exposed by Tomas Paul, which although the product was presented fairly well in an ebook, the video content that came with the course was relatively difficult to follow and understand, due to a language barrier of the author.

The main problem with Tomas, and his product was that the videos did not have much commentary, and was too reliant on the ebook to explain what he was actually doing, which made the course difficult to follow, albeit Tomas was extremely plausible, and obviously very successful as a Betfair trader.

On the other side of the equation, was The Betfair Scalping Course, which actually won our award for product of the year back in early 2017, and went down extremely well when we reviewed it, and still generates a lot of interest from our readers. The previous owner of the website (Ben) tested this scalping course, and I have seen the results which were very good, plus I am reviewing the course myself currently, and the training is excellent.

But this review is about The Exchange Trader.

Let’s start the review, which will be updated, as and when I have gone further through the course.

Product: Exchange Trader Video Course.

What You Get: Access To The Videos Via YouTube.

Price: £35 for the videos, and up to £360 a year for the data services.

Guarantee: No Money Back Guarantee found.

Support Offered: Yes, via email.

 Where to buy: There is currently not a direct website that I can find.

What is The Exchange Trader?

The Exchange Trader YouTube course promises to teach you how to trade the Betfair markets, taking you from novice to ‘budding professional’. The course starts by explaining a little bit about the Geeks Toy software that the trader Stephen Speight uses, and then explains some simple trades.

Stephen explains that the sole aim is to teach you from the start. Watching the videos, and the way they were titled initially made me think that they were simply promoting the software, but after watching a few of the videos, I am not so sure, as no direct advertising is made regarding any specific sofware, only that Stephen makes a reference to what software he is using.

Stephen Speight does not make any claims of income, and what was interesting is that he also never shows you any real profits he has made, well, apart from a couple of pounds on the trades.

How Does The Exchange Trader Work?

As mentioned already, the videos start by showing a little about the software, and then a few simple trades are demonstrated.

What stood out immediately, is that the trades shown on the first videos were on very high priced horses, and this initially made me think that this was the reason why there are only a couple of pounds in profit shown on most of the videos, because you will not get hundreds of pounds matched at such high prices usually, and to attempt to do so is usually associated with much higher risk.

I am still going through the videos at this stage, but I have seen enough to warrant the start of the review for The Exchange Trader.

Stephen Speight does seem reasonably knowledgeable, although having watching other trading courses, Stephen’s course does come across initially on the fact that he is banking on his knowledge of particular horses, and he will often say things  like ‘I have chosen this horse because…’, so just be aware that Stephen’s course is not based around trading the numbers as such, or the liquidity like other courses on the market.

If any of you have read our review on Betangel, then you will have read about Peter Webb (probably the most successful horse racing trader around) mentioning that he simply trades what he sees on the screen, and does not study the form on horses as such.

The Exchange Trader course seems to be based around acting on particular information, which is another service they provide.

In fact, I would go as far as saying (still at this early stage) that you will definitely be looking more at the analytics of certain horses when choosing which runners to trade on, which won’t be to eveyone’s taste.

Exchange Trader Youtube Videos

Our researcher purchased the course earlier this year. Upon purchase, Stephen will ask you for your YouTube credentials so that he can send you a test video, and then you are able to watch them.

Our researcher actually downloaded all of the videos so that he was able to watch them offline, as he was travelling with his job at the time and a solid, reliable internet connection was not always available. Therefore he uploaded them to a laptop so he could watch them on the move.

You will notice above, that every video starts with the same reference to the software, which is what made me think it was just advertising the software, but this could also be Stephen trying to capitalise on the Geeks Toy brand in the video search engines, which is not uncommon.

I have not counted them all, but I would say there is appromimately 30-40 videos on the course, with timescales ranging from between a couple of minutes long, and some going as long as an hour.

Some of the early videos are back from 2016, and then the majority of the rest seem to have been filmed in early 2017, so they are fairly recent.

The videos are sent to you by a series of emails, although they are laid out in parts, so you have part 1, which is free to view, and does not really give any strategy, and then you have parts 2-7 which is aimed and going into more detail about learning how the exchanges work and how to gain profits.

I used Geeks Toy recently, and what you notice immediately, is that the alerts, for example ‘fully matched’ when you are matched in the market is rather loud (I never actually checked if the volume could be turned down, although I would suspect that option is there in the settings), so when watching the Exchange Trader videos and whilst listening to Stephen.

You actually get a bit of a fright when the trades are matched in the exchange, as the voice over on the software is much louder than Stephen’s voice, so just be aware of that. Not a big issue, but a tad off putting nonetheless.

One example of the YouTube videos can be seen here:

As you can see from the above video Stephen likes to trade outsiders, and some of the trades were around odds of 32, and 34 (and as high as 60.0), which I have never seen other traders do, usually because there is much lower liquidity on such prices, and getting higher bets matched would not be that easy, plus the risks could be heightened once in play.

My first impressions are that The Exchange Trader is offered as a gentle approach to the markets, and to earn a little bit of pocket money whilst at the same time increasing your knowledge of the markets, with low risk, depending on which strategy you use.

The videos are relatively cheap for what you get, although I suspect the main reason for offering the videos at such a low price is that Stephen also offers a service which I think is almost certainly needed based on the training I have seen so far.

Form and Analysis Service

This additional service that Stephen offers is statistical data on which are the best horses to trade that day, but of course this will also be based on the type of trading you are doing. It is the first type of service I have seen like this, where the training videos are offered, and then an additional service that is required to get the best out of the videos.

That is not to say it is not viable, just different, so when bearing in the mind the cost of The Exchange Trader, then quite possibly to get the best out of it, the additional analytical service could be required, which is something to take a note of.

These services that The Exchange Trader offer as detailed as follows:

BRONZE SERVICE – Our bronze service offers customers a way in to our trading strategy.

Cost £9.95 every 2 weeks – £258.70 per year.

Below are the three key areas of trading which we use to identify value. – Form, Race Anylysis, Prices.

SILVER SERVICE – Our Silver Service builds on the bronze membership and has been designed with the more hands on trader in mind.

Cost £11.95 every 2 weeks – £310.70 per year.

GOLD SERVICE – Our Gold Service includes all the benefits of the bronze and silver packages. Plus these added extras: email support, advice and feedback, feedback on yuor trading, access to new videos content not as stadard.

Cost £13.95 every 2 weeks – £362.70 per year.

As you can see, these are relatively high costs for all the race data that much of the trading course refers to and mentions.

How Much Money Do You Need To Start?

Stephen mentions that he always advises a starting bank of £80, which considering the high odds he shows himself trading will definitely leave little scope for profits, because the liability of such odds will be high, so if you wanted to make a return of say £20 on the pre race markets, and you were laying first, then that would be a hefty betting bank you would need.

The Exchange Trader also have data sheets available which will show you how the betting bank can increase depending on which strategy you were using, and by how much your betting bank could increase over a set period, and a quick example of this spreadsheet can be seen below:

There has certainly been a fair amount of time spent creating the videos, and the whole set up.

Stephen is also relatively new to the Betfair course genre, so it will be interesting to see if the contents of the course does actually produce a profit, and if the advice is sound enough to be followed by those looking to make a profit from the exchanges.

Does The Exchange Trader Work?

This is what I aim to find out over the coming weeks, and months. I will also be updating on how our researcher got on with the course. Sports trading is now becoming extremely popular, and so I expect more of these type of course to come out as those who trade now reliase that there is actually a rather large market for people search for these type of product.

Although as I said earlier, some are most definitely of a higher quality than others, but on first impressions Stephen Speight seems to have put a decent product together here.

I am also interested to find out if the videos themselves are as beneficial as other courses out there without any reliance on the statistical service that is offered with the product. I hope I am wrong on that, but I suspect at this stage, and without viewing the whole course, that there could be a little ‘push’ towards to the other services to be able to gain maximum potential from the video side.

And the statistical side of the offer is very expensive.

Conclusion on The Exchange Trader

I plan to go right through The Exchange Trader videos and dig a little deeper, and I will report back to the review with an update over the coming weeks.

The post The Exchange Trader Review YouTube Videos by Stephen Speight appeared first on Money Makers Reviewed.

We have reviewed most of the Betfair trading software applications over the last 12 months, mainly because our website does receive a fair amount of traffic for this subject. So on this article, we will combine what we have reviewed.

Betfair’s betting exchange has changed the face of gambling. I feel like this is a more than fair statement.

There are bets that you can place now that 30 years ago were the reserve of a Gentleman’s handshake down the pub. Clever punters who had the bookies game nailed but lacked the finances to get started were suddenly able to play the role of the bookie.

Most importantly (for me at least), Betfair didn’t just demonstrate that betting was a numbers game, through in play betting and trading, it showed that numbers were necessary.

When it comes to identifying the most important numbers, this is again something that everybody will have a different opinion. There is however one factor that overrides all others and that is speed. Back in the days before betting exchanges, it was a difficult thing to know when the right time to place a bet was. Almost all the wisdom on this front came from the pre internet days which said the earlier, the better.

Where Did Betfair Trading Software Originate?

When Betfair was first launched, there were one group who were quickly able to identify what the key to making the platform as profitable as possible.

There are a number of different traders who have made money by switching their focus from stocks, commodities and futures to horse racing, football and tennis. The reason for their success wasn’t for the “old school” reasons though.

There was no insider knowledge or mate down the track, there was no trudging to the newsagents at 7am to get the Racing Post and pouring over form and past performances.

Instead, these traders applied the exact same principles to trading on Betfair as they would if they were trading in the city. This meant that split seconds could be the difference between a profit and a loss. This was betting, but not as most knew it.

Of course, I’m waxing lyrical here and in 2018, I doubt there is a single person who takes betting seriously who isn’t aware of Betfair. As concepts like matched betting grow in popularity and are increasingly endorsed and legitimised through mainstream media, the general public are also becoming increasingly aware of the platform.

So with more and more people joining Betfair and looking to stake their fortune? How can you continue to maintain your edge? The answer lies in the futuristic sounding world of software and robots. This isn’t the land of the future however, as these are very much a thing of “the now” and if you intend to make any real money through Betfair, you will want a piece of software like this on your side.

What Does the Betfair Software Do and How Does it Work?

Asking what a piece of Betfair trading software can do for you is a question that depends entirely on how nerdy you want to get. I could talk about things like API’s and different response times, how you can programme different pieces of software to do different things using Microsoft Excel.

I could also go on and on about the various different features that a decent piece of Betfair trading software should have. Instead, I want to keep this article as a bit of a “for dummies” thing. The aim of this is to help people to compare and contrast which betting software is right for them, not dissect the code.

So, software basically allows you to interact with your Betfair account from a different window on your computer. It does this by using set rules that Betfair have in place to make changes and place bets through your account.

This is only a very small part of it however, as any piece of Betfair trading software that is worth its salt does so faster. I have already touched upon the idea that speed is key when you are trading, and that is because you want to be able to get the best possible price for every bet.

The rate that Betfair updates prices on the betting exchange hosted on the website is 1 second (keep in mind that at one point, it was the woefully inadequate 15 seconds meaning you basically had to refresh the page). Through a decent piece of software, this figure becomes multiple times per second. This means that if odds change from 3.0 to 3.4 for an instant, you have a better chance of getting that.

Another thing that almost all software does very well is I makes using Betfair a much simpler experience overall. Getting around he Betfair exchange can be rather hard work and you don’t always have everything that you want “to hand”. With the power of software however, you can set it up to make Betfair look pretty much however you want.

This can mean things like hiding markets that you don’t bet on to changing how bets are displayed and even showing multiple displays of data on one screen. These are things that may sound superficial, however to anybody who takes Betfair trading seriously, having as much data as possible in front of your eyes at all time is critical.

Really, software is there to make your whole betting experience simpler and more efficient. This is something that I think that most Betfair trading software does very efficiently. This isn’t however the be all and end all and actually, there are a lot of slightly differing features from one piece of software to another. But all of this begs the question of, if there are so many different bits of Betfair software, and they all basically do the same, how can one be better or worse than another?

This is something that I plan to try and explore with this article. It is worth keeping in mind that I don’t tend to go too in depth with my review of the various bits of software. I have looked at some of them before now in great detail and it is my intention to (with time) cover more in the future. What you can expect here however is a brief overview of some of the “top” or most popular Betfair trading software applications out there.

A look at some of their pros and cons as well as which ultimately represents the best value.

What Betfair Software is Available?

There is a hell of a lot of ground to cover in terms of the various pieces of software that are available. In terms of the criteria that I have chosen to vet which examples of the trading software to look at, I have mostly looked at those that are widely known and recognised. This has led me to start out by looking at the Betfair app store at their trading software.

More likely than not, there will be some examples that I have missed out on. After all, everybody has their own favourites and I would welcome feedback here. For now though, I will get started with the trading software that Betfair themselves recommend through their store.

Rose Bet Trading Software

Rose Bet is definitely a newcomer to the world of Betfair trading software and in many respects feels like the baby of the group. The software was only launched in July of 2016 (around 7 months at the time of writing) and hasn’t been updated at the time of writing. As a piece of software, I would say that Rose Bet is a very simple to use affair with very little availability and complex settings.

This is the software that is sold as being developed by traders for traders.

At the moment, Rose Bet is rather restricted and the software can only be used on Windows based computers. From looking into the software however, there is a strong implication that the team behind it want to make Rose Bet a multi platform application. There are plans in place to port the software over to Mac OSX as well as iOS and Android.

The interface is for Rose Bet is pretty straight forward and anybody familiar with Betfair shouldn’t have too much trouble understanding what is what. It is unfortunately pretty far from the best interface that I have seen however. The system requirements are minimal which means that realistically, if you have even a basic laptop, the software will run on your computer.

So what are the Key Things About Rose Bet?

• Rose Bet brings all of the features that you would want and expect from Betfair into one place. Naturally, this makes betting much easier than having to have pages constantly refresh. You also aren’t spending time waiting for pages to refresh and update.
• Rose Bet uses a one click betting option which means that to save time, you can automatically place bets at a predetermined stake simply by clicking available odds.
• The ability to set the refresh rate for prices, something that I have already explored the importance of before. This means that prices for Rose Bet are guaranteed to be completely up to date when you try to bet on and help get the. It can also help you to get the maximum profits.
• There are some features built into Rose Bet to help you out with certain types of betting, namely dutching and bookmaking. These features didn’t feel fully fleshed out to me however.

Rose Bet Conclusion

Rose Bet in its current form is very much in the start up stage and this is reflected in the software.  It does the basics, but this is far from a complete thing in my book. Not when compared to the offerings from competitors. If you want something that simply does “the basics”, then Rose Bet isn’t a bad option as you can also trial it for free. In the future, the software may get better, but as it stands if you are a professional bettor or take trading on Betfair seriously I would consider other options.

Honestly though, compared to some of the more established examples of Betfair trading software on the market, Rose Bet simply doesn’t cut it for me. Everything that the software does, can be done better elsewhere.

The fact is that when you are looking for a piece of software for trading on the Betfair exchange, there is a lot to consider. Unfortunately, whilst I don’t think that Rose Bet does an inherently bad job, I don’t feel that in a very competitive trading market it does enough.

Unfortunately, since I wrote this review, Rose Bet seems to have vanished as a vendor, which is a shame.

BetTornado Sports Trading App

BetTornado is a piece of software that I haven’t really heard anything about, however looking into it for the purposes of this article I have been left somewhat impressed. In fact, I would go as far as to say that I haven’t been so excited about a piece of Betfair trading software for some time.

This is because BetTornado chooses not to do everything, but instead to do certain things very well.

The software comes from Racing Traders, a company that specialise in Betfair trading software. The first thing that I have to address with BetTornado is that this software isn’t for everyone. Literally.

With BetTornado you can only bet on football, tennis and darts markets which rather severely restricts the numbers of users. The thing that BetTornado have done very right with this approach though, is made a piece of Betfair trading software that is entirely unique in its presentation and that is the star attraction here.

To look at BetTornado, it doesn’t really look anything like Betfair and this is honestly quite an intimidating factor to have to deal with when opening a piece of software of this nature. What is quickly apparent though, is that this change is to accommodate extra features. When you are used to the interface of the software (which could be a little more familiar or come with additional help), this isn’t a huge problem.

Whilst I have talked about the interface, I haven’t explained why it looks like this. The unique selling point for this software is the in match view and it takes pride of place. This is taken directly from Betfair’s match view and whilst much better looking, actually appears to be slightly slow by my measure, at least on Tennis. When it comes to football, BetTornado is much more on the ball and seems to provide better detail and more information than Betfairs match view.

Just like Betfair Match View, BetTornado doesn’t go into detail instead preferring to provide an overview of what is happening. So you may well see “Manchester United Attacking”. It also tells you of key events such as free kicks and penalties awarded. Think about BetTornado as providing you an overview of what is happening and you won’t go far wrong.

This is all presented on a view of a field/pitch which makes it very easy to follow along and gain an idea. What this means is that if you are using BetTornado solely as a trader, you can quickly and easily establish the direction things are going in and bet accordingly.

The full complement of markets that you can bet on with Betfair seems to be available with BetTornado however this only appears to be the case on some games. Whilst trialling the software, I have looked at a few of the more obscure leagues where the software simply won’t let me access markets that the Betfair exchange will.

So What are the Key Things About BetTornado?

• There is a unique in game display which shows you in real time what action is unfolding. This is complemented by full live match commentary (where available).
• Various data streams are made available on screen at once allowing BetTornado users to gain an insightful overview of where money is being spent.
• There is an unfortunate lack of availability in terms of some of the markets on offer. Given that BetTornado already operates on a reduced number of sports, this isn’t ideal.
• BetTornado is a relatively new venture and there is room for improvement. There is also plenty of time for the changes to be implemented.

How Much does BetTornado Cost?

The costs for BetTornado are actually rather reasonable, especially compared to some other Betfair trading software. These are set out as follows:

• One Month – £20 per month (£10 per month on offer at the time of writing)
• 6 Monthly – £80 per 6 months (£50 for 6 months on offer at the time of writing)
• Annual – £140 per year (£70 per year on offer at the time of writing
• Lifetime – £125 – This offer is open to the first 125 takers and is a one off cost

BetTornado Conclusion

BetTornado is something of a niche offering and from the get go, this will make or break the software for you. My immediate response to the software is that it is slightly lacking in terms of usability and the UI could definitely be a little bit easier to understand. I also think that by having all of the markets displayed as separately, BetTornado can potentially lead you to miss out on some betting opportunities.

Personally, I would have liked to have seen a “general” markets option which would show a wider variety of options.

Somewhat minor criticisms aside, BetTornado takes a different approach to Betfair and I have to be honest, it does it rather well. The thing with BetTornado really is that it is different and different will always be decisive.

For my money, I think that if you are heavily involved in betting on the sports that the software does offer options for, it is worth a serious look. I do however openly acknowledge that the approach used isn’t something that will work for everybody.

BetTrader Betfair Trading Software

There were some rather substantial gaps in my look at BetTornado and the most noticeable of these is horse racing. BetTrader is also by Racing Traders however there are no limits whatsoever on what you can bet on. If it is on Betfair, then it is on BetTrader. This makes it a perfect tool for those people who have a large portfolio of systems/tipsters or simply like to bet on a variety of sports and outcomes.

As a piece of software, BetTrader is rather unusual as it launches directly into your chosen internet browser. What isn’t unusual however is the layout and presentation of BetTrader. The software’s layout is rather busy looking initially with everything crammed into a sidebar.

I completed a more detailed look at Bettrader here.

Once you are used to this however, the software looks like Betfair, handles exactly how you would expect and is all rather straightforward. If you want to get the most out of BetTrader however, I would definitely recommend looking at some of their tutorial videos.

You can programme BetTrader to stake and limit liabilities as you see fit which means that those who are using staking plans can have multiple numbers aside. One click betting is available however you do have to turn this on each time you log into BetTrader, however once you do, it is really easy to use.

Where BetTrader moves away from some of the other Betfair trading applications that I have looked at is that it is rapid in response. Odds are updating and changing constantly and the response from the software is phenomenal.  In fact, the BetTrader boasts a refresh rate of up to 20 refreshes per second. Things like this are what really matter when it comes to trading and these are all the things that I feel any trader worth his salt would be looking for.

There are some other features included with BetTrader as well, all of which are helpful to bettors. The first of these is the ladder format display. This is something that is now rather common place with Betfair trading software, however this was the first example of it (and still arguably the best).

There is also a comprehensive training mode which allows you to trial systems etc. without actually risking your betting bank.

In terms of customisation, finding your way around BetTrader can be difficult (as I have already mentioned when talking about the user interface). Once you find your way around however, you can set the software up to do almost anything that you want it to. Once again, the response time for these settings are rapid, something which serious traders are going to be looking for.

So What are the Key Things About BetTrader?

• BetTrader has some of the fastest refresh and response times I have ever seen on a piece of Betfair trading software.
• The training mode is a massive bonus allowing you to really give something a go whilst ultimately, minimising your risk.
• The ladder format display remains amongst the best in the business and when combined with the other tools you can use for trading, BetTrader becomes a very serious bit of kit for traders.
• The user interface can be rather clunky when you are getting used to it, especially in terms of traversing menus and finding settings. There is plenty of training and support available to help with this though.

How Much Does BetTrader Cost?

Racing Traders are selling two different options for those who want to sign up for BetTrader. These are set out as follows:

• Monthly – £9.99 (available at the time of writing for £4.99) per month
• Annually – £99 (available at the time of writing for £49.99) per year

There is also a 7 day free trial in place for those who are trying BetTrader out for the first time.

BetTrader Conclusion

BetTrader feels like the Rocky Balboa of Betfair trading software. It is ugly and it can be difficult to understand, but by God does it do what it is supposed to well. For me, this is about as light weight and stripped back this kind of software can be, but this seems to be a big part of allowing BetTrader to work so quickly. This is the part that is important.

I have looked before now at bigger and apparently better pieces of software for Betfair trading that claim to pack a lot more into their software but they are missing where it matters.

When you combine this with the prices that Bet Traders want for BetTrader and it becomes very easy to see what the big appeal is. This is one of the cheapest full pieces of software for trading on Betfair. Don’t get me wrong, it is pretty far from flawless and I do feel that in order to get to grips with BetTrader properly and to use the software like it is second nature to you will take time and effort.

It is an investment of time however that is very likely worthwhile putting in.

Advanced Cymatic Trader Software

Out of all of the different bits of software that I have looked at, I am perhaps most familiar with Advanced Cymatic Trader as I have used the software before now in a number of different trials of products. This familiarity has however led me to find more flaws with this particular piece of Betfair trading software. With that in mind, I will still try to keep this summary review relatively balanced.

Advanced Cymatic Trader has been about for some time and I have to give credit to creator Gavin Porter as the end result now feels very polished. Unlike BetTrader, Advanced Cymatic Trader is entirely its own thing, running in its own window rather than using your browser. This does mean that the software will only install natively on a Windows based computer (although it can be used on other platforms if you are willing to spend some time on it).

Our  complete review of Advanced Cymatic Trader can be found here.

As a piece of Betfair trading software, Advanced Cymatic Trader is very much an all rounder and whilst this sounds like a good thing, it does create some problems. The speed of betting and the pricing refresh rates are both decent although I am not certain that it is quite up there with the fastest pieces of software. The flexibility of Advanced Cymatic Trader does go some way to make up for this however.

Bets are automatically set up as one click betting however there is no quick option for changing your stakes, something that does feel a little cumbersome. There are however a number of different values that you can change so that you set Advanced Cymatic Trader up to bet automatically for you.

This is a feature that can be particularly helpful if you have a successful betting system that you want to use.

There is also full integration with Microsoft Excel which allow users to programme some pretty creative betting strategies into Advanced Cymatic Trader. This is all very advanced stuff however and isn’t likely to be a feature that everybody will use.

For those who do favour something more straight forward, Advanced Cymatic Trader comes with a number of built in trading systems that you can set the software up to bet using.

In terms of usability, I don’t think that Advanced Cymatic Trader does too badly. The display and layout are very similar to Betfair’s own website however if you are a serious trader who needs graphs, charts, etc. then there are plenty of options to have these on display. There are a number of different layouts available for bets with Advanced Cymatic Trader including the now obligatory ladder view.

So What are the Key Things About Advanced Cymatic Trader?

• Advanced Cymatic Trader is a highly flexible trading platform and one of the better all round examples of Betfair trading software
• When it is compared to some of the other pieces of software on the market, Advanced Cymatic Trader can feel a little bit sluggish at times.
• The fact that the software is almost fully customisable when it comes to programming in a betting system is a massive thing.
• Whilst Advanced Cymatic Trader are quick to talk about their built in betting strategies, these are actually somewhat crude and offer no real guarantee of an income.
• Training mode to trial systems without spending any cash

How Much Does Advanced Cymatic Trader Cost?

There are a number of different options available to you if you are going to sign up with Advanced Cymatic Trader. These are laid out as follows:

• Monthly Subscription – £6.69 per month
• 6 Monthly Subscription – £35.99 per 6 months (representing a 10% saving
• Annual Subscription – £59.99 per year (representing an overall saving of 25%)

At the time of writing this, Advanced Cymatic Trader are also offering a full 14 day free trial of Advanced Cymatic Trader to see if the software is a good fit for you.

Advanced Cymatic Trader Conclusion

In terms of the Betfair trading software that I have looked at so far in this article, Advanced Cymatic Trader is probably the first real heavy hitter. The software is very capable and does pretty much everything that you would expect it to do. Whilst I maintain that Advanced Cymatic Trader isn’t the quickest on the market, it remains competently quick.

The fact that Advanced Cymatic Trader is as versatile as it is is probably its biggest asset. It doesn’t matter what your approach is to trading and betting on the Betfair exchange, Advanced Cymatic Trader will have a way to help you with this.

The fact is that there are a very impressive array of tools that even Forex traders would instantly recognise. One of the stand out features on offer here though are the sheer number of ways that you can present your data, again, another notch in the versatility bedpost of Advanced Cymatic Trader.

The things that you can get Advanced Cymatic Trader to do with Excel are really quite impressive. Unfortunately, this is also a big part of the downside for Advanced Cymatic Trader, namely that it can get quite complicated. There is a sprawling forum for users, all of which is full of different people from different ways of life there helping one another, and this is a great thing.

Especially if you find yourself struggling to get Advanced Cymatic Trader to do exactly what you want.

The problem with this is that ideally, you shouldn’t need all of this to get Advanced Cymatic Trader working how you want. I am sure that there is good reason for it, however this piece of software should really work for everybody, not just those with the tenacity to work it out. This is a shame as for me, it is what makes Advanced Cymatic Trader simply a bit mediocre rather than something really special.

FairBot Betfair Software

FairBot is one of the longer standing examples of Betfair trading software on the market and this experience shows. What also shows is the fact that Binteko, the company behind FairBot are constantly working on the software (despite being released in 2005, the last update was just a few months ago).

I have to be honest and say that FairBot has many of the same positives as the Advanced Cymatic Trader software that I have just looked at, albeit with a lot less negatives.

In terms of what is on offer, I can’t think of a single box that FairBot doesn’t tick. It has a quick interface, updates at a rapid rate (which is also easily adjustable from the home screen) and a host of both advanced and straightforward features, all of which are easily accessible. FairBot is also a very good option for those who want to bet on multiple markets, something that I will look at below.

In terms of the basics, FairBot looks a lot like Betfair’s own exchange and beginners will not find themselves particularly out of their depth at this point. There is also the inclusion of things like one click betting that most users of Betfair trading software have come to expect.

What quickly becomes apparent however is that there is a lot more here if you want it. With just a few clicks, FairBot has everything on display that a serious trader would want to look at including ladder displays, graphs and a host of different charts and technical indicators.

Building on this, FairBot also comes with a number of tools which have come straight from the world of trading. You can use the software to set up stop losses, offset bets and fill or kill, all with relative ease. For those who are less hardcore when it comes to their trading experience, there are also a number of tools to assist with dutching and “bookmaking”, two methods that a lot of bettors would look towards.

One of the things that I really like about FairBot is the fact that you can create your own systems. This isn’t something that is carried out with complicated spreadsheets like Advanced Cymatic Trader however. Instead, there is a built in wizard for inputting the conditions of your system. Whilst this can initially feel slightly overwhelming, even a beginner can soon figure things out and have their own criterion set up and running.

Once your system is created, you can simply choose to run this, sit back and let FairBot do its thing. You can also configure FairBot to do this over multiple markets at once with a variety of options available for those who want to bet on multiple sports at the same time. This is one of the main features of FairBot and the ease with which you can carry this out really helps to set the software apart from the competition in many respects.

So What are the Key Things About FairBot?

• There is a massively customisable and easy to use system creator built into FairBot
• The user interface for FairBot is familiar yet still you to create a more complex arrangement if it suits your betting style
• Specialist features built in to allow users to trade on multiple markets at the same time
• FairBot features a number of different trading tools that allow you to trade on the Betfair exchange in the way that you want to.

How Much Does FairBot Cost?

Binteko offer 4 different packages for those who wish to purchase a license for FairBot. It is worth noting that unlike other Betfair trading software applications I have looked ay before now, the prices are in USD. This means that the pound value quoted may be different depending on when you are making your purchase. The prices are as follows:

• 1 Month access – $11.95 per month (this equates to around £9.56)
• 3 Month access – $29.95 per quarter (this equates to around £18.36)
• 6 Month access – $54.95 per 6 months (this equates to around £43.96)
• 12 Month access – $99 per year (this equates to around $79.20)

There is also a free 15 day trial of the software for new customers who sing up for Bet Angel.

FairBot Conclusion

When it comes to weighing FairBot up to other Betfair trading systems, you have to be willing to really stop and look at what the software does better than others. Much of what FairBot delivers is I line with what I would expect from any system however there are a few areas where it really stands out.

The first is the system creation wizard which is a really neat feature. Coming off the back of trying to make sense of excel and how it links up with the Advanced Cymatic Trader, using FairBot is so simple. Despite this, it is also a massively powerful tool.

You can use FairBot to carry out some pretty sophisticated trading rules, arguably to the extent where I don’t really see what else you would use.

Secondly, the way that FairBot handles multiple markets is very much one of the most impressive features of the software. So much so that it appears to be something that the team behind it seem to want to push.

Combine this with the aforementioned system creator and you have a system that offers a lot of features for those that like to trade on the Betfair exchange rather than using it as a betting platform.

Bet Angel Software

When it comes to looking at Betfair trading software, Bet Angel is probably the best of them all. There isn’t a lot that the software can’t do and this is all very well presented. For me, the first thing that stands out about Bet Angel is that the user interface is just right. It is approachable and easy to follow. As most pieces of software related to the Betfair exchange do, the data is all laid out in a very similar to the exchange itself. This makes it a very familiar arena.

There are so many different tools that are included with Bet Angel that are designed to make your life easier that I won’t list them all here. What I will attempt to do however is to summarise the main features that are included with Bet Angel.

In terms of the trading tools, there is plenty on offer with Bet Angel. There certainly isn’t’ anything that I would say is missing that is included with direct rival trading software (I don’t include niche things like BetTornado).

Our Full Bet Angel Review can be found here

One of the arguable weaknesses for Bet Angel is that like Cymatic Advanced Trader, if you wish to programme the software to its fullest you do have to use excel. This can make using Bet Angel a pretty difficult task, or at least, not as simple as some examples.

If there is one question that hangs over Bet Angel, it is what version of the software you should be using. There are three different versions which are a basic version, a full version as well as a final premium paid one. As you would no doubt expect, the full and premium paid version comes equipped with a hell of a lot more in terms of its features (something that I will explore in more detail below).

As well as having all of these customisable features, certain versions of Bet Angel come with some pretty advanced features. For example, there are two tools that look at both football betting as well as tennis. These tools look at market activity before providing the likelihood of certain games and events. This arguably makes Bet Angel the only piece of Betfair trading software that can (at least hypothetically) pay for itself.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that there is a massive, and supportive, community in place for Bet Angel. The forum has around 15,000 users and is generally very helpful for those who are getting started. As well as getting advice on using Bet Angel, there are also some people who are willing to share their own betting strategies and approaches.

What are the Differences Between Different Versions of Bet Angel?

It is important to note with Bet Angel that there are multiple different versions of the software that allow you to pick what is right for you. The entry level is Bet Angel basic which allows you to place bets and trade with the benefits of a piece of Betfair trading software.

This means things like one click betting, faster refresh rates and allowing you to “green up”, a term for a method of trading that can allow you to generate profit before an event has started. Essentially, think the Betfair exchange, but faster.

The Standard version of Bet Angel allows you to access more of the features, as well as the same things as the basic version. The vast majority of the tools that Bet Angel opens up allow you better access to trading information. This means having things like the ladder interface, advanced charting and tools for Dutching and bookmaking. This version of Bet Angel also open\ts up a number of different video tutorials and support.

The Professional version of Bet Angel opens up all of the features that I have looked at above. This includes advanced tools such as Excel integration, multiple market trading and Soccer Mystic and Tennis Trader (the predictive tools for football and tennis trading respectively). As well as this, you get full access to all the features of the Standard version of Bet Angel.

So What are the Key Things About Bet Angel

• Bet Angel has an incredibly user friendly interface that makes interacting with Betfair easy and very efficient.
• There are multiple versions of Bet Angel available which allow you to select the version that best caters to your needs and your budget.
• Bet Angel comes with some rather advanced tools that can provide you with direct advice on how to bet on both Football and Tennis (only applies to certain packages).
• Huge user driven community that provides Bet Angel users with advince on the software itself and some games/bets.

How Much Does Bet Angel Cost?

As you would expect given the difference in the availability of features from one version of Bet Angel to the next, there are also pretty significant differences in price.

The Basic version of Bet Angel is entirely free.

The Standard version of Bet Angel is priced as follows:

• 1 Month – £6
• 3 Months – £18
• 12 Months – £60

The Professional Version of Bet Angel is priced as follows:

• 1 Day – £0.99
• 1 Month – £29.99
• 2 Months – £39.99
• 3 Months – £59.99
• 6 Months – £99.99
• 12 Months – £149.99

As is often the case with subscription based products, the longer you sign up for Bet Angel, the better value the overall cost is.

Bet Angel Conclusion

If I am entirely honest, I feel that far and away, Bet Angel is the most complete package available. If you go for the Professional version, it goes way above and beyond what I would expect from a piece of software of this nature.

The multiple price points mean that there really is something for everybody in Bet Angel and this isn’t something that I am able to say very often. This doesn’t however mean that it is without fault.

There is for example, no way of getting around the fact that the software is not the cheapest, especially when you get to the professional level. That having been said, sometimes you really do have to accept that you get what you pay for. I also think that it would be remiss of me to ignore that there are different price points for different tiers of the software.

As I have mentioned, when I talk about Bet Angel here, I am mostly be talking about the professional version as it makes sense to me to review the whole product. If I am honest, I find it to be fundamentally peerless in the world of Betfair trading software. It is fast, it is efficient and it can do a lot more than any of the competition will offer., especially in terms of the betting advice that is provided through the football and tennis data analysis.

Whilst I wouldn’t like to go as far as to say that Bet Angel is by without a doubt the best software on the market, it is undoubtedly up there. This is down to the balanced approach that is taken by the team. I can think of one thing or another with most of the trading software that I have looked at that is better than Bet Angel, but rarely do they excel in more than one or two things.

This means that in some ways, Bet Angel is a jack of all trades and whilst this is often considered to be an insult, with this kind of software I consider it to be the highest compliment. The fact is that when you bet, you are constantly changing and altering how you approach things, what methods that you use etc. and this can mean that a piece of software you bought for one feature is quickly rendered obsolete. With Bet Angel, I don’t really see this ever being the case.

Geeks Toy Betfair Software

Geeks Toy is one of the better known examples of Betfair software on the market and a big part of this seems to be down to the man behind the service, Caan Berry. Given that he has historically made his money through trading on the Betfair exchange, you would expect that Geeks Toy to be one of the most competitive pieces of trading software on the market and in many ways, it is.

You can read our full Geeks Toy review here

The fact that Geeks Toy has been developed by a trader means that it takes certain aspects of almost any piece of Betfair trading software and takes it even further. This ultimately results in the software having something of a niche feel, although it doesn’t take things nearly as far as some examples that I have looked at.

As a piece of software, Geeks Toy has a reasonable enough user interface and generally speaking looks like the Betfair exchange. This is only in its default position however as Geeks Toy can be made to look like a traders dream if you so desire.  Geeks Toy displays almost all data that you could want on one screen. Geeks Toy even goes as far as to look at things that some software overlooks.

The other thing that is worth picking up on with Geeks Toy is the speed. It moves very quickly which is something that any bettor or trader would be more than glad to see. After all, as I have stated a number of times, speed is key when it comes to Betfair trading software.

There are also wide variety of different features that Geeks Toy comes with that you would expect from Betfair trading software. These include a number stop losses etc. as well as tools to help you with both Dutching and Bookmaking. More than the additional features however, if you really want to get into Geeks Toy you have to look at both the software and the overall package.

This latter half is definitely somewhere that Geeks Toy exceeds. There are literally pages of information on the various different ways of using the software. There is even a whole section of the Geeks Toy website dedicated to getting users up and running with the software.

So What are the Key Things About Geeks Toy

• There is a hugely flexible user interface in place for Geeks Toy that allows you to display a lot of information if you so choose
• Geeks Toy looks at a lot of information that you would want to see. This means that there is plenty of stuff to take advantage of the UI.
• Of all the pieces of software that I have looked at, Geeks Toy has possibly the largest amount of training and support in place via the website and a comprehensive help system.
• Geeks Toy is flexible and can be used for trading on betting exchanges other than Betfair.

How Much Does Geeks Toy Cost?

There are just two options available if you wish to buy a license for Geeks Toy. These are as follows:

• 3 Months – £20
• 1 Year – £60

There is also a free trial available if you are signing up as a new user.

Geeks Toy Conclusion

I am, and always have been, of the opinion that Geeks Toy is a bit of a mixed bag. It is clear from the get go that this is a piece of software designed by a trader, for traders. Some people reading this will no doubt get excited by the prospect of getting all of their charts and graphs up, having different displays of odds on show and generally setting up like a London stock broker.

These people are unlikely to be disappointed with Geeks Toy.

Unfortunately, this focus does detract a little bit from some of the more basic aspects of Geeks Toy that I would expect from any piece of Betfair trading software. I also think that it is interesting and definitely worth pointing out that whilst Geeks Toy does come with a very extensive training course, I feel that this is somewhat needed.

Traderline Software

It is rather good for me that Traderline comes so immediately after Geeks Toy as there is some definite overlap between the two. Whilst the last entry had a focus on trading, Traderline is seemingly almost consumed by its desire to be the best trading platform for any Betfair bettors. A lot of the features that are on offer here are rather niche, however what the software does wel, it is truly exceptional at.

The fact that Traderline is something a little bit different is pretty apparent as soon as you launch the software. The UI, whilst not unfamiliar, is a far cry from the typical Betfair standard that you see on most pieces of software like this. It isn’t unpleasant to navigate however I do think that it may take slightly longer than you may initially expect in order to fully get to grips with everything.

In terms of the features that Traderline offers, there isn’t a lot here that you wouldn’t see on any other trading software such as one click betting. There are however a host of features that you wouldn’t expect. In terms of the ways that you can view data, I believe that Traderline is probably the most flexible on the market.

What really stands out isn’t just the number of different charts that you can display, but the fact that they are fully customisable. This allows users to focus on the data that they want to see rather than having to look and sift through information. Whilst this doesn’t necessarily seem like it’s a huge difference, anything that makes this side of things easier is a definite plus.

In terms of the speed, Traderline is blisteringly quick. The information is updated every millionth of a second which means that you certainly aren’t going to be far behind the action. Combine this with the way that the information is presented and it is probably the most efficient display of data that I’ve ever seen on a piece of Betfair trading software.

The final point to make about Traderline is that it is probably the most widely available piece of software in so much as its multi platform coverage is fantastic. Traderline has native support for Windows and Mac OSZ as well as mobile support for both Android and iOS.

So What are the Key Things About Traderline?

• Traderline is one of the fastest, if not the fastest pieces of trading software that I have looked at.
• The way that the data is presented and the fact that it is massively customisable represents a huge advantage for any trader.
• Interesting UI that once you are familiar with, is very well suited to those who take trading very seriously.
• Multi Platform software means that you can use Traderline on the go.

How Much Does Traderline Cost?

There are three options available for those who wish to purchase Traderline. These are as follows:

• Monthly – €9.99 (around £8.50 at the time of writing)
• Annual – €69.99 (around £59.50 at the time of writing)
• Lifelong – €139.99 (around £118.50 at the time of writing)

It is worth pointing out that there is also a 30 day trial with Traderline.

Traderline Software Conclusion

Traderline is a pretty advanced piece of kit and in some ways, it is so far ahead of the competition it is quite incredible. This does however come at a cost and that is that in some ways, the software looks and feels rather complex when compared to some of its rivals. Whether or not this is a problem is entirely subjective and ultimately depends on what you are looking for, however it would be remiss of me to ignore this.

Putting Traderline somewhere in the larger picture is not a difficult thing to do. There is a clear focus on trading and the software handles this more than competently. To say that it does everything that a serious trader could want is a bit of an understatement.

The sheer amount of customisation you can carry out and the various ways you can display data and control trades is massively impressive.

All things considered, Traderline falls into a bit of a niche product in my opinion, however this doesn’t necessarily mean it is bad. I have to hold my hands up and say that I hadn’t used all of the different pieces of Betfair trading software on their app store and I was surprised by how few I had heard of. Traderline was however a standout, albeit specialised, product that doesn’t appear to have the same level of publicity as some of the better known names.

Betex Trader Software

Coming into this article I had heard of Betex Trader before, however I was not overly familiar with the software. I have come to realise that this may well have been a bit of a let down on my behalf as this is a very interesting option for those who wish to trade on the Betfair exchange.

What is noteworthy about Betex Trader is that it eschews the standard format of copying the Betfair exchange in order to provide a different method of betting and any innovation I always try to see the best in.

In terms of the layout and user interface, I wouldn’t say that Betex Trader is unrecognisable, however I also don’t think that it is something that you will be able to simply pick up and run with. There are some differences to how Betfair as well as most trading apps display their data. Key to these (and Betex Trader as a whole) is the options when you set up bets.

Whilst Betex Trader can be used in a normal fashion to really get the most out of the software you need to be using bet plans.

Bet plans are the unique selling point of Betex Trader and they are a fantastic way of setting up complex betting strategies without any real fuss. You simply start out by creating your bet plan which is a set of rules that you can use for any future bets. You can set a variety of different criteria which when met, Betex Trader will place bets for you.

This can be set on the back of bet types, trigger conditions for in play betting and even stop loss instructions. These initial bet plans can then be expanded on with various “conditional filters” which allow you to add additional trigger points.

It is worth pointing out with Betex Trader that there are actually two versions of the software and depending on what sports you bet on and how seriously you  take your betting, then one or the other may not be suitable.

The Pro version of Betex Trader is somewhat restricted and comes with things like fixed staking and restrictions on the markets that you can bet on.  The ultimate version of Betex Trader however comes with no restrictions whatsoever.

So What are the Key Things About Betex Trader

• Software design allows you to configure your own betting strategies which you can quickly and easily apply to your betting.
• “If this, then that” approach to setting up your bets which allow you to set up triggers for the software to act in a certain way for your bets.
• Run multiple instances of the software to employ multiple betting strategies at once.

How Much Does Betex Trader Cost?

Unlike most pieces of Betfair trading software that charge a subscription fee, at the time of writing Betex Trader charges just a one time cost which is as follows:

• Betex Trader Pro Version – €84 (around £70 at the time of writing)
• Betex Trader Ultimate Version – €165 (around £137 at the time of writing)

There is also a 7 day free trial of either version of Betex Trader available to new customers.

Betex Trader Conclusion

Most of the software that I have looked at so far is designed for traders and as such, has a focus on graphs and charts. These are things that you will recognise as requiring human input. Betex Trader on the other hand allows you to simply set up the terms of your betting strategy and employ it with the click of a button.

Whilst Betex Trader could well be used for trading, I can’t help but feel that this is a piece of software that is mostly aimed at those who have a horse racing system that works for them. There is a strong sense with Betex Trader that if you can programme the rules in, then you can stake it very easily.

To me this is a difference that is important to differentiate as traders tend to be more dynamic and responsive to the market, whereas bettors typically have a system based on other factors.

A big part of the appeal of Betex Trader for me is how simple it is to set up a betting system. Whilst he UI is not necessarily as intuitive as it could be, it is difficult to ignore the fact that setting up rules for betting is pretty straightforward. What really stands out however is the fact that you don’t lose any of he important options that you may expect to.

The final thing to acknowledge about Betex Trader is the pricing. Whilst I can’t sit here and claim that Betex Trader isn’t a lot of money to invest, when you price it up next to some services for the year, it is a bargain. The fact that there is a simple one off payment also means that any future earnings that any future earnings are secured, as opposed to having monthly outgoings affecting your profit and loss.

MarketFeeder Pro Software

MarketFeeder Pro Software is a piece of Betfair trading software that in some ways I rather struggle with. This isn’t the software itself, per se (although I do have more to say on tis matter), more the fact that the main selling point that the creation team have latched onto is that you can use MarketFeeder Pro Software to programme betting systems, use them in trial mode and paper trade without risking any real money or effort.

This is definitely a helpful feature to have, however it is also something that most examples of software that I have looked at is also capable of.

Moving onto the software itself, the user interface for MarketFeeder Pro Software is relatively familiar however I do find that it will likely feel a little bit foreign to those who are used to Betfair’s own exchange.

In terms of features, MarketFeeder Pro Software has all of the mainstays such as one click betting, assistance with dutching and greening up etc. There are also some trading tools however this is a long way from the focus. The refresh rate for MarketFeeder Pro Software is very respectable refreshing up to 0.3 seconds.

Not dissimilar to Betex Trader which I have just looked at, MarketFeeder Pro Software really comes into its own when you are programming in your own betting system.

There is a wizard in place to help you to set these up which makes things pretty straight forward. MarketFeeder Pro Software does however also come with Excel support which means those who are proficient are able to make the software do some pretty advanced things.

The real crown jewel for MarketFeeder Pro Software in my opinion however is their Time Machine. This is a neat piece of software which can be used to test systems based on virtual data. The virtual data isn’t entirely random however. Instead it comes from Betfair’s API server with full compliance of their Historical Data Licence. If you are testing a betting system through Time Machine, then you can control the speed at which the data is tested.

So What are the Key Things About MarketFeeder Pro Software?

• Creating your own betting system is a relatively uncomplex affair and can be carried out by most users.
• For more advanced implementation of betting systems, MarketFeeder Pro Software can use systems programmed into Microsoft Excel.
• When paired with Time Machine, it makes MarketFeeder Pro Software one of the best methods of testing a betting system.

How Much Does MarketFeeder Pro Software Cost?

There are a few different ways of paying for MarketFeeder Pro Software depending on what you want the system for. To use MarketFeeder Pro Software for trading, the prices are as follows:

• 2 Weeks – £10
• One Month – £14
• 3 Months – £29
• 6 Months – £49
• One Year – £74

If you then wish to take advantage of Time Machine, there are potentially additional costs involved as well. To add Time Machine to an existing MarketFeeder Pro Software subscription costs a flat rate of £6 per month extra. Alternatively, you can buy access to MarketFeeder Pro Software only in Time Machine mode for £12 per month.

Trialling MarketFeeder Pro Software as a piece of trading software also comes with a free trial which runs for a full month, entirely unrestricted.

MarketFeeder Pro Software Conclusion

It would be unfair of me to pretend that MarketFeeder Pro Software is a fantastic piece of trading software because in my opinion, it isn’t. I find he UI to be a little clunky and difficult to navigate personally, however MarketFeeder Pro Software does provide some very unique and interesting features that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

It is clear from the get go that MarketFeeder Pro Software is all about providing the most possible customisation for users in terms of the ability to trial systems. This is something that it does exceptionally and for paper trading, I can’t think of a piece of software that I would rather use. Of course, key to this is the Time Machine which is an additional premium.

It is worth pointing out that this is by no means a guarantee that a system developed with MarketFeeder Pro Software will work for the future however.

There isn’t really a lot more for me to say about MarketFeeder Pro Software really. As a piece of trading software, it leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion. This is a very clear niche piece of software that to the right kind of user will be a godsend. For those who are simply looking to be day to day or just want a faster and easier way of trading on the Betfair exchange, there are definitely better options.

Scoregrid Bet Practice Software

BetTornado isn’t the only piece of software that is designed for trading on football. Scoregrid Bet Practice is a direct competitor and I have to hold my hands up and say that I am rather wowed by what the team have done here. To me, there is very little left of the traditional Betfair exchange user interface and that is a very good thing as the Scoregrid Bet Practice team have crafted something massively practical and unique.

At the centre of this change is the eponymous “Score Grid”. This allows you to place bets on full and half time results in game. Whilst you can do this on most software, everything is presented in a 6×6 grid that shows you profit and loss potential depending on the outcome.

This is a particularly useful tool for those who are involved in dutching as everything is there and in one place.

All of this is very good however it is also important to balance it out with the fact that Scoregrid Bet Practice is also very restricted. In fact, there are just 50 markets that you can bet on. This isn’t necessarily going to be a problem if you only bet on football, but how many people can really say that? Especially when you’re on a betting exchange of which one of the greatest features is the volume and variety of betting.

Given the rather unusual layout and features etc. it may come as no surprise to learn that Scoregrid Bet Practice comes with extensive training and a comprehensive user guide. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that this does a good enough job of compensating for the fact that this is such a niche piece of software.

So What are the Key Things About Scoregrid Bet Practice?

• Unique interface allows you to quickly and easily bet on a variety of different football markets.
• The software is restricted so that you can only bet on Football.
• Full support if you are struggling with Scoregrid Bet Practice.
• Pretty reasonable pricing makes Scoregrid Bet Practice an affordable option for anybody who bets on football.

How Much Does Scoregrid Bet Practice Cost?

If there is one thing that may save Scoregrid Bet Practice it is the price and I am inclined to say that it just about warrants the existence of Scoregrid Bet Practice. There are two options which are as follows:

• 3 Month Subscription – £11.79
• 12 Month Subscription – £29.79

There is also a full 15 day free trial available for Scoregrid Bet Practice.

Scoregrid Bet Practice Conclusion

For me, Scoregrid Bet Practice as a piece of software holds a very fine balance. One the one hand, if you want to bet on football, I don’t think that there is anything better. I honestly don’t. Unfortunately, if you want to use Scoregrid Bet Practice then this better be all that you want to bet on and that is fundamentally a problem.

The thing about Scoregrid Bet Practice though is I don’t believe that it is ever really sold as a full trading platform and most importantly, it isn’t priced as one either. This is important to consider when you are weighing up all aspects of this particular piece of software.

The fact is that it doesn’t really fit into any typical box when it comes to trading. Unlike BetTornado before it which is competent but has a focus on presentation, something which may appeal to a more casual bettor. Scoregrid Bet Practice is all about serious football betting.

Whether or not you are serious enough about football betting to purchase another piece of software is a very different question, and this is really what it all boils down to. It is worth considering however that given a 12 month subscription, you will pay out less than £2.50 per month in order to get access to the unique tools that Scoregrid Bet Practice leaves at your disposal.

If you take betting on football even remotely seriously, this is a trifling amount to pay, even if you are already paying for another piece of Betfair trading software.

I have talked a lot about gaining and edge in trading and I have to hold my hands up and say that Scoregrid Bet Practice does this. It may not be substantial, but any edge is worth pursuing. The fact that this is such a niche product has to be put to one side. In my opinion, when you combine the benefits with a very low overall price, I can’t help but feel that despite the numerous limitations, Scoregrid Bet Practice is a worthwhile piece of kit.

Bet Commando Software

Bet Commando is sold as being built by sports traders, for sports traders and I have to say that I can see how this community driven project has worked out successfully. Like a lot of the more interesting pieces of software that I have looked at over the course of this article, Bet Commando is not surprisingly a rather niche affair.

Whilst you can use the software to bet on a number of different markets, there is a very strong focus with Bet Commando on horse racing.

The user interface for Bet Commando is generally speaking very much inline with the industry standard and doesn’t really deviate too much from the Betfair exchange set up. There are also the usual options such as ladder displays so that you can see what the entire market is doing for a particular selection.

Bet Commando has one ace up its sleeve however which is an in play animation interface that allows users to improve their in race betting on horse racing. Whilst it is rather crude to look at, this aspect of Bet Commando shows you where horse are in relation to each other during a race, as well as showing the odds moving, all in real time. This visual representation can be a godsend for those who aren’t able to follow the race “in person” but still wish to engage in in play betting.

As I have touched upon, despite the clear leaning towards horse racing trading, Bet Commando can also be used for betting on all other sports. There is very little here that is really any different from any other example of any other piece of Betfair trading software.

So What are the Key Things About Bet Commando?

• Horse racing based trading software that also allows you to bet on all other Betfair markets.
• Unique in play racing animations that show you in real time how a race is unfolding and supposedly provide an edge for those who like to bet in race.
• Various ways of displaying betting information to assist with in play betting.

How Much Does Bet Commando Cost?

There are just two options that are available for those who wish to subscribe to purchase a license subscription for Bet Commando. These are as follows:

• 1 Month – £9.99
• 12 Months – £69.99

There is also a 7 day free trial in place for Bet Commando.

Bet Commando Conclusion

It doesn’t really come as any surprise to me that Bet Commando has stood out as much as it has. In looking at all of these different pieces of Betfair software, it is niche examples that tend to stand out. The problem with niche products is that as Scoregrid Bet Practice (and to a lesser degree Traderline) demonstrates, when you focus on one thing, something else typically gives elsewhere.

Bet Commando doesn’t seem to have fallen into this trap however and despite a genuinely novel and unique approach to in play betting, there remains enough functionality that you could realistically use it as your main trading software. This doesn’t however think that I feel that this is a great all rounder. In fact, pretty far from it.

My final thoughts on Bet Commando are based predominantly around how often you bet on horse racing, more specifically, in race betting. If your particular betting approach involves a lot of this kind of betting then I have very little doubt that you should be using Bet Commando. Whilst the rest of the software is passable, this is all that it is and as such, if you have a more varied approach to betting you will likely find yourself missing some of the functionality of less niche software.

So What Betfair Trading Software is Right For Me?

I have to say that from the off, I don’t think that there is a single “best” piece of Betfair trading software. There are a lot of pros and cons to the different examples out there and really what is best for you may not be best for everybody else.

It all depends on what you are looking for and what you consider to be the assets you consider to be most important. With that in mind, I have tried to break down the different pieces of software into categories and listed the best based for that particular feature.

It goes without saying that these are all entirely my own opinions. What I liked or disliked may not be suitable for you.

The thing is, whilst I like to think that I have offered some direction to those who are looking at Betfair trading software, I believe that all of the examples that I have looked at offer a free trial. With this in mind, the absolute best thing that you can do is get out there and trial things for yourself. Hopefully, this guide will give you two or three to try out rather than all of them.

What is the Best All Round Betfair Trading Software?

I have long been a fan of Bet Angel and this is mostly down to the fact that I feel that it offers the most complete and comprehensive Betfair trading experience. It does everything very competently and comes with a number of features that simply aren’t available anywhere else. This doesn’t mean that the software is flawless however and the biggest problem is the one that will likely put most people off, namely the cost.

That having been said, I do feel that you get what you pay for with MarketFeeder Pro Software and I would personally rather have a piece of software that does everything that I want it to at a cost, than compromise and save a few quid. It is worth pointing out that the differing tiers to Bet Angel mean that even if one option is too costly, then you can always compromise on a few features to make it affordable.

Honestly though, if you are reading this, then you take betting and trading on an exchange very seriously. As such, the cost is going to be pretty ow on your list of priorities as you would want to make the right choice rather than the cheapest.

What is the Best Budget Betfair Trading Software?

Whilst there are a number of cheaper options on the market in terms of Betfair trading software, there is one that for me, stands out when compared to the others. That is Advanced Cymatic Trader. It is a decent all rounder and does a lot of the things that some of the more heavyweight (and costlier) examples do at more than half the price.

When you take the time to consider it, it is quite possible that you spent more on your last trip to McDonalds than you would on a monthly subscription to Advanced Cymatic Trader. This is a good indicator of just how affordable it is, and if you want to get to understand trading on Betfair properly, then this combination of cost and features makes it a great starting point.

What Is the Fastest Betfair Trading Software?

It is worth starting by saying that every piece of Betfair trading software should be faster than the online betting exchange. I should also mention that whilst some refresh rates etc. can be set very high, they are not necessarily manageable as they become too quick.

With this in mind, the winner for me in terms of speed is BetTrader. The refresh rate on this particular piece of software was very impressive without ever moving out into the realms of being unreadable. The speed at which BetTrader is able to place and cash in bets is equally as impressive all of which makes it the fastest Betfair trading software in my eyes

What is the Best Betfair Trading Software?

I should preface this by saying that when I mean trading software, I am talking about your graphs and charts men. Those who apply market trading techniques to Betfair’s exchange.

For me, this is actually a pretty clear winner. Traderline is not necessarily the prettiest piece of software. Or the most intuitive. I could probably find other things that I don’t like about it. But to focus on this would miss what it does so well. In terms of presenting information, Traderline is second to none in my opinion.

The customisation aspect is without a doubt what makes this stand out. Whilst almost every piece of Betfair trading software that I have looked at has displayed some kind of chart of graph, Traderline takes it to the next level. The ability to choose not just what data is displayed, but how it is displayed is something that I haven’t really seen before now (at least not to this extent).

I think that really what Traderline does is take a very good and existing concept and it runs with it, almost to an extreme.

The end product speaks for itself however and when it is combined with the speed (which is one of the other strong features of Traderline), you have a piece of software that is ideal for “traditional” traders. It is quick enough to allow you to make split second decisions whilst giving you enough data to make sure these are well informed.

What is the Best Software for Football/Horse Racing?

I have chosen to lump these two in to one category with a brief look at my winner for each sport. The reason that I have looked at football and horse racing is that they are by and far away the most popular sports on Betfair’s betting exchange. I also feel that I should preface these selections by saying that these recommendations are based solely on betting on either football or horse racing.

The best horse racing software in my opinion is Bet Commando. This may not be a surprise as I was rather effusive in my initial look. This is mostly down to two things. The first is, not surprisingly, the in play race look. It’s a fantastic addition and is a great example of how Betfair trading software can continue to evolve. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of this kind of thing in the future.

In terms of the best football trading software, again, there are probably no surprises in my choice of Scoregrid Bet Practice. As with other “category” winners, the software works specifically because it deviates from the Betfair experience that we are most comfortable with. In placing the focus on giving football traders what they want in front of them, it makes the whole experience faster, more efficient and resultantly, profitable in the long term.

Final Conclusion on Betfair Trading Software

In approaching this article, it was my intent to try and showcase some of the various examples of what is available for trading on the Betfair exchange. I also wanted to highlight the fact that I you do use the exchange, then there are plenty of options out there for you regardless of your betting or trading style.

This is not a comprehensive list however. I have mostly chosen to focus on apps listed on the Betfair Apps page under the trading category and I know that I haven’t hit all of these. The fact of the matter is that there is a hell of a lot of overlap between one piece of software and the next (with a few notable and very niche exceptions) and the reality is that on some of the later nights when I was up testing the software, I had to check what I was looking at because it looked almost identical to what went before it.

Despite this, I like to think that I have also shown that despite all of the similarities, there are a lot of differences too. For example, Betpractice Score Grid jumped out as being by far and away the best piece of software for football trading in my eyes. This is because (as I have touched upon in my main coverage) there is a clear focus on improving an existing user interface.

I won’t pretend that Betfair’s exchange UI (and resultantly, a lot of the software) is rather clunky and when you are making minute by minute decisions on multiple markets for one event (as you may well do with football), it can leave you lacking.

I was also genuinely and pleasantly surprised by the sheer number of ways that you can keep on top of your betting. Whilst Windows PCs and to a lesser degree, Apple Macs should have plenty of availability, I was pleasantly surprised to see developers catering to mobile platforms. This does feel a little in its infancy, but it is also something that I believe you will see more of in the future.

Ending on the note of the future, there is no denying that betting is only getting harder and harder for punters. With the very recent merging of Paddy Power and Betfair I wouldn’t like to make predictions about what will happen to the betting exchange, but my gut feeling is that not much will change.

If my hunch is right, then this is very good news for punters as betting exchanges feel like one of the last truly free ways of gambling. If you are successful, it is certainly the only sustainable option.

The software that I have looked at is all designed to give you an edge, albeit a very fine one in this day and age. But to me it is clear that if you are serious about betting then every edge is worthwhile pursuing. Yes, there is a cost involved and with Betfair taking a 5% commission, some people may be a bit negative about signing up, but what is £5-10 out of your monthly winnings?

I have said before now that Betfair’s exchange changed the landscape of betting forever. I don’t think there are many people that would argue with that statement. It wasn’t perfect however. Betfair are happy to operate it as is and it makes a lot of money, but for punters it wasn’t perfect. Fortunately, there is the ability to make it much closer to perfect.

It isn’t expensive and you can cater your choice of software to your needs. For Joe Average, any piece of trading software is fundamentally made redundant, but if you are in any way serious about trading on the Betfair betting exchange, then I genuinely think that you need some sort of Betfair software.

The post Betfair Trading Software, Which is The Best And Why? appeared first on Money Makers Reviewed.

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I have been asked if I would test a lay betting tipster service by a vendor that this website has reviewed for before. Now this is not a system, but an actual tipster service: Lay Bet Kings.

I have been asked before to test such tipsters, and usually discount them, but this one does seem to stand out based on the results sent in to me, and based on around 2 weeks testing myself laying the bets on Betfair.

But with lay betting, it is ALL in the percentages, and 2 weeks worth of profits is not always enough to validate a tipster, not in this business.

Lay betting is fairly simple to understand, but on this review I will be explaining the basics of how it works, some background information on the tipster, as well as the full results for at least 2 weeks moving forward (providing I have the time, of course).

What this lay betting review will contain:

• Background to lay betting.
• How lay betting works.
• The tipster selections (pre race)
• The tipster results.

The Product Review

Product Name: Lay Bet Kings.

Offered By: laybetkings101.

Price: £200 Per Month by Western Union Only.

Where to Buy: Not given (see warning in review).

What You Get : 20 lay bet tips per month.

If you have used Betfair for lay betting before then you will probably know that usually the trades go your way, but it is when the trades don’t go your way that you can make losses, so the percentages of losing horses needs to be extremely high, and the odds not too hight o make this work.

I have been sent some results from the tipster concerned, and they are relatively impressive (so far!), but as with all such things, this needs testing in a real life situation, and so that you the readers can see the selections/tips before the races start, and the potential profits (or losses) being made over a decent enough timescale.

That is my aim on the Lay Bet Kings review.

All the tips will be placed BEFORE the races start, and we can then evaluate the success of this service, as we have done with other testing on this website.

What is Betfair Lay Betting?

Lay betting on Betfair is the process of betting against an outcome.

For example, if you thought Liverpool were going to lose against Arsenal, then you can make a bet, or trade on this outcome happening, and if Liverpool then do lose the match, you will have made a profit.

There are differences with lay betting, compared to conventional back betting, and the main difference is that you are liable for more losses depending on the odds you have chosen for your lay bet.

The same goes for horse racing, which this test will be all about.

If the horse the tipster gives you loses the race, and you have layed it at Betfair, then you win your trade.

For example, on this lay betting test, the first selection ( Bay Station) I have placed a £2 trade on, and you can see from the image below, that should the horse lose, I will win £2.

Although, should the horse win the race, I will lose £14.80, as I actually placed the lay bet at 8.4.

You can see the result below:

As you can see from the image above, Ebitda won the race (odds of 1.01), and the horse I layed, which was the selection from the tipster, lost the race.

The following is the Betfair profit from this first selection:

Let the lay betting testing begin. As I said, I will be placing ALL the tips before the races start so that you can see this testing live, and the results yourself. I have not deducted Betfair commissions for ease of explanation, and reporting, but on average this will be around 5%.

I will be testing this for around 2 weeks, using £2 stakes (After the first profit of this review, I have now decided to increase the stakes from £2 to £20 moving forward to give this a real test).

I am told all selections will below 9.0 as much as possible, and that selections are created using statistics, and algorithms.

The Betfair Laying Tips are as follows:

What are The Benefits to Lay Betting?

The main benefits to lay betting is that it is far easier to pick a losing horse than a winning one.

This is obviously really, because if you are looking at a typical racing card with day 8 runners, then only one of those horses is going to win, so if you then look at the form of all the horses, you can mostly predict what is going to happen in a race, and the chances of your chosen horse winning, or losing the race.

It is like in a football match, the chances of Chelsea losing to Burton Albion is slim to none, is a competitive match, so you have a high chance of winning your lay bet if you bet on Burton Albion to lose.

Thus you would be reasonably confident that you would win your lay bet, and you probably will unless something highly unusual happens in the game.

The same goes for lay betting on the horses.

For example, if you look at today’s race at Leicester, the 14:55 below, you will see that the favourite is Beautiful Memory at 2.66 in back odds, and the lay odds are currently 2.68.

Then you have Savaanah at odds of 10 on the back bet side, and 11.5 on the lay bet side, so obviously the betting market thinks that Savaanah has a much less chance of winning the race, and thus you may this this is ripe for a lay bet:

What are the Negatives to Lay Betting?

The negatives are that unlike with direct betting where you place say £2 on a horse to win, then no matter what the odds are, if the horse loses you will only lose £2.

With lay betting on Betfair, if you say lay a horse to lose at odds of 12.5, then if the horse wins the race (the opposite to what you have bet on it to do), then you are risking a lot more, because you are then risking the LIABILITY.

• With back betting you risk the stake.
• With lay betting you risk the liability.

The above is well worth remembering.

To give you an example, using the same race at Leicester, the odds of Savaanah have now drifted out, and the lay bet option odds are now at 12.5, so as the image below shows, if you place a lay bet on that horse at those odds, the liability (if it won) is now £25, compared to winnings of £2 if it lost:

As you can see from above, you are risking far more money the higher you go up on the odds.

If for example you were to place a lay bet at evens, then you would be risking the same amount as you would be winning if the result went your way, so the success of lay betting is the odds in the main.

I will demonstrate this now.

I will go to Betfair on the same Leicester race and ask for odds of 2.0 on the lay bet side for Savaanah, and see what happens:

As you can see from the image above, by asking for lower odds, my liability should the race not go in my direction (the horse winning) I would be liable for just £2, which is the amount I would lose if the horse won.

To further demonstrate this, I will show you the actual card which Betfair conveniently shows you the profit and loss depending on which way the result goes:

As demonstrated above, now the I have asked for much lower odds, the winnings, compared to the potential losses are now equal, because I have asked for even prices (2.0).

Is Lay Betting Successful?

It is a good question, and the fact is, that if it were easy to predict everybody would be at it wouldn’t they?

There are people, and tipsters who obviously make profits using lay bets, but I feel the key to the success is as follows:

• Getting real value on pricing
• Doing real background checks on the horses potential
• A proven history on success
• A high enough success rate  – which is essential

The last point, the success rate needs to be extremely high, definitely in the 90’s and with low enough odds to ensure that long term, even with a few losses that do not go your way, that overall a decent profit is made.

The Lay Betting Tipster Being Tested?

As I mentioned earlier, I have been approached by a vendor that we have reviewed before, and asked if we would publish the live results, and tips of this lay betting service.

I am told that there has never been a losing month, and that in 95% of the previous results, that a 100% record has been achieved on a monthly basis regarding the laying tips.

I will be publishing the lay betting tips for 2 weeks on this website before the races commence, and then updating with the results.

I have no doubt that profits can be made using lay betting, but this is the first time that I have tested a live trial of a Betfair lay betting service on this website, and it should be interesting as to what the results bring.

The odds need to be decent enough to avoid over-exposure to the markets, and the success rate needs to be high enough to produce a long term profit.

I have actually been testing this for a few weeks now, as I was asked a while ago to check this out before making this blog review, and the results were excellent, hence why I am going live with the results to give readers the chance to follow the tips, and results.

Conclusion on the Lay Betting Tipster

At the end of the 2 week trial, I will public my full findings and see if this really does have potential.

You can bookmark this page if you wish to follow the trial.

Lay Betting Tipster Update 13th Sept 2017

I know we should not judge too early, and I am usually the first to say to readers that trading, and betting is long term, but considering when I was approached, I was told that 95% of the months over the last 12 months had a 95% successful lay betting record, I expect a much better start than 2 losses out of the first 3 races.

We tested the same on the Greats Bets review, and the more recent Racing Wins review (both of which can be read in the reviews section), and both those services had fantastic previous records, and then when we tested them the results were less than favourable.

The same thing also happened more recently with the DataKings Product from Agora Lyfestyles/Betting Rant, in that their reviewer checked all the stats for a particular bot service, and when they launched it to their full membership base, and their email list the results just did not replicate previous results that the author achieved.

The difference with a lay betting tipster service, is that the winning percentage really does have to be so high, or you are forever chasing the proverbial £ note trying to recoup your losses.

On this test, after 2 races, 2 out of 3 losses has already placed a massive spanner in the works, so much so that another couple of losses in the next few races could lead to quite considerable losses overall, unlike say with a direct betting system where you only lose the stake, and a few losses is sustainable.

After only 3 races we are already £216 down to £20 stakes, so to recoup those losses we would need 10.8 winning races on the bounce to break even, which shows you how delicate lay betting can be.

It is of course possible that this is down to reviewer’s curse, in that when a service has been flying high for even 12 months, when a third party starts to review the service, it gets off to a bad start. Maybe the tipster gets nervous due to their outfit being reviewed, live. The problem is, if such a service had launched yesterday, there would be a lot of potential agry folks already in deficit-city.

…….Albeit that still does not (yet) mean something does not work, just possibly a bad start, but still, it is difficult for the grey matter to comprehend when you have such a loss in your Betfair account.

lay betting has to be ultra focused on the winning percentages to stand even the slightest of chances.

I will continue to put up the selections just to see what happens, as I did say I would give it 2 weeks, and the early results could have been a blip, or as I say reviewer’s curse.

Lay Betting Tipster Update 18th Sept 2017

The results over the last week have definitely got better, in fact, I actually missed one of the tips that was issued.  It was sent but for some reason I didn’t receive it, which was also proven to me, and it was a winner for the tips.

Let’s see how the results go for the next 2 weeks, or maybe longer. I currently stand by my initial stance on lay betting tipsters, in that the results have to be very, very high to produce a consistent profit.

One other point to make, is that the second loss on the results section was irregular, as usually there is only one tip per day, not 2, and if that had been maintained we would be in profit by now.

The tipster concerned sends out one tip per day, so that second tip that resulting in the second loss should not have been given, but it was given so I have included it in the vein of transparency.

I also suspect the tipster was trying to make up for the first loss that day due to this review, so these lay betting results are still interesting to me, especially considering the back dated results that I have checked, and which can be seen below:

• August 2017 – 19/20 lay bets won = 95% success rate.
• July 2017 – 19/20 lay bets won = 95% success rate.
• June 2017 – 20/20 lay bets won = 100% success rate.
• May 2017 – 20/20 lay bets won = 100% success rate.

78 lay wins out of 80 lay bets given cannot be ignored in this business. Obviously the above results would have produced excellent profits had you been trading them – although as you will see below, they are manipulating their results, which we found out at a later stage…

Let’s see how the rest of the results pan out, because I don’t have a great deal of interest in previous tipping results, because as we all know the past does not equal the future, and that is even more relevant when dealing with tipsters, lay betting or otherwise.

Lay Betting Tipster Conclusion 19th Sept 2017

I am concluding this review early. In fact it is one of the quickest reviews we have done.

The tips that were provided are just not of good enough quality, and if all the tips had been traded, then a loss of £336 would have been made in just 9 selections/tips, which is only 6 wins out of 9 selections, and 3 losses, which is a very poor strike rate.

Generally, that strike rate would not seem too bad in a backing environment, but when you are being asked to LAY horses at odds of 12.0+, then this becomes extremely risky, and as I mentioned early on in the review, the strike rate needs to be in the high 90’s to make a success of lay betting, and these tips are nowhere near that.

Final Lay Bet Kings Results to £20 Stakes

(Finished early due to Poor Results/Odds):

Could it have been just a blip? Possibly, but a blip that could have wiped out a betting bank, and when you consider the previous results I mentioned on the last update, then those results compared to the live testing results seem very suspect indeed, and this is the whole reason why it is absolutely imperative to TEST under live conditions.

WARNING: Lay Bet Kings Changing Their Results:

I have now been alerted, that due to the losses this particular Lay Bet Kings Blogspot tipster had in September, that they have removed all the losses from their website, and are now claiming they have had a ‘100% success rate’ with a ‘new algorithm’, which is very underhanded, and misleading the public regarding their service.

The Lay Bet Kings Tipster now has the following results for their September selections:

20/20 =  100% success rate

Which is strange considering there were at least 3 losses given to us during the testing for this review, and one more loss earlier on for the September results on their page. Now those losses seem to have mysteriously ‘vanished’.

I have no doubts that lay betting can, and does work, but not with this tipster, especially when one of their key messages on their home page is:

“Just Check On Our Results And Subscribe Through Western Union

Get In Now For Only 200 Pounds Per Month”

Plus the following statement on their Twitter account just 12 hours ago:

“#100% RECORD IN TACK 20/20 Lay Bets Won For September Subscribe Now For October”

Well, there were at least 3 losses given to us during the trial, and at least another loss further up the September month results.

This highlights how some tipsters are manipulating their results/figures in an attempt at fooling new, and potential members into thinking they are successful – especially considering that Lay Bet Kings are charging their members a massive £200 per month.

 – It is actually fraud.

Never judge on previous results alone.

Related Content:

Lay Betting Systems, Calculators, Odds and How it All Works in Reality.

Horse Racing Systems, Free, Paid For, and Which One To Choose

Each Way Betting Systems, and How It Works, Rules and Odds

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The post Lay Bet Kings Review. Lay Betting Tipsters on Betfair – Testing Started appeared first on Money Makers Reviewed.

Everyone loves a winner, and there is no greater feeling than walking out of a bookmakers with a few hundred quid in your pocket. It’s over to the pub or out with your wife for a night you won’t soon forget, all from a few well placed bets.

It’s just a shame that this doesn’t really happen all that often in the real world.

Sure, watch an advert from the bookies and they’ll make it seem like a sure thing. Especially some of the more “laddish” campaigns that feature a Cockney Geezer sort talking about the thrill and the win.

Let’s look at the reality though. If you’re reading this, you are reading it because like almost all punters you aren’t actually winning. Sure, you might have the odd win and the buzz that comes with it is something that you will continue to pursue.

Why Gambling/Betting is Addictive

It is a very strong and positive high that can quickly become addictive.

It is estimated that 95% of people who bet on a regular basis end up losing money to bookies. Whilst this may come to a surprise to a layperson, as somebody who is somewhat involved with the betting industry it is actually more than I would expect.

A big part of this is that everybody knows somebody who makes money through gambling. Without fail, if you ask anybody in a bookies, there will be somebody who knows, if not claims to be, in that elusive top percentile.

Why do people think this? It’s simple. Mentally speaking, we are programmed to remember the good and not the bad.

When somebody talks about how a few weeks ago they hit their strike and had 10 horses come in, half of which were outsiders, it is interesting to press exactly how many weeks ago.

Henry Royce (of Rolls Royce) once said that quality will remain long after the price is forgotten. In the same vein, wins will always remain when the losses are forgotten.

This leads me to my first step to winning more through betting.

Remember Your Losses as Well as the Wins

As boring as it may be, if you want to be a decent bettor, you also have to be prepared to be an accountant in some small way. By keeping a detailed log of your winnings and your losses, it allows you to gain a much better idea of how you are doing.

More importantly, this approach can help you to understand where you are earning money and where you are losing it.

It is a simple enough thing to do as well. All that you need is a simple spreadsheet or even an old fashioned ledger is plenty enough.

Keeping track of the dates, what you have bet on, how much you have bet and how much you won/lost is more than enough to get started. At the end of the month, it can be worth totalling up how you have done and using this as a starting point.

This works in two different ways…

The first is that you don’t sit around thinking that you are constantly winning. By the end of the month, it is very easy to trick your brain into forgetting a couple of losing £10 bets. Do this often enough and you can lose track of hundreds of pounds of losses.

The fact is that in acknowledging where you have lost money, you don’t become overly confident with your betting which allows you to become more disciplined.

It is only through discipline and avoiding erratic staking and chasing losses that you can really make betting a consistently profitable endeavour.

Find What You Are Good at and Stick to It

The second method of improving your betting actually ties into the idea of keeping a full log of your bets. Recording your bets in this fashion allows you to improve is by highlighting where you are winning and where you aren’t.

This can be as detailed as you want it to be too. For example, you might bet on football and horse racing and find that you are losing on football but winning on horse racing.

By cutting football out of the equation, you are left with only profitable bets. Of course the whole process is rarely this black and white, however it does give you an idea of where to start looking to trim some of the losses off your betting record.

Finding what you are good at however is an inexact science at best. This is in part because you should try to understand why you are picking winning bets in a certain market or sport, whilst also trying not to overcomplicate things. Good look juggling to paradoxical statements like that.

What this really means is, if for example, you are picking obvious wins in European Football then lumping them into small accumulators, then don’t stop. Most people who are fans of football recognise an easy game when they see them.

In fact, I would be inclined to say that even people who don’t like football can identify them. To keep on point with this, if you start trying to analyse what constitutes an easy game, then you are complicating a process that doesn’t require it.

On the other hand, you spend each morning going over the form of horses on a given day. You have a preference for those that have ran in similar conditions in the last few months. Those that have done well, you decide to back.

Here you have a system and something like this can be refined. For example, you may decide to see how many that have won their last race go on to win again, or if a horse has placed in the last few races by how much?

The difference between a system and betting on instinct is that a system can be refined. It is a series of numbers that you can add factors to in order to produce a more accurate result.

Remember that the House Always Has an Edge

Whenever bookmakers make their books, it is in their interests to price betting markets so that the odds on offer do not necessarily represent the statistical probability of an event occurring.

As you can probably guess by now, this section is not going to be light reading however I do feel that it is something that is important to address. It is only really by understanding how a bookmaker works that you can hope to beat them.

The best example that I have ever seen of explaining how bookmaking works is based on a 6 sided die (presuming for the purposes of this that it is entirely fair and shows no bias).

There is a 100% chance of a number between 1 and 6 being rolled. Resultantly, this means that each side has a 16.66% chance of coming up and should be priced accordingly. Instead, imagine that bookmakers decide to round this number up to 17%.

….After all, it is seemingly close enough. This means that the actual market percent is 102% rather than 100%. This 2% represents the houses edge.

Now consider this being applied to something like horse racing where there aren’t fixed odds, and you can easily see how bookmakers can manipulate their market percent.

With many bookmakers, it is estimated that this number can be as high as 110%. Despite this obvious house edge, it is something that is often overlooked, especially by people who are new to gambling and don’t understand the concept.

This explains why bookmakers are able to offer fantastic odds on certain outcomes on certain events. I’m sure you’ve seen them in the bookies window before now.

Bale to score first, Real Madrid to Win. 3/1. The market percentage that is lost on this bet outcome is made up through other bet outcomes so that no matter what, the bookies theoretically can’t lose.

Avoid the Gambler’s Fallacy

Whilst we are talking about the house edge, I feel that it is important to look at a similar although actually quite different concept. The Gambler’s Fallacy is something that I have watched wipe out more people who are interested in betting than I care to admit.

These are not typical “mug punters” either, but intelligent people. The problem with overcoming the Gambler’s Fallacy is that we are also programmed mentally to look for patterns.

This is why if you look at something random for long enough, you will begin to perceive shapes.

The same thing starts to happen with gambling. We think that we’re beginning to see patterns emerging however the reality is often very far removed from this.

The most well known examples of Gambler’s Fallacy come courtesy of the roulette table. For the last 5 spins, a fair roulette table has come up on a red number. The next spin must surely be black because the odds of getting 6 reds in a row is 1 in 64.

The reality however is that the odds reset for each spin and the odds remain the same for both black and white.

This same method of pattern searching can be seen when looking at any sporting event. The important part is to ensure that any pattern that you think that you have seen can be tested in a productive and structured fashion.

Only Bet What you can Afford to Lose

This is something that seems so blatantly obvious on paper and yet, I have seen people ruined by trying to stretch a betting bank to increase their profits. Generally speaking, you should be looking to bet to level stakes.

This not only makes it easier to keep track of how much you are betting, but also ensures that you don’t start to chase losses. I would strongly recommend steering clear of any staking plan that offers recovery.

These seem great on paper but often end up leaving you broke very quickly.

I would personally recommend starting with a 100 point betting bank. A point is a term used to represent how much each bet should be. For example, a £500 betting bank would mean betting £5 per bet. If you just had £100, then it would be £1 per bet.

Whatever your initial betting bank is, it should be money that you are hypothetically be willing to lose. It is only when you have  this mindset that you are likely to be able to bet in a consistent and professional manner.

Level staking doesn’t mean however that you are tied down to simply betting a quid at a time and making a fiver back on the odd horse.

As well as a level staking plan based on single numbers, you can also use a percentile approach in order to increase your profits through compounding.

This means that instead of staking £1 per bet, you bet 1% of your betting bank. This will slowly increase the amount that you are betting and increase your profits, however it also means that you can lose more.

It is also worth pointing out that whilst your betting bank is hypothetically infinite, you may find that you quickly end up betting so little that  it is impossible to build your bank up again.

However you choose to bet with your bank, the amount should be something that you can afford to lose. If you start to stretch yourself, realistically, things will only end badly in the long run.

Shop Around for Odds and Value When Betting

Generally speaking, bookies odds will not vary too much from one to another. The key thing to take away from this however is that there is some variance and this is one way that you can quickly and easily increase the profitability of your betting.

Once upon a time, this was a difficult and time consuming thing to do however the landscape of betting has changed a lot over the last 10 years or so.

One of the major game changers for punters is a website called Oddschecker (https://www.oddschecker.com/). What Oddschecker does is list all the prices that bookies are offering on a given market. This means that you can make sure that you’re getting the best possible value from your bets with very little real effort.

Whilst shopping around for odds may not see a huge increase in your profits, it is important to note that this is probably the single easiest way to boost them.

Take Advantage of Bonuses and Offers

(But Check the Terms and Conditions)

Because it is such a competitive industry, bookies almost always have some offer or another on. These range from free bets to boosted odds but they all have one important thing in common. They let you bet on the bookies money.

You should look to take full advantage of these whenever possible (this approach has been taken to the extreme with matched betting). This kind of bet can be a good way of boosting your betting bank with very little risk.

With the positives out of the way, it comes to something that I cannot stress enough and that is to check the terms and conditions of these bonuses and offers.

A number of years ago, I thought that I had hit on a pretty sound system for playing roulette (I still argue that it holds up on paper).

Being inexperienced and having returned from a reasonably successful night at the casino, I signed up for a free £10 bet on roulette when you deposited £10.

What I didn’t realise was that I had to bet the free £10 300 times to withdraw any winnings. This mean that when I came to cash out my £30 (not bad for a nights work), I couldn’t.

I would have had to have staked this 100 times in order to withdraw anything. I ended up losing a tenner on that night but the lesson that I learned was invaluable.

It hasn’t put me off using free offers, however I do now double check what the terms and conditions are as you can very easily end up getting stung down the line.

Avoid the Casino Games at All Costs

I don’t know how you like to place your bets but since you’re reading this online, I am going to hazard a guess that you use the same method for betting.

If you want to make money by gambling online, then one of the worst things that you can do is play online casino games. These are fixed odds and whilst they sound enticing (some promise that they pay out as much as 90% of all money wagered), the  reality is that they are easy money for bookies.

For those who prefer to go into a bookmakers, you will see their in store equivalent. Fixed odds betting machines.

Again, these sing about a 70% pay out rate, however this means that bookies are still taking 30p on the pound from them. This kind of “easy money” betting is something that bookies will always encourage.

As a punter however, you can even the scores a little bit by avoiding them.

The main reason for the appeal of Casino games is that they are sold as quick and easy money. Just come and have a quick spin on the roulette wheel, have a hand of blackjack.

If you win, then it is genuinely some of the quickest and easiest money you will have made. On the flip side of the coin, it is possible to lose £10 in literal minutes. When you are up against “the computer” so to speak, what this really means is that you are going to lose.

Betting Exchanges Are Your Friend, Sometimes.

Betting exchanges are a gift and a curse in the world of betting. They are a great way of getting the bet that you want. Sometimes bookies offer much better or worse odds than are available on an exchange.

Betting exchanges are also the only way to lay a bet (that is to bet against an outcome happening) as well. This is a valuable strategy that can be used for some very strong profits in the right hands.

There are also much more varied and arguably better betting strategies that can be implemented when you are using a betting exchange.

The core reasoning for this is that a betting exchange allows you to do so much more than simply bet, you can actively trade your position as the day goes on. This allows for savvy bettors to lock in profits before an event has concluded or even begun.

Despite the positives that come with a betting exchange, there are negatives. The first I that unlike betting with a bookie, you have to pay a small percentage of your winnings to the company who operate the exchange.

This typically ranges from around 2% to 5%. The other thing that can be a problem, particularly for those who aren’t familiar with them, is that betting exchanges can be overwhelming.

There is a lot of data and information being updated at a very fast rate and until you understand what it means, it can be a very intimidating place.

Find Reputable Help

Help with betting is available in a number of different formats. Some of it is free, however I cannot sugar coat the fact that a lot of people online will charge for their services.

Whether these are as a tipster or somebody with a betting service, odds are you will find some cost to you somewhere down the line.

This makes finding decent advice a difficult thing. I have known free services that have produced a decent profit and I have known of people losing tens of thousands of pounds to scam artists.

Finding genuine help is a difficult thing however the best places to start in my opinion are the multiple forums that are out there. It is also worthwhile finding a decent website that offers advice (if you’re reading this, you’re on one ).

In terms of different products that are available, it is worthwhile looking long and hard at results and testimonials before you commit to making a purchase. Some websites have a lot more integrity than others so you should look for websites that are impartial or independent.

There are some websites out there linking to products that are for the company that funds said website. Not surprisingly, they also come with glowing reviews.

The best help will introduce you to interesting and new ways of making money through your betting. Sometimes they may seem intimidating but the best products talk you through everything step by step.

This can really help you to add new string to your bow and increase your overall profits.

Be Prepared to Lose, But Don’t Expect It

Nobody simply becomes good at betting in the straightest forward sense of the word. Going into a bookies and placing bets, even with the best system in the world will lose. Unfortunately, nobody likes to talk about this side of things.

I have already talked about remembering your losses and that is massively important, but it is equally important to be prepared to lose.

If, on some level, you are prepared for your bets to lose then it can massively help you to keep your composure. This is where preparing to lose is much different than simply noting your losses.

It is easy to write down that you are losing £10 here and £10 there. It may help foster a broader understanding of betting, but dealing with that feeling in your gut where you are simply losing money is a difficult beast.

On the flip side of the coin, being prepared to lose can lead to expectation and in much the same way that being overly confident can lead you to make bad calls, so can sloppy betting where you’re playing to lose.

I know that I have talked at length about the process of dealing with losing out on a bet but honestly, if you expect to lose, then you can become lethargic and not care if you win or lose and that is where addiction lies.

The truth is that a lot of betting on a serious level is psychological. It takes a very certain type of person to be able to bet in a sustained fashion and to ride the highs and the lows that come with it.

It is very much a balancing act and it is one that can very easily throw you off if you aren’t careful. This brings me onto arguably the single most important thing if you want to win more through betting.

Discipline is Everything

More than anything else, discipline is the single most important way of making your betting more profitable. Generally speaking, if you speak to a lot of people who have failed with their betting it is because somewhere along the line, they have broke their discipline.

If you have been paying attention to this article, you will likely have realised that the idea of discipline is something of an over arcing theme.

Quite what we mean by discipline can be a massively varied thing. For example, some people talk about discipline in the simplest sense. This means making sure that they aren’t chasing any losses that they might have incurred.

By sticking to a staking plan, you can reasonably reliably predict where your betting bank will be in the future. To others, discipline is about the bets that you place.

You  might want to back your favourite football team or a horse with a name that means something to you, but if you deviate from a system that is profitable then you can expect to lose money.

Discipline is more than this however. As well as sticking with what works, discipline can be as much about what doesn’t work. Identifying your short fallings as bettor and trying to take steps to correct them is a part of being disciplined as well.

All of this sounds so straightforward on paper and this is exactly why it is so difficult to be disciplined. It seems like a really obvious thing to say that if something isn’t working then it is worth mixing it up, but at what point is a system simply having a bad run and when is it not working?

It is only through taking a vigorous and focussed approach to betting that you can come to understand some of these differences.

Probably the hardest part of being disciplined though is that it can become something of a bore. Not the making money side of things. That is one of the most enjoyable things that you can encounter as a bettor.

Instead, there is very little thrill in placing a bet. Pursuing exciting bets is all well and good but it is rare that you will find yourself profiting from it.

Final Thoughts

Being a profitable bettor is a lot of work and that is the key word. It is work. Just like your 9-5 job, you will find that at times you resent it. You will more likely than not find that some days you simply can’t be bothered to focus on things.

This is all natural and like anybody who is self employed in any capacity, you have to rely on yourself to keep things moving forward.

The rewards from making money through betting are clear and very much there for the taking. You will find that there are a lot of naysayers in the wider world and I am loathe to say with good reason.

Most people’s idea of betting and gambling is a long way removed from the professional, almost clinical approach that seasoned bettor will make.

I have talked about discipline at length and honestly, I could probably write another thousand words on why it is so important in betting.

I think that the real way to have fun with betting, either as a second income or as your primary income if that is your inclination (although it is significantly harder trying to make a full wage through gambling) is in trying to find pleasure in what you do.

The truth is that if you look at betting and gambling it is a numbers game. From jockeys to  trainers and from bookies to punters, we are all looking at numbers.

It takes a certain kind of mind to be happy pouring over figures and results, considering in factors that can seem wholly unrelated or things that are so blindingly obvious that you overlook them.

But if you can derive pleasure from this work, if you can change the thrill that comes with betting from winning to identifying a way of picking winners, then you will do well.

Betting is not for everybody. In fact, I would be inclined to say that it is very far from it and you only have to look at the harsh reality of gambling addiction in the UK.

Truth be told though, there is a reasonable percentage of people who have substantially improved their lifestyle through gambling. It is possible. The secret is not so secret either. It is just very difficult to maintain your discipline.

Do NOT, EVER Gamble with Money You Need

I will say it again, gambling, and betting can be highly addictive, so never ever gamble, or bet with money that you cannot afford to lose.

Treat gambling as a hobby, a hobby that if you made a profit – great, but if not, then see it as an entertaining experiment, but never gamble with your family’s money, or money that will keep you awake at night should you lose it.

That is a golden rule.

There are far too many horror stories of gamblers becoming addicted, and this can lead to a downward spiral that is difficult to escape from.

If you do think you have any kind of problem, then there are many websites that can help you, including the following:

https://www.gamblersanonymous.org.uk/

https://www.begambleaware.org/

http://www.gamcare.org.uk/

Gambling, and betting can be highly profitable, but it must be carried out with the correct mentality, and with anything really. All in moderation, and the right focus.

Related Content:

How To Make Money From Gambling, What is Really Possible?

Online Betting Exchanges vs Online Bookmakers The Differences and Pros and Cons

Is Gambling Tax Free In The UK, and Do You Have To Declare Winnings?

The post How You Can Win More Money Through Your Betting? The Mind of a Gambler appeared first on Money Makers Reviewed.

Football trading, and betting systems, especially on Betfair is a topic that many people are now interested in. For a long time, betting in the UK was synonymous with horse racing. This is with good reason as well. If it weren’t for bookmakers at the side of the track, I think it is fair to say that shops wouldn’t have opened up on the high street and so on.

Times have changed since those days however and so has betting. Horse racing is still the largest betting market in the UK, but football is fast catching up and as bookies pursue a more casual type of punter, I think that interest in betting on football will continue to grow.

In fact, it is estimated that anywhere between £435 billion and £625 billion are spent on sports betting each year across both legal and illegal betting sources. Of this number around 70% is estimated to be on football.

These are not small numbers and they highlight the fact that what was once a bit of a niche, can quickly become central to a whole industry. As you can see that is a LOT of money being traded, and the amount of money traded on football in any given week is colossal .

I mean, the amount of money traded is mainly due to the global interest in the sport, but not only that, football is a much slower sport to trade than, say, horse racing where the majority of people trying to make a few quick will just back the favourite and hope for the best.

Think about it, with horse racing some of the races are over inside a minute, where you get punters panick betting if the results are not going their way, and this leads to an unstable position (especially in play), because it is more risky, no doubt.

In play football trading is much slower paced, more more relaxing because at the end of the day you have a whole 90 minutes in which to plan and implement any strategy you may be using, and use all the ammunition to make a profit, and to make the game pay.

Of course, if is not always that easy, or we’d all be raking in the spondules on a weekly, if not daily basis

Although, what I want to show you on this write-up, and this ‘review’ is how the markets works, the traders who definitely make it work for them, what to look out for, and just what football trading is – as there is more to it than meets the average eye, who just see numbers jumping about on Betfair’s website.

What is Football Trading Then?

Truth be told though; football betting has existed in some form or another for almost 100 years and was born here in the UK. Football pools used to be a method of betting in which you would try and predict outcomes of a large number of games.

Really, the football pools were more akin to a lottery, however unlike betting now, you were competing with a “pool” (hence the name) of other bettors. The person with the most accurate and highest scoring predictions would taking home the prize. It is interesting that football betting started in this fashion and has now come full circle of sorts.

In 1999, the first large scale and commercially viable betting exchanged launched in the shape of Betfair. This allowed people to bet directly against other people rather than a bookmaker. It also changed the landscape of betting immensely.

As Betfair has grown, football has become an increasingly popular sport for people to bet and trade on and this is with very good reason. The structure of Betfair made in play betting a viable thing to do for any football game. It also opened up betting markets that probably won’t have been touched by bookies at the time.

Fast forward to today and there are so many options open to bettors that it almost seems to be overwhelming. Whether or not you consider this to be a good or a bad thing depends on your approach to betting I suppose, but the majority of people I talk to are loving it at the moment.

Now that I’ve spent a little bit of time painting a picture, I want to get down to the brass tacks of my article today and that is football betting through Betfair.

Using a Betting Exchange For Football Trading

Before I can talk about football trading specifically, I want to start by looking at what betting on a betting exchange entails and how this works. I feel like most people reading this will already be familiar with the process to some degree, however I am aware that many people are not familiar.

With this in mind, I will not just be referring back to betting exchange concepts when talking about football betting. As a result of that, I don’t want people to feel alienated or out of their depth.

It is well known how placing a bet works with a bookmaker. You go in, they set the odds, and you either take them or walk out of the door. With a betting exchange, you are betting with your fellow punters which makes the whole experience a lot more flexible. Instead of accepting the odds which are offered, you can essentially put your bet out there, with other people accepting your bet.

If you win, you receive payment at the odds that you chose.

On the other side of this bet, you can also “lay” your bet. This is essentially being on the other side of the bet as discussed above. Laying a bet means that you are betting against an outcome rather than for it and it is the crux of betting exchanges. Lay betting, as it is often referred to, is an integral part of many betting strategies, both football and none.

One of the other key features of betting on a betting exchange as opposed to through bookmakers is the concept of trading. For many, this feature is what makes a betting exchange superior to betting through a bookmaker and it isn’t difficult to see why. Because of how betting exchanges work, when you place a bet, you can then “trade” that bet out midway through an event.

This allows you to take a profit before an event has finished or alter your bets completely.  I will cover this topic in much greater detail below however.

Football Betting, How It Works

Football betting is really straightforward, right? You put a tenner on your team to beat Crystal Palace (because so far, this season, of course you do) and you make a few quid to cover beer money for your next game. Some people might go a little bit more in depth. That is most people’s experience of football betting and taking this approach probably won’t steer you far wrong in the short term. Long term however, we are looking for very different results and to really understand this, we have to look at football betting as a whole.

For a long time there were football pools, but in many ways, this was more akin to a lottery than modern football betting. Modern football betting has truthfully only really started to take off in the last few decades, mostly because it is seen as being a more profitable market for bookmakers to make money. This is because when people are betting on football, they are more likely to bet with their heart than with their head.

Think about your chosen football team for a minute, and then ask yourself how comfortable you really feel betting on them to lose. It feels a little bit like turning your back on somebody. Of course, you may not enjoy football in which case football betting is simply another stream of revenue for you. Frankly, this is the best attitude that you can have.

As I have already touched upon however, betting is slowly changing, especially in regards to the methods of betting that people employ. Trading is becoming increasingly popular and it isn’t really hard to see why.

Aside from some of the obvious advantages such as being able to cash out a bet when there is some profit and allowing a much more different analysis of betting markets, trading can be used to all but guarantee a profit in game or allow you to turn a negative into a positive. Traditional football betting simply isn’t in the same league (if you’ll pardon the pun).

Trading on Betfair

Trading on Betfair is a skill which is not necessarily new. In fact, a large number of the fundamental skills that are involved in trading on Betfair have been brought over from Forex markets. The early pioneers of trading were financial traders who came to notice that there were similar patterns and indicators on betting exchanges as there were on the foreign exchange, something that the name strongly implies (betting exchange).

By bringing their skills over from finances to betting, there have been a large number of professional bettors trading on Betfair both historically, and presently.

One of the things that it is important to note when looking at trading on Betfair compared to betting is that you don’t have to know anything about a sport to trade. When you are betting however, you generally need some knowledge. This opens up trading on Betfair in ways that you wouldn’t have ever expected when compared to the traditional betting route.

Trading Football on Betfair

With our appetisers out of the way, I think that it is important to look at what this article is really about and that is trading football on Betfair. There are a lot of reasons that you would want to trade football over other sports and likewise, there are a lot of reasons that you would want to trade over betting, most of which I will probably go into over the course of this article.

The long and short of this is that trading carries significantly less risk than betting if the correct approach is taken. It also allows for very different strategies which focus on making a more consistent profit on a day to day basis rather than the ups and downs that come with traditional betting. After all, I think that most people who bet on football would rather win £5 every day, than lose £5 every day, only to win it back with a £35 profit at the end.

Many traders try to show you how to actually trade the football markets on betfair, as there is a whole nich that has been built up around this topic over the last few years, and here is Steve Howe, a professional Betfair Trader Of ItsaMugsBlog explaining his own simple football systems:

What Football Can I Trade?

The number of games that you can trade on Betfair is frankly rather staggering.  It is a genuine year round affair with a massive variety of different leagues and competitions from different countries and continents. In fact, I have just logged onto the Betfair exchange and there are an eyewatering 53 different countries that I could bet on the football over. There are also international games as well.

This kind of variety is hugely important as a big part of profitable football trading lies in finding value. It is no coincidence that most of the profitable football tipsters and settings that I have looked at have involved betting on more obscure leagues and games. Fortunately, the breadth of depth that exists on Betfair’s exchange makes it ideal for trading, whether you are looking at the Champions League final or an Azerbaijani Cup match.

Which Football Markets Can I Trade?

For many serious football traders on Betfair, the types of games that they are betting on is somewhat secondary to the betting markets that are available. This will vary from game to game depending on what games you are betting on (more niche leagues and cups have less markets), however the main ones have you more than covered.

Obviously, the main markets that people will be used to are win markets.

This means backing a team to win, lose or draw. It can also mean laying a team as well. Generally speaking, this is where the least value is to be found in football trading as the number of potential outcomes are fixed. This doesn’t mean that it is a bad market to bet on as it is often the most liquid. Furthermore, there are some very well established trading techniques which are based around backing or laying on this market. This includes half time/full time markets which involve choosing the outcome at halftime and full time.

The next bet type that I wish to look at that you can trade are the over/under goals markets. These are exactly what they say on the tin. You can place bets on there being over or under anywhere from 0.5 goals all the way up to 6.5 goals. Over/under goals markets have become a staple of the Betfair trading scene. There are a number of reasons for this but the main ones are liquidity, the ability to hedge bets and the value that is available.

The other types of football bets that you can trade are something of an eclectic mix. This includes things like the correct score (both at the end of the game and at anytime during the game). Whether a penalty will be awarded in a game and even whether a hat trick will be scored.

This kind of esoteric bet isn’t something that most traders will look at, usually because there simply isn’t really any value in this type of bet. Furthermore, they are also generally very unpredictable.

The only other bet type that is left to trade are Asian Handicap bets. These are an interesting but somewhat niche bet type which teams are handicapped based on their form. This particular betting market has yet to be really take off in terms of trading. This is mostly down to the fact that to the best of my knowledge, there aren’t any specific trading strategies for Asian Handicap bets.

What is Befair Liquidity and Why is it So Important?

I have mentioned a number of times about liquidity in markets and this is arguably one of the single most important aspects of trading anything on Betfair. Because you are betting with other people on an exchange, liquidity must be a thing to get your bets matched. This is because liquidity is basically the amount of money that is available on any given betting market on any given game. More liquidity is a good thing as it means that you are more likely to get bets accepted.

Naturally there are certain general rules that you can expect to see when you are looking at liquidity of bets. For example, the bigger the game, the more money will wagered on it. Take the upcoming United vs Liverpool match. At the time of writing, there has been just under £240,000 stakes on the game simply on Match Odds. By contrast , the Qatari game between Al-Rayyan SC and Al Sadd has had just £19,188 bet on it.

What is important to keep in mind is that generally speaking, with any game that you wish to trade on, liquidity will be at its peak the closer you get to the game. When it comes to trading, this is generally where you can get the best possible odds and your bets are most likely to be matched. This is of huge benefit to a trader as you are able to get the most out of each of your trades.

Which Markets Have the Most Liquidity?

Now that we know what liquidity is, we can take a look at which markets generally have the most. Using the upcoming Liverpool v Manchester United game I can start to look at how liquidity is spread out. I have already talked about the match odds and the amounts of money that have been bet there and this is generally where you will find the most liquidity.

People like to believe that it is easiest to predict the overall outcome, something that I believe that there is some truth to.

The match odds liquidity will inevitably increase as we get closer to the match, as will other markets. For example, the correct score market currently has around £16,000 stakes on it, a figure that will naturally rise as more goals are scored in game. The same applies to over/under goals markets which have across all examples a touch over £10,000.

After this you tend to find that there simply isn’t that much liquidity unless it is a particularly big game. This is because the kind of bets (as I have already talked about) tend to be niche and unpredictable. As a result of this, it can mean that there is less interest from bettors and as a direct result, less liquidity.

How Do I Become a Successful Football Trader?

The best way to start earning your stripes in football trading is to get on Betfair and start trying to trade bets. I will be looking at some basic systems below which if you follow, you should enjoy at least a little success with. Ultimately, this will all depend on your mindset when you are trading.

Betting and trading take a very different approach and this is mostly down to the fact that betting is binary. You can win, or you can lose. If you win, then you will make a profit and if you lose, you will lose your stake. Trading is much more fluid than this because you choose at what point you wish to begin or end a trade.

To trade successfully, what you really need to be focussed on is avoiding losing rather than winning. This is because the nature of trading means that you are looking to make less money, more often. The narrower profit margins mean that anything resembling a big loss can kill your profits for a month. On a personal level, this means that you have to think a certain way. You must be selective and have patience and discipline when you have a trade in play.

This is of course somewhat boring which is why most football betting traders that you see are more mature in age. These are people who are not seeking the thrill of a big win, but the feeling that comes with knowing that you have made a profit for the day, no matter how big or small that is. What matters is getting to the end of the year and seeing steady bank growth and an overall profit.

It is important to talk about this before talking about practical advice for trading, not least of which is because without the mindset, you can easily overextend yourself. Making a trading plan is a good idea regardless of your experience. This means finding games that you believe have strong opportunities and working out which are best to trade. Consider things we have discussed like liquidity in the market, will teams play to score or will both play for a draw?

From here, you can consider the kinds of trades that you might want to look at and start to learn how to manage trading throughout a game. When you are getting started, you might prefer to have the game playing out live in front of you. Irrespective of what markets you are trading and the set up that you have, it is important to keep in mind the fundamentals of trading football on Betfair.

Trading Using Software

You will probably find it far easier to trade using either the Betfair platform itself, or by using software such as Bet Angel, and you can see a quick, albeit simplistic kind of system below from Peter Webb, who is trading the under 2.5 goals market:

What Kind of Football Trading Systems Are There?

In terms of the numbers of football trading systems for Betfair, there are more than I care to count. Fundamentally however, all trading can be viewed in two lights. These are pre game trades, and in play. Both of these are pretty self explanatory however it is important to understand the differences as they can massively influence how you trade.

Pre game trading strategies will often involve the least risk. This is because you are looking to leverage small market movements often in order to identify profitable trading opportunities. This is often compared to the more traditional market trading methods of scalping. Pre game trading strategies of this nature generally involve being able to buy positions as soon as news breaks in order to get the best odds. You can then trade these out as prices move to lock in profit before a game even kicks off.

In game trading is a much more dynamic affair that can produce much higher profits than pre game trading. This can be somewhat more exciting as there are a greater variety of bets to trade. It is however important to remember to be disciplined here and not let your trades drift into bet territory.

General Trading

This type of trading is arguably the purists trading in so much as it most resembles the traditional financial trading that ultimately evolved into bet trading. This kind of trading involves taking advantage of market positions and movements to generate a profit. It is arguably the most time consuming and riskiest method of trading as you are relying on things going one way or another in order to get results.

This kind of trading doesn’t necessarily require you to have a substantial knowledge of football however if you wish to mitigate your risk then it will definitely help. A good example of in game trading may look something like this:

Before a game, you notice that a teams star striker is on the bench, despite being up against an evenly matched team. You place a bet on Over 0.5 goals at odds of 1.8. The game plays out as expected and ends up feeling very much like a stalemate at 0-0. Both teams are reasonably matched with no obvious advantage. Team A suddenly bring on their star striker.

At this point, the value in the various goals markets starts to drop significantly which means that your original position can be traded out for a profit, even though there hasn’t been a goal scored. You trade your bet and lock in a profit, despite the game ultimately ending in a draw.

As you can see from this, we are using knowledge of the sport in order to identify where there are opportunities to make profits.  With the correct approach, you can carry out this kind of trade multiple times in a game on a wide variety of markets which means that it is massively flexible. As I have mentioned however, you do need to have a reasonable understanding of football in order to really profit from this. Furthermore, you should ideally be watching the match so you can see where opportunities are becoming available.

Whilst this method of football trading sounds simple, and in principle it is, it can actually be very difficult to remain profitable in the long term. This is because trades can often turn on a dime and the amounts of income that you generate are quite small. You can of course implement stop losses and trade out before you lose too much money, but it is difficult to ignore that this is a risky method of trading.

Trading counter goals is really quite a good example of in game trading which involves looking at a very specific set of circumstances on which to trade. Consider the following example:

The same Team A and Team B used in the example above are playing. Both are evenly matched although Team A happen to be a point ahead in the league. Team A manage to score a goal in the 60^th minute. The markets inevitably go crazy and the odds ultimately settle at 1.3 for Team A to win. At this point, you could lay Team A knowing that Team B are going to push hard to score a goal back and get at least a draw. Team B start to play a much more offensive game with a stream of corners coming their way. The odds for Team A winning drift to 1.8 at which point you cash out your lay bet for a profit. The game ends 1-0 to Team A

This is a method that is again somewhat dependent on having some understanding of football. You have to have a reasonable amount of knowledge to say whether or not a team really has a chance of scoring a goal in return. This approach to training when paired with a sensible stop loss can allow you to make a decent profit in game with minimal risk.

You will notice that in both of the examples that I have listed above, the winning trades ultimately end up being losing bets. This is what being a savvy trader is about. You are looking for trades that will win, not bets that will win and that is a distinction that most people struggle with, especially at first. Once you have got past this however, I feel that trading becomes a much more natural process.

Specific Trading Strategies

There are a lot of trading strategies out there that individuals use to make money every day. Some of these are clear winners and others are much more questionable. The truth is that what might work for one person might not work for another and vice versa. Trading is a very personal thing and it is really up to you to find where you are comfortable in terms of managing risk and your profit and loss sheet.

That doesn’t mean however that you should instantly dismiss football trading strategies for Betfair out of hand. Becoming a successful trader is something that you never really stop working towards and there are some genuinely very good guides and strategies online. Dismissing them on the grounds of “knowing what you’re doing” can definitely impact how much money you can make through trading.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Trading Football on Betfair Versus Traditional Betting?

I have already touched upon the answer to this at numerous points in this article but there are some very clear pros and cons to trading over betting. Naturally there are some nuanced and grey areas, however in the main, there are quite definite differences.

One of the main differences between betting and trading lies in the approach to profit. As I have already talked about at length, trading is all about finding small profits and consistently taking advantage of them in order to increase your bank in the long term. When you are betting, you have to take profit where it comes as ultimately, you have no control over anything. Personally, I consider this to be a positive for football trading over betting.

Obviously, this does eat away at the excitement a little which some people will find to be a big disadvantage however I am not one of them.

The next difference is in how time consuming each discipline is. Betting is usually “set and forget”. Put simply this means that once you have placed your bets you have nothing to do but simply wait to see what happens. Trading undoubtedly means spending more time at your computer. Especially when you are getting started. Even when you are experienced you will need to spend some time at your computer.

The time consuming nature of trading can be mitigated somewhat through the use of a trading bot, however this will not apply to every method of football trading.

Finally, the big difference as far as I am concerned is that football trading is a skill. Many traders that I have spoken with talk about how they could land somewhere new and start to make a living immediately. With a small amount of initial capital, I can entirely believe it. Betting on the other hand always involves some degree of luck.

Realistically, I think that betting and trading both operate at different ends of the same spectrum. Which of the two you find preferential will ultimately depend on your approach to making money. For my money, I definitely prefer the approach that traders have to making money through football. Betting seems fraught with risk by comparison, and whilst landing a big win is definitely a thrill, I find that it is not enough to override being 50 points in the red whilst you wait for a win.

Conclusion on Football Trading, Betting and Gambling

Trading on Betfair is one of the safer ways of making money online that I can think of, so long as know what you are doing. Those who jump in with reckless abandon are almost guaranteed to lose money. This is unfortunate, but trading on Betfair simply isn’t for everybody. As I have already touched upon, you have to be dedicated, disciplined and hard working if you want to be successful in trading.

Trading football on Betfair is one of you best options as well in my opinion. I know of plenty of people who prefer horse racing, and some of them make good money through it. To each their own. For me, football is just more accessible. When you are looking at horse racing you might have to consider 3 or 4 different horses per race. With football, there are only 3 possible outcomes per game. Furthermore, there are many more markets that you can aim to take advantage of.

Not always that easy trying to make a profit…

It is not always as easy as it may seem, when trying to profit on football, and the following Youtube video will show you how one such trader is pretty much all over the place when trying to make a small profit:

As you can see, the guy was fumbling around all over the place. But, many do make a profit, so it is always best not to focus on those who cannot do something, or who go around the houses just for the sake of showing a YouTube video

There are other reasons that I prefer trading football on Betfair however. One of the main ones is that I find football easier to follow.

The first thing to keep in mind is that there is a firm media bias towards sports and sports personalities when reporting. This means that if a teams star striker is injured and unavailable to play, you will likely read about it in all of the papers. Compare this to a horse getting a slight knock which affects its gait which might get reported in the Racing Post.

Second of all, there is the fact that football gives you plenty of breathing room when you are trading. 90 minutes is a long time and there are plenty of strategies that you can apply in that time scale. This is significantly longer than the few minutes that a horse race will last and as such, you get more time to respond to in game events. This makes it particularly well suited to those who are just starting out with trading.

All things considered, I believe that bet trading is a skill. It is not a flash in the pan thing and if you take the correct approach, you can literally build your betting bank from next to nothing. This is no small feat. The truth about trading on Betfair whether it is football or any other sport,  is that it takes hard work to get things going.

This is something of a point of contention when it comes to making money online with a lot of products underrepresenting how much you have to do turn a profit.

If you are looking for a consistent way to make money online then I believe that football trading on Betfair is one of the best approaches that you can take. It is not the easiest, however I also believe that it is something that pretty much anybody can do.

Even if you don’t know a lot about football, it is not a difficult sport to come to understand. Again, I particularly apply this when put next to horse racing, however I feel that it can be applied to a variety of other sports.

As I stated earlier, there are many nprofessional traders who do make a living trading the football markets on betfair, and if you are an avid reader of this website, then you will know that we have recently completed a review of the Daisho Trading System, offered by Tony Langley, and this is one guy who does know how to trade football.

I should be clear though, football trading on Betfair isn’t going to make you a millionaire (as if, right!). I cannot stress enough that trading is all about making small and frequent wins. The beauty of trading as a method, when combined with this approach, is that you are in control. This is massively different to a lot of ways of making money online which require you to operate at a loss and rely on third party sources to make you money.

Trading is all about your abilities, and understanding the task at hand!

Whether you are currently involved in football trading on Betfair or not, I think that this is a method that at the very least is worth a look. Especially if you are serious about making money online. There are very few immediate negatives outside of having to put time and effort.

If these things are problems for you, I have to hold my hands up and say that it isn’t just Betfair trading that you will have problems with, it is any method of making money online. You have to apply a lot of effort when making a profit with anything.

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Advantage Play Secrets has been launched recently. The name Mike Cruickshank might not mean a lot to most people reading this. In fact, I would not be surprised to find out that it doesn’t mean anything to a lot of people. What they may well have heard of however is the culmination of his hard work and the name that remains from his first product, Bonus Bagging. I am referring of course to matched betting.

If you haven’t heard of matched betting and have an interest in gambling, welcome to the show. You’re rather late. I think that it is fair to say that matched betting is arguably one of the most important developments from a punters point of view in the last decade. The almost zero risk betting approach made a lot of people a lot of money and Mike Cruickshank has continued in this vein for some time.

It has been a while since Mike Cruickshank has released an entirely new product however, so it is with a fair amount of excitement that I sit down to look at Advantage Play Secrets. This applies doubly so as I had heard some rather positive things on the grapevine about it. Truth be told, I think that whilst matched betting was an incredible thing, the bookies are getting savvier, more people are offering their take on it, more people are getting involved and the waters are slowly starting to muddy.

Let’s Start The Review.

Product Name: Advantage Play Secrets

What you get: See content below (too much to put here!)

The price: £1 14 Day Trial

Money Back Guarantee: 30 Day Money Back Guarantee

Author: Mike Cruickshank

Where to Buy: Click The Link: Try-Advantage-Play-Secrets

With all of this in mind, I want to start to take a look at Advantage Play Secrets and whether or not it can deliver the same quality that I have come to expect from Mike Cruickshank.

What is Advantage Play Secrets?

Advantage Play Secrets is an entirely new product which brings together several different low risk betting strategies, each developed by Mike Cruickshank. Now I have to be upfront from the start. Using Advantage Play Secrets is not like matched betting products which you may be familiar with.

What Mike has actually done here is packaged up 4 of his very lastest income generating products, and offered them as a membership.

For example, the main products in the Advantage Play Secrets product, he was offering to entice customers on another product recently, and I know for a fact that customers and new members came flocking, with the feedback on these new products being extremely positive.

Therefore I suspect that this is the very reason that Mike has now decided to offer them as a package, and I cannot blame him for that.

This is what Mike Cruickshank himself claims the product contains:

With the Advantage Play Secrets Course & Software Package,
it’s almost like STEALING money from the bookies!

In fact, they’d consider you to be a QUADRUPLE THREAT…
Imagine This Is All Yours:

• 4 Brand new strategies you can execute back-to-back to progressively increase your earnings, and build your betting bank!
• Time-saving tools that take ALL the guesswork out of betting (because all of the research and calculating has already been done FOR you!)
• Intelligent software that quickly and easily finds you the BEST bets. (No more researching bets for hours!)
• A world-class Online Betting coach – watch over my shoulder as I use these strategies to place low-risk, profitable bets in REAL TIME that you can mimic.

Whilst Mike Cruickshank does a very good job of explaining everything with Advantage Play Secrets, this is not the “paint by numbers” approach that you might be used to with other products. By this I mean that there is a bit of work involved. Fortunately, there are a number of tools included with Advantage Play Secrets to help you.

As an overall package, Advantage Play Secrets is made up of 4 different systems, each of which I will look at in detail in their own section. What I can say now is that all 4 are actually very capable of working and ultimately making you a profit. Ultimately, you can expect very comprehensive training showing you live examples of how to bet using a given method.

These are recorded by Mike Cruickshank and he talks you through the process, step by step, of what each betting strategy involves.

The whole thing has clearly been designed to be user friendly and I feel like Mike Cruickshank is to be commended for this. In fact, I was able to navigate round the members area with absolutely no problems and everything did what I expected it to do.

The content that is contained within Advantage Play Secrets is concise and too the point whilst Mike Cruickshank is very informative and helpful in his videos.

With this in mind, I will now look at each of the different systems that comprise Advantage Play Secrets.

The Golden Parachute Method

This is recommended as the starting point of Advantage Play Secrets and I can definitely see why. Mike Cruickshank refers to it as one of his favourite beginner methods and it isn’t hard to see why.

First of all, the nature of the method behind The Golden Parachute Method is incredibly straight forward. You don’t really have to have any understanding of betting to get started and in a rare but welcome move for a product aimed at those starting out betting, you don’t need to invest a lot of cash to get started.

As always I am loathe to go into detail about how The Golden Parachute Method works. This is a product if Mike Cruickshank and to publish the details simply isn’t fair. Betting isn’t too difficult which is mostly down to a rather comprehensive piece of software which calculates your bets and stakes for you.

I don’t think that I am giving away anything in saying that The Golden Parachute is based around dutching and taking advantage of pricing movement from bookmakers.

In Mike’s Own Words:

At this point I feel the need to point out that I have been somewhat critical of most products which claim to use this as a basis for a service. With The Golden Parachute Method however, you are not simply looking at odds and pricing movement based on a criteria of your own design. This is often the case with tipsters and frankly, it is the problem that I have with their methods.

There is no verifiable way of monitoring their reason for predicting price swings outside of “I think this horse will be faster on the day”.

The method that The Golden Parachute Method employs is however steeped in a very logical, almost machine like process.

This means that it will work the same way every time and that is something that I always expect when looking at a betting product. Combine this with a piece of software which helps you to place your bets and calculate where your profits lie and there is little denying that this first element of Advantage Play Secrets is a winner.

The Golden Parachute Method is a decent low risk system however it is important to keep in mind that it is “only” low risk. Truthfully, I can see how if you lack discipline and start betting erratically there may be an increased risk. Generally, though, there are a large enough number of decent bets available each day that you shouldn’t find yourself in this position.

Everything about this introductory aspect of Advantage Play Secrets has been geared towards those who are starting off and this doesn’t just show, but it is appreciated. It is clear that there are some decent returns to be made (Mike Cruickshank logged a profit of 27% on just one bet) and you really don’t need a lot to get things started. Even the software that you use in order to calculate everything is deceptively simple.

Putting all of my cards on the table, I would go as far as to say with the exception of a very small handful of other betting methods, The Golden Parachute Method is one of the strongest beginners betting strategies I have ever looked at.

There are a number of reasons for this, and they are points I have raised before, but they bear repeating. Advantage Play Secrets is low risk, simple and doesn’t require a substantial betting bank to get started. These are ideal conditions for those at the beginning of their betting journey.

The Dutching Bounty Method

As the name of this particular aspect of Advantage Play Secrets implies, this method is a dutching strategy. Like The Golden Parachute Method, the focus here is very much on minimising risk whilst also maximising profit.

Where the previous method is based more on volume of bets, the Dutching Bounty Method can generate much higher profits on a “per race” basis, however there is a notable dropping off in the number of races that you will be able to identify.

Once again, I won’t go into too much detail about The Dutching Bounty Method as I don’t believe that it is fair to Mike Cruickshank to have his system available in the public domain. Essentially you are looking for certain dutching opportunities to appear on a very specific betting market. The first thing that you have to do however is find a race.

There is a very clear indicator as to which races do and don’t fit the criteria for The Dutching Bounty Method which goes a long way to keeping things simple.

In Mike’s Words:

As with almost all aspects of Advantage Play Secrets, there is a full calculator which is included for use with The Dutching Bounty Method. When you have found a race, the next thing that you need to do is to identify what the best possible stakes are.

This may sound like an odd statement to make (surely more is better right?), however there is a very strong balance between the risk and reward. Fortunately, The Dutching Bounty Method calculator comes with a “simulator” which shows the potential profits and losses from your bets. By consulting this, you can place the correct bet. There are also options to further boost your profits and further minimise that risk.

Truth be told, there isn’t a lot more that I can say about this aspect of Advantage Play Secrets without giving it away. What I can say is that whilst you won’t necessarily be finding races every day with this, there is a lot of potential for big profits.

This isn’t however an entirely risk free betting strategy, something that Mike Cruickshank is open about and actually provides examples of where it can go wrong (a very sure indicator of how consistently The Dutching Bounty Method actually works in my eyes).

All of that having been said, the losses that you face might be at most £10-12 compared to realistic profits of £50 plus per bet. From a purely mathematical point of view, this represents a very good opportunity. Especially given the fact that the losses themselves are actually unlikely to occur as they rely on very specific outcomes.

Acca Booster

Acca Booster is one element of Advantage Play Secrets that doesn’t come without risk. In fact, I think that it is fair to say that you will lose a lot using this method, however, there is something at work here that means that it isn’t a system that should be dismissed out of hand. In fact, I think that it is reasonable to say that it is one of the more interesting betting strategies that I have looked at recently.

As the name suggests, Acca Booster is all about betting on accumulator bets. More importantly, it involves finding examples that have been “boosted” by bookmakers that also have value. By using a strategy which I won’t divulge for obvious reasons, Acca Boosters is very good at identifying value accumulators, something which Mike Cruickshank has provided a number of videos that show you want to do.

Acca Booster is a bit of a dark horse, especially when compared with the other products that make up Advantage Play Secrets. It is also one that I am least sold on. Because of how Acca Booster works, Mike Cruickshank says that the law of big numbers means that you will eventually profit if you follow the rules of finding value accumulators (so much so that Mike Cruickshank recommends that you record results over at least 250 times.

In Mike’s Own Words:

This means that you have to have a lot of discipline and the patience to manage your betting bank over the long term. It also means keeping staking don to a minimum. In fact, Mike Cruickshank says that you should only stake between 0.25 and 0.5 on any one Acca Booster bet.

This highlights to me just how strong the possibility can be for things to go wrong, particularly in the shorter term.

As with the other systems that make up Advantage Play Secrets, there is a piece of software which will help you to identify when Acca Booster bets are available. This is incredibly easy to use which is by far and away one of the strongest points for me.

Betfair Matched Bettors Exploit

I find it rather fortunate that Mike Cruickshank is so open about what his Betfair Matched

Bettors Exploit involves as I would have a very difficult job trying to convince you it can work otherwise. I also have to credit Mike Cruickshank for turning one aspect of his betting industry into yet another way that you can find value and as a result, decent profits.

Essentially, Betfair Matched Bettors Exploit does exactly what it says on the tin. It exploits Betfair matched bettors. Because matched bettors are only interested in using betting exchanges to hedge their bets, this can be in turn leveraged to find value in backing these same bets. This is not a straight forward method however and I would even be inclined to say that it is the riskiest method of betting included in Advantage Play Secrets.

In Mike’s Own Words:

Truthfully, this particular method definitely isn’t going to suit everybody and it is a far cry from what I was expecting coming into Advantage Play Secrets. This doesn’t however mean that it is a bad strategy.

Truth be told, it is a fantastic way of identifying value bets quickly and easily. If you are comfortable being in the red for extended periods of time and are content to keep a long term approach to betting, then Betfair Matched Bettors Exploit will likely turn you a profit. You may well just have to wait for it.

Advantage Play Secrets Members Area Log In

Here is an image of the actual logged in page to Advantage Play Secrets:

As you can see it is quite a simplified log in area, but that is what Mike Cruickshank does – he makes it simple. There is no point is over-complicating such things, because what is really important is learning how to make a profit.

Advantage Play Secrets Software

Where required, there is software assicated with each of the 4 areas (as described in this review), and Mike is the ‘Don’ of software products, so rest assured that the software you need to be able to work out your trades is all valid, present and correct.

Here is an example of the software on the Acca Booster:

So What Do I Think of Advantage Play Secrets as a Package?

I am actually rather surprised by the content of Advantage Play Secrets as an overall package. If I am completely honest, Mike Cruickshank has thrown in a number of approaches that I wasn’t expecting given his track record. This doesn’t mean that it is bad however; it is just different. I will try to get into detail to explain what this means below, but for now, I will say I am a little bit on the fence about Advantage Play Secrets.

The reasoning for this is perhaps down to my own prejudice more than anything else. There are certain things that you expect from the Mike Cruickshank brand and frankly, only half of Advantage Play Secrets delivers on this.

Where I think it is important to be up front about this is precisely because of the kind of thing that people associate with Mike Cruickshank.

The truth is that on a long enough time scale, I believe that all aspects of Advantage Play Secrets will prove profitable. The Acca Boosters and the Betfair Matched Bettors Exploit use some pretty sound principles for identifying value.

The thing about value based betting is that when it is done properly (as Mike Cruickshank has), it will eventually turn good. The Golden Parachute Method and The Dutching Bounty Method are both much more in line with what I was expecting. These produce decent yields with low risk.

Really, I would say that Advantage Play Secrets is the start of moving into more intermediate betting strategies. Mike Cruickshank has a clear approach to his products with each generally leading into one or another in a roundabout fashion. In Advantage Play Secrets I feel like the last vestiges of low risk betting have likely been plundered and this means that inevitably, things have to change. This change is what makes for intermediate betting.

I cannot stress enough how difficult it can be to manage a betting bank and keep a long term approach to betting. This is in part because I think most people simply don’t have the financial freedom to make their money make money for them. Of course, Mike’s earlier products can definitely help you with that and if you are new to his work, go pick up those before you look at Advantage Play Secrets.

The truth is that it takes a certain resilience to watch yourself losing money week on week and a lot of people don’t have that. In fact, this is one area where I would have really liked to have seen more from Mike Cruickshank.

He has been in this game for years and I know that he has written about the topic before now. Something that reassures you about a long term and value based approach is sorely needed given the Acca Booster and Betfair Matched Betting Exploit strategies.

It might sound like I’ve been giving Advantage Play Secrets a bit of a hard time so far and to some degree this is true. As a reviewer, it is my job to point out the good and bad of a service. The fact is that despite these negatives, there is a lot to Advantage Play Secrets that is more than worthwhile. I just think that you have to be aware of exactly what you are getting when you sign up to the service.

If you can keep what I have already said in mind and are able to take the correct approach to Advantage Play Secrets I actually think this is a decent product. It is definitely not what I was expecting from Mike Cruickshank but I don’t think that this move is a bad thing. The fact is that there is only so much you can do around matched betting and low risk betting before you have to look elsewhere.

There are a number of directions that you can go, but I think that finding quantifiable value and using that as a basis isn’t terrible.

Does Advantage Play Secrets Represent Value for Money?

This is a bit of tricky question as it very much depends on who you are and where you are in your betting career. If you are starting out or are still using some of the more basic matched betting techniques that Mike Cruickshank has developed, then you are going to struggle with Advantage Play Secrets.

As such, it isn’t really worth paying anything out; never mind the cost of Advantage Play Secrets. If however you are looking for the next logical step from matched betting, then Advantage Play Secrets is a solid option.

Obviously all of this leads me on to the price. There is only one option which is available if you want to sign up for Advantage Play Secrets which is a single payment of £99 (plus VAT).

This buys you full access to the training, videos and the related software for a full 12 months At the time of writing, you can also get full access to Advantage Play Secrets for 14 days for just £1 in order to trial the service. Payment for both of these options is handled via Cickbank. These are famous for offering a no quibble 60 day money back,

As far as I am concerned, you are getting 4 very solid betting systems for £100 (after the £1 trial).

This is definitely a fair price and more than in line with what you would pay for much lesser offerings. Yes it is quite a substantial initial outlay, however given that you only pay once I think it is justified. With that in mind, if you are able to handle the risks that come with Advantage Play Secrets, I think it represents excellent value for money.

Conclusion on Advantage Secrets Play

There are two ways of viewing Advantage Play Secrets. The first is in the same light as Mike Cruickshank’s previous offerings. In this regard, I think that it possibly pushes people’s expectations of what is on offer a little too much.

Truthfully, most matched bettors and low risk bettors (which I feel it is safe to say make up most of Mike Cruickshank’s audience) are very unlikely to be happy with the risks that come from  Acca Boosters and The Betfair Matched Bettors Exploit.

It is important to discuss these risks as I feel they are perhaps more prominent that any aspect of Advantage Play Secrets really makes out. Looking at Acca Boosters, the fact that you need a minimum sample size of 250 bets is a hell of an ask. Even if you are only staking small amounts, this can still cause a fair amount of trouble for your betting bank.

The second way of looking at Advantage Play Secrets is as a new chapter in Mike Cruickshank’s journey as a “betting guru” and this is the way that I want to look at it. I am quite certain that if you are reading this article, you have probably seen and heard some crap.

I however practically eat, breathe and sleep it. As such, I know when there is something genuine and when somebody is trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Mike Cruickshank is definitely genuine. One look at the methods he employs for extracting value in bets tells me this.

This makes Advantage Play Secrets a winner in my book, albeit not necessarily a typical example. There is a hell of a lot on offer and whilst there is risk in the systems, Mike Cruickshank has done a good job of minimising it as much as you can expect. The fact is that really, the only real risk that I could perceive is the costs but with the trial and the money back period this is negated.

Would I rush out to buy Advantage Play Secrets? If I were serious about building a long term betting system portfolio then absolutely. If however you are looking for  something shorter term or that will turn around a quicker profit, I would look at Mike’s more “traditional” products, as we have reviewed many times on this website.

Advantage Play Secrets Update 13th November 17

Now that Advantage Play Secrets has been launched a few weeks, more and more people are emailing in to report their profits, as well as documenting their profits on Mike’s Facebook page.

As you can see from the screenshots below, some excellent profits are now being made:

As you can see, these are excellent profits being made. The above profits were made with just one aspect of the whole series of products, these profits were made using the Golden Parachute method that is included.

Recommended

Click Here To Claim Your Advantage Play Secrets £1 Trial

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Most people have heard about Bitcoin, but BitConnect is probably a new name for you. Many cry scam when something comes out that they do not understand, and I am always on the lookout for new ways of generating a passive income online. Why passive income? Passive income is the dream. Simply logging into a site and withdrawing your profits is the dream of many an online entrepreneur.

With this dream however comes a large number of questionable and less than ethical services which also claim to offer just that. One such site which was very recently brought to my attention is BitConnect. Initially, I set out to carry out a standard review but once I began to dig a little deeper, it became clear that BitConnect warranted more than this,

As you can probably tell from the name, BitConnect is a part of the increasingly popular crypto currency craze. For those who aren’t aware of this term, a crypto currency is a form of currency which exists solely online. These have become massively popular in recent years as their value has grown exponentially with Bitcoin currently being the best known and most valuable.

Interestingly, this growth is only linked to the intrinsic value which is placed upon it by those who are buying the currencies.

The scope of different services that have sprung up in the wake of this increasing popularity is massive. As such, I have watched companies spring up that promise to show you how to trade bitcoins, how to mine bitcoins, how you can invest in bitcoins for the future, collectives and so on and so forth. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the business that surrounds bitcoins is now probably worth more than the value of the coins themselves.

Truth be told, the industry that has been built around Bitcoin as a brand is rife for scamming and there are a number of reasons for this which I will explore over the course of this article. Of course, that isn’t to say that BitConnect is a scam product.

In fact, at the time of writing this I know that a number of people are making money from the service. The smart ones amongst them are willing to accept that this revenue stream may collapse in the immediate future.

Now that I have painted a picture of how I have come to find BitConnect, I want to get down to the nitty gritty. This may turn out to be rather substantial, but truth be told I am yet to find a website that has really got in depth on the subject of BitConnect.

A Brief History of BitConnect and Why It Has to be Brief

In early February 2016, the domain Bitconnect.co was registered. This was carried out entirely anonymously and the website registrant continues to remain anonymous. That is about all that your brief history of BitConnect can include, largely down to the fact that this is all the information that I am able to dig up.

I would at this point love to say that having explored around I am not the only one who has struggled to tie down information on BitConnect.

If there were any one place where I wanted to start highlighting the vulnerabilities that BitConnect has in terms of its legitimacy, this is as good a place as any. There is some speculation surrounding who may be behind BitConnect including listings on company house, but these aren’t explicitly tied to BitConnect either.

The only thing that is of note in the very brief history of BitConnect lies in the relatively recent past which is an expansion of the service from UK and American audiences to also include a large quantity of Asian versions of BitConnect. This includes Vietnam, Indonesia and South Korea.

This is what the website claims:

What is bitconnect?

A self regulated Financial system

BitConnect is an open source all in one bitcoin and crypto community platform designed to provide multiple investment opportunities with cryptocurrency education where it is entirely possible to find the independence we all desire, in a community of like-minded, freedom loving individuals who, like you, are seeking the possibility of income stability in a very unstable world.

What is BitConnect All About?

With the worrying lack of history covered, I feel that it is important to look at what exactly you are getting yourself into with BitConnect. There is rather a lot of ground to cover here and many of the services which are offered by BitConnect deserve a detailed look under their own header. With that in mind, I don’t want to go into too much detail, but instead provide an overall summary of what is available.

Now I must say at this stage, that trying to view the BitConnect website immediately started to flag on my MalwareBytes software as a problem:

So the above was a red flag immediately, as I have found MalwareBytes over the years to be highly reliable is weeding out websites that have flaws. But let’s continue with this review…

The BitConnect website perhaps best tells the story of what you are getting with BitConnect referring to it as a self regulated financial system. Whilst I can’t help but feel that this is supposed to reassure, I find it to be massively concerning for more reasons than I care to list. I will however get to these over the course of this article.

Truthfully, the website for BitConnect isn’t very clear about things here and I cannot find anywhere near all the information that should be available so stick with me here. BitConnect say that they have a number of different coin supply channels. This includes mining coins (which is the same process as any crypto currency mining operation). It also appears that when you purchase BitConnect, they release coins for you to use.

This isn’t explicitly stated, but is rather implied at various points.

Let’s allow the website to say what it is all about, as this is what it states on the BitConnect website:

BitConnect is also bitcoin and cryptocurrency news site that allows you to keep up to date with new businesses that accepts bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, and bitcoin regulations news. We also report on latest crypto currency news, prices, talks and new start up related to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

There is also a coin demand channel which includes the lending platform and once again, the staking comes into play here. Presumably (but again, never explicitly stated), it appears that as demand increases, more BitConnect coins are simply pumped into the “ecosystem”. There is also the concept of lending which I have gone into greater detail about below.

What is interesting is that I don’t see how lending increases demand of BitConnect coins as it appears to me that you are pumping more into the market

Finally, there is the BitConnect coin distribution channel. This is simply a self contained exchange in which you can buy and sell BitConnect coins.

In terms of how you make money through BitConnect, there are 5 core ways each of which will get a detailed review. For now however, I simply wish to provide a rough approximation of what you can expect as a BitConnect user. Once again, I wish to highlight that there is very little clear information on this side of things which remains a key concern.

The first method of monetising BitConnect is to literally just purchase some coins. When you make a deposit into BitConnect, the service will supposedly make consistent returns through the price of coins simply going up. This is the crux of the passive income that I have discussed before now and is most likely what the majority of bettors will be aiming to achieve with BitConnect.

Secondly, we have the lending arm of BitConnect. This isn’t really lending in any traditional sense of the word. Instead when you “lend” to BitConnect, you are really opening some of your accounts up to a trading bot. This supposedly trades on the volatility of the BitConnect market and is used to boost the profits that you make through method one.

The third method that BitConnect uses is straight up trading. This involves purchasing your own BitConnect coins and trading them on an exchange. This is arguably the most traditional way of using the BitConnect platform to generate a profit.

There is also the option to mine BitConnect coins. This can be done simply by using your CPU/GPU which means that theoretically, it can be used on any home computer.

Finally, there is a multilevel marketing aspect to BitConnect as well. This is something which isn’t really discussed in the sales material however I know from research that this is in place.

Obviously, all of these different methods are interchangeable, and you can use as many of them as you want. If you believe what BitConnect say, if you want to maximise your profits then you should look to combine as many of these different methods as possible.

I would like to have a bit of a final word on BitConnect here before I try to decipher what passes for information on the service. Truth be told there is very little about BitConnect that is concrete.

The English of whoever is behind the service is atrocious with a large number of mistakes that range from typos to grammatical phrasing that seems to change what is supposedly on offer. Truth be told, I think that this is in part an attempt to clearly obfuscate information and make it difficult to understand exactly what you are getting. That way, it is harder for BitConnect to be held accountable.

Investing in BitConnect

As I have mentioned, the core premise behind BitConnect is simple. You leave them with your money and in return, you get dividends paid out on a regular basis. BitConnect say that “the moment you acquire BitConnect coin it becomes an interest bearing asset”.  This sounds fantastic and as I have mentioned is in many ways the ideal platform for those who are looking for a passive form of income.

There is however a lot going on behind the scenes of BitConnect that make me question how legitimate this all really is. The sales material says that all that you have to do is pay into your BitConnect wallet and this is enough. This is all well and good, except that you essentially buy BitConnect with Bitcoin.

This means that the developers of BitConnect are selling you their own product in exchange for a much more tangible asset. This would be akin to buying Disney Dollars as a financial investment.

It isn’t difficult to see how an economy which is controlled by the sole creators of the currency is a risky investment. Especially when you consider the terms of depositing your Bitcoin in exchange for BitConnect coins. To quote the BitConnect website:

“You will receive daily profit based on your investment option. Upon investment term completion you will receive your CAPITAL BACK to take out from the BitConnect lending platform or optionally reinvest back in lending platform to continue receiving daily profit”.

Reading through this there are a few things that stand out here. The most important is that you can only get your investment capital back after an allotted amount of time. This means that any money that you invest in BitConnect is tied up with them for a length of time dictated by them. I have said it before now, but I cannot stress enough.

Any investment which doesn’t allow you an option to withdraw your investment capital or sell on your assets, especially when it is for something as intangible as BitConnect, is not an investment worth making.

BitConnect on YouTube

I had to put a section here about the affiliate marketers who are promoting BitConnect on youtube. And as with any product, even if it does not work as advertised, you will get affiliate marketers saying it does. Here is a section (an image) of just some of the claims on YouTube:

Some quite crazy claims as you can see, so let’s see a video which shows an entirely different angle on this:

Lending

Lending is a very strange concept in BitConnect. The sales material says the following:

“You can invest BitConnect coin in Bitconnect lending platform exclusively from the BitConnect Dashboard. This investment option involves profiting from Bitconnect trading bot and volatility software. You will receive daily profit based on your investment option.

Upon investment term completion, you will receive your CAPITAL BACK to take out from the Bitconnect lending platform or optionally reinvest back in lending platform to continue receiving daily profit.”

This is essentially what simply owning some BitConnect coins does as well, the difference apparently being that you are choosing to incest your current BitConnect coins in order to boost your return on investment. Really though, as you can see above there is that seeming attempt to obfuscate information again.

This did however lead me to the BitConnect volatility software. Using this supposedly provides a safe way to earn a high rate of return on your investment. There is supposedly a guaranteed interest rate in place, however this is also calculated by the BitConnect price volatility software?

What this actually appears to mean is that your investment is subject to a rate of interest which is determined by tracking the volatility of Bitcoin vs USD and the volatility of the USD against “major world currencies”. In 365 days, this has supposedly never been a negative number.

From what little I can gather I stand by the assumption that this is an extension of the core staking service. It simply happens that you choose how much of your assets you choose to leverage in order to increase your returns.

Trading

The trading aspect of BitConnect is welcomingly straightforward. You are able to buy and sell BitConnect coins as you please in line with the self contained BitConnect exchange. From what I have seen and can fathom, this is one of the more convenient ways of transferring your BitConnect coins directly into Bitcoins. It is important to keep in mind however that there has to be somebody looking to buy your BitConnect coins first.

Mining for Bitcoin Currency

For those who don’t now, mining a cryptocurrency works by getting your computer to make large numbers of calculations that unlock small amounts of said currency. To successfully mine Bitcoin now there are companies that employ massive server farms which have been constructed solely to focus on this task. These work 24/7 in order to successfully mine coins. This is important to create some context as mining with BitConnect simply requires a home computer.

Not surprisingly I you want to mine these coins you have join a pool of other miners. This is common place however what is less common is the fact that one of the required mining pools that you have to connect to is operated by BitConnect. This type of approach is seen everywhere with BitConnect seemingly wanting to manage all aspects of the economic value of their coins.

Multi Level Marketing

On top of all these different ways of making money through BitConnect, there is of course a multi level marketing aspect. This is sold as you having an affiliate status but truthfully, you are recruiting new people to bring new money into BitConnect. Interestingly, in order to be an affiliate, you have to be actively lending with BitConnect.

This is supposedly because you “earn bitcoins from lenders you refer through your affiliate link”. In other words, you have to have people signed up and paying into the lending pool in order to get paid anything.

There doesn’t appear to be any direct downlines with BitConnect however I have seen people who use it talking about being several levels deep with affiliates. This suggests to me that this is definitely a thing.

This All Sounds a Bit Suspicious Surely?

I don’t think that I have looked at something as divisive as BitConnect for a long time and I have to be honest and say that there is good reason for this. Put bluntly, that reason is that people are definitely making money through this service. I have even looked at well respected review sites who are happy to recommend the service on the grounds that it is paying out, and if something is making you money it isn’t necessarily the best thing to question it.

That is a valid point however on the flip side of that coin is that this is exactly how a Ponzi scheme works. There is a focus on getting people on the bottom level to keep paying out. With their money, you pay the people who are further up the pyramid (hence the other name, pyramid scheme) who continue to glow about something because they continue to make money. Of course this isn’t to say that BitConnect is a pyramid scheme, however I do think that it would be naïve of me to overlook the similarities.

So, What Are the Pros and Cons of Bitconnect?

More than anything else there is currently one big positive to BitConnect and that is that it is paying out. Making money with something like this is the bottom line and I have known of people who have been aware they are involved in pyramid schemes but have been content as they have continued to make money.

I also have to say that if there is another positive to BitConnect it is that the returns are not just consistent, but are seemingly rather high. One reputable website that I know of have made an ROI of just under 10% making $121 off an investment of just over $1,500.

Elsewhere I have seen numbers which are much larger than this as well as claims of winning sports cars etc. for being top promoters. It is interesting to note however that these extreme cases are only really touted by the same people who are trying to get you to sign up (and earn them a commission).

As I have been writing this I think that I have covered the cons of BitConnect rather well. In fact, I would be inclined to say that I have been overly cynical with this service although I find that this is often the best way. Let us address the two biggest concerns that I have with BitConnect however. The first one is that neither I, nor anybody else online, can appear to find who is behind the service.

I can find limited companies registered in the UK however the broken English in the sales material makes it seem more likely that this is a foreign run operation. This is unfortunately all speculative however and this helps to highlight how much of a problem this actually is.

This brings me onto the next big problem with BitConnect which is the lack of tangible assets. I know that a Bitcoin is a none tangible asset, as is an BitConnect coin. On paper, there should be no difference between the two in so much as both exist online and only have a value that is ascribed to it by those who are using it as an investment platform.

There is one key difference however and it is a biggie. With Bitcoin I can go online and find hundreds of reputable exchanges. I can see millions of people all of who express an interest in the currency.

Whilst I don’t think the bubble will last forever, Bitcoins remain an asset of interest for a very wide collective. With BitConnect coins however, the only people that are interested in them are those who are currently within the fold. Despite this, I have traded an asset that has “real world” value for these coins.

This has a twofold effect on the potential future value of your BitConnect coins. First of all, if interest from the community dies out, then there is no wider interest and your assets could be rendered valueless. More concerningly is that the unknown figures behind BitConnect could choose to pull the plug on the whole operation and disappear into the sunset. This means that again, your assets have no value.

Conclusion on BitConnect

There are a lot of reasons that I wouldn’t invest in BitConnect. More than I care to count if I am completely honest, however I will none the less look to cover them here. To start with, the whole concept of BitConnect is fatally flawed if you are an investor. The bottom line of what you are doing is trading an asset for a product which only has value within the context of BitConnect. This means that if BitConnect turns out to be as questionable as it appears, you may well be left with a currency which is entirely valueless.

The other thing for me is that your assets are tied up in BitConnect essentially until they say that you can cash them out. Were you to invest a single bitcoin into BitConnect, that remains in the wallet of the unknown creators until a certain time has elapsed. Yes, you have had returns on that investment and when the time comes to pull it out, you might have had generous returns, however it doesn’t alter the fact that if your circumstances change, you are stuck.

I will try not to tread old ground too much here, but the lack of genuine information surrounding BitConnect is very concerning. As I have touched upon, everything that I have seen that is positive comes from those who are embroiled in the service. Whilst this can look good at first glance, I am yet to see any long term evidence that I would say is truly conclusive that BitConnect is genuine.

This is in direct contrast to being able to see the whole set up from the outside and identify that it is on inherently shaky grounds. Whenever I look at something like BitConnect I like to look at the product that you are buying. Putting aside the interest and returns for a minute, what you are buying with BitConnect is nothing, and it is an expensive nothing at that. You are then going to pay for this nothing to nobody using a method of payment that whilst not untraceable, is difficult to follow.

My personal recommendation for BitConnect is to avoid it like the plague. For a minute, let us remove the crypto currency factor and play BitConnect’s pitch out as an “on the street” encounter.

A complete stranger approaches you and asks you for £100 cash, for which they will give you £125 in Monopoly money. They tell you that there are plenty of other people in the area who want to buy that Monopoly money for real money. Once you have it, you can go and find one of those people and trade them your £125 Monopoly money and make yourself a tidy profit. Life is good.

But if you ask yourself honestly, would you have let it get that far? Or would you have stopped this at the point where somebody asked for your real money in exchange for Monopoly money. I don’t see BitConnect as being any different.

I will be balanced here however and say that this is a big operation and I think that if BitConnect is going to collapse under its own weight, this will be some time off. With that in mind, if you want to get in on the ground level and start making some money whilst it is still there to be had, then you should probably try and get involved with BitConnect sooner rather than later.

Furthermore, there is enough evidence to say that at the moment it is paying out something. Again, I wouldn’t like to speculate too much on the long term future, but people are definitely making money, and it is easy money at that.

Final Thoughts on BitConnect

BitConnect isn’t for me. I have looked at enough products along similar lines to this that are no longer about. Despite this, I can’t help but think that BitConnect is just an incredibly high risk investment. You may well take a decent amount of money out of it and that potential is there for now. Perhaps to best way that I can close this rather lengthy look at BitConnect is by comparing it to the Schrodinger’s Cat though experiment.

Just as the cat is both alive and dead until we open the box and check, BitConnect retains a sense of being both legitimate and a potential dishonest scheme by paying out and also hiding a lot of information.

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Are you a lottery user? Been scammed by a fake lottery? I try to keep politics and current events out of the things that I write about and that will continue to be my mantra. I am here to inform, not to tell you how to think.

Recently however, there have been a few events that have come together at the right time to make me think that maybe there is an article on the subject of lotteries and more importantly to you as a user, lottery scams.

I’ve sat down at my desk today following a beautiful day spent lounging about the garden and catching up with a few chores I needed to do (the bags in my shed weren’t going to take themselves to the tip). I have caught up with the news and one of the bigger stories is that the Euro Millions jackpot is likely to exceed £100,000,000.

It has been said many times, that playing the lottery is a tax on the stupid

We’ll dissect that though, and see if it is really of a benefit to the average person, or if it really is just a ‘tax on the stupid’. By the way, I have played the lottery a few times, epsecially in the early years when we all though we had a chance

Now I could turn this article into a fantasy about what I would spend that kind of money on (I’ll start by definitively stating that I wouldn’t be taking my own bags to the tip!), but that isn’t what I want to talk about. I was recently linked to a product and I was asked by an associate what I thought of it. I ended up looking at the product which was being marketed as Free Money Plus and LottoSpring. It was crap.

My detailed review on LottoSpring was here.

With the jackpot getting as high as it is through official marketing channels however, I thought back to LottoSpring. More specifically, I thought about the number of people who are drawn into questionable arrangements on the back of very real opportunities. Now I should preface all of this article really by saying that I don’t generally play any sort of lottery.

I’ll talk about the why’s behind that a little later, but I will have an occasional punt when the numbers get crazy big (I’ll be out to have a fiver on tonight for example).

What I will do to have a go on the lottery is to head to a licensed lottery seller here in the UK, and purchase tickets from them (actually, I’ll probably buy them online, but the point is that my entrance ticket is coming from the organisational body).

That way, if my numbers come in, I know that I can claim my £100 million and never be heard from again. What I wouldn’t do is head online to the multitude of stores offering discounted and cut rate lottery tickets.

What Is So Bad About Cut Rate Lottery Tickets?

I, like many reading this, can remember when Lotto first started, or as it was called back then, The National Lottery. It was a pound a ticket and being a millionaire really meant something. Times however have changed. It is now £2 per ticket, or £2.50 for the EuroMillions and yet, there are resellers online claiming to sell tickets for much cheaper.

Some are sold through clever affiliate and multi level marketing schemes, however I have increasingly seen these sites appearing on services such as Groupon. Like anybody who is browsing Groupon, I like to save a few quid here and there, but I have also been stung before now (restaurant vouchers that could only be used on a weekday Afternoon and on a fixed menu or a clear Chinese knock off immediately spring to mind). However you hear about them you should exercise caution.

The big problem with a lot of these companies that claim to provide subscribers with cheap cut rate lottery tickets is that you are very rarely buying tickets. Going back to my point in the introduction, I said that I would only ever purchase a ticket through an authorised dealer or through the lottery website. Truthfully, almost all of the bargain lottery service that you see use something called Lotto Betting.

What Is Lotto Betting?

Fundamentally, lotto betting is exactly what it says. Rather than entering a lottery, you are betting on the final outcome. This doesn’t seem like much of a distinction to make however it is an absolutely massive one. When you enter a lottery, your agreement is with the lottery company and your payment, should you win, is essentially already paid for by everybody else who has bought a ticket.

When you buy a ticket through Lotto Betting, you are buying a ticket directly from the company in question. If you win through them, then you receive the same jackpot as the lottery is offering. In and of itself, this sounds relatively straight forward with the companies simply piggy backing on the better known lotteries. By this I mean that they will use the numbers from actual lotto draws.

The problem with piggy backing like this for you as a consumer is that there is often a lot of overlap. Especially in terms of what it is implied you are getting and what you aren’t. Take for example a TV advert by Lottoland, one of the larger companies that operate this kind of service (and also one of the more trustworthy in my opinion). You have Chris Tarrant talking about how you can bet on the outcome of lotteries. Something that is only mentioned once and never explained, despite it being massively important.

Immediately after saying this, there are images showing giant lottery balls for various lotteries from across the world including the US Powerball, the Australian Lottery and EuroMillions. All of this makes it look like you are partaking in those lotteries. Once again, I have to stress that you aren’t in fact entering lotteries.

So how does lottery betting pay out if they match the same jackpots that have been accumulating over weeks and even months? The short answer s through very well measured insurance policies. If a lotto betting company ever actually has a big winner (which has monumentally smaller odds, arguably more so than a lottery, something that I will go into a little later), then it will ultimately be an insurance policy that pays out the jackpot rather than the company themselves.

So Is Lotto Betting a Scam?

Lotto betting is no more or less of a scam than lotteries are in and of themselves. For example, using the EuroMillions as an example, the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 139,838,160. To put this into context, there is supposedly a 1 in 10,000,000 chance that you will be hit by a falling plane part. What is interesting is that these odds are also supposedly the same as being fatally struck by lightning.

Some people call the lottery a scam but the truth is that it is an entirely random event and as such, it is probably one of the fairest methods of gambling that you can employ. Unfortunately, something being fair doesn’t necessarily equate to something that is winnable. In fact, the number of large scale rollovers only shows how few people really win.

In actuality, between 1994 when it launched, and 2014 which was its 20^th anniversary, the British National Lottery claims to have made more than 4,400 millionaires. Keeping in mind that this is across things like scratch cards etc. and you can see that the actual number of jackpot winners really isn’t that high.

Moving back onto lotto betting specifically, if you are using a reputable company then I can’t see any reason why you would expect the service to be a scam. I can find no examples of bigger companies not paying out and I have little reason to believe that they would. Unfortunately, these aren’t what you have to look out for.

Unfortunately, as with any market where there is a legitimate operation, there will be shadier examples copying the same model, without the regard for a customer. Using the EuroMillions as an example again, the odds of winning are around 1 in 140 million. You as a lotto betting operator are privy to 25% of the number of people who actually play the lottery (I am working with entirely hypothetical numbers here to demonstrate a point), however your ability to charge less per ticket means that the 25% of users buy twice as many tickets.

This puts you at half of the users, which means that in real terms, you are half as likely to have to pay out. Less tickets means less combinations covered, less combinations covered means less chance of there being a match.

An unscrupulous person could very easily set up a lotto betting company on those odds of not having to pay out and enjoy a decent income every month from it. Again, I have to highlight the fact that this isn’t the case for a lot of companies, however I have looked at some smaller ones researching this article and I would not be surprised to find that it happens.

Syndicates and Lotto Betting

One of the main selling points that I see from lotto betting websites is that they are somehow a better thing as you can sign up to a larger syndicate. There is some truth to this as bringing together large numbers of people together into a syndicate from around the world clearly means more tickets and more chances to win.

There is also the managed aspect of syndicates which supposedly enhances the syndicate experience for users. Lotto betting companies will tell you that you can buy as many tickets as you want on recurring payments and that pay outs are automatically spread out amongst those in a syndicate. Truth be told, the only aspect of this that real lotteries don’t offer is paying out to all syndicate members.

Also, if you do join a lottery syndicate then make sure that you have a signed agreement between all the players, as there have been many reported instances of major fallouts between syndicates who thought that ‘good will’ would last after they have come into the spondoolies, money changes people you see

Here is how a lottery syndicate works:

So What Should You Look out For?

It is easy to say that a healthy dose of common sense will help you to no end in this kind of thing but truth be told, it is easy to be led astray online. Many of the more questionable lotto betting operations that I have looked at have been operated through social media. Think about Facebook groups, promotions taking you to very basic websites etc.

Another thing to look for is to ensure that the company in question is registered with a gambling commission. Certain conditions have to be met in order for a company to get a license and key to this is they have to demonstrate the ability to pay out in the event of a win. This means that if you do happen to have won on a draw, the company has to have the funding and ultimately, they have to pay out to you.

If there is one piece of advice that I would offer to anybody who is looking into lotto betting, it is to look out for any product or service that requests more of you than buying tickets. I say this with things like LottoSpring in mind which had a large multi level marketing aspect. In fact the lotto betting aspect of the service appeared to take a back seat to the multi level marketing. This meant paying an expensive monthly subscription and dedicating a lot of your time to recruitment rather than the core product.

Are There Other Lottery Scams?

There are more types of scams built around lotteries than I know what to do with, however there are a few ones that are worth exploring.

If at any point you receive a notification that you have been deemed a winner in a lottery, draw or competition that you don’t remember entering, somebody is trying to scam you. This kind of scam is very crude and involves you getting to pay a fee in order to release your prize, usually under the guise of an administration fee.

Of course, where big money is concerned people also start to get greedy. Just watch this lottery scam which I thought was quite amusing during my research for this article:

So What Are My Final Thoughts on Lotto Betting?

Personally, I don’t see why lotto betting exists as a concept. I understand that for a small minority of people, mostly large scale syndicates, it may work out easier or better. Truth be told though, the National Lottery website now allows you to run everything online which means that creating a syndicate is just as quick and easy through official channels.

Despite my opinions and thoughts, lotto betting companies continue to grow and for legitimate operations, I don’t think this is of any consequence. The problems come with the numbers of fraudulent services that use very similar marketing methods.

If I hold up my hands however, they may not be as common as they appear to me. After all, I spend a very fair amount of my time immersed in the world of making money online and as such, see more than the average person.

Once again, I do feel that I must reiterate if you are going to use a lotto betting site rather than an official lottery, make sure that this is all that they do. Anything that talks about other ways of making money or even talks about buying tickets for you is highly suspect and I would recommend avoiding them, for obvious reasons.

Are Lotteries a Viable Method of Gambling?

The odds of winning anything on a lottery is inherently very low. Using the Lotto (which has arguably the “best” odds of winning), even the odds of winning a free entry into another draw stand at 1 in 10. That means that for every £20 that you were to invest, mathematically, you would receive a free £2 go on next weeks lottery. The lowest cash prize is £25 however just 1 in 97 tickets wins this. This would mean investment of £194 and a loss of £169.

All of that having been said, there is the potential for a truly life altering amount of money and if you are lucky enough, it may well be you. I have always been of the mentality that when it comes to the lottery, you have to be in it to win it. Statistically, you will never win and over 30 years, playing £4.50 per week (a Lotto and a EuroMillions), you would have spent over £7,000.  That having been said, the actual amount spent is negligible.

So in answer to the question of the viability of lotteries, they are statistically a very bad bet. That having been said, your actual real world outlay is quite small, around the cost of a large coffee at most high street chains. It is a very personal decision to make and one that I don’t generally partake in, however I can also very easily see why people would.

Can You Improve Your Odds of Winning The Lottery?

I have looked at a few products before now that have explored this very question. The short answer is no, and whilst it is rather dry, I will explain why. None the less, you should be wary of anything that claims to be able to increase your chances of winning the lottery. Some of the methods that I have seen before now have ranged from looking for the most common numbers (presuming some kind of bias), avoiding sequences and not choosing numbers that have been drawn in the last month.

The thing about a random number generator is that it is entirely random, and that is what the machines that choose the balls are. If there were an algorithm or edge to be had, I feel like somebody would have spotted this by now. Honestly, a lot of products that claim to improve your odds are reliant on a gambler’s fallacy rather than any genuine pattern that has been discovered.

To answer the question of why the odds can’t be changed on a lottery draw, consider the following.

Let us presume that there are 49 balls and 6 numbers must be matched in order to “win”. Each ball has a 1 in 49 chance of being selected. The inherently random nature of lottery machines means that they should be fair and so this is a reasonable statement to make. The second ball has a 1 in 48 chance of being chosen, the third 1 in 47 and so on and so forth.

What this demonstrates is that each time a ball is selected, the probability resets on each subsequent turn. In the grand scheme of things, this means that 1,2,3,4,5,6 has as much chance as winning as 3,9,14,23, 31, 45 (1 in 13,983,816). But if someone were to tell you one of those numbers were the winning lottery numbers for next week, which sounds more likely?

Let’s see what somebody in the know thinks about the odds of winning the Lottery:

So there you have it. Your chances of winning the National lottery are:

1 in 45,000,000 (1 in 45 million)

Despite knowing that mathematically, both outcomes have the same chance, we favour those that look “right”. Any product that claims to help you to win on the lottery will only give you patterns that appear to have some truth to them.

The Lottery Compared to Other Methods of Gambling

The big difference between the lottery and other methods of gambling in my opinion are the numbers. Put simply, they are astronomical. A rank outsider in horse racing may have odds of 500/1 and unless there is something that you know that other people don’t, these odds will not often be taken up. Even when Leicester City won the Premier League their odds were 5000/1. The lottery is miles away from even this.

There is one simple reason that people prefer other methods of gambling too and that is because it is much easier to predict outcomes. The fact that lotteries are entirely random is one of the biggest factors in deciding whether or not they are a good investment. On the one hand, you genuinely have the same chance as anybody else of winning. On the other, you can gain an edge when looking at other gambling methods.

The traditional gambling approach, that is sports betting or horse racing is all about a more balanced approach. It is about winning some weeks and losing others and, it has to be said, investing significantly more capital than your average lottery player would. For example, the £7,000 figure I mentioned earlier in this article, some professional bettors will easily clear in a matter of months. Their wins will also not be as high as the lottery jackpot, but the important bit to focus on there is that there will be wins.

Conclusion on Using Lotteries

I’m actually settling down to write my conclusion on Saturday morning, post breakfast. The fact that I am doing so tells you that my few tickets were not lucky. I am fortunately just a fiver down though and as I have already said, I won’t miss it.

Lotteries are a difficult thing to judge from the position of somebody who wants to make money as they are a terrible idea on paper. But as has often been said, you have to be in it to win it.

This brings me onto the concept of luck. I don’t want to wax philosophical about luck and whether it is or isn’t a real thing. Honestly, I’m not really sure what I think (although we’ve all felt lucky some days more than others). If you subscribe to the concept of luck then seeing a lottery as a method of making money is something worthwhile. If you are a pure numbers man (which I tend to be), you won’t. Even if I do still throw caution to the wind and have the odd bet.

I think that the best way that I can possibly describe the in order to justify it being a part of any business strategy would be to see it as an incredibly high yielding and high risk investment that requires minimal capital. Put that way, it certainly sounds better however the reality doesn’t change.

Of course, joining a syndicate is one way of increasing your chances of winning however the odds remain astronomically against you. Even if your syndicate has 100 tickets, each with different numbers, your odds are still well outside the boundaries of what you will find in other methods of gambling. Furthermore, when in a syndicate the prizes are also watered down as well.

With all of this in mind, I maintain my stance that the lottery is not a viable method of gambling at all. I can however see the appeal.  I know that I have said this multiple times throughout this article, but for my money, the lottery is only worth entering if you don’t mind losing the money, and in fact, many people don’t.

Moving away from the concept of lotteries and onto lotto betting, this is a very curious niche. As I have said before now, I don’t really see the point in it when there are actual lotteries that you can enter, and yet there is a clear interest in the products and the concept. I can also see this sector growing as people become disillusioned with paying out as much as actual lotteries are charging.

The biggest concern for me in this regard is that consumers are going to end up worse off in the long run. Not because the business model is in any way illegitimate, but because there is so much room for illegitimate business to be founded on the model. I have already seen questionable multi level marketing operations (one of which has been examined in detail in the shape of LottoSpring.

There is also massive scope for out and out scamming people as the lotto betting model grows into the public conscience, something that at this point seems inevitable. It is clear from the odds that wins aren’t going to happen often and with this high profit business model, I can see people exploiting it for quick and easy cash.

All things considered, I don’t see anything inherently wrong with playing the lottery. I might doubt the rationale behind it but there is clear appeal. If there is one thing that I want people to take away from this article however, it isn’t so much whether or not you can make money through lotteries or not (although I am all for a debate on the subject).

My concern is that I can see this being an area in which there will be increased questionable activity. With this in mind, I feel like it is my duty to notify and inform with a view to helping people protect themselves in the long term.

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Back in April of last year, something came into effect which drastically changed the landscape of betting and the bookmaker forever. Something that probably flew under the radar of most of us reading this. The UK Government opted to introduce a limit on the maximum stakes for fixed odds betting terminals (or FOBTs). Frankly, it was monumental.

For those of you that don’t know what an FOBT is, it is effectively a glorified casino in a box. Punters could come into a bookies, stick their cash in and play digital versions of roulette, blackjack, slot machines, and a host of other games. The odds on these were fixed (as the name suggests) to pay out about 70p on the pound. And with maximum stakes for a given game of £100, it was incredibly easy to burn through money.

You see, in my opinion FOBTs are (or at least, were) the devil. They were designed to be addictive. There was no skill involved. You could go into a bookies and blow a months wages in your lunch hour (something that actually happened to a mate of mine once). But the stakes were limited to a maximum of £2 per game. And all of a sudden, those people who had been propping up the high street bookmaker lost interest. Which isn’t a bad thing frankly

William Hill started to tell landlords that that if they didn’t cut rents, then up to 900 shops would have to close. They also went on to post a £63.5m loss as a result of this. Ultimately, it was reported that the company may have lost as much as £1 billion. And across the high street, bookmakers saw revenues down by 12%. I know, boohoo, poor bookies.

But that was a long time ago. And things have settled down a bit, except, maybe they haven’t. You see, a week ago, I saw an article in The Financial Times that caught my eye, with the Gambling Commission looking to instigate limits on how much consumers were allowed to bet online. Almost £1.2 billion was wiped off the market value of the gambling sector overnight.

Here’s the thing. This kind of approach is something that will always sit well with the General Public. Even as somebody who is involved with the betting industry, I can appreciate that it is problematic. Addiction is rife, there is a very clear marketing campaign across multiple bookmakers trying to bring in the kind of casual “mug” punters that they love. People just don’t like that. They see betting as something that is inherently wrong.

BETTING IS BAD?

Honestly, there are definitely problems within the world of gambling. And bookmakers should be held accountable whenever they can be. God knows, they deserve that. But this isn’t about me getting on my soap box quite yet. What I will say though that it has been a historic problem. In 2016, Paddy Power were lambasted for allowing a customer who was working five separate jobs to fund a gambling habit to continue.

It was found that a “senior employee” notified a shop manager that “steps should be taken to try to increase Customer A’s visits and time spent in the gambling premises”. Something that the Gambling Commission described as “at odds with the licensing objective of preventing vulnerable people from being exploited by gambling”.

Let’s not kid ourselves. There are people who have problems with betting. And I really do think that bookmakers should be held accountable and do more to help these people. There are vulnerable members of society out there who are being roped into betting that they can’t afford. That is just fact.

But gambling and betting in and of themselves are not inherently bad things. There are plenty of ways of betting, whether through a bookie, a gentleman’s agreement down the pub, or even trading on the stock exchange. All of those are a form of betting, each with massively differing outcomes.

Your mate lands a quid in an empty pint glass, he takes a fiver off you. Banks over invest in something, there is an economic bubble created, it bursts, banks start to go under. Before you know it, you have the worst economic depression since the so called “Great” one in the 30’s. Both are, at their core, gambles. But one costs you another pint, one costs years of economic uncertainty.

But the act of gambling isn’t the problem. The problems that stem from betting come about when people overstretch themselves, make silly and uninformed decisions, and generally show a willingness to “back stupid”. This is a term that I will probably use a lot, and it really isn’t supposed to be derogatory at all.

However, the fact of the matter is that people will always fancy and outsider, there will always be somebody backing Leicester to win the Premier League. Those kinds of bets may well land occasionally, but that doesn’t mean that they are smart bets. They are bets whereby people are “backing stupid”.

ONLINE CASINOS, WHY THE CALL FOR RESTRICTIONS?

This brings me back to the current situation with online casinos. Trying to actively win money through an online casino is backing stupid. What you are dealing with is fundamentally an algorithm that is designed to create a pseudo random number. You can’t predict this; you can’t influence the outcome, the odds reset themselves after every spin. And the same applies to blackjack, slot machines, virtual sports betting, craps. I could keep going.

The fact of the mater is that online casinos carry a lot of overlap with FOBTs in my opinion. They both are very fast paced. For example, a virtual roulette spin can take anywhere from a third to a quarter of the time that an actual roulette wheel takes to spin. They both encourage impulsive betting as well. There is always a “repeat bet” button. Before you know it, you’re simply hitting it without thinking.

And of course, the reason that so many people are against online casinos is because it is an inherently solitary activity. I’ve spent many a good night down the casino with mates. Walking in with a hundred quid and leaving with a profit is an amazing feeling. But we’ve also talked, drank a bit, and importantly, we’ve enjoyed a night out. And when I’ve lost money, I’ve still paid for that experience.

I have also spent time with online casinos. It involves me, sat alone at a table or lay in bed. Covering the same sets of numbers, betting a few quid at a time. I can genuinely say that within a matter of minutes, I’d burned through the twenty-something pound I had in an old betting account. That was betting at £2 stakes and just hitting that repeat bet button (I was young and naïve, I thought I had a system. I didn’t). The scariest part was, I didn’t even realise that the time had passed.

How easily is that multiplied? It could have been £10 stakes, in which case that’d have been over £100 in a few minutes. Or I could have been betting for half an hour without realising, which would have been… Well, I almost daren’t calculate it, but you could easily be looking at £150 in half an hour. It really is that easy to fall into the trap.

So, I can absolutely see why the general public and the government may call for restrictions on online casinos. In my experience that I just shared, I was already betting to the new maximum stakes and could have very easily lost a lot of money. And that is all scalable, and the marketing for online casinos is towards people who like to “bet stupid”. It’s a melting pot of disaster, waiting to happen.

IS THIS THE END OF ONLINE BETTING?

So, is this the end of online betting? It is quite apparent that in the pursuit of public opinion, any Government will quite happily clamp down on betting. That really doesn’t have to be a bad thing as I believe the max stake on FOBTs proved. But it does undoubtedly impact a lot of people that use online betting as a way of making a second income. But personally, I think that there’s a lot of life left in the old ‘gal yet.

Online betting is a long way from dead. If anything, I am inclined to believe that it is very much the future. I don’t doubt that there is a strong need for change in the structure of betting online. But as a nation, we love a bet. In a survey, 45% of British adults had engaged in some kind of betting in the last four week.  The number drops to 27% if you exclude those who only play the lottery. But that is still a massive number.

And it’s not surprising really. Betting and British culture come with a lot of overlap. You could almost say that it is ingrained into our culture. And for context here, you only have to look at the Unlawful Games Act of 1541. This prohibited “new devised games” that were causing “the Decay of Archery”. That was almost 500 years ago that the Government of the time was interfering in betting activity.

Fast forward to when this Act was repealed in 1845, and you start to have a betting scene that honestly, wouldn’t look too out of place next to modern Britain. It was reported that better “educated gamblers” focused on racing with sporting magazines reaching a circulation of about 300,000 by the 1880s. For context, this was reaching around 1% of the population at the time.

Nowadays, the Racing Post’s website alone is close to breaking the top 10,000 websites in terms of global internet traffic and engagement over the past 90 days (at the time of writing). And it interesting to me that this is really just the digital equivalent of what you saw in the late 19^th Century. Educated gamblers focusing on racing (and to be more up to date, sports betting).

The thing is, if you follow the media, we are all on the verge of becoming addicted to gambling. And as I’ve stated, that is a very real problem that needs to be addressed. But the answer doesn’t lie in simply blanket banning online betting. Online casinos, I understand. Really, they aren’t fair to punters. I said before I wasn’t going to get on my soap box, but I will now.

The fact of the matter is that these kinds of operations exist almost exclusively for bookies to take money from people. They are aimed at people who are inclined towards gambling addiction, they aren’t fair, and they remain very much a part of that “game of chance” approach to betting. There is a strong case for restricting these elements.

But sports betting is a much fairer institute. There are varied odds, there is competition. Arguably more competition than there has ever been before when you consider the fact that betting exchanges are a thing (and a topic I will be exploring properly a little later on). As such, I don’t think that you will ever really see restrictions on this kind of betting. Because at the end of the day, picking a horse is a game of skill, not a game of chance.

When you pick a horse, so long as you don’t bet stupid, you aren’t just choosing a name you like or a jersey that’s a pretty design. You are looking at form, the course, the trainer. You should be using available information in order to make an informed decision about your bet. And that is why I don’t believe that there will ever be a blanket ban on online betting.

Some naysayers in the industry will start talking about this like it is the end times for betting. They will say that Governmental involvement will ruin the industry, bookies will close, and the market will generally become less competitive. Now if you’ll pardon my French here, that’s bollocks.

There will always be bookies making money. There are over 80 online bookies licensed to operate in the UK. That shows just how much money there is to be made. This has grown exponentially since the firsts online betting site, a company called Intertops went live (a company that somewhat ironically, did not actually have a license for UK gambling).

Those 80 bookies also mean that there is more competition than ever before. Something that only helps bolster the betting scene for punters.

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO BE A PUNTER…?

This seems like a great point to talk about how that competition between bookmakers has made it probably the best time to be involved in betting in history. At least, so long as you are a punter. Quite literally, as I am writing this, I have gone to a website called Oddschecker. For those who aren’t familiar with Oddschecker, it is a website that… Well, it checks odds.

The most popular bet currently being placed is for the 19.00 at Chelmsford City. It is backing a horse called Lord Halifax. By visiting just one website, I can see that odds are being offered ranging from 2.25 going as high as 2.38 through bookmakers. If I go to Betfair’s betting exchange, I can get odds of 2.6. And it has taken me seconds to check that information out.

Compare that to calling round different bookmakers to get quotes on odds way back in the day. Making notes on said odds, going back to a bookie only to find that the odds had shifted. Going from the bookie on one side of town to the bookie on the other side of town, only to find that they were both offering the same miserable odds. Ok, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but I think it highlights my point nicely.

Checking that took me seconds, I was warm and comfortable the whole time, and if I were to back that horse, I could potentially look at making as much as an extra £3.50 on a £10. Sure, that isn’t much, but at £100, you’re looking at an extra £35 profit. And that isn’t a bad amount for les work than I ever would have had to have put into getting the best odds.

But there is even more to it than simply being able to get the best odds possible. There are so many different ways of betting. One of the most obvious examples involves lay betting. One the off chance that you aren’t familiar with this term, it effectively means betting on something not to win. Let’s be honest. It’ much easier to guess what won’t win, than what will.

This type of bet came about exclusively through betting exchanges, more specifically, Betfair. Launched in 2000, their betting exchange allowed punters to lay bets and effectively act as a bookmaker themselves. This adds yet another element of competition to pricing and it is exactly the reason why I could have made that extra profit.

Betfair themselves ran a very successful advertising campaign that was all about the fact that you could get better odds on the exchange. They might have used the ridiculous tagline of “where gut instinct meets smarts”, but their claim about winning bigger on an exchange than a bookies is true.

It also resonates that as a punter, when you bet on an exchange, you are betting against somebody “like me” the average Joe in the advert states. Again, if you are an “educated gambler” that can give you a massive edge.

VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE!

All of this paints a pretty good picture of why you can be more successful as a punter now than you have ever been before. But I still don’t think it comes close to really showing the scale of what is on offer in online betting these days. The fact of the matter is that there are methods of betting that can guarantee you profits under the right circumstances.

Take for example, matched betting. This is an approach that involves using special offers from bookies and betting exchanges to ensure that you ultimately lock in a profit. It’s somewhat complicated, and I have provided a gross oversimplification of the process, but it is definitely something that is not just viable, but proven to be successful.

Dutching involves backing multiple outcomes on the same event with a view to ensuring that a profit can occur regardless of what happens. This generally requires calculators that use the available odds and tell you how much to stake to lock in a profit. Not every event has this opportunity, but they definitely exist.

One of the better known ways of guaranteeing that you make money is arbitrage betting. This typically involves exploiting a difference in odds between two bookmakers to ensure that you lock in a profit either way. This is something that could always be done, but as is the case with so much. It is even easier than it ever was before.

And all of that is before you even talk about what I consider to be one of the most promising and entirely new ways of betting which is trading. On a betting exchange, you can effectively buy and sell the bets that you place. This means that if you (for example) back a horse on a betting exchange to win at odds of 10.0, and those odds shorten. You can “sell” that bet back to somebody and cash out a guaranteed profit.

The reason that this is the most interesting development in betting for me lies in the fact that it is an evergreen method. Matched betting is great, but opportunities can start to dry up. Arbitrage and Dutching are not constants. But with a bit of know-how, you can always trade successfully.

And some people have used one  (or a combination of these methods) to become incredibly wealthy. And what’s really interesting is that these people are also now more than ever willing to share with others.

YOU’RE NOT ON YOUR OWN NOW

If you wanted an edge on your betting way back when, there were a few different approaches. You could take your time to learn how to read form, understand the Racing Post, apply all of that with whatever knowledge you had on a given course. Sometimes, you might happen to know somebody who could do all of this and you might get the odd tip down the pub.

Alternatively, you could read the racing pages and follow the advice of the tipsters in there, if you were hoping for an easier approach. There we also those now infamous premium phone lines that you could ring at a cost of £2 per minute where an answering machine would slowly reel off bets for you, inevitably costing you more money and netting those tipsters a decent profit in the process.

Nowadays though, there is just so much support out there if you are budding bettor. From free options through to premium subscriptions and even products that will teach you everything that you need to know. No matter where you are starting out, you aren’t on your own.

Probably the most obvious place to start is of course the myriad of online forums. If I type Betting Forum UK into Google, I get about 19,000,000 results. Take off the stipulation about the UK, and that number grows to an incredible 50,300,000 results. That’s potentially hundreds of millions of people, all talking about betting, and all wanting to help others.

One UK based betting forum that I looked at had 3,250 members participating in over 100,000 threads. On top of that, there are also similar numbers of betting blogs, all offering you advice on how to bet, what to bet on, and much more. Put bluntly, there is reams of free information out there to help you improve your betting online. That just wasn’t an option once upon a time.

If you’re really serious about betting and don’t mind investing a bit of money, this net is cast so much wider. In my time, I have looked at literally thousands of betting products. Not surprisingly, they aren’t all winners. There is a massive gulf in terms of quality (which is why you should always look to a reputable site for reviews), but some of what is good is very good.

The fact is that here are tipsters and betting products on the market that will suit everybody. No matter what your budget, you approach to betting, or even just whether you want to have a bit of a punt on the football , build a portfolio around niche sports, or learn how to create a successful career based around trading on betting exchanges, you can find something.

WHY ISN’T EVERYBODY DOING IT THEN?

When people find out about my involvement in the betting industry, I always get the same response. “Yeah but it’s all a scam isn’t it? Nobody actually makes any money through betting, right?” and I have to tell them the same thing, every time. Yes, yes people do. And some people make very good money off it. But that doesn’t mean that everybody does.

The second question that inevitably follows this up is “If it’s that easy, then why isn’t everybody doing it?”. And the answer to that is much more nuanced than the one for the first question.  But I think that the shortest answer is that it that just because people can do it, it really doesn’t mean that it is easy.

Honestly, it is something that you will rarely see said (at least, by those who are trying to sell you some crappy “get rich quick” tipster service or betting system), but actually making an income through betting can be hard work and demanding. Often in ways that you don’t really think about.

I mean, let’s examine a hypothetical situation that is also pretty typical of what most beginning bettors encounter. You’ve got around £1,000 which you want to use as your betting bank. You’ve found a tipster service that is doing well, and you decide to subscribe to them. So, you pay out £30 for the first month, betting to £10 stakes. Unfortunately, the tipster you subscribed to has unknowingly started a losing run.

A few weeks later, you’ve had a couple of small wins at middling odds, but ultimately, you’re £250 down. All that you see is the other things that you could have done with that money. That has a very substantial psychological impact, especially if you have a family to support and it can put pressure on relationships.

Or maybe you find a trading system that looks good. You try it out, but actually, you’re spending several hours just sat around waiting for an opportunity to appear. It is time consuming and frankly, a little bit dull. Sure, it isn’t hard work, but it can become mentally taxing.

As a result of this, you start to modify the parameters a little bit, because at least you’re not just sat staring at a screen. This makes it more interesting, but you start to lose. Because at that point, you aren’t betting with your head. You’re betting for entertainment (which there is nothing wrong with, but it isn’t the right approach if you want to make money).

Honestly, I want to talk about all of this in more detail at some point in the future. I think that there is a massive amount to talk about in terms of the psychological aspects of being a professional punter or even just a bettor who takes themselves seriously. But I do believe that I’ve done a good enough job of highlighting the fact that whilst betting can be profitable, it is naïve to come into it thinking that you are simply getting “easy money”.

CONCLUSIONS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

It seems inevitable to me that there will be stronger sanctions on online betting as we move into the future. As I said earlier, it’s quite an easy and popular move for any Government of the day. The fact of the matter is that whilst there is definitely some hypocrisy to it (because the numbers show just how many of us in the UK like a bet), Joe Average likes to see gambling as being a bad thing.

And this leads me to a distinction that I think it is incredibly important to make, and that is the different between betting and gambling. The Oxford Dictionary defines gambling as “the activity of playing games of chance for money”. They also define the word gamble as “to risk losing something in the hope of being successful”.

The key elements there is the term “games of chance” and also risking something “in the hope” of it being successful. Gambling to me is about chance and luck. Roulette is gambling. Craps is gambling. FOBTs and Online Casinos are gambling. With all of those, you as the bettor are dealing with fixed outcomes, and as such, it is very difficult to make any informed decisions.

Betting on the other hand is all about that informed decision, especially if you want to take it seriously. When you look at a given horse race, there may well be 6 outcomes. But those 6 outcomes are not equal. It isn’t like rolling a dice. And there is also information available on what the chances of those outcomes may be. Things like form, a horse’s weight, the going of the course, and so on and so forth.

Using this information, you can ascertain the likelihood of a horse winning. And as such, I don’t see that as being the same as gambling. It isn’t a game of chance. One might even look at this scenario and deduce that what you are actually engaged in is very much a game of skill with the bookie. And with the right knowledge, you can beat them in the long run. Even with their so called house edge.

All of this leaves me with one final point that I really want to talk about, and it all cycles back to the core theme of this article. And that is the online betting element. You see, I believe that over time, bookmakers will start to scale back the bricks and mortar. The fact is that the overheads on hundreds, if not thousands of buildings and people are substantially higher than a server farm and a bit of software.

Even looking at the here and now, I can’t help but feel that one of the main reasons that the storefronts still exist for the likes of William Hill, Ladbrokes, and Bet Fred is as a form of advertising. Keeping those high street names in the mind of the kind of casual punter that they love so much.

Elsewhere, you have online betting which allows you as a punter convenience, more betting markets, better and more competitive odds, and a host of extras such as bonuses. And let’s be honest. As time passes, we are all becoming more and more comfortable using technology. Even my 83 year old Nan has an iPad that she uses for a host of different things. The future is, as they say, very much now.

So, here are my final thoughts. Despite what many people may say, online betting is here to stay. In fact, it only keeps getting better. There are of course elements that will probably become more tightly regulated in the future, but those are unlikely to be thins that mater to the skillful bettor.

And honestly, there isn’t a better time to start learning that skill. Whether this is picking up the Racing Post yourself and learning to read form, bet on paper for a bit, or spending hours poring over betting forums. These kinds of steps can potentially be life changing ones in the long run.

Of course, all of that takes time. Which means that there also the myriad of products out there today. And whilst the vast majority of them aren’t great, there is definitely money to be made following the right advice.

I titled this article “Online Betting Is Dead, Long Live The King” when I was writing it, but honestly, that felt a little bit “clickbaity” to me. Online betting may well be the king when it comes to betting, but isn’t close to dead right now. It is thriving. And you can rest assured that it will only continue to get better, especially for you, the punter.

More competition means better everything in this market. Additional services and tools like Oddschecker and a myriad of calculators help you to gain that edge over the bookies. And all of that can be turned into cash in the long run. But so much of this future only works online. And so, I want to close by asking you this. With everything that is going on right now, why would you want to be trapped in the past, whilst the future is so bright?

Related Content and Resources:

How You Can Win More Money Through Your Betting? The Mind of a Gambler

How Brexit is Affecting Gambling and Trading in The UK

How To Make Money From Gambling, What is Really Possible?

The post The Future of Online Betting, What Will Happen? appeared first on Money Makers Reviewed.

We were recently asked by Ryan Carruthers, from the Betfair Trading Community to compile a review of their latest BTC Trading Academy Course, which is a brand new Betfair trading course that claims to offer a full overview of how to trade the exchange markets across an array of different sports.

As you know, we are very honest in our assessments when it comes to the claims of such courses, and this review will be the same. Courses on Betfair have seen a spike in recent years due to the popularity of trading the exchanges, and sports trading in general, so let’s break down exactly what is claimed, and what is offered on the BTC Trading Academy.

We have already reviewed a fair few Betfair trading courses; some not so good, and some exceptional, BFScalper for example, which I reviewed in great detail, and showing my profits, as well as Steve Howe that receives positive feedback, and what we would say regarding this subject, is that although there is a lot of content out there for those looking to gain entry into this arena, success rates are not that high, so the training and teaching has to be exceptional to even stand a chance.

There is also another side to Betfair trading and that is the software angle, which again, we reviewed many of the main ones, including: Betangel, Cymatic, BetTrader, Geekstoy, and more.

So the components of trading Betfair are fairly vast, and wide.

Let’s Start The BTC Trading Academy Review…

We are still fairly early on i this review, and when we were approached to compile the review, we are, as I type right in the middle on the corona-virus pandemic, therefore time permitting, this review will take as long as it takes, as obviously during this time, there are other considerations.

Product: BTC Trading Academy

What You Get: 120 Lessons/videos

Price: £147

Guarantee: 30 Day Money Back Guarantee

Support Offered: Yes

 Where to buy: TBA

What is The Betfair Trading Community?

Firstly, it’s probably wise to start this review with the core website behind the offer of the Betfair course…

The Betfair Trading Community is a portal set up by Ryan Carruthers where those interested in learning to trade the Betfair markets can discuss strategies, systems and ways to trade.

From what I have seen, the website discusses a variety of different subjects all related to taking advantage of the exchanges, but it looks like mainly a forum, with some input from the owners of the website, as well as some strategies being offered to those paying for the service.

The idea behind it, as with similar websites on many subjects, is that members will be paying for some sound strategies, along with the ability and option to discuss, and increase their knowledge with like-minded folk.

To be totally honest I had not heard of this website before being approached by Ryan to compile this review, and therefore I am learning all about it from a standing start, and this will help, because for those that have already read some of my reviews, they will know that I do already trade Betfair, and this will help with the subject at hand.

As it happens, I am already a profitable trader, and have been for a while, so if the teachings on the course are valuable, I will say so; if I think it is a product that has just been quickly put together, I will also say so, because the price (£147) is not the most expensive course out there, it is still a pretty sizable amount when taking into consideration other products in the market.

Costs of The Betfair Trading Community?

The costs for the Betfair Trading Community, and BTC Trading Academy are detailed below, bearing in mind that the Betfair course has only just been launched:

As you can see from the above image, the pricing ranges from:

• A 24 hour pass for £2.99
• Monthly access to the community for £29.99
• Annual pass to the community for £299
• The BTC Trading Academy for £147

I wouldn’t say that the cost for entry into the community is particularly ‘cheap’, apart from the 24 hour access, but I have seen more expensive also. Of course, this all depends on the value you gain once you have invested, and gained access. If you make more profit than the cost, or gain the knowledge required that you need, then the price becomes less of a factor, no matter what you are purchasing.

The BTC Trading Community or Academy?

The BTC Trading Community promotes that you will learn how to trade the Betfair markets, using training from the expertise of those who have set up this platform. Before joining (costs above) there is some free information on their website, together with a relatively large YouTube presence, which is also advertised directly from the website, to give you an idea of the type of training they can offer:

Of course, it goes without saying, as with many who promote on YouTube this way, that although this content is given for free, the sole intention is to join the paid versions of their website. This seems to be the standard way to advertise these days.

I have to say though, that unlike many websites trying to attract custom, the Betfair Trading Community website is lacking in content that explains exactly what you will be receiving. Yes, on the pricing option it shows some detail, but I think when asking for payments, some proof of success is required as far as what to expect after you have paid, etc.

Like I said earlier, I have never heard of this website before, so a little content on the credentials of those behind the paid services would be very helpful.

Ryan Carruthers states on the website that he found very profitable ways of scalping on the football markets, which takes just 15 minutes to implement, and I think this may have been the entry into the whole website, when putting it together, because once you know how to make a profit, even the smallest profit, then it is human nature to try and increase the options around this, and on the pricing options it claims to hold 10+ proven strategies to profit.

The BTC Trading Academy side of the offering is the main focus of this review, and as you all know by now if you have been following this website, we never, and will never follow blindly, so let’s see what the course itself has to offer…

What do you Get with BTC Trading Academy?

OK, so the reason you are probably reading this review is to see if the BTC Trading Academy is actually worth it, and to see if the course content will be beneficial is teaching you how to trade.

S0, let’s delve into the actual mechanics of what is being offered here, and then I will give my views…

Let’s Starts with The BTC Academy Sales Page.

The sales page is fairly sparse in content, especially considering the price being asked, and I hope Ryan will not mind me saying this, but I have a pet hate of people obviously reading from a script when they are compiling videos – instead of talking directly to the camera. It is just a bug-bear of mine, and lacks sincerity, almost ‘cheesy’, but that is just the way it comes across to me. No offence intended, but there is a product being sold at the end of the day.

I feel if somebody is passionate about what they are promoting then they should be able to compile a sales video un-scripted, that’s just a personal thing for me, and after reviewing a lot of products over the years, it does stand out, as well as a few spelling mistakes.

Ryan Carruthers states that he has compiled 52 lessons (although the payment side states 120 lessons…) of trading essentials that has taken over 15 years of experience to generate.

Ryan also states that the course teaches to the following:

1. BTC Trading Academy – Trading Essentials

BTC Trading Academy Membership Area

Obviously on this BTC Trading Academy review  you will no doubt want to know what the training set-up looks like, as well as what content you are going to receive once you have invested, so the next part of this review will detail what you receive as part of the package.

This is an ongoing review…

The post Betfair Trading Community, BTC Trading Academy Review Ryan Carruthers appeared first on Money Makers Reviewed.

I have been asked about Carl’s In-Play Trading Course for Betfair a few times over recent months by readers. Now, there are a lot of different ways of approaching making money through betting – Betfair being a very popular one.

This kind of thing always seems like a really obvious statement, but I can tell you for nothing that most of the people that I talk to day to day just don’t have a clue how to make money from Betfair. Why? Because it is not easy.

If you’ve never traded on Betfair before then there is a lot on information about it on this very blog; as many people still use the bookies as their first port of call. Some people make this work for them, but in my experience with betting (which is quite considerable if I may humbly say so) most people don’t. The smart money though tends to be exchanged on… well, the exchange.

That is to say, betting exchanges. There are a lot of reasons for this, but most of them one way or another come down to the fact that there is just so much more that can be done on a betting exchange compared to a bookmaker.

All About Carl’s In-Play Trading Course (Betfair)

And finally leading into Carl’s In-Play Trading, a big part of that is trading. Now, trading in and of itself is a hugely broad subject with many different philosophies on what works. And all of these different approaches have their own pros and cons. There is pre-play Betfair trading, which we have covered on a different review a couple of years ago.

There isn’t necessarily a right and wrong way to trade. But Carl’s In-Play Trading is very much focused on its own niche. And as the name suggests, Carl is mostly concerned with in play trading.

Specifically, this is a comprehensive video course that aims to teach you how you can leverage in play trading to produce consistent long term profits.

Using Carl’s own strategies and methods, Carl’s In-Play Trading claims to help you to become a better trader, and start making an income that is potentially quite substantial. Of course, as is the case with the world, it isn’t entirely a simple process.

What Does The In Play Trading Course Entail?

In play trading is, as the name suggests, trading out bets whilst “in play”. For those who might not understand what this means, it is quite literally trading bets as an event is occurring. And believe me, it is not an easy thing to do. There are lots of reasons for this, but I think that there is a very simple way to paint a picture as to why it is so difficult. That really boils down to the fact that a horse race simply doesn’t take that long to run.

Whilst there is of course variance depending on the length of a race and the course, and a host of other elements, you are still dealing with very narrow windows. Often a matter of minutes. Probably not surprisingly, a lot can happen in that space of time. And you have to be watching everything, following what is happening in the race, what the numbers are doing, where the money is going…

To say that it can be overwhelming is probably an understatement. Especially when you are starting out. Of course, with time, you can learn to do all of this without much thought. But you really do have to spend a lot of time to get to that point. It is important for me to be clear that this isn’t necessarily a criticism of in play trading. Everything in betting has its ups and down. But I think it is very important to establish factually what Carl’s In-Play Trading involves before looking at what Carl provides.

What Is Included With Carl’s In-Play Trading?

So, in play trading isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do. I don’t think that there are many experienced people in the betting sphere who would disagree with this statement. But that is exactly why services like Carl’s In-Play Trading exist. Everybody has to start somewhere, and full credit to Carl, this is one hell of a package that he has put together.

I have looked at a good number of betting systems in my time, and I can tell you now that there is a lot of crap out there. If I had a pound for every hastily put together 10 page document in which somebody simply outlines a basic principle of betting that anybody who takes it seriously would tell you for free… well, I wouldn’t be rich. But I could have a bloody good night out off the proceeds. Carl’s In-Play Trading isn’t this.

Firstly, I like the fact that this is a video based product. The truth about any trading is that it is a visual medium. Doubly so with in play trading because you are having to react to things in real time. If you can’t see what that looks like, you simply won’t learn it. But it isn’t just that Carl has made a basic correct choice with Carl’s In-Play Trading. It is the standard that he has adhered to.

There is over 6 hours of content included, and it is all exactly what I would want to see from a training course. Whilst Carl is Finnish, his presentation is pretty much spot on. He talks eloquently and generally speaking is able to explain clearly and concisely what his ideas and strategies are. Importantly though, I think that Carl’s In-Play Trading does a god job of showing you the things that are important and pertinent.

The In-Play Trading Course Menu:

As you might expect from somebody that is showing you how to trade in play, a lot of Carl’s In-Play Trading is screen captures of Carl actually trading. He explains how his strategies fit into what is happening on screen, why he is carrying out certain actions, and what they mean. Something worth noting is that this quite frequently has to be carried out in slow motion. A quite telling fact about just how difficult in play trading can be.

In terms of the content itself, there is a solid structure to Carl’s In-Play Trading, and I think that it all ties together very nicely. There are a good few strategies that Carl actually shares (which I always like to see), and each is broken down concisely. You start by exploring the theory of each strategy. Once this is explained and established, you then get to see multiple examples of this being implemented.

As well as the above, which I think you would expect as a bare minimum, Carl’s In-Play Trading also covers a number of other topics. There are basic things like an introduction to actually using the course, to full trading days (in which you literally watch Carl trade for the day in real time), and importantly some technical and psychological elements.

These latter parts are a very good inclusion for Carl’s In-Play Trading. Firstly, it is incredibly important to understand when you should and shouldn’t trade, and how your mindset influences that. Carl himself has bad days and on his Twitter actively talks about not trading because of things like losing a basketball game or simply because he doesn’t want to make “bad boredom trades”. Although it is noteworthy that he also talks about making these mistakes too.

The technical side of things mostly pertains to using a piece of software that Carl recommends for following Carl’s In-Play Trading. This is Geeks Toy and it is worth keeping in mind when you factor in the costs of getting started (something that I will be talking about a little later) that it costs £20 per quarter or £60 for the year. If you want to use other trading software, that is an option, but everything here is geared towards this particular software.

Is The In-Play Betfair Course Any Good?

I won’t mince my words on this. Yes, as a course, Carl’s In-Play Trading is pretty good. Like I say, the content is top notch, Carl’s descriptions are decent, and I do believe that when you walk away from it all you will know more about in play trading than you did when you started. That is what the training sets out to do and so in that regard, it is hard to view it as anything more than an unequivocal success.

With that said, there are some things that merit criticism. Whilst I don’t think there is anything that is outstandingly bad here, there is a certain lack of polish. Carl talks about not putting up videos with little value, and in most respects, he achieves this. But there are also sections in some of the trading where I think there could have possibly been a “take two” in talking about the footage and what he is doing.

But all of that is academic. When we talk about Carl’s In-Play Trading being good or not, the real thing that matters is whether or not the strategies work. There is a very long answer to this (that I will be coming to), but the short answer is that they work for Carl. With time and with practice, they can also work for you too. But there are ultimately a lot of caveats that come with that side of things.

Who Is Carl?

One of the things that I think it is quite important to explore with Carl’s In-Play Trading is just who Carl is. Ultimately, it is hugely relevant because his background is actually as a financial trader. Interestingly, he quite freely admits to… well, not necessarily being all that good at it. At least, if you look at the bigger picture for him and do your research.

An example of Carl’s Trading on Youtube:

Here’s the thing though, Carl’s In-Play Trading isn’t a financial trading course. The important and noteworthy thing is that we are told that Carl has been successfully trading for 8 years on in play trading on horse racing. During this time, he claims that his average monthly earnings are between £4,000+ and £8,000+ per month. That is a hell of a lot of money. So, why wouldn’t you want to copy his strategies?

The thing is, I do believe all of this. Whilst I think there is arguably some lack of transparency on the Carl’s In-Play Trading website (I’ll be talking about this a little later on), I can appreciate that it is there to sell a product. And ultimately, this is a product that reflects a trader who has been successful for some time. The bottom line here? I think that Carl is the real deal and really does understand what he is doing. That is very important to keep in mind later.

Cost and Returns on The Betfair Course?

I won’t make any bones about it. Carl’s In-Play Trading isn’t something that comes cheap. Not just in terms of the costs Carl is asking for his course, but everything else that comes with it. So, let’s break down exactly what all of this really entails.

Obviously, your first cost is actually signing up to receive Carl’s In-Play Trading. This is really quite pricey at £290. Whilst I have definitely seen services that cost substantially more than this, it is also the most expensive thing that I’ve seen for some time. Especially when you keep in mind that payment is handled via a proprietary service and Carl doesn’t offer any sort of refund or money back guarantee. I appreciate he has no obligation to do this, but it means you have to be very sure.

Then there is that cost of the software. Like I said, Carl’s In-Play Trading is based around using Geek Toy. That is £60 for the year if you want the best possible value. On top of that, Carl says that you need to have either two monitors or a bigger one if you are going to trade successfully. This might not be a problem for some people, but for something of a reasonable standard, that might be another £120.

This puts your potential outlay at close to £500 before you’ve even placed a trade. Don’t get me wrong, if you want to make Carl’s In-Play Trading work for you, this is all necessary stuff and it may well be worth the investment. But let’s not forget the fact that it is still a considerable investment to make.

All of this pales next to the costs of actually trading though in my mind. Carl personally trades with £250 per day. Of course, this is scalable, but something that is worth keeping in mind is that Carl’s In-Play Trading is based around trading using stakes of about 10% of your daily bank. This can quickly add up over the course of the day, for better or for worse.

Of course, how much an investment is going to cost you will always sound negative. The exciting part is how much money you can potentially make. Now, something to keep in mind is that Carl refers to himself as being “on a pro-level”. This is a term that he uses several times in the sales material for Carl’s In-Play Trading. And using his averages, he is making anywhere from 16 to 32 times his daily stakes. It is clear that there is genuinely substantial income potential from in play trading.

A closer look at his trading reveals a slightly more intriguing picture. Whilst there are definitely days where Carl is making substantial returns, this also goes the other way. Even in the last month, he has had losing days where almost his full daily bank has been lost. Other days have seen losses of hundreds of pounds on single trades. It might ultimately be offset, but even this “pro-level” trader loses money.

I don’t doubt that there is money to be made through in play trading. I think I’ve been clear about this from the offset, and this isn’t something that is new to me. I know for a fact that there are people that do well off it. Smart traders will always turn a profit, and Carl’s In-Play Trading will help you to get there. Just… eventually.

Real Term Risks on In-Play Trading on Betfair?

Anybody who has even tried in-play trading on Betfair will know that the action is fast…and furious, and that you are definitely not guaranteed to get matched – unlike pre-race trading, which many people do well with – myself included, as I have been pre-race trading for 3+ years now, very profitably.

Long term, Carl is clearly doing well from Carl’s In-Play Trading. Even within the last month he has demonstrated days where he has made almost £1,000 in a single day. But long term is a luxury that he has that you don’t necessarily have when you sign up for Carl’s In-Play Trading. And that is something that really warrants being a real talking point.

Look, in play trading can be successful. It can be profitable. But it is probably the most difficult method of trading that I know of. In play, things are moving rapidly, all of the time, and you have to keep multiple plates spinning. If you want to really get an understanding on just how much speed matters, Carl talks about the fact that he is losing 0.2-0.3 seconds a trade trading from Helsinki.

That miniscule time difference is impacting his betting. Admittedly, he does say that it is only slight, but that is less time than most of us could measure. And again, that is a pro-level trader. You see, the real term risks when you’re in play trading is missing windows of opportunity. They can be so narrow. Blink and you miss it type stuff.

Which brings me back to that point about the luxury of long term. If you’re already profitable from the last few days and you make a mistake. No biggie. Even losing your entire days stake doesn’t really matter. Not when you’re bringing in the type of money that Carl is. But what about if you’re getting started with Carl’s In-Play Trading? Not only do you have less resources to absorb mistakes, but let’s be honest. You’re going to make more of them.

The training can be as good as you want it to be, but the fact of the matter is this. You will make mistakes when you start trading. Especially if you’re in play trading. Everything can be laid out for you on paper, you can see Carl place as many trades as you want. You can watch Carl’s In-Play Trading 100 times. Once you are at the proverbial coal face though, mistakes will be made. Learning from them is the part a lot of people struggle with.

Is There a Money Back Guarantee?

It would help also if there was a money back guarantee, which there does not seem to be, which is a shame, as it would show real confidence in the course, and product being offered.

Conclusion on The Course

I feel like I’ve put Carl’s In-Play Trading through the wringer a bit. As such, I want to qualify something. This isn’t a bad product. With what he has to work with, I think that Carl has put together something that is really quite good. But this isn’t just about whether or not something is objectively workable. I know how to kick a football. Ask me to curl one into the top corner from outside the 18 yard box though. Forget about it.

With all of this in mind, you really have two things to think about when deciding whether or not Carl’s In-Play Trading is a good fit for you. Firstly, there is the product itself. It is quite a lot of money (£290 at the time of compiling this review). Especially compared to other products that are on the market. And then there is potentially further investment on top of that too.

Now, you are paying for something good. I will concede that the strategies that are laid out are pretty sound. For this kind of in play trading, they definitely have the potential to work. This is undoubtedly because… well, Carl just knows what he’s talking about. Which if I’m really blunt puts Carl’s In-Play Trading above and beyond a shocking amount of crap that is out there.

But you just need to know that in-play (compared to pre-play) trading most certainly has risks for those that are not experienced.

Then there is the fact that barring some parts that perhaps could be a little bit clearer (and would probably benefit from scripting), the video content is decent. As are the few written elements that make up Carl’s In-Play Trading. But you do pay for all of this. And I think that you really have to be very committed to wanting to learn in play trading for it to be a worthwhile investment. If you are, you could do plenty worse.

The second question is probably the more difficult one though, and that is whether or not in play trading is the right approach for you (the speed of in-play trading is not for everyone!). Obviously, there are huge degrees of personal choice involved in this, but I think that this is probably the key factor in ultimately deciding whether Carl’s In-Play Trading is a good option.

In play trading requires a very specific mindset. You have to be laser focused and watching everything all of the time. I know that I’ve said this a few times already, but I really want to nail home that point. In showing you show to do things, Carl has to show you what he is doing in “slow motion”. And whilst Carl’s In-Play Trading gives you the tools, executing it is a whole different kettle of fish.

Remember, Carl has been doing this for 8 years. He comes from a background as a professional trader. He is a self proclaimed “pro-level” trader. And yet he can still lose all of his money in a day. If you are really going to follow Carl’s In-Play Trading with intentions of long term profit, you really have to be prepared to have very deep pockets and see this happen time and again.

Personally, I find in play trading to be incredibly stressful. I’ve been there and I’ve done that, and it is very time consuming. It can even be boring. Don’t get me wrong, when everything aligns it is a thrilling thing, but sitting waiting for that to happen can lead to bad decisions. Again, even Carl admits to doing this (although conveniently not in the sales material for Carl’s In-Play Trading). Whilst the rewards may be there, I feel there are better options.

And I think that brings me to my final thoughts with Carl’s In-Play Trading really. If you are committed to learning in play trading, you could do much worse. In fact, for a very small minority of people, I would say that this is a very good product. But that is people who are interested in this niche trading approach, that have the pockets to fund losses until you are winning and have the time to dedicate to mastering what Carl teaches.

But for a lot of people, I feel like Carl’s In-Play Trading might not be a good fit. Again, I want to nail home that this isn’t a bad product. Carl achieves what he sets out to do. I just feel like he perhaps does a bit too good a job of making it seem like this is easier and more accessible than it realistically is for most people. That might not be a problem if you could get your £290 back. But you can’t. Making it a very expensive risk.

Really, that is a very reasonable phrase that sums up Carl’s In-Play Trading. It is an expensive risk. Don’t get me wrong, the rewards can be earned on a long enough time frame. I’m just not certain that are many people can realistically afford to keep making the mistakes that are somewhat inevitable until they get there.  

That being said, and getting back to the cost of this Betfair course, it’s still a fair risk considering the lack of a money back guarantee. At least if the product had such a guarantee, then it would show confidence in the teaching materials, and whether they can be replicated, or not.

Related Content and Resources:

Betfair Scalping System Review, BFScalper Course, Looking Good So Far

Bet Angel Review, Is Peter Webb’s Betfair Trading Software The Best Out There?

Betfair Trading Software, Which is The Best And Why?

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