The Man in the Know is a horse racing tipster service which is operated through the Inbetsment platform. This allows anybody to offer tips, however The Man in the Know is a seemingly stand out example.
Introduction to The Man in the Know
There are a lot of larger websites out there that allow individuals to offer their tips on a subscription basis. These can typically offer much larger profits than many of the more typical tipster services, however they also come with their own caveats.
Typically speaking, you can expect to pay a lot more for these services (as is the case with The Man in the Know, as I will explore later), they can also come with somewhat erratic staking plans (which isn’t so much the case with The Man in the Know).
Now I have never really had any dealings with Inbetsment and their services before, however the results that The Man in the Know has produced more than warrant a look in my opinion.
The claims suggest that there are massive amounts of profit to be had and there is a considerable amount of evidence to back this claim up. With this in mind, is this a service worth deviating from more conventional channels?
What Does The Man in the Know Offer?
One o the first things to explain about The Man in the Know is that the service operates entirely through Inbetsment. When you subscribe to one of their tipsters, selections are made available in two different ways.
The first of these is through their app (which is available on iOS and Android) or alternatively you can choose to receive an email. In the case of The Man in the Know, the selections are typically made available the evening before a race.
The standard of content on the tips is pretty strong with all of the information that you would expect from a tipster, including recommended bookmakers.
In terms of the bets themselves, The Man in the Know uses a selection of win and each way bets with little in the way of favour to one or the other. What is interesting and definitely of note is that on some occasions when the bets advised are each way, there will be multiple horses backed in the same race.
Seemingly this is all down to some larger plan, but as I will go into a little later, Inbetsment do not make their tipsters divulge huge amounts of information.
The bets that are advised through The Man in the Know have a range of odds, but by and large you can expect to be backing horses at middling to longer odds (the average odds are supposedly 25.05 but I don’t see this as reflective of the larger picture).
I mentioned in my introduction that the staking plan for The Man in the Know is not so erratic. I say this having looked at tipsters through other services similar to Inbetsment that have advised staking as many as 100 points on a single bet.
Here we are free of this kind of absurdity however that doesn’t mean that The Man in the Know can’t involve high stakes. All bets are advised at between 1 and 5 points, with the Inbetsment page saying that the recommended maximum is 0.5% of your bankroll per unit. Sticking to this maximum can definitely add up, even if it is optional.
The final thing that I want to discuss is the strike rate. The Man in the Know has been operational for a considerable period of time and as such, there is a lot of proofing to go with this (going all the way back to 2014).
Inbetsment show a strike rate for the service of 27% over this timescale with an additional 3% of bets deemed void. This represents a pretty solid result all things considered.
How Does The Man in the Know Work?
In terms of how the tipster behind The Man in the Know makes his selections, there is unfortunately no information provided. This is often the case when it comes to platforms like Inbetsment that rely on a large volume of tipsters each paying small amounts of commission in order to tip through them.
As such, there is little in the way of accountability as it is a bit of a “throw enough at the wall and see what sticks approach”.
Now, typically speaking I think that it is reasonable for a tipster to provide basic insight into their selection process. Nobody is expecting anyone to give the game away, but I do feel that punters should be able to make an informed decision. Under the circumstances though, I don’t think that this really counts too much against The Man in the Know as a service.
There is proofing going all the way back to 2014 and you can easily use this to get a good understanding of what to expect. Combine this with a quite remarkable looking consistency on the profits, and I think The Man in the Know has earned a pass here.
What is the Initial Investment?
If you wanted to follow The Man in the Know, there are a few different options which are available. The first of these is a monthly subscription (every 30 days) which is priced at €85 (around £75). Alternatively, you can sign up for 90 days and receive a 20% discount.
This still means paying €204 per quarter however (around £180). This makes The Man in the Know one of the most expensive services I’ve looked at for some time. Furthermore, it should be noted that Inbetsment don’t appear to offer any refund policy on their services.
What is the Rate of Return?
Since July 2014, The Man in the Know has made a profit of almost 2300 points using the recommended staking plan. Whilst I can appreciate that this has happened over a time period, even by the start of July this year the service had averaged more than 500 points per year.
That is a number that I think any tipster would be more than happy with. The yield also stands at 21.8%, again, a very strong number, especially given the time scale that it has been maintained over.
Conclusion on The Man in the Know
I have looked at a few individual tipsters on these Euro tipster sites (as I will now refer to them as) and there is an inevitability to them that borders on sameness. By and large, the tipsters can make some phenomenal amounts of money, as is the case with The Man in the Know.
They have been doing it for some time and because of the platforms, there is always plenty of proofing. They look like a solid option, but they are always marred by similar problems as well.
First of all, there is the pricing. I don’t know how much people pay for a decent tipster on the continent, but for what Inbetsment are asking for The Man in the Know, I could recommend you a full tipster portfolio. There is just no way of trying to view The Man in the Know positively.
£75 is just a very large amount of money. Whilst I can appreciate that the amount of profit potential offsets this somewhat, I am not certain that it necessarily does it enough to warrant the extra cost (unless you are in a position where money is no option, however I don’t believe that this will be the case for most readers).
The other problem that I have with services like The Man in the Know is that the tipsters are only really accountable to themselves. What I mean by this is that Inbetsment get their cut, but they are merely a broker of sorts.
When you look at UK based operations like Betfan or Betting Gods, they manage their tipsters. As such, even when there is no refund policy in place, you know that tipsters report to somebody. I have see tipsters on these services simply drop off entirely, and I often find myself wondering what has happened there etc.
With all of this in mind, I don’t think that I would recommend The Man in the Know. I don’t think that it is necessarily a bad service. The results more than speak for themselves in this regard, however I don’t believe that it is necessarily worth the money either. The fact of the matter is that the tipster market is a competitive one, and you have to really justify your money if you want to charge £75 per month.
I just don’t see how The Man in the Know does this though.
