Raid the Bookies is a new to market horse racing tipster service that purports to be operated by an ex bookie, Paul Jenkins. Supposedly, his selections have proven incredibly lucrative.
Introduction to Raid the Bookies
Something that is always interesting to me when I look at a new service for the first time is the tone that the marketing material take. Because ultimately, I believe that this tells you quite a lot about what sort of experience you can expect. Sometimes, a tipster will talk infinitely about “long term profits”, and what that usually means is that they average less than 5 points per month. Other times you get it rammed down your throat that there is just so much money to be made following somebody. These rarely seem capable of delivering this though.
Anyway, that’s just a thought to keep in mind when looking at today’s review subject, Raid the Bookies. Because I’ll be very upfront and say that Paul Jenkins makes some truly quite incredible claims about the income potential of his service. We’re talking really serious life changing money. And furthermore, he seemingly guarantees this. That is a unique play, because as anybody with any experience with betting will be able to tell you, guarantees are very few and far between.
Honestly, all of this makes it look like you’re onto a winner, right? I certainly believe that is the image that Paul Jenkins wished to portray in his marketing. There is talk of quitting your job and paying off debt. There are pictures of a luxury mansion, sports car, and tropical looking beach. Raid the Bookies really tries to show off how much money you can supposedly make here. And as such, I am quite sceptical of it. Is that justified? Let’s find out.
What Does Raid the Bookies Offer?
In many respects, Raid the Bookies is an incredibly simple and straight forward tipster service. This, by no means, is a bad thing. I have said many times that the more complicated a tipster service is, the more that there is to go wrong. With that said, simplicity in and of itself isn’t necessarily a guaranteed positive. It has to be attached to something decent in order to have merit.
So, how exactly does this simplicity manifest itself? Well… in a lot of ways, if I’m really honest. First things first, let’s talk about how Paul Jenkins manages the service. I say manages, there is about the bare minimum applied in that respect. You can probably guess what this means for Raid the Bookies.
As is pretty much industry standard, selections are sent out directly via email. The contents of these is… well, it’s probably best described as minimal. Don’t get me wrong, Paul Jenkins provides enough information to get your bets placed, but that’s about it. Selections are also sent out on the morning of racing, sometimes quite late in the day. This means that Raid the Bookies can have some very narrow windows to get on top of things.
Now, something that I want to talk about here is the odds involved, or more specifically, the lack of insight that is available. This is incredibly important in my mind. Now, most of the bets that are advised will ultimately end up having rather middling odds. Something that I’ve come to expect from services like Raid the Bookies. However, you are rather left to your own devices.
This means that Paul Jenkins doesn’t provide you with insight about which bookies are offering what, where you can look for additional value. There is pretty much nothing. Because you are left to your own devices I would recommend using an odds comparison site. Obviously, it makes it easier to see where you are getting best odds, but also, if Raid the Bookies is going to have a chance, those best odds are a necessity.
In theory, none of this should be difficult of course. After all, everything I have seen of Raid the Bookies so far suggests that Paul Jenkins seems to lean exclusively on straight win bets. Furthermore, this doesn’t seem to be a particularly high volume service either. There only seems to be a small handful of bets each day. And by each day, you are seemingly betting every day.
At this point, you might be wondering how all of this stacks up in terms of your potential risk, the drawdown, etc. Well, this is a difficult thing to talk about, frankly. Because going back to that idea that there isn’t really a huge amount of information provided pertaining to Raid the Bookies, this applies to a number of element including staking.
You see, whilst Paul Jenkins talks a lot about how much you can expect to earn from his bets, he doesn’t tell you things like how much you should be betting. Personally, I would aim for level stakes of 1 point per bet. I really do anticipate some quite significant losing streaks (as I will come to shortly).
With that in mind, I would also want a very substantial betting bank. As a minimum, I would want 100 points. That should give you around a solid month of losing bets if you are staking 1 point per bet. Even in this circumstance though, I would say that you are still walking a fine line with Raid the Bookies.
This is all down to the simple fact that… well, I don’t believe you’ll win all that often. Paul Jenkins doesn’t make a specific claim about how often his tips will win, but there is a definite insinuation that you will win regularly. Various aspects of the marketing are definitely set up to project this notion, however, it is one that I am yet to experience with Raid the Bookies.
How Does Raid the Bookies Work?
One of the things that is quite interesting to me about Raid the Bookies is that whilst Paul Jenkins seem to go out of his way to avoid talking about his service, he talks a hell of a lot about how it supposedly works. And that “supposedly” is very deliberate. There is a strong narrative element to it all, and I am honestly quite sceptical about it all.
You see, in order to understand how Raid the Bookies all works, you have to go back to the fact that Paul Jenkins claims to have been a bookmaker. He says that he started out going straight from school for some work experience. After 12 years in the industry, we are told that he was the general manager of the betting shop and that he seemingly handled almost everything involved. This is all important, as is the fact that Paul Jenkins ended up getting sacked.
This is where things become interesting, because, we are told Paul Jenkins knew everything there was to know about betting. Of course, this is a bold claim, but it doesn’t stop it being make. Specifically, we are told that he understood “the methods, the tricks and the scams” and that “Often [he] would know the outcome of a fixed race as much as a whole week before the actual event”.
With all of this information in hand and supposedly still accessible due to contacts that Paul Jenkins maintained in the industry, he began betting himself. Eventually, this ended up becoming Raid the Bookies once he decided to sell his tips. It all has a certain ring to it. I am however hugely sceptical of these claims. Because ultimately, they don’t really tell you much of anything.
As impressive as it all sounds, we aren’t told what the selection process for Raid the Bookies is. There is no insight into these various contacts, how they are being used, and so on and so forth. Adding to this problematic situation is the fact that there is absolutely nothing in terms of evidence backing anything up either.
What is the Initial Investment?
If you want to sign up to Raid the Bookies there is just one option available. This is a one time payment of just £26.99 (plus VAT). Of note however is Paul Jenkins’s claim that he typically charges £126.99. This means a very substantial looking £100 saving. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that this initial price is actually genuine, and the whole thing seems to be nothing more than a crude marketing ploy.
Something that isn’t a ploy however is the 60 day money back guarantee. This is something that is backed up by the fact that Paul Jenkins is using Clickbank as the payment platform for the service. For those who aren’t familiar, they are a well known company and are generally pretty good at ensuring that refunds are provided.
What is the Rate of Return?
There are a lot of claims thrown about in terms of the income potential of Raid the Bookies. The headline makes reference to making more than £200,00 this year. Paul Jenkins also claims that you can make £4,000 per week. Backing this up is the only real evidence that we get for anything which is a supposed screenshot of a William Hill account with £4,328.98 a the balance.
Interestingly, at this point, I want to come back to that point about the profit potential being guaranteed. You see, Paul Jenkins states in the sales material for Raid the Bookies that “With these tips you’re GUARANTEED to make £4,000 per week – that’s more than TWO HUNDRED GRAND per year – tax free!”. Of course, it is incredibly interesting to me that there isn’t actually any information on how this is guaranteed or what that means.
Interestingly, all of this is presented without any context. Paul Jenkins says that all of this is “guaranteed”, but key information is missing. The fact is that it’s all well and good saying that these numbers are guaranteed. If you could stake enough per bet, you could hypothetically guarantee any amount of profit. But there is little hiding the fact that with Raid the Bookies you really are coming in blind to all of this.
Conclusion for Raid the Bookies
More than anything else, the single biggest issue with Raid the Bookies is the lack of anything resembling evidence. This is a huge issue with a lot of tipster services that I see in this day and age, but in this case, I think it is particularly pertinent. There are a few reasons for this really. First and foremost, there is how the service supposedly works.
You see, it is all well and good Paul Jenkins saying that his tips are based off things like inside information from his contacts as a bookie. But there are things within that narrative that simply don’t add up. For example, we are told that he knew about fixed races a week in advance. Despite the obvious fact that actual race fixing is incredibly unlikely in British horse racing, why would people be telling a small bookie this?
Because let’s not forget. If you believe the narrative, Paul Jenkins was working for a small independent bookmaker in Peterborough. This is a city that has more connection with greyhound racing than horses. In fact, the closest link is a small local(ish) town that has a small racecourse. For context on how small, it hosts just 2 major jump events per year. This is hardly Aintree or Ascot.
So, small town independent bookmaker manager is being fed inside information by the same people who will be betting against his books. Sure, that sounds reasonable… And here’s the thing, once you really begin to see how dubious these claims are Raid the Bookies starts to fall apart. Because there isn’t any suggestion that there is more of a system than this, and furthermore, Paul Jenkins provides no real proofing.
Of course, all of this means that you are effectively just taking the word of somebody on the internet that all of this is true. You’re taking their word that you can expect to see huge returns (let’s not forget that they’re guaranteed), that they have all of these insider contacts (which conveniently can’t be named or discussed), and yet, Paul Jenkins also lacks the ability to show any real winning bets from Raid the Bookies. There is simply… well, not a lot.
With all of this in mind, whilst Raid the Bookies may look like a fantastic value service, it is also one that I really can’t bring myself to recommend. Paul Jenkins provides nothing that actually backs up anything that he says, and the guarantees are effectively meaningless. The only arguable saving grace is that this is cheap (although even that is mired in bad marketing).
Here’s the thing with that though. Something that I often say is that if you don’t pay a lot for a bad service, you’re still paying for a bad service. And I don’t really think that there is anything more that you can say about that. There is definitely a lot wrong here, but that is just the icing on the cake.
