How to check a tipster record yourself

To check a tipster record, you get every tip the tipster has published, with the time it went out, the price, the stake and the result. Then you recompute the figures yourself and test them against the closing price and the number of tips. A record that cannot be handed over in that form is a claim, however good it looks.

The check takes an evening with a spreadsheet. It catches the faults that most often flatter a record: tips posted after the start, prices nobody offered, stakes changed after the result, and losing tips that quietly went missing.

Tracked, self-reported and screenshot records

Who writes the figures down decides how much they can be trusted:

"Verified", "proofed" and "tipster verification" are labels, not proof. A verified betting record earns the word only if you can see when each tip was logged, the price on offer then and every tip since the record began, losers included. Ask what the service checks before you give its badge any weight.

What a full record shows

A full record carries, for every tip:

• a sequence number or ID, so a missing tip leaves a visible gap
• the date and time it was posted, and the event's start time
• the event, the selection and the market, such as a win, place, line or total bet
• the advised price and the bookmaker it was on offer with, or for a tote bet the approximate shown when the tip was posted
• the stake, in units or dollars, as stated when the tip was posted
• the result as settled, including voids, dead heats and scratching refunds
• the closing price: the Betfair Starting Price (BSP) for racing where there is one, or a close with the margin taken out for sport

The record should also say when it began and how many tips have settled. If it lacks the posting time or the advised price, stop there: without those two, nothing else can be checked.

Recount a record yourself: a worked check

An illustrative extract of eight racing win tips, not a real tipster, with 1 unit = $10 and the BSP as the close. Check each advised price against the runner's price history at the time the tip was posted, such as the bookmaker flucs on an odds board. For NSW TAB race meetings, the official flucs from Racing NSW's NSW Official Price service show where the market sat.

Four corrections:

1. Drop tip 3. It went out 7 minutes after the start, and a record should count only tips posted before the jump.
2. Reprice tip 5 at $4.80, the best price anyone offered when it was posted.
3. Restate tip 7 at the 1 unit its original post stated.
4. Leave tip 8 out of both counts. A scratched runner's stake is refunded, so it neither wins nor loses.

The late tip alone was worth 5.5 units, 44% of the claimed profit. The CLV figures are the counted price / BSP - 1 for each counted tip, with tip 5 at its corrected $4.80: +10.0%, +11.5%, -18.2%, +6.7%, -2.9% and +4.8%. They sum to 11.84 points, an average of 11.84 / 6 = +1.97%.

Six tips prove nothing either way. The method is the point, and it works the same on six hundred.

Strike rate, ROI, turnover and closing line value, read together

Each figure answers one question and hides another:

Read them as a set. With illustrative figures, a 50% strike rate at an average winning price of $2.50 returns 0.50 x 2.50 = 1.25 per dollar, a +25% ROI; the same 50% at $1.70 returns 0.50 x 1.70 = 0.85, a 15% loss. A tipster who quotes profit against a betting bank instead of stakes makes the same tips look bigger once total stakes exceed the bank, and ROI vs yield shows how to restate it.

How many tips before a record means anything

With level stakes, the luck in a yield shrinks only with the square root of the number of tips: standard error = square root of (average price - 1) / square root of the number of tips. Over an illustrative 480 tips at an average of $3.20, that is 1.483 / 21.91 = 6.8 percentage points.

A +7.5% yield then sits about 1.1 standard errors above zero, a result a tipster with no edge would match or beat about 13% of the time on the normal-curve rule. To clear two standard errors at that edge and price takes about 4 x 2.2 / (0.075 x 0.075) = 1,564 tips. Sample size in betting sets out the method in full.

Ask how the record reached you, too. A record found at the top of a leaderboard of hundreds owes part of its place to luck, and records that went badly tend to drop out of sight, which is survivorship bias.

A tracked record is not a forecast

Even a complete, tracked record leaves three things open:

• What happens next. Markets change, and a method that beat them for a year can stop.
• Your own result. You bet after the tip is posted, often at a shorter price once followers have backed it, a cost called price slippage, and a bookmaker can limit your stakes.
• Whether the tipster's own stakes got on at the advised price.

Your own bookmaker account is the independent check on what following really did. Under the National Consumer Protection Framework, online bookmakers send active customers a monthly activity statement showing wins, losses and the net result. A statement nets every bet in the account, so pick out the bets you placed on the tipster's tips from your account history and total them for a few months. Set that beside the tipster's record for the same period, at your stakes: the gap is what following cost or paid.

What to ask a tipster before you follow

1. Every tip since the record began, as a file rather than screenshots.
2. How each tip's time is recorded, and where its advised price came from.
3. The staking rules, and whether they have ever changed.
4. How voids, scratchings and dead heats are counted.
5. Whether any tip has been edited or removed, and why.

A tipster who answers all five with documents is giving you something to check. One who answers with testimonials, a countdown or a single big collect is showing the signs set out in fake tipster red flags. The same five questions apply to a tipster that calls itself AI, and AI horse racing tips covers what else to ask about the model behind it. Each check here applies to any of the betting tools in Australia that sell selections.

Mistakes that make a record look better than it is

On the figures used above:

Skip any tipster whose record you cannot get as a file, and never pay before you have recounted a sample of it yourself.

Where B337's copy betting records fit

Tipping Pro is B337's copy betting plan. Its feed records are worked out by B337 from the tips each tipster published through the platform and how those bets settled: tipsters do not type figures in, and screenshots, spreadsheets and tips posted elsewhere are never counted.

Each feed shows its strike rate, ROI, turnover and closing line value, how many of its tips have settled and when it started, and any signed-in account, free included, can browse them. Even so, a record is not a forecast, not your result, and not an audit, a rating or a recommendation.

Subscribing to a feed shows its tips as they go out but places nothing. Copying is a separate step: you link one of your own bookmaker accounts, and the bot places a copy of each tip in it at a stake from your settings, never the tipster's. It skips any tip that would pass a max liability you have set. The bot runs on your own computer, so a tip published while that computer is off, asleep or offline is missed.

You arrange Tipping Pro with the team, each feed's weekly price is set by its tipster and shown before checkout, and bets placed through B337 use credits, a per-bet usage charge. Bookmaker names are trade marks of their owners. B337 is not affiliated with them.

For free and confidential support call 1800 858 858 or visit gamblinghelponline.org.au.