BetTwo is a relatively new horse racing tipster service from the team over at Betfan with selections coming courtesy of a tipster, Ian. The service supposedly has some strong historic results, although recent performance is massively different.
Introduction to BetTwo
It won’t come as any surprise to anybody who has ever researched anything in detail that a big part of the process is data analysis. Whether this is looking at the performance of your next car or laptop, or the performance of a tipster service, what you are doing is looking at data and singling out what is important.
Off the back of this, one of the things that I always find to be interesting when weighing up a service is historic performance versus more recent trends. This is because the two can sometimes prove counter intuitive to one another and nowhere is this more obvious to me than with BetTwo.
The sales material from Betfan claims that there is a high historic performance, however the proofed results over the last few months show otherwise. Which of these is more important when analysing BetTwo? You will find my answer towards the end of this, but it is something to think of as we go.
What Does BetTwo Offer?
As far as tipster services go, BetTwo follows a very straight forward and systematic approach. This is arguably one of the better aspects of the service as I will explore. What it means, is that subscribers can expect to receive selections on a daily basis.
These are issued directly via email as well as being uploaded to a special member’s area on the Betfan website. Honestly, there isn’t a lot more to say in terms of the logistics for BetTwo. Betfan are very good at managing services and there are rarely issues in this regard. As such, this isn’t a difficult service to follow.
Moving on to the bets themselves, that systematic approach that Ian favours becomes much more evident.
The name merely hints at it, but each day subscribers will receive two selections. Typically speaking, BetTwo advises bets as straight winners, however occasionally there are each way bets as well. What doesn’t change however is the fact that there is quite significant variance in terms of the odds. The proofing from Betfan shows a significant range with this aspect of BetTwo going from 1.53 one day to 15.00 the next.
Sticking with the theme of “two” all bets that are advised through BetTwo are supposed to be staked to 2 points each. This isn’t the only element of a staking plan that is in place however. Betfan mention in the sales material that Ian recommends you compound your stakes.
This involves maintaining a 150 point betting bank, increasing it on a daily or monthly basis. What is important note however is that the tipster behind BetTwo is adamant that you should never reduce your stakes off the back of a losing month.
Because of the odds involved, you would expect the strike rate for BetTwo to be reasonable and you would be right. According to Betfan, since the start of May, the service has maintained a strike rate of 37.9%. At a glance, this appears to be a very respectable figure and you would think that it represents at least some degree of consistency. As I will explore however, these things are not always as straight forward as “big number = good”.
How Does BetTwo Work?
I find it interesting that in the sales material for BetTwo, Betfan say that Ian is going to “tell you how to make the cash you’re desperately seeking. I won’t be hinting. I won’t be offering tantalising glimpses of what the method might be – I’ll actually tell you the details so that you can decide whether or not to use it for yourself”. I feel it is important to quote this at length, because we aren’t actually told a whole lot about the method outside of the fact that you should be using BetTwo apparently.
Instead, what little insight we are given into the selection process is predominantly around how long Ian has been betting. There is also mention given to the claim that he knows “an awful lot about horse racing, stats, trainers and jockeys etc.etc.”.
For me, this is a long way from understanding how a service works. Unfortunately, given the results for the service, I feel that insight into the selection process for BetTwo would have been pertinent information.
What is the Initial Investment?
One of the things that immediately stands out about BetTwo is that it is not a subscription based service. This means that when you pay for it, you are only going to be billed once. This is probably a blessing if I am honest.
In terms of what Betfan are asking, they offer a 28 day subscription which is priced at £36, or alternatively, you can sign up for 90 days at a cost of £75. As is the case with all Betfan products, there is no money back guarantee in place for BetTwo. The team do say that they review refund requests, however I wouldn’t generally expect these to be given.
What is the Rate of Return?
Between May and September of this year, Ian guided BetTwo to a considerable profit of 234.57 points. Since then, there have been 3 consecutive months of losses. According to Betfan, the service has lost some 53 points in this period, a not inconsiderable amount at all. Whilst this would ultimately mean that BetTwo is still in the black, this demonstrates a very worrying trend in my book.
Conclusion on BetTwo
In the introduction to this review, I talked about the importance of weighing up historic results vs more recent results. This was important because I already knew coming into BetTwo that this was going to be a topic that I would have to address. Furthermore, I would go as far as to say that honestly, it’s a bit of a deal breaker to me here.
The main reason for that is whilst I have used the term recent results, the fact of the matter is that BetTwo has lost money on 3 successive months according to Betfan’s proofing.
The thing here is it isn’t even like this is a service that banks on those big wins.
If BetTwo focused on Lucky 15’s or crazy accumulators that amount to thousands to one odds, then there could be some justification for losing 3 months successively. Unfortunately, I just don’t really see that here. There may be longer odds involved, but they aren’t the kind of things that are going to turn around a months losses in one fell swoop.
Naturally this result has an impact on a lot of things. For example, £36 is not a massive amount to ask for a tipster service. In fact, if I were looking at BetTwo in September, I may even have said that it just about scrapes by as value for money. But I am not, and as such, it is hard to see how paying £36 to effectively lose money is a good thing.
Not surprisingly, I don’t think that I can bring myself to recommend BetTwo.
I can see the argument that yes, the service is ultimately in profit, and even that the losses haven’t necessarily been the worst thing, but it is the consistency with which they have lost that concerns me. At no point in 3 months has BetTwo really started to look like turning things around.
With so much positive stuff on the market, spending money on something that loses like BetTwo does just doesn’t seem like a smart move.
