Can betting advice be trusted?

Anytime humans are desperate to solve a problem, frauds will step in to sell predatory solutions.

This happens when people want to lose weight.

This happens when people want to get rich quick.

And this happens when people want a bet that can’t lose.

Today, your friendly neighborhood Robin Hood of sports betting is back, and I’m kicking off a three-part series on problems in the betting advice industry and a game-changing fix that will benefit bettors.

We’ll cover the history of sports betting “touts”, assess the modern landscape of betting advice, and introduce Juice Reel’s elite bettor marketplace.

As always, we’ll look to continue winning with our bets of the week.

Let’s get after it.

History of Sports Betting “Touts”

The history of tout services, people selling “winning” bets, is as old as sports betting itself. For decades, self-proclaimed experts have been selling picks to hopeful bettors looking for an edge.

Here’s a quick timeline:

• 1960s - 1980s: Phone-in tout services grow — Ads on late night television featured men in suits promising "guaranteed winners". One infamous tout, "The Greek," claimed he employed ex-CIA agents (!!) to gather information. If you called an 800 number, they’d give out free picks, then pressure you to upgrade to their "premium" service.

• 1990s - 2000s: The internet explosion of online touts — With widespread adoption of the internet, anyone with a website could be a "professional handicapper." This rewarded great internet marketers, but there was no accountability. A tout could claim a 70% win rate, sell you coin-flip picks, then disappear and resurface under a new name.

• 2010s - Today: Social media creates "celebrity" handicappers — Instagram and Twitter gave rise to the "lifestyle cappers". These guys flash Rolexes, Ferraris, and stacks of cash, claiming they got rich from betting. But their private jets are actually wooden sets sitting in warehouses.

Back in college, I briefly fell for the marketing of one of the most prominent of these snake-oil salesmen: Jim Hurley.

I saw an ad in the back of Sport magazine that looked something like this:

After paying $99 for a membership, I finally wised up and stopped calling the “Network” once the premium “Back to School Parlay” went 0-2!

Now let’s look at the modern environment for handicappers and delve deeper into structural challenges that exist in the betting advice market.

Structural Challenges and Today’s Handicappers

A problem created by the landscape described above, is that truly excellent bettors who want to sell betting advice have no way of verifying their skill.

Everyone’s betting history was trapped within the confines of their bookie’s records, or their online sportsbook.

All a handicapper had was their word to try and prove they were a winning bettor.

This environment rewarded whoever yelled the loudest, and marketed most effectively, and left exceptional bettors behind.

Today, many platforms exist to enable the selling of sports betting advice.

They provide tools that allow handicappers to communicate with their audience, sell seamlessly, and advertise well. They enable entertainers, charlatans, and truly great handicappers equally.

They do not, however, provide transparency, or accountability for those buying picks.

They cater to sellers and leave buyers to use trial and error to find skilled bettors amongst the frauds.

Enter Juice Reel with a revolutionary approach.

Juice Reel’s Elite Bettor Marketplace

Last week Juice Reel rolled out an update to the app featuring a tab where any user could offer their actual betting feed for sale as a weekly subscription, and any user could subscribe to get real time access.

It can be found in the bottom right of their navigation bar, circled in blue below:

That marketplace is centered on a leaderboard ranking bettors based on verified results from actual bets placed at linked-sportsbooks. Here’s the visual:

The leaderboard can be filtered by sport, bet type, and subscription cost.

For example, here I’ve applied a filter to see who the best golf bettors are:

Juice Reel even allows users to run detailed reports on a seller’s betting history, allowing research and trust before pulling out a credit card to subscribe.

Here’s a report on #1 Bettor CalvinAndHobo, who I interviewed in the past, from the last year:

In contrast to other hubs for betting, advice, Juice Reel is taking a “bettor-first” approach, inserting themselves as a layer of trust, accountability, and verification between bettors and handicappers.

All sellers will have transparent track records, they will not be able to hide losses or manipulate stats. Their records come straight from linked betting accounts at FanDuel, DraftKings, PrizePicks and dozens of other sportsbooks.

If you’re a great handicapper and want to prove it, or you’re eager to tail bets from actual winning bettors, this is the place.

Over the next few weeks I’ll go into parts two and three of this series, including:

• My approach to sizing up sellers and deciding who I want to subscribe to and tail, and:

• How I use the real-time betting information from my subscriptions to tail most skillfully and maximize the value I receive.

I’m ecstatic about launching this disruptive marketplace to forcibly separate the winners from the fraudsters, so please open the Juice Reel app and take a look - I’d love to hear your feedback.

Bets of the Week $$

Before we get to this week’s accounting and bets, I need to boast.

Last week I broke down my in-game betting angle for University of Illinois basketball games. They’ve played two games since, both of which fit my criteria for making a bet against the Illini.

As a reminder, the play was to make in-game bets on Illinois’ opponents when the Illini trail or lead by 10 or fewer points, with less than 10 minutes remaining in the game.

The results were too good not to share!

Game 1 vs Michigan State:

• Score with 10 minutes remaining: Illinois leads by 1

• Live line with 10 minutes remaining: Michigan St. +4.5

• Final margin: Michigan St. wins by 14, covering the line above by 18.5 points

Game 2 at Wisconsin:

• Score with 10 minutes remaining: Illinois trails by 10

• Live line with 10 minutes remaining: Wisconsin -9.5

• Final margin: Wisconsin wins by 21 and covers the line above by 11.5 points

Hopefully a ton of you joined me in betting this angle and won!

I know at least one reader did because he dropped me an email:

Even without the Illini, we went 3-0 last week (!!) and won 2.6 units.

Maryland took care of business on the road, and CJ McCollum and the Pelicans put together a big overtime win.

Since starting the newsletter, bets given out in this section are ahead 13.1 units, at a positive 24% ROI. We’ll update this regularly.

Based on my research, I am making the following bets this week:

• San Antonio Spurs +3 on Caesars @-110 for 1 unit

Victor Wembanyama’s season sadly will end due to an unexpected DVT diagnosis, but I expect the Spurs to be ready to play with plenty of support at home. I’ll fade heavy public money coming in on the Suns and take the Spurs as a small home dog.

• (Live bet) In Saturday night’s Illinois vs Duke game, in event either team leads by 10 or less with ten minutes remaining, live bet Duke to cover the in-game spread at the next timeout for 1 unit

Illinois plays Duke Saturday night at Madison Square Garden and I plan to continue riding the in-game trend detailed last week.

I’ll only avoid this bet if either team (likely Duke) leads by more than 10, as I imagine that’ll introduce volatility due to the lack of historical games that fit that mold.

Next week we’ll cover part two of our series on Juice Reel’s elite bettor marketplace: how to find the right bettors to tail.

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