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Tipster: Are you an informant or a "hunchor"?

Tipster: Are you an informant or a "hunchor"?

To know if you are an informant or a hunchor, you must ask yourself this question:

What makes the difference between your choices and the rest of the bettors? Can you draw odd lines more accurately than bookmakers or are you just imitating them?

by Josué Ramos   |   comments 0
Tuesday, April 26 2016

The title of the article raises an important question, since most people can't tell the difference between:

  • An informant, who bases his decisions on numbers and information;
  • A hunchor, who bases his decisions on feelings and accumulated knowledge of the teams and competitions.

It's not easy to make this distinction, since sometimes the tipster himself cannot tell if his decisions were made based on feelings or an objective analysis of data. Sometimes the tipster may think he is basing his decisions on an objective analysis, when in fact he is, at least partially, making decisions on hunches.

The question is therefore more complex than it seems. What separates a tipster's choices from the rest of the market? What leads the tipster to conclude that a certain bet has value?

These questions raise even more questions, but everything becomes clearer when you ask the right question. So here it goes:

Are the tipster lines more accurate than the bookmakers'? Or is he just imitating them?

Before analysing this any further, let state something that is well known by every sport betting professional:

A tipster is an informant, who acts on numbers, stats, knowledge of the sports and the teams and, most of all, someone who has access to a lot of quality information.

Information is the key for everything. In the Sport betting world, it's not enough to be better than the bookmakers at setting lines, since there are other competitors, other tipsters: fast, precise and who have access to a lot of financial power. This makes it even harder to find good value bets, since they may be gone even before the first lines are drawn.

Many think it's easy to be a bettor. Just pick an option and hope to get lucky! But the truth is it takes a strong mathematical base and a lot of studying to stay ahead in this market. Moreover, we're up against other bettors, in a daily struggle for value bets. These days, bettors face prejudice, bookmakers, other bettors and also face losing their mental stability. So what's easy about all of this?

Today there are thousands tipsters, or at least people who seem to think they are. So what does it take to be a professional tipster?

I have heard many people saying they could make a profit even without studying the events or the market, or without privileged information, proudly stating their ignorance.

Enganado

There are many hunchors out there, who bet on hunches and actually pay to bet, therefore living in ignorance. Others live in a much obscure world, in which there is no evolution. They know how to draw lines, but they just imitate bookmakers, because they have access to the stats, but not privileged information.

I could say that if a tipster can't draw a line he isn't a real tipster, but I know that's not true. There are tipsters who don't draw lines, they just seem to know when a bet is available at a higher or lower value than it should be based on privileged information. The greatest problem they face is finding value bets, since they are usually gone very quickly. In this respect they're not doing a great job, since in the long term their profit may be limited by fair lines.

Now, taking into account the mathematics behind betting, it the tipster can't do more than imitate bookmakers, in the long run his profit will be eaten away, if he even manages to stay in the green zone at all.

The problem is that in this case the tipster needs investors to stay afloat. So he's not actually a bettor, but someone who depends on the profit of others to make his own profit. But who is the investor who is going to risk his money to get a small profit?

Another important question is that bookmakers ignore important information when drawing the lines, apart from the fact that sometimes important information only comes up after the lines have been drawn. It's up to the bettor or tipster to adjust the lines according to information they may have access to, as if putting weights on a scale, before the bookmaker corrects the lines.

I have heard many people say it's impossible to make a profit in this market, because it's all very risky and unstable. It so happens that the very same people who say that don't have a good base to place bets. that is, they either don't have access to privileged information or don't know how to draw lines. In the long run, they are therefore throwing money out the window with a big shovel.

This is what I call bleeding. Drop by drop the bettor bleeds out, by betting with fair odds. In the end this eats away the profit, since we must also consider variance, which adjusts all of this. We call it CURVE, since the concept of variance is often misused by bettors and poker players.

To conclude this article let me say that most tipsters are hunchers, since they lack the necessary base to be successful in this business, while others just imitate bookmakers, so in the end they just exchange money with them, because they lack the mathematical knowledge, by not being able to draw odd lines and define the minimum value odd they should accept.

Very few actually bet professionally and can be taken seriously. But this article is meant to be a constructive criticism, since many potentially good tipsters commit sins that don't allow them to be successful.

What I wish to have made clear is that a tipster is an informant, in the sense that he uses information and mathematical knowledge to make rational decisions. Moreover, he is also someone who manages to stay ahead of bookmakers. This is the minimum set of skills to be a successful tipster. But the hardest thing to do is to stay ahead of other bettors: these are the real enemies, not bookmakers.

A tipster is an informant who has a good mathematical knowledge and access to good sources of information.

But for those of you just starting, all you have to do is learn. With dedication and study anything is possible!

I hope you have enjoyed this article! Hugs and good bets everyone.