By its very nature, betting on the horses, or indeed any kind of betting, is an uncertain business. No matter how much experience or knowledge you have, no one can ever make a certain bet on anything, cheating aside. The horse racing is one of the oldest and most popular betting events in the world, and so naturally there are people out there with a great deal of knowledge on the subject—but can these tipsters be trusted?

We’re going to consider both angles of this question, so let’s dive into it.

Trusting online tipsters

Let’s start with the arguments for trusting online tipsters. Of course, trusting anyone online requires a certain degree of due diligence to begin with. Make sure that the person is coming from a reputable, reliable source of some kind, like directly from a betting publication. While there may be trustworthy tipsters in online forums, you can’t ever really verify what they’re saying.

 The most experienced and reliable tipsters, though, can certainly offer advantages. They might have in-depth statistical knowledge which gives them a much better chance of being able to accurately forecast how a particular horse racing event might go. Studying a horse’s past, recent performance, for instance, can help to predict how they will perform. Their experience in the industry is also a big benefit.

What is generally a good way to do it is to find a particular horse racing tipster that knows their stuff, and following them through. While again they can never guarantee a return, the better their proven track record, the more you can trust them.

Now let’s look at the other side of the argument.

Skipping the tips

There are a few reasons why online tipsters, even the best of them, can be less than useful in giving betting advice for the horses. For one thing, even those reliable tipsters will start to attract more and more attention, and ultimately the bookies will notice them—and they may cut odds in response to this. After all, if a punter did have a reliable formula, they’re not likely to want to share it with everyone.

Beyond that, though, you can never really verify what a tipster is saying. Even their own records may often be inaccurate or incomplete, and thus their “statistical analysis” isn’t really worth much.

Ultimately, there is never any certainty in sports betting, otherwise there would be no such industry. Read what tipsters are saying, but don’t take it as gospel—this will only hamper your own eye for betting.

Conclusion

Online tipsters can be helpful in some ways, but the likelihood that you find a consistently reliable, trustworthy tipster is extremely low. Anyone who did offer such consistency would attract too much attention and the bookmakers would crush the odds in response. Tipsters, like any sports publication or news, are useful to read and improve your own knowledge, but ultimately you will never have any guarantee of the safety of following their words.