5/1 Method is a brand new horse racing tipster service which is being operated by Phil Swales. He claims to have produced a very substantial profit in a relatively short space of time.
Introduction to the 5/1 Method
I am a keen student outside of this blog and one of the things that interests me is debate and how people can be misled and manipulated. Particularly through the use of fallacies and statistics. I want you to keep this in mind as understanding of these elements is particularly useful when looking at 5/1 Method as a product. There are some very specific claims made here that I want to dissect later on.
With that having been said, it is also worth keeping in mind that what Phil Swales is presenting in 5/1 Method is a tipster service which is supposedly able to make some very substantial profits. Seemingly, there is very little risk to this either. Of course, anybody can say anything when it comes to marketing a product, so let’s see whether or not 5/1 Method is actually able to deliver on the claims made.
What Does 5/1 Method Offer?
I want to start by talking about the logistics of 5/1 Method. In this regard, it is very much a typical horse racing tipster service. What I mean by this is that Phil Swales issues his selections on a daily basis. The tips are issued directly via email and are sent directly to subscribers.
These are usually sent out before 10am on the day of racing. As I am finding increasingly (and disappointingly) common, there is very little in the way of detailing when it comes to the tips. I also want to highlight that Oddschecker will serve you well here, especially because of the strategy 5/1 Method is based on.
As a service, 5/1 Method is based entirely on backing horses at long odds. More specifically, Phil Swales says that he backs odds that range from 5/1 all the way up to 20/1. The volume of bets that are advised can vary from day to day, however you will never receive more than 4 bets on a given day. This is something that is integral to how 5/1 Method works.
Phil Swales does have a staking plan in place for 5/1 Method and it is a very simple one. All bets are advised to be backed to 1 point per bet. I haven’t seen any information given about a betting bank however I wold advise that a bankk of 100 points would be necessary.
The way that Phil Swales talks about 5/1 Method makes it sound like you could probably get away with much less, however I don’t believe this is the case, or in fact possible.
Finally, I want to talk about the strike rate for 5/1 Method. Again, this is an important detail because it is also a part of the wider strategy that Phil Swales has in place. This is claimed to be “under 22%”, however there is no wider discussion of this.
This sounds like a very reasonable and viable strike rate. It is worth noting however that there is no proofing provided for 5/1 Method. This means that you are simply taking Phil Swales’s word on this figure.
How Does 5/1 Method Work?
There are two things that I want to talk about in terms of how 5/1 Method works. The first things is the strategy as discussed by Phil Swales.
This is also where I want to talk about fallacies and misleading statistics. His rational goes a little like this. He wins just under 1 in 4 bets. But he backs horses at a minimum of 5/1. Therefore, it only takes 1 horse to win in order to generate a point of profit. This is dubious, despite sounding like incredibly logical maths.
In terms of the actual selection process, this is something which simply isn’t discussed. This is something that is always problematic for me when a service is based around value. It seems to be very easy to claim that you are picking horses based on value, but without any details of how a tipster is finding value, I am always rather sceptical of these kinds of claims.
What is the Initial Investment?
There are two options made available by Phil Swales if you want to subscribe to 5/1 Method. The first of these is to sign up on a 90 day trial. This is priced at £60 which is a one time payment. Alternatively, you can sign up to 5/1 Method for a full year which is priced at £147. This is also a one time payment.
It is worth noting that both of these are sold through Clickbank which means that there is a full 60 day money back guarantee in place.
What is the Rate of Return?
Phil Swales claims that for July, August and September (we’re almost at the end of the month at the time of writing), 5/1 Method has made a combined profit of more than £9,000. This is based of £2,150 in July, £4,200 in August and £2,850 for September (so far). It is important to note that there is no information on how much was staked in order to achieve these results. £100 per point seems plausible, but this is entirely speculation on my behalf.
Conclusion on the 5/1 Method
There is a lot about 5/1 Method that looks reasonable and it is very apparent to me that this is by design. One of the key things that stands out to me is how good a job Phil Swales does of making his strategy sound really reasonable.
I love anything that is numbers based as by and large it makes analysis much easier. The problem with numbers however is that they can be anything that you want them to be, and this is where interpretation and the ability to read them comes in handy.
For example, the results that are claimed are all well within reasonable levels. A strike rate of 22% for example is entirely conceivable. So are the profits claimed profits.
As mentioned already, using £100 stakes you are talking about 21.5 points per month, 42 points per month and 28.5 points per month. I have seen plenty of services provide these kinds of results. Maybe not consecutively, but it is easy enough to see 5/1 Method achieving this. It also makes sense that by backing the odds that Phil Swales does, it is difficult not to profit.
With this having been said, I have seen a lot of services with strike rates higher than 22% not win for several races on the trot. 5/1 Method does not appear to be equipped for this, or at least, Phil Swales doesn’t say anything which suggests that this eventuality has been catered for. It is also worth noting that there is no proofing provided.
Given that I have looked at services recently with 3 years of results, I don’t see why Phil Swales cannot present 3 months of results. This naturally casts doubts on Phil Swales’s claims for me. But the fact of the matter is that even if there was some proofing, it seems very apparent to me that these results will have been cherry picked. Whilst possible, they are certainly not going to be consistent.
The evidence that I have seen to date strongly suggests that 5/1 Method is a genuine tipster service. Whether or not this is the case only time will tell, but if it is, there are a number of quite simple things that I think are missing. For my money, I am really not sold on 5/1 Method. I don’t think that it is quite cheap enough at this point to say that it is worth a punt either.
£20 per month is not a lot, but asking £60 up front is a pretty big ask (I should also point out that whilst it is entirely circumstantial, the fact that 5/1 Method is sold on the back of a 90 day trial is also somewhat suspect. This approach has been applied by questionable tipsters in order to keep people on board until the money back guarantee that Clickbank has expired).
Currently the website is stating that membership is ‘closed’, and that you can “leave your email to be contacted when it reopens”, but one thing I will guarantee you, is that if you leave your email address, you will be ‘ivited’ to join very quickly indeed. It is simply a marketing muse.
The other problem, is that you do not know how, or when your email is to be used, as many of these marketers are passing around data like it is the year 2000, despite the GDPR privacy regulations.
With so many clear and genuine tipsters on the market, I don’t believe that I would really want to invest my money in a tipster service which is as unproven as 5/1 Method. Should Phil Swales come forward with more evidence and proofing, I would love to be proven wrong, but here and now I don’t see myself recommending 5/1 Method.
