The 26K Challenge is a new to market horse racing tipster service which is operated by one Sean Hopkins. He claims that he can turn a small betting bank into a rather substantial one, supposedly with little effort.
Introduction to The 26K Challenge
I don’t really know what’s going on in the world of betting at the moment, but it seems like everything is a challenge. And I don’t say that to mean that it’s hard work. It’s all about “gamifying” your betting. Starting with a small amount and turning it into massive profits. Now inherently, there isn’t anything wrong with this. But it should be noted that this kind of approach is typically the opposite to what most serious bettors will advise you do.
All of that is quite important to establish, because what I am about to say next will really make it sound like I’m just singing the praises of Sean Hopkins. You see, he is claiming that his service, The 26K Challenge, can make you £26,000 within a year. Now I have my doubts about this, but it is also very difficult to ignore this kind of claim. Especially because you can get started with the betting equivalent of pennies.
Of course, it is very easy to make this kind of claim from your office. In fact, one can claim pretty much anything that you want to. All of which brings me to the real question that surrounds his, and that is whether or not The 26K Challenge can actually deliver. The fact is, Sean Hopkins talks a good game. But that doesn’t necessarily equate to actually making you money.
What Does The 26K Challenge Offer?
Honestly, it almost feels like this kind of thing is just a template at this point. I know for a fact that I’ve seen about five examples of services just like The 26K Challenge over the last six months as a minimum. And unfortunately, there has been practically no difference at all from one service to another.
The 26K Challenge doesn’t look like it is going to beak that mould either. Now don’t get me wrong there are always going to be limits to this kind of thing. Especially when you are dealing with horse racing. Let’s not mince our words here. There are only very limited markets within the sport. However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t also profit to be made from horse racing.
Now in the case of The 26K Challenge, most of what you are dealing with here is a pretty basic affair as far as tipsters go. Logistically, Sean Hopkins delivers pretty much the bare minimum of what I would expect. This of course means selections being sent out directly to subscribers via email. All that you really have to do is place the bets advised.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a massive amount of information provided here which can make it difficult to know whether you are getting the most out of the service. One of the things that is worth noting about The 26K Challenge is that bets typically seem to be issued on the morning of racing. Now this does have a number of problems getting bets placed, especially if you are working a 9-5 job.
It also has an impact on the odds side of things as you miss out on the best value opportunities. Personally, if I were following The 26K Challenge long term, I would definitely want to take advantage of an odds comparison website. At least that way, I could know that I was getting the best possible odds for me.
Where things do start to get interesting is when you talk about the bets that you will be placing. Because The 26K Challenge is focused on taking advantage of accumulators in order to maximise the profit potential. Furthermore, Sean Hopkins says that he bets in such a way that you get paid, even if all the selections don’t win. Which of course means some of the more exotic accumulators out there .
One area that I do want to touch on a little is the odds thing. Because honestly, you are dealing with pretty normal numbers for accas. In and of itself, this doesn’t necessarily need to be a problem. However, when you are trying to exponentially increase your betting bank week on week this kind of thing takes on significant level of importance.
Honestly, this is all rather interesting as a look at some of the affiliate marketing material that I have received suggests that odds of 3,000/1 are possible. It literally states “Some bets have turned into £3000 profit, from a single £1 bet”. At no point have I seen anything that comes close to this. The odds I have seen have been a long way from this figure.
In terms of the volume of bets, well, once again everything is pretty much what you would expect. Sean Hopkins doesn’t seem to particularly favour either a particularly selective or high volume approach. At the very least, this does mean that The 26K Challenge is pretty manageable in terms of the time you have to invest.
At this point, there ae only really two things that are left to discuss. The first one is the strike rate. Unfortunately, I can say that there isn’t a lot to report here. Sean Hopkins makes no real claims in terms of this number. Nor is there any proofing provided for previous years that we can look at to get an idea of what to expect for this year.
The final thing to talk about is the staking plan. This is something that is incredibly important to The 26K Challenge. First things first, I want to talk about the actual stakes. Because in the sales material, you are told that you can get started betting just 10p per bet. We are also told that you can expect to stake as much as 26% of your betting bank on a given day. That is… Well, it’s a lot.
Especially when you factor in that it is recommended you can start with a betting bank of just £100. In theory, that all looks pretty reasonable. But I don’t really see how this these numbers really add up, a topic that I will discuss a little later.
How Does The 26K Challenge Work?
At the core of The 26K Challenge is, not surprisingly, the staking plan that is in place. Sean Hopkins favours a really quite aggressive compounding approach. This is of course necessary in order to generate the claimed results. Let’s be honest, you aren’t going to get to £26,000 from £100 without these kinds of states.
As well as this, the approach of those accumulator bets is also pretty fundamental to the service. I’ve seen this kind of thing before and on paper, it makes perfect sense. Smaller accas come in and ensure that your betting bank is “kept afloat” and then those big winners bump up the profit. I am sure Sean Hopkins would argue that this is a gross oversimplification of his process, but it does do a good job of explaining things in a straight forward way.
But the single most important element of any tipster service is the selection process. This is something that isn’t discussed at all for The 26K Challenge. Literally all that Sean Hopkins says on the matter is “I only bet on horse races with a favourable outcome…”. Well, you’d hope so. In fact, you’d hope that any tipster is aiming to do that.
What isn’t displayed at any point is an understanding of horse racing. Sean Hopkins makes no real effort to explain why he is betting on certain things and honestly, the whole set up of this concerns me greatly. As far as I’m concerned The 26K Challenge might as well be based around hanging up The Racing Post and simply throwing darts at the wall.
What is the Initial Investment?
We are told that the actual value of The 26K Challenge is £99 for the year. Honestly, that is seemingly very cheap working out at £8.25 per month. However, Sean Hopkins is claiming that he is offering a 50% discount on this which means that you can actually get access for a one time cost of just £49 (plus VAT).
Rather interestingly, there is a full 60 day money back guarantee in place for The 26K Challenge, however, this isn’t something that is mentioned in the sales material. This is backed up by Clickbank who process the payment for the service and in theory, you shouldn’t have any problems claiming this (so long as you don’t serially ask for refunds).
What is really noteworthy about The 26K Challenge though is that Sean Hopkins says if by the end of the year, you haven’t made £26,000, then he will give you another year of access for free. Of course, this sounds incredibly generous, however, I am actually rather sceptical of all of this for reasons that I will discuss a little later.
What is the Rate of Return?
By this point, you can probably figure out what the income claims for The 26K Challenge boil down to. Start with £100, make a minimum of £26,000 by the end of the year, According to Sean Hopkins, it really is that simple. And we are also told that this number is scalable, meaning that if you started with £1,000, you could hypothetically have made yourself more than quarter of a million quid. However, there is no real evidence backing these numbers up.
Conclusion for The 26K Challenge
I can entirely see the appeal of things like The 26K Challenge. There is a lot to be said for being able to get started betting with a small amount of money. This applies doubly so when you are talking about making such a huge amount of profit from that small initial betting bank. But the big question that really hangs over something like this is whether or not it can deliver.
The long and short of this is that I don’t really believe that Sean Hopkins can do that. There are a few different reasons for this. First things first, I want to talk about some of the things that… Honestly, just don’t quite seem to add up.
For example, starting with 10p bets (which are mentioned in Sean Hopkins’s own affiliate marketing), it would take you a ridiculously long time to get to £26,000. Even with compounding. For example, if a £100 betting bank means those 10p bets, and we have to get our bank to £500 to increase to 50p bets. How long do you really think it will take to get to £1,000 at which point you will still only be betting £1 per bet.
Which brings me to the odds. Yes, there are some big bets advised here if everything comes in. Is that going to happen? Well, who knows is the short answer. Because despite having supposedly operated The 26K Challenge for two years already, there is no proofing provide. Services that I have looked at that have a similar premise to this tend to err towards lower strike rates, a necessity of the betting approach.
Not that this stops Sean Hopkins also claiming in big bold letters that he has a 100% success rate. By which he means that he has supposedly made this minimum target over the past two years. Of course, you are just taking his word for this. And that is where things really start to fall apart in my eyes.
Because a lot of The 26K Challenge is just taking Sean Hopkins’s word for things. That he actually has a selection process for identifying bets. Sure there is. Just take his word for it. Because there certainly isn’t any evidence at all that suggests that this is the case.
That you’ll get access to free selections next year if The 26K Challenge doesn’t make £26,000 this year. Unfortunately, you’ll have to go ahead and take Sean Hopkins’s word for it, because that is all that you really have here. Which might not be a problem if I believed that this service will still be around in a year. Which I don’t.
The fact of the matter is this. Everything related to The 26K Challenge just seems like it’s too good to be true. Which would be fine if there was anything to back these claims up. But personally, I don’t count a few questionable Betfair screenshots as being evidence that Sean Hopkins will deliver.
Honestly, having looked at The 26K Challenge, I feel like it has only raised more questions than it has answered. That isn’t the best place to start things. And there isn’t really anything that demonstrates that a long term profit is plausible, whether that is the full £26,000 over a year or even much less than this.
As such, not even the relatively low price can save The 26K Challenge. Because honestly, it isn’t even like this is that cheap. Sure, £49 plus VAT isn’t a massive amount to pay out. But it is still pretty substantial. Especially in light of the fact that Sean Hopkins goes out of his way to not talk about your right to a refund.
Everything is just… Well, frankly, it’s just a bit… Off. With all of this in mind, especially given that initial outlay, I just don’t think that I can bring myself to recommend The 26K Challenge. This is one to avoid as far as I’m concerned.
Tried this system. Absolute rubbish. Mostly. All accumulator bets ; Heinze Accumulators- 57 bets @10p each = £5.70 ,
6 selections never had a bet where all six horses won or were placed . THIS IS A SURE WAY TO LOSE YOUR MONEY VERY QUICKLY.