I have been reviewing Great Bets. This is a tipping service with a tiered subscription ranging from £25 per week (£1300 per year) to £849 per year.
Full results are available through the website here: Great-Bets
You receive an email, usually on the day of the event, and place these bets at the Bookmakers. The email states the number of points to be bet and I paper-bet these at £1 per point and assumed you could get the prices quoted. I think that, in most cases, you’ll have to be quick to get the prices quoted, so I recommend that you set up email alerts to a dedicated email account so you can place the bets as soon as possible once the email is received.
The email usually states 10 point or 20 point bets. In other recent reviews I have been using £10 per point but the advised bets were 1 or 2 points. In both cases the average bets are £10 to £20. Please do not bet this service at £10 per point from a small account.
The trial ended UP 982.8 points (£982 at £1 per point) from which approximately £300 or less of subscriptions need to be deducted.
Because bookies limit accounts faster than you can say “mugger”, I also recorded BSP. Here the service is £400 UP before subtracting the subscription, so this service will work using exchanges but only just; you’d have to be betting around £2 per point to be comparable with the bookies.
Looking at the website results, a 500-point bank from £500 is used on the results page to get £1 per point, so a £1000 account you should be able to run at £2 per point, etc.
Another thing I’d consider regarding stakes is to compound by setting the £ per point each week or month, or in my case every time the account grows by 50%, and ratchet (never reduce stakes) to really make the account grow.
The figures above are for illustration only; you have to work out your bank and points values for yourself!
Given the nice profit and the fantastic figures in the full results I have no hesitation is classifying the service as approved.
You can get Great Bets here: Great-Bets
UPDATE 27th March
Unfortunately, a downturn in the results has meant that anyone that joined on 14th March 2017 would now have lost £520.10 which will have bust the recommended £500 bank (if betting at £1 a point). It’ll be interesting to see if they change the recommended bank to £1000, which is more in line with other similar services. To put this into perspective, the service has been making around £300 a month profit on a £500 bank, which is astounding. I don’t know any other service that has done this. BUT, they do recommend a £500 bank and whilst most people would still be well up and very happy, anyone that did join on March 14th would be out of pocket. That would merit a fail had we been testing it during that period ourselves so I’m going to move this into the Failed section.
UPDATE November 2017
We originally tested this service this time last year, and gave it an approved rating at the beginning of February after it made £982 profit at £1 per point. It then, perhaps predictably, went on to have it’s first ever losing month in February and then a particularly harsh losing month in July that would have bust the recommended betting bank at the time. At this point I moved the service into the Failed section on the blog with a view to monitoring it going forwards.
They have since changed their recommended betting bank from 500 points to 1000 points, which is far more sensible, and have returned the following results:
Feb:-203.79
Mar: 82.73
Apr: 204.86
May: 339.93
Jun: 66.40
Jul:-630.50
Aug: 124.48
Sep: 96.5
Oct: 190
Total: 270.61
So, based on a £1000 betting bank, you would have made £270.61 profit of which you would need to subtract the membership fees which, even at the cheapest annual fee, would still see you in the red right now.
However, they recently contacted me to say they had made some big changes to how they pick, and they’re 200 points up this month already so they may well be turning this around.
On top of this they are making the following guarantee to Cash Master readers… profit or your money back. If you don’t make a profit in any month – after your subscription fee has been deducted – then you will receive a full refund on that months payment.
So you either make a net profit, or you get your subscription refunded. You can’t say fairer than that.
I’ll do another update in February, one full year since our initial review, but in the meantime I’m happy to move this into the Neutral section because of their profit guarantee and improved performance.
You can try Great Bets here
