Flat Specialist is a brand new horse racing tipster service that purports to be able to generate a substantial monthly income. It is supposedly operated by an independent tipster, David Walton.
What does the product offer?
The first that I heard of Flat Specialist was from one of the many questionable services I have looked at before now. Naturally, this latest tipster service (which is capable of making you a small fortune) is doing the rounds with the usual affiliate marketing groups which makes me naturally suspicious. This applies doubly so when you look at the headline for Flat Specialist in which David Walton claims two flat seasons worth of pretty substantial profitability.
So, what are you actually looking at with Flat Specialist? According to David Walton, he runs the service in a straight forward service and logistically, this appears to be the case. Selections are issued to subscribers via email on a daily basis (with an email issued when there are no selections).
These will be released around 10-11pm the day before the race. David Walton also says that he can set up a “group/page where the selections will be posted online”. At the time of writing this doesn’t appear to be uploaded.
All of the bets that are sent out to Flat Specialist subscribers are win bets which David Walton recommends backing through Betfair to SP (which is what the “proofing” is based on). In the sales material for Flat Specialist, he does however say that you can likely find better odds online. This raises a massive red flag for me for a number of reasons that I will explore later. As the name of Flat Specialist suggests, all of the bets recommended are for flat racing.
What is interesting about the betting patterns is that despite being sold as a daily service, Flat Specialist has historically been somewhat patchy when it comes to finding selections with numerous days bet free.
Curiously, David Walton talks about how Flat Specialist will produce between 1 and 6 bets per day and this is a number that is invariably stuck to in the proofing. This is something that in all my years of looking at tipster services I have never seen before now. It could simply be that David Walton is disciplined however I view this with a little more suspicion.
This only really leaves the numbers side of things left to consider. Staking wise, David Walton recommends that Flat Specialist users stick to a level staking plan.
For this, he advises that 1 point per bet should be sufficient to produce a profit. In terms of the strike rate, this has historically been around 29% according to the proofing. For 2017, there has been no proofing supplied and so this is a difficult thing to calculate.
How does the product work?
The selection process for Flat Specialist is perhaps not surprisingly not really discussed in any detail. What we are told is that there are a “simple set of rules” that David Walton follows in order to find selections.
He also talks about finding value in his selections. This may be enough to satiate those who aren’t familiar with this kind of product, but I have seen this approach on plenty of questionable tipster services. As such, I see this as more of a red flag than any real insight.
What is the initial investment?
There is only a single option available for those who wish to subscribe to Flat Specialist and this is to sign up for the rest of the flat season. David Walton is asking £70 for his service (equates to £10 per month) which is a one time cost.
This price is supposedly going to double “at 10pm tonight” however this message has been up for some time. As such, I am inclined to view this “generous discount” with the same suspicion I have treated every other aspect of Flat Specialist.
Whilst on the cost side of Flat Specialist, it is of particular noteworthiness that whilst David Walton is selling Flat Specialist through Clickbank, there is no money back guarantee mentioned. This is rather disappointing as Clickbank do offer a 60 day refund period on any product that is sold through the platform.
What is the rate of return?
The claimed income potential for Flat Specialist is what first brought the product to my attention. The affiliate email that I received refers to pulling in £2,744.89 per month. This appears to be based around a claim of 768.57 points over 2 season of flat racing. To £50 bets, this would in turn mean a profit of £19,214.25 supposedly.
Conclusion
Sometimes I look at a product and I have to rely on my instincts to tell me whether or not something is genuine. Flat Specialist is a prime example of this as on the surface of things, this is a service that has a lot on offer.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that all is as it seems here and there are only small things that I can cite as reasons for this, however I feel that there is enough to justify my position.
The first thing that I think that needs to be mentioned is not necessarily directly in regard to the service however it remains of note.
The website that hosts Flat Specialist was only registered early last month and this was all carried out anonymously. Where a tipster operates their service genuinely, they will try to provide plenty of information about themselves as they have nothing to hide. Services that are anonymous and have appeared out of nowhere however often don’t perform.
Based off my experience, this is enough to avoid Flat Specialist. There are other red flags however. To return to my earlier point about the fact that David Walton says that he simply uses Betfair’s starting price. Returning to reputable tipsters, many will provide you with details on what kind of odds to aim to get etc.
Simply advising users to accept the SP means that you are losing out on a lot of potential value. Something that the sales material for Flat Specialist says is integral to the service.
The fact is that a lot of the sales material for Flat Specialist is geared towards reassuring users that this is a low risk and easy way of making money. This is something that in and of itself leads me to believe that a service is not entirely genuine.
Truth be told, I could continue to pick apart Flat Specialist however I don’t believe that the service really warrants my time.
With that in mind, I will end by saying that I am highly dubious about Flat Specialist as an overall service and despite a seemingly cheap offering, I would still recommend giving it a miss.
In my experience, this sort of tipster service ends up losing money for subscribers in the medium to long term, even I it can produce some small profit in the interim.
