The Horse Man is the latest horse racing tipster service from Betfan. Selections come courtesy of the eponymous The Horse Man and to date, they have proven moderately profitable.
Introduction to The Horse Man
When I look at a new service, there are a number of things that can catch my eye. Sometimes it is a ridiculous sounding claim, like making a six figure income through betting. Sometimes it can be that the marketing simply uses a tasteless angle. With products rom Betfan, it is generally about the headlines, and The Horse Man delivers here. “An Embarrassingly Simple Way To Swipe That Smile From The Bookies Faces Once And For All!”.
This headline alone ticks a lot of boxes for a lot of bettors, simply by virtue of claiming to be simple and of course the implied profit that is there to be had. The thing about a well written headline however is that we are used to taking away an entire story just from that.
As anybody who still reads the papers will tell you though, there is often more than the big bold claim. With that in mind, let’s see whether or not The Horse Man is able to deliver.
What Does The Horse Man Offer?
The Horse Man comes in a shape that should be familiar to anybody who follows the betting world, namely, a daily horse racing tipster service. Selections are issued to subscribers directly via email as well as being uploaded to a member’s area on the Betfan website.
As you would expect from one of the largest tipster stables on the market, the quality is all very much present in the operations side of The Horse Man.
The actual bets that are advised through The Horse Man are quite interesting to me for reasons that I want to go into a little later. First of all, there is a very apparent focus on longer odds. Looking at the proofing from Betfan and choosing any random day, the lowest odds that I have seen are 6.0.
This is however rather extreme for The Horse Man. By and large, you are betting on horses with odds between the 10.0 and 20.0 mark (although you may still see higher numbers than this even). It is also interesting to note that The Horse Man is very selective in its approach. I don’t believe that there has been a single day in the proofing where more than 4 horses have been advised.
As you would expect from a service that favours much longer odds, this does have some impact on a few different areas of The Horse Man.
The first one that I want to look at is the staking plan. Typically, Betfan seem to prefer proofing their services to 5 points per bet (allowing for much higher claims of profit). In the case of The Horse Man however, there is a clear 1 point per bet staking plan. This is no bad thing as you won’t be winning very often, talking of which…
The strike rate is the last thing that I want to mention here. I accept that not winning often is part and parcel of a service like The Horse Man, but it should be noted how infrequently this will happen. The proofing from Betfan shows a strike rate of just 11.98%.
There have been just 26 winning selections since June 1st. In spite of this, there does seem to be some profit in The Horse Man as I will explore, but it is important to keep all of this in mind in my opinion.
How Does The Horse Man Work?
There is one thing that is missing from The Horse Man and if I am entirely honest, I do see it as a bit of a deal breaker. That is a lack of information on what the selection process for the service entails.
I understand entirely that whoever is behind the service probably didn’t want to give their secrets away, and Betfan don’t strike me as the kind of company who will push this matter if it means losing a profitable service. I can respect that to some degree.
The problem that I see is you are being asked to pay quite a lot of money for a service that doesn’t win very often. This is down to the fact that you are betting on horses with long odds, which is fair enough.
However I do feel that as a consumer, you should understand to some degree why those horse are chosen. Let us not forget that The Horse Man has a strike rate of just 12%. This could just as feasibly be luck as it is a clever selection process. This lack of insight is a pretty big miss from Betfan in my book.
What is the Initial Investment?
Betfan have made available two different options if you want to subscribe to The Horse Man. The first of these is sold as a monthly subscription, however I believe it is important to note that this is charged every 28 days at a cost of £37. As such, you will pay out this amount 13 times. Alternatively, you can sign up to The Horse Man on a quarterly basis which means paying out £77 every 90 days.
As is the case with all products from Betfan, there is no real money back guarantee in place. The team do however say that they will review refund requests.
What is the Rate of Return?
Using best odds guaranteed, The Horse Man would have produced a profit of 89.7 points. Over almost 4 months, this amounts to a pretty respectable figure of some 22.25 points as a monthly average.
This also represent an ROI of 39.17% which is a very strong figure which also demonstrates where The Horse Man can perform. When it comes to advised odds however, the numbers do drop quite significantly losing 20 points of profit.
Conclusion on The Horse Man, From Betfan
There is quite a lot about The Horse Man to like. The results are solid and ultimately, that is all that you can ask from a tipster service. If I am entirely honest, the results are plenty more impressive than they may look at a glance.
What you are looking at in very real terms is a monthly profit of £222.50 using £10 stakes. This isn’t an unrealistic amount to bet on level 1 point stakes at all. On top of this, the ROI is a very respectable figure.
There are some conditions to this however. One of the first things that I want to point out is that The Horse Man has not really been active for a huge amount of time. Betfan have only proofed the service for slightly less than 4 months.
This really isn’t a lot of time and I don’t believe that the results are necessarily indicative of the longer term profit potential for The Horse Man.
This brings me on to whether or not I believe there is value for money to be had here. The fact that Betfan charge for their services every 28 days does mean that you are really paying quite a lot for The Horse Man. With this in mind, I am not entirely certain that I see that value for money here.
Note that this isn’t because entirely because of the cost. It is, at least to some degree the fact that I still see The Horse Man as not really being well blooded as it were.
Here and now, I don’t believe that I would be particularly inclined to recommend The Horse Man. It is very early days and whilst it is apparent that The Horse Man has performed well, I can also see that there is a lot of potential for things to go wrong too.
This is a point that is well illustrated by the strike rate of just 12%. If in another 3 months, The Horse Man is still doing as well as it is now, then I would consider it a much healthier option.
