Cricket Counsel Review

Cricket Counsel is a new sports betting tipster service that is operated by the Betfan stable of tipsters. As the name of the service suggests, it is based around cricket with selections coming from one Dave Owens.

What does the product offer?

When you think of mainstream sports and betting, I am willing to bet that your mind generally goes in a few select directions. Obviously, horse racing and football are the first things that come to mind. If you are a bit more involved in the betting scene you may even think of tennis or the ante bets of golf. I have to hold my hands up here and say that one of the last places my mind went was cricket.

With this in mind, it came as little surprise to me that the headline Betfan have put in place for Cricket Counsel reads “A Sport That Is Exploitable And Being Overlooked By The Bookmaker”. I can actually imagine there being some truth to this. In spite of my ignorance of the subject, Dave Owens (who is the tipster behind Cricket Counsel) claims that he has been living quite comfortably off winnings from betting on the sport. I am eager to see if this is really a hidden gem so with that in mind, let’s delve right into Cricket Counsel.

As a service, the management aspect of Cricket Counsel is pretty much in line with what you would expect from the Betfan. When selections are available they are emailed directly out to subscribers as well as being uploaded to a member’s area on the Betfan website. The number of bets that you receive can vary massively. Whilst Dave Owens says that on average, Cricket Counsel subscribers will receive around 5 selections per day. Now, I have said when selections are available and there is a bit of an emphasis on the when part of that.

Because of the nature of cricket, Dave Owens says that selections are not necessarily available on a daily basis. For example, no tips were generated during December and whilst this month has been a busy one for Cricket Counsel, this is down to the cricket calendar. On top of this, whilst Cricket Counsel subscribers will typically be given selections on either morning of the game or the evening before, this isn’t the only time you may receive bets. I feel that Dave Owens is quite open about the fact that you may sometimes receive selections somewhat out of the blue for events in several days. These are where there is exceptional value available.

Looking at the results I half expected to see the usual Betfan staking plan of 5 points per bet. Instead, Cricket Counsel appears to be staking anywhere from 1-3 points per bet. These are reasonably well apportioned so that you aren’t staking the maximum on a bet with a massive outside chance.  Generally speaking, you are looking at the higher end of this scale though.

This only leaves the strike rate to try and consider however rather disappointingly, Betfan haven’t published any numbers for Cricket Counsel. Looking through the proofing though, I feel that somewhere around the 30% mark is probably a reasonable figure. Truthfully though, I think that the important thing to take away in this regard is that whilst it is early days, Cricket Counsel has yet to encounter a losing month.

How does the product work?

According to Dave Owens, his history is actually in online poker, not cricket. Despite this, the online poker market slowed and he says that he began to bet on this other passion, cricket, in order to try and keep an income stream going. Over time he says that he figured out that as somebody who knows a lot about cricket, there were some good bets to be had by taking advantage of value where the bookies have missed a trick or mispriced. All of this is core to Cricket Counsel.

Now usually, this would be about all the explanation that you get in terms of how things work but rather pleasantly, Dave Owens does go into much more detail. For example, he says that one of the things that doesn’t seem to be factored in by bookmakers is the surface of the ground. Despite this, it can supposedly have a massive impact on how the ball handles etc. I can believe this to be the case and I also have to commend Dave Owens on providing insight into the selection process.

What is the initial investment?

Cricket Counsel is a Betfan product and as such, I came into this expecting quite an expensive product. I can happily report that I was pleasantly surprised on this front. In fact, Cricket Counsel is priced at £30 per month (although a month is actually 28 days) or £60 per quarter, both of which are affordable.

Unfortunately, there is no money back guarantee in place for Cricket Counsel. The Betfan group say that it is not in their policy to offer refunds. They do however also say that they will reviews requests and if they believe it to warranted, a refund may be offered.

What is the rate of return?

Since proofing began in November, Cricket Counsel has produced a points profit of 294.15 points. This is a fantastic result to achieve in such a short space of time. At the time of writing this, we are just over half way through January this month alone has seen 133.23 points. What is particularly impressive about these numbers for me is that they haven’t been achieved on the back of inflated staking plans.

Conclusion

Before I start to get into any detail of my thoughts on Cricket Counsel, I want to open by saying that I am rather impressed by the results that Dave Owens has achieved so far. These may well be aided by the fact that the cricket calendar is pretty busy at the moment which of course means more tips. None the less, as far as initial results go, they are strong and most importantly, consistent (so far).

I have to be honest and say that I haven’t seen many cricket tipsters before now which does make gauging future profitability a bit of difficult thing. That having been said, Dave Owens is confident in his description of the service and seems to know what he is talking about, something which once again, the results to date reflect.

Aside from the profit potential, there are a few other things about Cricket Counsel that make it really stand out for me. One is the aforementioned scarcity of cricket tipsters. For those of you who have a portfolio of tipsters, yet another horse racing service or football tipster is unlikely to titillate you. The fact is there is arguably an over abundance when it comes to these sports and as such, you can end up losing money simply by spreading your betting to wide. Cricket however is something that you are unlikely to have in your portfolio which means that you can focus a part of your betting bank on an entirely new revenue stream.

The other thing comes down to value for money. £30 per month is possibly a touch pricey for such a niche service, but it is also a long way from expensive. When you compare this to the profits that have been made to date, even £1 per point would have made a fine profit over 3 months and that’s after paying subscription fees.

With all of this in mind, I am going to say that despite being early doors, Cricket Counsel is probably worth some serious thought. This applies doubly so if you are one of the bettors I mentioned with a portfolio. If you are new to the tipster scene, you can probably do worse than Cricket Counsel however if I am honest, there are also probably better options available as well.