King of the Picks Review – From Bartender to Tipster
Quick Summary
Introduction
Introducing Hugh Doyle, a former bartender who decided to go pro as a horse racing tipster after losing his job during the COVID pandemic.
Despite it being a completely new career path for Hugh, he certainly wasn’t a stranger to the world of horse racing betting. He had grown up around horse and greyhound racing and his brother went on to be a jockey.
He has managed to make a steady income since then and now he wants to share his bets in the hope that he can help others beat the bookies too.
Advertised Stats
Based on £10 stakes
£2,672
38.5%
8.1%
133.6%
Putting It to the Test
Hugh’s posted results showed that he had certainly been beating the bookies, but I needed to do a bit of digging to find out his return on investment and strike rate.
At 8.08%, it was a decent return and he had more than doubled his 200 point betting bank.
For this tipster trial, I aimed for 400-500 bets in order to be able to analyse results fairly.
Find out more about King of the Picks here.
Key Details
The service provides horse racing tips, including a mixture of straight win and each-way bets. The advice includes the advised odds, place payouts and stakes that should be used for each bet.
All tips are posted to a member’s area as well as being sent out via email.
- Time of tips: Evening
- Bet volume: Average 40 tips per month
- Advised starting bank: 200 points
King of the Picks Review Results
I tracked 378 bets during my King of the Picks review and that covered a period of six months access to the service.
It was an interesting experience, as the service produced a decent profit of 29.27 points at the advised odds, but I recorded a 28.76 points loss in my own results.
The reason for this is that, in my own results I checked that both the quoted odds and place payouts were available on at least two bookmaker sites.
I felt that this was reasonable, as if, for whatever reason, you couldn’t use one particular bookmaker, then at least they would be available on at least one other provider.
The place payouts are a key thing here, as they made a big difference to my profit. There were several runners that finished just outside the number of places I could find at 2+ bookies, so I missed out.
I want to point out that the advised odds and place payouts were almost always available at ONE bookmaker, so if you happened to have that account available to bet at, then the 29.27 points profit would have been easily achieved.
The service didn’t make a profit at Betfair SP, which was to be expected due to the place payouts.
There were fewer winners due to the standard Betfair places offered, but you could always select a custom place market. This would have increased the profit, but I just went with the standard payouts (usually 2 to 4 places, depending on the size of the field) to keep it simple.
I was pleased with other aspects of the service and found that Hugh was very reliable with sending the tips out when he said he would. Usually this was at 10.00am or sometimes 9.00pm on the evening before.
Final Verdict
Across six months, I observed a 14.38% decline in my bank while following this service. It’s important to note that this calculation is founded on advised odds accessible at two or more bookmakers.
However, if I based my assessment on the odds available at a single bookmaker, I would undeniably be in profit.
Given this tricky situation, I’ve assigned a neutral rating.
The reality is, the profitability of this service varies depending on individual bookmaker availability, so some may be able to use it to make a profit, while others may not.
If you want to try it out for yourself – click here to get started.
Josh Henderson
Cutting through the noise to find tipsters that actually deliver. On a mission to uncover the best betting services in the UK.
