Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater is a relatively new service from the Winning Information Network arm of the Betfan group. As the name suggests, it provides golfing tips, all courtesy of the eponymous Ian Hudson.
What does the product offer?
The headlines for Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater are definitely an attractive piece of marketing. Talk of “THE ULTIMATE GOLF GOLD RUSH” instantly make you think that you are onto a winner. As do the demonstrations of winning bets at odds as high as 80/1. There are also claims about the income which ultimately make Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater look like a massive earner. This isn’t quite the case, however I also don’t believe this to be a bad service. I will get to this however.
In terms of what you are getting, as is typical with almost anything from Winning Information Network, Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater is made out to be a cinch to play along with. Low risk, high profit and even less effort involved. Essentially, Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater is portrayed as being ideal for anybody who wants to do little and make a decent amount of money. What is interesting about this particular product, is that Ian Hudson may actually be able to deliver.
All of this sounds great but what about the nitty gritty of Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater? As a service, selections are typically issued on a Tuesday with selections for the immediate week ahead. The number of these bets is naturally dependent on what the gold calendar looks like for that week, however you can generally expect a pretty high volume of selections.
The bets themselves are all pretty straight forward ad involve backing a golfer to win an event or to place. This means that Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater is one of the few genuine tipster services I have seen from Winning Information Network that really doesn’t require a lot of effort. In fact, given that Ian Hudson also notifies you of where you can get the odds that he recommends, Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater is almost no effort whatsoever.
The staking plan for Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater is surprising for a product from the Betfan group in so much as they are generally just 1 point bets. There are the odd occasion where three points are advised, however this is a long way from staking 5 points per bet. This is rather important as I will now explore.
The whole premise of Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater is that you don’t win often, but when you do you win big. Winning Information Network openly acknowledge that this is a key strategy for the service. Unfortunately, this has led to no published strike rate however it is rather straight forward to create some context for how Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater is performing. The last two months have shown consistent losses with June showing just 5 place bets coming in. May didn’t even have those place bets.
How does the product work?
There is plenty of information made available on what the process behind Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater is and it certainly makes for an interesting read. Essentially there are two factors at play, both of which are inextricably linked. The first is the experience of Ian Hudson. Winning Information Network call him “one of the best sports betting guru’s in the business”. With an alleged 15 years of experience working in online sports betting in some capacity as well, this may be with good reason. This includes some prestigious positions with a number of major media publications.
Naturally the focus for Ian Hudson is golf, hence the name of the service. In terms of what Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater actually entails, during his time working in sports media he has developed his own ratings system for the sport. These are based around a number of different parameters however there are three main ones that are at play. These are course form, current form and skills profile.
By feeding these elements into a proprietary system, a spreadsheet will provide selections that will ultimately be sent out to Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater subscribers. For example, some golfers may be more accurate which is favourable on one course, whilst powerhouses may be better on another. All of this is key to finding potential winners.
What is the initial investment?
At the time of writing, Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater is not too expensive with a 28 day (monthly) subscription costing just £30. This is a decent price, especially compared to other products that Winning Information Network have put out recently. If you want to extract further value from Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater, you can also sign up for a quarterly subscription which costs just £60 and runs for 90 days.
As is the case with all products from within the Betfan group there is no real money back guarantee in place unfortunately. That having been said, the team do say that they do review refund requests and where they feel it is warranted, this may be given.
What is the rate of return?
Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater has been proofed since the start of 2017 and during this period it has produced an overall profit of 97.7. This is down rather significantly from a peak profit of 178.85 points. According to Winning Information Network, one of the main selling points of Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater is an ROI of “almost 90%” (actually 87.56%). Unfortunately, if you were to go back and recalculate this following the two months of losses, I would expect this number to be substantially less impressive.
Conclusion
Frankly, I am rather disappointed that Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater has performed as it has because I genuinely wanted Ian Hudson to perform. In fact, I can’t help but feel that somebody with the background that he has should perhaps be performing a little better. Whilst I can appreciate that the methodology behind Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater means that it is always going to be a little bit up and down, there is also a limit to this.
Whilst I am more than happy to acknowledge that Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater has produced a long term profit, this isn’t always enough. In this case, a consistent loss of almost 80 points means that if you had started with a betting bank of 100 points, you would be down £60 and potentially as much as an additional £800 if you were using £10 stakes.
It is a shame that Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater has (for want of a better phrase) turned out as it has because it has been a long time since I have seen a tipster that I thought had potential. Unfortunately, as I have seen far too often, it is not the way that tips are identified that is the problem but the methodology. Waiting for a big win to come in can be viable, but only if you are actually capable of pulling those wins in on a consistent basis. In the case of Ian Hudson’s Golf Rater, I just don’t see that see that consistency being there short term enough to keep it profitable in the long term. Given the expense that is involved, I simply can’t see this being a profitable option in my opinion.
