Tipster History

In the past, tips were exchanged and traded, but today, thanks to the Internet and pay phone lines, they can exchange for money, and many operate websites. Some of them are free, & some need a subscription.

In the past, tipping was associated with horse racing but can apply to any sport where odds offer. The loose cultural attitude towards gambling in the UK has increasingly resulted in elements of gambling promoting alongside media coverage.

System

Tips in gambling are bets suggested by a third party believed to know more about the subject than the bookmaker who set the initial odds. (The bookmaker will change his odds according to the bet amount but has to start with a blank book, where he forms an initial price to encourage betting.) So the tipster thinks the tip is different. Still, Tip bookmakers price too low (or too high) based on absolute risk: this is a form of financial derivatives, as the tipper himself does not risk his own money but sells his expertise to others in an attempt to “beat the bookies “gamblers.”

Tipster has to overcome the margins that bookmakers’ trading teams integrate into sports betting odds and gain an additional edge to realize long-term profits.

Role

Tipster is sometimes a sport-specific insider who can provide bettors with non-public information. Other tipsters provide equally impressive results by analyzing commonly accessible information.

Some tipsters use statistically based estimates of game outcomes and compare that estimate with the bookmaker’s odds. If there is a gap between the estimated odds and the bookmaker’s odds, the tipster is said to have established ‘value.’ In contrast, someone who bets at such odds considers having determined ‘value’ when they are not a certainty but a ‘book gap’ Be a “value bettor.” The tipster advises the bettor to place a bet when the value is found.

A tip considered a racing certainty, almost entirely sure to be accurate, is also called a nap, and tipsters in newspapers often mean “nap.”

United Kingdom

Newspapers

Most national newspapers in the UK employ tipsters or columnists who offer horse racing tips. Instead of picking a Tip for every game on a given date, the usual protocol provides a Nap and nb choice.

A nap (derived from the card game Napoleon) indicates that this is the tipster’s most confident choice for the day.

Nb = “Next best” indicates another choice highly rated by the prompter.

Both types of picks consider when calculating the tipper’s running profit and loss figure, which indicates how far an individual’s profit and loss would go if they backed each tip with a certain level of stake (£1).

Television

The popular Channel 4 TV show Morningline, when it aired in 2016, previewed the weekend horse racing on a Saturday morning, culminating with a panel of experts and guests offering their picks for the day. In 2017, ITV took over coverage of horse racing in the UK, and they have a program similar to what Channel 4 calls “The Opening Show.” It usually airs on ITV4 at 9.30 am on Saturdays, hosted by Oli Bell. Sky Sports News has a similar preview section, including expert team analysis and betting odds about Saturday’s Premier League fixture.

Radio

UK National Radio 4’s Today show usually includes some racing tips in its brief sports section (Gary Richardson is the usual presenter, although others fill in when he’s away). Still, these aren’t taken too seriously (in fact, Tips provided by a well-known newspaper tip): But the program tracks Richardson’s performance as a tip for entertainment value: he’s usually “down” but occasionally “up” after tipping correctly for the long term.

Scams

Premium Tip Service charges a fee for receiving one or more tips over the phone, Internet, or by mail. More reputable companies will keep accurate records of their tipping activity, enabling potential customers to evaluate their past performance and thus predict possible future implementation. There is much room for less reputable businesses to falsify these numbers or even to attract new customers. In 2008, the Office of Fair Trading said that between £1m and £4m were lost yearly to informant scams in the UK alone.

Derren Brown’s Channel 4 show ‘The System’ reveals one method of tipping. By giving different hints to different people (people who don’t know each other) in a horse race, one of them has to win (essentially a lottery). Winning bettors may then think they have gained a real insight into the game’s outcome from the tipster and may pay for subsequent tips.

Australia

Australia has led the way in the appearance of tipping contests to win prizes for signing up for virtual bets. Most of these games focus on Australian Rules football, but the term, which usually refers to footy tipping activity, now also includes football, rugby league, and rugby union. There are many such races in the UK, but most are related to the horse racing industry.

In theory, tipping in exchange for prizes in freerolls is a viable alternative to real money gambling. However, many will take the opposite view, arguing that it makes gambling more reachable to a broader audience by creating avenues that are considered safe. There is also much room for gamblers to use such tournaments as information to find good tips. Given the resource, some tournaments post the history of currently entered tips and the tipsters involved.

Internet

Internet forums increasingly use to share ideas and information within online communities. Many such forums exist in the gambling world to discuss opinions on events or offer advice and tips. While many in the gaming world see this as a way to earn their peers’ respect in an isolated profession, tipping services also use these areas to lure users into their premium programs.

Stocks and shares

While gambling is generally limited to sports betting or at least the service provided by bookmakers, the classification applies to stock investing, where the betting involves the price of a stock or commodity moving in a particular direction. Stock tips published in the financial sections of the media aim at casual investors, but their interrelationship and interests with the business sector have proven controversial.

The rise of spread betting as a financial derivative has blurred the distinction between Financial investment and gambling. Since winning bets are not taxed in the UK, but another form of investment may be subject to capital gains tax, there may be a “betting “Financial advantage.

Derivatives

Many newspapers and other betting journals (such as the Racing Post) track the tipsters of the major newspapers and look at them by assuming a nominal bet of £1 for each tip the tipster gives and calculating the theoretical payoff. How closely do the predictions match the actual results? Thus, informants can be “tipped” as excellent or bad.

So, it is possible to bet on whether the tipster’s Prediction is correct (instead of betting on the Prediction itself).

Other uses

Tipster is also used in the UK to inform journalists about potential news stories, especially those involving celebrities, usually in exchange for cash; or informants.