How we measure ourselves

Updated 30 July 2026 · Every test we've run on our own tips, including the ones that failed

The short version

Our own data says our tips do not beat the betting market. We've tested it repeatedly and the answer keeps coming back the same. We publish that here because a tipping service that can't show you its failed tests isn't showing you anything.

What we do offer is a written, reasoned verdict on every race, a published record you can check, and tests that were designed before we saw the answer. If you want someone claiming a system that beats the bookmakers, there is a great deal of that available elsewhere.

How the testing works

We write the test down first.Before looking at any result we record what we're measuring, on which races, and what number would count as success. That stops us finding a pattern after the fact and calling it a discovery.

We look once. Checking repeatedly until a run of luck makes the numbers look good is the most common way betting records are fooled, including by the people keeping them.

We compare against the price, not against zero. A 40% strike rate is meaningless without knowing what odds those horses were. Backing favourites produces a high strike rate and loses money. Every figure below is measured against what the market expected from the same horses at the same prices.

We publish it whichever way it lands. Everything on this page is a test we ran hoping for a different answer.

What we've tested

Does our model know anything about a horse that the price doesn't?

No. Its own read is worse than the market's.

249 races · market alone scored best · blending our model in made the forecast worse at every weight

We replayed 249 archived races with every price, fair-odds figure and market-movement note stripped out, and asked the model to rate every runner blind. Its blind opinion correlates only 0.62 with the market, so it genuinely has a mind of its own, but that opinion is worse than the price. Mixing even a tenth of it into the market's own probabilities made predictions no better (a shift of +0.0001, with a margin of error of ±0.008); mixing in more made them clearly worse. Normally the model correlates 0.94 with whatever price it's shown. That isn't laziness. It's the model correctly deferring to better information than its own.

Do our picks get better prices than the market settles on?

No better than same-priced runners picked at random.

+0.4% edge over price-matched runners · margin of error −5.2% to +12.1% · beat the closing price on 36% of picks

Beating the closing price is the fastest honest signal that tips have real value, because it strips out which bets happened to win. Compared against runners at the same prices we didn't pick, our edge is +0.4%, which is statistically indistinguishable from zero. An earlier, larger-looking figure turned out to be our own rule about backing horses whose price was already shortening: following the market, not anticipating it. A full pre-registered test on a larger sample is still running.

Does a favourable draw make a horse worth backing?

The bias is real. It is also already in the price.

favourably drawn 12.1% winners vs 8.2% · returns −33.8% vs −37.2% · 1,209 runners each side

Well-drawn horses do win considerably more often, a 48% higher strike rate, which is a big effect. They return almost exactly the same, because draw bias has been in the form guides for decades and the market priced it long before we saw the card. This is the clearest example on the site of a factor being genuinely predictive and completely worthless as a bet.

Do our lowest-confidence picks have any edge?

No. They run 7 points behind the market they were backed at.

MARGINAL −7 points vs market · GOOD +3 points · ~150 picks each

About half our output is MARGINAL, and measured against the prices those picks were actually available at, that tier loses to the market. It is excluded from Top Picks entirely, which is the main reason our published board is often small or empty. We would rather show you nothing than pad the list.

Is there a corner of the market that's softer than the rest?

Not once you account for field size.

538 races · no segment soft on both measures · Group and Listed races the tightest, as expected

We measured how much margin bookmakers charge and how far prices move before the off, by course, class and field size. The first version of this found big fields looked soft. Then we realised books take margin per runner, so that was arithmetic, not opportunity. Adjusted for field size, nothing stands out.

When our model is asked the same race twice, does agreeing mean a better pick?

Unresolved

Two measures disagree. We treat it as unproven.

win rate says yes (52.9% vs 40.2% expected) · closing-price test says no (+3.3%, margin of error −6.1% to +13.1%)

We ask the model each race more than once and only publish a Top Pick when the answers agree. On strike rate that looks strong. On the closing-price test, which is the harder and more honest measure, it's indistinguishable from nothing, and it doesn't survive correction for the number of angles we tested to find it. We still use it, because a stable answer is worth having on its own terms. We don't count it as an edge.

So why publish tips at all?

Because a well-argued read on a race is worth something even when it isn't a licence to bet. Our picks come with the actual reasoning: the form, the conditions, the case for the horse, so you can disagree with it. That is the product.

What we won't do is tell you we have an edge we can't demonstrate. Every gambling business in this market has an incentive to overstate its record. The only defence a reader has is evidence, so we keep publishing ours, including the parts that argue against us.

Bet only what you can afford to lose. Nothing on this site is a prediction of a result.

Figures on this page are dated results from specific tests, not live counters. A published finding that quietly moves is one nobody can hold us to. For the always-current record, see our results.