Race Spy is anew to market horse racing tipster service which is operated by James Gordon. He claims that he is able to produce some very substantial profits through his approach to betting.
Introduction to Race Spy
It’s sometime difficult to know how to introduce a service. But in the case of Race Spy, it is quite simple. James Gordon claims “Profiting on the Horse Racing isn’t hard”. Which of course anybody who is actually involved with horse racing betting will tell you that this is pretty much BS. Profiting isn’t impossible. Don’t get me wrong. And there are plenty of people out there who make money through horse racing.
By and large, you have to put work in somewhere. Money doesn’t just fall into your lap. And yet, that is what James Gordon is implying is the case with his service, Race Spy. In fact, his claims are very substantial. And with that in mind, you could very easily look at this and get excited. And I wouldn’t necessarily blame you. I’ll come to this a little later on, but the headlining claim is “£2,163 Profit In June Betting On Only 38 Races”.
That is no small feat. But as is so often the case with the myriad of tipster services that I look at, there are a lot of questions that surround James Gordon’s claims. And actually when you really start to break things down, everything to do with Race Spy isn’t quite how it is sold. So let’s jump right into this and see whether or not this is actually worthwhile.
What Does Race Spy Offer?
Honestly, it is rather difficult to know where to begin with Race Spy. This all boils down to the fact that really, it isn’t necessarily a typical tipster service. In fact, there are a number of elements that at least present themselves as interesting. But ultimately, I plant to start this by talking about the logistical elements.
As far as the logistics go, Race Spy is very much what you would expect. That is to say, you are getting a seemingly daily horse racing tipster service. I say seemingly because whilst James Gordon does provide some information for his service, it is ultimately pretty limited. And this information combined with what I have seen suggests that it will be daily. But I have some doubts about the long term future of this (but I will come to all of this later on).
Selections are sent out directly via email (again, all very typical) however, the content contained within them doesn’t contain too much in the way of information. One thing that James Gordon does that is commendable is the fact that selections are sent out the evening before racing. This means that, as he points out, you are able to get better odds on those selections.
With that said, don’t expect a lot of advice in this regard. Realistically, if I were to follow Race Spy, I would definitely be looking to take advantage of an odds comparison service. The fact is that despite the claims made about how often you will win, I don’t anticipate this actually being a high strike rate service. As such, every winning bet counts.
Now, when it comes to the betting side of Race Spy, there are much stricter rules. Each day you will typically receive 3 different selections (James Gordon says that there are occasions where there will only be 2). However, they will all be for the same race. This is integral to how the service works as I will explore later.
One of these bets are advised as a win bet whilst the other two are to be backed each way. This means that you aren’t simply restricting your potential winners to just one horse. Otherwise, you’d just be throwing money away. And, as you would probably expect when you are betting each way on a frequent basis, you are typically dealing with longer odds.
This is a very substantial element of Race Spy. When you look at the limited evidence that James Gordon provides for he service odds range from 3/1 going as high as 50/1. And whilst these are very much extremes and outliers, the fat is that you are still dealing with averages around 11/2 up to 25/1. Once again, these odds are a key part to making this service make some sense.
Another key element here are the stakes involved, and this is where I start to struggle a little with Race Spy. James Gordon frames his approach as betting 3 points per day (typically). In his case, he says that he bets £20 on each win bet and £10 each way on the other bets. This of course minimises your hypothetical outlay and risk. In theory.
The thing is, you don’t really get any advice on a betting bank. Now if I am staking 3 points per day on high odds bets, I would probably expect to have a bank of 150 points. That allows a maximum drawdown of 50 bets which in theory should weather any losing streaks. But really, this is definitely advice that James Gordon should be discussing.
Finally, I want to talk about the strike rate, or rather, the claimed strike rate. You see, James Gordon says that 75% of bets advised through Race Spy win. By which of course, he means that they had a horse place. Honestly though, I just don’t know how much weight I’d put behind these claims as there are a number of things that make me believe all may not be as claimed.
How Does Race Spy Work?
At the core of Race Spy’s service is a very simple concept. You are betting on multiple horses per race in order to maximise the chances of winning. Fundamentally, this is a similar approach to a Dutching Bet. However, there are some differences, namely that very rigid staking plan of 1 point per bet.
In theory, this all makes sense. However, I do think that in order for any service to work which involves backing multiple bets per race to be successful, there has to be a decent strategy in place. And that is rather where I believe that Race Spy starts to break down a bit.
You see, James Gordon doesn’t once talk about what his selection process entails. Really, what he says is almost distinctly vague which is something that I actually find to be quite telling. All that we are really told is that it involves finding the right races and looking for horses that are overpriced. Unfortunately, that is about it.
The fact of the matter is that much of Race Spy seems to be built on the notion that value is good, and people like a value based service. I wouldn’t disagree with these statements, but I don’t believe what James Gordon says offers a lot of insight into his approach to betting either. And given the lack of proofing that is provided, you can’t even really get a long term idea of what to expect.
What is the Initial Investment?
There are two options if you want to sign up to Race Spy. The first of these is a 2 month subscription which is priced at £40 plus VAT. This, we are told, represents a discount on the “actual value” of £60. A number that is entirely unsubstantiated.
Alternatively, James Gordon says that you can sign up for Race Spy on a 6 monthly subscription. This is priced at £87 (again, plus VAT) which is a seemingly huge discount on the “actual value” of £180.
What is incredibly interesting about both of these options is that they both come with a full 30 day money back guarantee. This is backed up by the fact that Race Spy is being sold through Clickbank. However, James Gordon fails to mention this anywhere in the sales material. I’ll be quite honest here and say that this is rather concerning.
What is the Rate of Return?
There is one key number that is used in order to sell Race Spy and that is a claimed income of £2,163 in just 38 races. Using the £20 stakes that James Gordon uses for each bet, this means that you are seemingly looking at a points profit of 108.15 points which frankly is highly questionable. Especially because when you look at everything, there is just one example of these kinds of results.
Conclusion for Race Spy
Like so many of the questionable tipster services that I look at, Race Spy really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I will be entirely blunt about this. And it isn’t just in one area either. There are so many claims that James Gordon make that I simply don’t believe.
First things first, let’s talk about those results. Let’s be honest, they are the reason that most people are going to look at Race Spy. And do you know what, rightly so. More than two grand in a month is bloody good going. 100 points is even better. But I have questions as to whether or not James Gordon has actually won this amount.
Here’s the thing. When it all boils down to it, there isn’t really a whole lot of evidence backing up the claimed results for Race Spy. The best case scenario is that the results are genuine. But without wider context, one can only assume that they are cherry picked or anomalous. But all of that just doesn’t seem likely to me.
Because here’s the thing. If James Gordon were winning half as consistently as he implies he is, full proofing would be provided. I can see no reason not to show this outsider of two scenarios. He either hasn’t kept proofing, which would cast doubt over his professionalism in my opinion. Or there haven’t been successful bets in the long term.
Now what really makes me think that it might be the latter are two things that independently might not be too obvious. But combined, paint a pretty good picture. And the first one is something that I feel most people wouldn’t consider. Namely, James Gordon’s lack of information on a selection process.
The guy does nothing to suggest that he can pick winning horses. Everything is built on this notion that the staking plan and bets chosen are enough. They aren’t to me. In fact, I find this blatant obfuscation of information to only be indicative of one thing, and that is a lack of knowledge.
Secondly, I think it is very questionable the way the money back guarantee is handled. Or rather, I should say the way that it isn’t handled. Because James Gordon has no reason at all not to talk about how this is offered on Race Spy, other than the fact that he doesn’t want customers to know it is there. Why wouldn’t you want this? Because you want to avoid refunds.
This is somewhat backed up by the minimum subscription length of 60 days. I have seen more than enough tipsters do this kind of thing, only to encourage people to stay on. They’ve just hit a bad spell, things will turn around, etc.
And once the period has elapsed where you can get a refund from Clickbank, those services very quickly start to dry up. I’m not necessarily saying that this is definitively the case, but one can’t help but suspect that it may be.
So, with all of that in mind, I don’t think it’s a big decision to say that I really wouldn’t recommend Race Spy. The truth is that there is very little here that I believe is genuine. And when that is the case, it just doesn’t really warrant investing your time and money in a service, because ultimately, you will likely just end up losing out.
