The Professor’s Formula is a horse racing tipster service which is provided under the Tipster Street umbrella of tipsters. It aims to provide profitable betting for subscribers with a focus on the flat season.
What does the product offer?
One thing that I like about Tipster Street as a tipster stable is that they don’t mess about trying to sell you on choice statistics to make a service look great. They provide factual information which you can easily use to establish the quality of a service. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always mean that the services that they offer are quality as such. A service that arguably falls under this category, as I will explore, is The Professor’s Formula.
First things first, what exactly are you getting into here? As a service The Professor’s Formula has been with Tipster Street for a rather considerable amount of time (starting in September 2015) over which it has had a bit of a mixed bag of results. In terms of how it operates, The Professor’s Formula doesn’t have any problems. Selections are issued via email on a near daily basis, and these are usually sent out between 9 and 11 am giving you time to place bets (all of which are back to win). One thing that does stand out however is that The Professor’s Formula tips to Betfair SP.
As a service, The Professor’s Formula has two main lines of focus. The first of these is flat racing which being seasonal means that the overall volume of selections can drop off. The second thing that is covered is all weather racing so you can still bet through the winter months. Where this does have a knock on effect however is in the overall volume of selections with an average of just 24 selections per month.
In terms of a staking plan, when selections are emailed out, subscribers will be advised how much to place on each bet. This will be somewhere between 1 and 3 points on a bet from a recommended starting bank of 100 points. Interestingly, Tipster Street used to historically favour lower stakes however there has recently been a shift to staking 2-3 points with just 12 out of 55 bets for last month being 1 point.
This only really leaves the strike rate to consider in terms of numbers and at first glance, this seems respectable enough. Tipster Street have guided The Professor’s Formula to an average strike rate of 30% which seems perhaps only a little below average. This doesn’t however paint a full picture however as at the time of writing, the last profitable month that The Professor’s Formula had was November last year. This is a rather worrying trend and actually accounts for a large loss as I will look at later in this review.
How does the product work?
Unfortunately, there is very little information on what the selection process for The Professor’s Formula entails. This is something that would generally raise a flag, however given the current run of results I can’t help but feel that it is just plain concerning. I am all for the fact that a tipster shouldn’t give up their selection process, however as a consumer I also expect to be able to have some idea of what I am buying into.
All that Tipster Street say about the selection process is that The Professor’s Formula uses a “special formula” and that the service is “selective”. To me however, this isn’t dissimilar to a television advertising itself as “displaying images through emitting light” and having an “audio component”. The truth is that when a service has performed as badly as The Professor’s Formula has recently, you should have enough information to make an informed decision.
What is the initial investment?
There are a number of different subscription options available for The Professor’s Formula including an initial trial period. This costs £3.79 and runs for 30 days when you sign up for a monthly or a quarterly subscription. Tipster Street are asking £14.95 and £29.95 respectively for these subscriptions. You can also choose to contact Tipster Street directly to discuss “lifetime rates” for The Professor’s Formula as well as sign up for a VIP club at a cost of £59.95 per month which gives access to all their tipsters.
Payment for The Professor’s Formula is handled directly through Paypal and as you would expect, and is typical for the industry, there is no money back guarantee in place.
What is the rate of return?
The rate of return for The Professor’s Formula is somewhat disappointing, to say the least. Technically speaking, since the service launched, it is still in profit to the tune of 207.66 points at the end of August this year. At the end of November 2016 however, the service would have stood at 379.82 points. This means that in the last 9 months The Professor’s Formula has lost an eye watering 172.15 points. Furthermore, September is shaping up to be a loss as well pending something miraculous.
Conclusion
In reviewing The Professor’s Formula it allows me to open up a bit of a larger question and that is how much faith you are supposed to have in long term results. Anybody who is involved with a tipster will tell you that losses are inevitable and that any service can have its up periods and its downs. But how far can you realistically take this approach?
In the longest possible terms, The Professor’s Formula is profitable and has made an average of 100 points per year (give or take). Not a phenomenal amount, but for a service that is so inexpensive, this could arguably be forgiven. Despite this, in the last 9 months it has nearly halved this profit and is very deeply into the red as I see it. There are 3 quarterly periods at which you could have joined The Professor’s Formula and made a loss and that is before you consider your subscription costs as well.
Some people may say that up is up, and that Tipster Street may turn the service around but I am not one of them. A few months of losses on the trot I consider to be a minor cause for concern, but 9? It is simply unacceptable. To pick up my TV analogy from earlier, you wouldn’t pay for a TV that only played static for 9 months of the year, so why would you accept this from a tipster service?
In spite of this, I am actually rather disappointed because I wanted The Professor’s Formula to succeed. There is a decent recipe here which would make it a genuinely solid competitor for those who are looking for that quick and easy second income. In fact, the mere fact that you are betting to BSP means that you could automate The Professor’s Formula and simply have a bot run things for you once you receive selections. On top of this, there is that historic profit which I would love to see come back.
The honest truth is that if I’d reviewed this product a year ago I’d have probably been singing its praises. It won’t make you rich, but it might well pay for a holiday or a really great Christmas without breaking the bank. There was definitely bags of value for money to be had.
As it stands however, there is nothing here that I can really recommend. I think that you will struggle to find a tipster service for similar money to The Professor’s Formula now, but it is worth paying more if you are going to make money and there is no sign of this on the horizon with this service which is a massive shame.
