Secret To Sports Betting / Sport Betting System Reviews / Mike's Lock Club Review

Mike's Lock Club Review

Review Date: 10 March 2009 (Updated on 25 April 2009)
Our Reference: System M

Basic Facts

Our Experience

We first came across Mike's Lock Club in February 2008, when we received what amounted to spam emails (i.e. we never requested them) promoting his sports pick service.

Much against our better judgment, as we make it a policy never to respond to unsolicited emails (which only encourages spammers even more), we took a look at his website to find out more.

We were heartened by the fact that his system was a single game / non-progressive one, as we'd already found out, by tracking and playing System 1 (Sports Betting Champ) and System 2 (World's Greatest Sports Betting Systems) that progressive systems can get really expensive.

And a win rate of 74% was certainly a tantalizing prospect too.

Initially, we paid for one month's membership (at $9.99, which was the going rate at the time) to see how things went, but then rather than continue paying for our subscription (which used to $199 for a year's membership back then), we contacted Mike, as his website at the time was somewhat basic, offering to build him a new website, complete with members' area, and manage some of his support queries, in return for free membership of his sports pick service.

After a bit of negotiation, we got the go-ahead and built his new site for him.

Meanwhile, we started to track and play his system.

Now, Mike's Lock Club actually has several different types of games, which we tracked separately:

• Regular Games, which is what come with the standard membership
• Lock Games, which are games that have a higher than normal chance of winning, and which cost an additional $100 USD per game
• Super Lock Games, which are games that have an even higher chance of winning than Lock Games, and which cost an additional $250 USD per game
• VIP Games, which were billed as "near certainties" (the actual words used for one such game were, "This game will win no matter what. I know this for sure."), and which cost either $500 USD per game, or $5,000 USD for membership of his VIP Club in which case you got all of the additional types of games for free.

We were able to track all of these, as part of our agreement with Mike.

So, what happened?

Well, the win rate was nowhere close to what was advertised, and so in order to help his members make money, even with a lower win rate than expected, he introduced a "betting units" system on 18 May 2008.

The intention of this was to bet multiple units (up to five per game on Regular Games) on those matches where he had a higher degree of confidence in their outcome, and to stick with a single unit for those that were less likely to win.

(Note that Mike had always recommended betting multiple units on Lock Games, Super Lock Games and VIP Games, as these were meant to be more likely to win. Originally, his recommendation was to bet 10, 15 and 25 units respectively on these games, although he later revised these down to 5, 7 and 10 units respectively, once it transpired that these games were not winning like they should.)

There were many ups and downs throughout the year, and after our bankroll was severely depleted because of clerical errors on Mike's part and too many big losing games, we decided not to place any further bets, but just to continue tracking every single game so that we could monitor his system accurately.

On 21 December 2008, Mike offered another VIP Game to members on a trust system - i.e. if you bet on the game and it won, then you promised to pay $500 USD for the game.

We chose not to bet on this game - we'd not placed any actual bets for months, as mentioned previously.

Perhaps not too surprisingly, given human nature, Mike reported that not a single person paid for the game (which did win), and that because he was so disappointed, he was going to take a break from his Lock Club and decide what to do about the future of the Lock Club.

That email was sent on 23 December 2008, and that is the last we've heard from him - we've not received any more daily picks, and he's not replied to any of the emails we sent him in our capacity as his webmaster.

Perhaps he thought we were one of the members who should have paid but didn't, and he's removed us from his list? If so, he could at least have contacted us about it, given the role we played in managing his site, but we heard nothing at all.

At the very least, he should have replied to our direct emails, as these concerned members who had paid him their annual membership fee and who should have been set up with access to the members' area on the site we built him (which we only ever did once we'd received confirmation that a member had actually paid).

So, after hearing nothing for more than two months, we recently took the site down that we built for him, and redirected it to this, our Secret To Sports Betting site.

As far as we can tell, Mike is still operating from his original website, which we know has been updated fairly recently.

Other Opportunities

Although Mike's Lock Club was primarily a sports betting service, other opportunities were offered, for additional investment.

Once such was a chance to make money on slot machines in Las Vegas, based on what we can best describe as "inside information".

There were five such outings during 2008, with the following results:

We did not participate in these slot machine opportunities, for various reasons, and we're glad we didn't, as the three winning trips would in all probability be more than offset by the two total wipe-outs.

The second opportunity involved an oil drilling project, which required an investment of between $10,000 and $100,000 and which we also declined.

We therefore cannot comment further on this, especially as the expected maturity date had not been reached at the time we received our final email from Mike.

However, to give you an idea of how much was at stake here, the total raised for one of the Las Vegas outings and the drilling project was $6,445,000!

A third opportunity was also mentioned, involving a hedge fund with an investment requirement of $15,000 - $250,000, although he never went ahead with this one owing to adverse market conditions so all funds were returned to the members concerned.

Two more opportunities, for 2009, involved a real estate portfolio and a Government debentures program, but we have no idea whether these went or are going ahead, and what, if any, the outcomes are.

Actual Results

This is the bit we're sure you've been waiting for! How did his sports picks actually fare?

The overall win rate across all of the different sports Mike picked was just 58.79%, which was very disappointing. If you calculate the win rate based on betting units, instead of games, then the win rate increases slightly to 59.94%.

If we break this down by sport, then it looks like this for the Regular Games:

As for the additional games you could buy, then the results are even worse:

If you want to see game-by-game results for all of these matches, then they're available on our Mike's Lock Club 2008 Game Summary page.

So, given that these win rates are substantially lower than the 74% shown on his website, how much money could you have made during 2008?

We tracked a virtual account, with a starting balance of $4,400 USD, and betting to win $100 USD per game, initially.

The following table shows how much profit (or loss) you would have ended up with after one year of using this system (and a modified version of his Money Management Plan - modified as it didn't take account of certain situations):

Based on the figures shown on Mike's website, from an estimated 135 betting opportunities per year at a win rate of 74%, and betting to win $100 a game, you should net a profit of about $6,150.

In actual fact, we recorded 165 Regular Game picks during 2008, so using the same calculations, you should have expected an overall profit of about $7,100, which is $137.48 more than the best-case scenario shown above.

The following table shows how much money you would have made on just the 165 Regular Games both with and without:

• multiple Betting Units
• the use of our Money Management Plan

Note that, although we would always recommend the use of a sound Money Management Plan, the most profit occurred when using multiple Betting Units but no Money Management Plan.

This is because the Money Management Plan he sends his members includes rules to increase or decrease the bet size based on your current account balance. If a multi-unit loss occurs just after an increase in bet size, that can leave you in a worse off position than where you were before the win that caused you to increase your bet size.

Once you start to buy the additional games that were on offer, from anywhere from $100 to $500 per game, then your overall profit drops considerably, and if Mike hadn't introduced betting units part way through the year, then you may have ended up well over $2,500 out of pocket.

What We Like About Mike's Lock Club

• It's a single-game system, which means no progressive bets, which can get very expensive.
• It covers multiple sports, so there is the potential for action all year round.

What We Don't Like About Mike's Lock Club

• If you're going to play a single-game system, then the overall win rate needs to be a lot higher than 58.79%. in fact, for this type of system, you really need to be looking at an average win rate of at least 75%, although this does depend on the odds you're getting on each game (basketball odds are usually -110, which is very good, but baseball and ice hockey odds are over all the place, being anywhere from -280 to +270).
  
  Remember, it's not enough just to turn a small profit, because you need to account for your time as well, not to mention any fees you may end up paying to fund your sports book account(s) and/or make withdrawals.
• His website claims to offer "a 74% win rate in every sport", which is clearly not the case, as shown above. In addition, although he says that you will receive NHL picks, we never saw any of these.
• You don't get a match to bet on every day as Mike's philosophy is quality, not quantity. This would be fair enough if this is what happened, but the win rate was nowhere close to the one advertised.
• Although Mike did give some of the additional games for free to make up for the fact that more of these lost than he said they would, the overall win rate of these additional games, which cost a lot of money, was way too low.
  
  For example, of the ten VIP Games, only six won, but because of the number of betting units recommended, those four losses would have meant you lost $5,868.58 on this series of games. One of these was a loss, for example, because the people he bought this game from turned out to be not so reliable after all.
• One of the VIP Games, which were meant to be almost sure-fire wins, was a loss because of a stupid administrative error - the wrong game was sent out by email, and by the time the mistake was spotted, it was too late to do anything about, so lots of people (us included) lost a lot of money on that game (as members bet heavily on such games on the promise of such a high likelihood of a win).
  
  When other people's money is at stake, then you really can't afford to make such basic errors. Even though he did give out the next game for free, to make up for this screw-up, some people may no longer have had enough money to bet with to recover from that first loss.

Recommendation

Even though it's true that you could have made a reasonable profit over the year (albeit less than advertised), but only if you'd stuck to the Regular Games and Lock Games, and ignored the additional Super Lock Games and VIP Games, we cannot recommend Mike's Lock Club. (Of course, with all of the sales pitch about how often these special games won, how would you have known just to stick with the Regular Games and Lock Games?)

The win rate is simply too low (and his own website still makes the same 74% claim that it did over a year ago, even though we know this was not achieved).

We even asked for previous years' records (i.e. 2007 and earlier) several times so that we could publish these on his website to increase the credibility of his service, but we were never able to obtain them as he ignored every request from us on this issue. Frankly, if your system works as you say it does, then what do you have to hide? We have to conclude that he has NOT been able to achieve his so-called 74% win rate and that is why he will not publish previous years' records.

One of Mike's members contacted us to say he was very upset about this review and claimed that our figures are inaccurate because we didn't take into account "unit bets as individual bets". As you can see from the details above, the win rate for 2008, on a game-by-game basis, was just 58.79%, whereas if you take the betting units into account, the win rate goes up by just over one percentage point to 59.94%.

For us, the issue is simple: if you claim a specific win rate (74% in this case), then you'd better make sure you deliver what you promise. Anything else borders on advertising under false pretences.

If you are interested in joining Mike's Lock Club, then we suggest you do your due diligence, and look for any information you can find, such as these interesting comments on XOM Reviews, for example.

So, if you're looking for a betting system that does deliver (for the NBA and MLB, at least), then we suggest you check out our review of Sports Betting Champ (System 1) and/or, for MLB and NHL, The World's Greatest Sports Betting Systems (System 2).

And if the thought of a progressive betting system scares you a bit, you should take a look at a slightly different form of betting, where you could win thousands of dollars a month, or more: Roulette Killer (System R1). The system is easy to use and only costs about $50 USD. We will, of course, publish our full review, as usual, as soon as we are able to.