Secret To Sports Betting / Sport Betting System Reviews / Smart Money Law

Smart Money Law

Review Date: 18 April 2009 (Updated on 30 November 2009)
Our Reference: System 3

Current Record
Sport	Actual	Claimed
	285 - 190	285 - 190

Although Sports Betting Champ is great for NBA and MLB, and the World's Greatest Sports Betting Systems is great for NHL only, we'd been looking for a reliable single-game betting system for some time, as those progressive bets can get pretty expensive when they lose.

We thought we'd found one in Mike's Lock Club, but that turned out to have way too low a win rate - much less than the 74% claimed on the website.

So, after continued searches, we came across Smart Money Law, which sounded ideal: it covers many different sports, is a single-game system (i.e. no run-away progressive bets), is simple to use, offers both a DIY approach or an email-based pick, is not too expensive, and claims an amazing 91.3% win rate.

However, as you'll find out, below, we found a few serious issues with this system.

Basic Facts

Our Experience

We didn't exactly get off on the right foot with this system, being unable to purchase the version we wanted.

You see, the vendor, Steven Taylor (probably not his real name, as a different name appears on the emailed receipt), offers two versions of this system:

1. Option 1 is a "do it yourself" version, where you buy the system itself as an ebook, and then you have to apply the selection criteria each day to find out which bet(s) to place.
2. Option 2 is a more expensive version, where you get his pick(s) emailed to you every day, for life. You also apparently get access to his seven-year back-testing details, so you can "verify" the accuracy of his claims.

Now, we certainly don't have the time to spend poring through bookies' websites all day (we know, he claims it only takes 70 seconds, but more of that later), so we naturally wanted to go for Option 2 - why bark when you can buy a dog?

But here's the first oddity with this website - you can buy Option 1 online, there and then, but if you want Option 2, you have to email him for payment details.

No problem ... or so we thought.

We actually sent two separate emails, several days apart, asking him about how to pay for Option 2 (as well as a couple of other pre-sales questions), but in spite of us offering him $399.95, he apparently didn't want our money as he never replied to either email.

So, zero marks so far for Customer Service, which we believe to be very important, no matter what product or service you are selling.

Next, his website states that in order to keep a lid on this system, he will only sell a limited number of copies of Smart Money Law in each region of the world.

This does make some sort of sense, but being well-versed in the wiles of Internet marketers, we suspected that this was merely a marketing ploy to instill a sense of urgency in potential customers.

We therefore took a screen shot of the number of copies that were apparently left, just after we bought this system (1:42pm on 27 February 2009).

We then took another screen shot of this information, at 1:15am on 18 April 2009, which is some seven weeks after we bought the system.

As you'll see from the two images below (the one on the left is from February, while the one on the right is from April), the two sets of copies available are identical. Now, we know for a fact that he's sold several copies since then, so we have to conclude (in spite of his claim that it can take a while for these figures to be updated) that this is nothing more than the marketing ploy we originally thought.

As At 27 February 2009

As At 18 April 2009

Some things sold online are genuinely in limited numbers (e.g. memberships to certain sites), in which case creating a sense of urgency is a valid approach to take, but when it is nothing more than a ruse to con people into buying under pressure, then we believe this to be unethical, if not dishonest.

In spite of all of this, we did buy the system - Option 1 only, of course, as he never replied telling us how we could pay for Option 2 - so that we could assess the system, warts and all.

On the plus side, the system is easy to understand, and only takes two to three pages to explain, and that includes a worked example.

It's also pretty easy to apply, and requires almost no prior knowledge of sports betting.

Nonetheless, we opted to write a computer program to apply the selection criteria automatically, as that's just the way we like to do things. (Partly, it saves times in the long run, and it also reduces the chances of human error.)

We began tracking this system on 27 February 2009, using just one of the sports book accounts that we have (Sportsbook.com), and just a single sport, NBA (basketball).

On 28 February 2009, we added NHL (hockey), and a day later, added NCAAB (college basketball).

On 17 March 2009, realizing that these three sports' seasons would be coming to an end soon, we began to add Soccer to the mix, beginning with English Soccer leagues, and then, several days later, we began to add more leagues, from Germany, Switzerland, Mexico, Spain, USA, Italy, Scotland, Austria, France and Portugal.

Finally, on 5 April 2009, we added MLB (baseball), which should keep us going for several more months.

So, we're now tracking 15 sports / leagues, which we felt should be more than enough for the system to work with.

Now, here's something that he doesn't mention - although you can use the system for many different sports, the world over, you do need to take account of time zones.

For example, by the time you get the odds for games played in North America, some games in Europe are already being played, and you could therefore miss out on the best pick for that day.

For this reason, we split our selections into two - American games and European games, so we actually get two picks per day (or more, but we'll come back to this later as well).

We'd not been tracking this system long when we realized that the win rate was far short of the 91.3% claimed on the website, so we emailed the vendor yet again, one month after we bought his system, with a few questions.

Specifically, we wanted clarification that we'd interpreted his selection criteria correctly, as our win rate at that point was a lowly 69.70%, and we even sent him a copy of a document that contained all of our picks up to that point, so that he could make sure we weren't making some stupid mistake.

We also asked, once again, how we could pay / upgrade to Option 2.

And, once again, he failed to reply to us, or even acknowledge receipt of our email.

His website does state that if you don't "instantly start winning 9 out of every 10 bets", he'll give an instant refund, as well as a possible offer to join his tipping service (which we took to be Option 2), as you can see from this extract from his site:

So, to put this in sports speak, he's now zero for three in terms of Customer Service - three emails, three chances to take even more of our money (which we were practically throwing at him) and prove his system works, and not one reply.

Well, you can tell that we're not impressed by either him or his system, so let's dig a little deeper and take the high-level benefits of Smart Money Law from the sales page, and analyse just how accurate they all are:

Website's Claim	Our Experience
Always Win 9 Out of Every 10 Bets (91.3%)!	Well, as you can see from the stats at the top of this page, our record falls far short of this claimed 91.3% (or nine wins out of ten). As at the time of writing this review (i.e. 18 April 2009), we've had: 52 wins 28 losses 10 pushes (i.e. drawn, or tied games) This equates to less than six wins out of ten games, or a win rate of just 57.78%. (The current win rate is now 60.00%.) After 90 bets, it would seem practically impossible for this win rate to climb to anywhere near the claimed 91.3%. To put this into perspective, if there were no more losses and no more pushes, then the system would have to pick a whopping 347 winning bets in a row, which is almost an entire year's worth of picks, at one bet a day, with nothing but wins. You don't have to be Einstein to realize that the chances of this happening are, for all practical purposes, zero.
Takes Only 70 Seconds to Work Out Your Bets!	We actually wrote a couple of computer programs to scan the odds offered by one of the sports books we use (sportsbook.com), as we felt this would eliminate human error and be faster. And, of course, it probably doesn't even take as long as 70 seconds to find the best bets from the 15 sports / leagues that we've been tracking. However, we realize that not everybody will be able to adopt this approach. Having said that, if you're going to track the odds from several different sports / leagues, as recommended, then 70 seconds would seem like you'd have to work very fast indeed. So, to test it out, we just timed ourselves doing the selection manually, only on one day's MLB games (there were 15 that day), and it took us 97 seconds. Admittedly, this is the first time we've done this ourselves instead of using our automated program, so we could probably go faster after a bit of practice, but remember that this is only for one sport, and the system recommends that you apply the selection process to several sports to ensure you get the best bet of the day. And on the same day that we timed the MLB games, there were just over 100 English Soccer games, and there's no way that anybody could process more than one a second, given that you have to do some simple math on each game.
Works Out Only ONE (the Best) Bet Each Day!	If you ignore the fact that we split our selections into two (America and Europe), for the time zone-related reasons mentioned above, then there are days where we've found more than one "best bet" - as many as five, in fact. The system provides no information on what to do in this situation, nor any additional rules to reduce the selections down to a single one. This may not be a big issue, but if you're just starting out and you don't yet have a large bankroll, this may not be that practical. So, the claim that all you need to start is a $10 investment is not strictly true, because according to our own results, you may need as much as $50 (or more if you don't want to wipe out your entire bankroll in one day).
Safely Turns $10 into $235 Every Week!	For this to happen, you have to place what are called "parlay" bets, where you basically use the winnings from the first game as a bet on a second game, and so on. And to turn $10 into $235, you would need to win seven back-to-back bets. Now, this could be a very effective way of mushrooming your winnings, if, and this is a really big if, you really were winning nine bets out of ten. However, with the win rate we're experiencing (i.e. 57.78% so far), this is not a practical way to proceed. Out of 90 bets so far, our longest winning streak has been eight, with the average being between two and three wins in a row. Our longest losing streak has been four bets, with the average being between one and two losses in a row. And for pushes (i.e. drawn, or tied games), the longest streak has been two, with the average being just over one (and all of the pushes have been with soccer games, so far). This means that there is only one week out of the seven we've been tracking this system where we would have been able to turn that $10 into $235.
Excellent Odds Paid Out With EVERY Bet! ($1.57 in decimal odds, 4/7 in fractions or American odds of -175)	The average odds on the 90 bets we've tracked so far are only 1.52, in decimal, which equates to -192 in American odds. This may not seem like a big difference, but over a large number of bets (i.e. one, or more, per day), it will definitely generate a lower profit than claimed. If you take all of the bets we tracked where the odds were worse than the average of 1.52, then the win rate is 61.40%, whereas the win rate for those bets where the odds are better than the average of 1.52 is just 51.52%. What this means is that you're winning a higher percentage of games that don't make you as much money, per win, than you are where the odds are better and make more money.

What We Like About Smart Money Law

• It's a single-game system, which means no progressive bets, which can get very expensive.
• It's easy to understand the principle behind it.
• It's relatively easy to apply and requires almost no research to select the day's bet(s).
• It covers multiple sports - more than any other system we've looked at.
• You don't need to know much about sports betting at all.

What We Don't Like About Smart Money Law

• The Customer Service is absolutely zero - we've had no luck in obtaining a single reply from him - which is unacceptable.
• The claimed win rate of 91.3% is simply way overstated.
• The method of turning $10 into $235 every week is therefore unachievable, as this requires you to win seven games in a row (which we've only managed to do once in seven weeks).
• The odds you get on the games are typically very poor.
• The system is really designed to work with decimal odds, not American odds, so if American odds are what you are used to, you'll have to go through one additional step to work the system. Also some sports books, especially those catering largely to the American market, don't even let you display the odds in anything but American format.
• We don't like the unethical way he tries to get you to buy by showing meaningless "copies left" figures that never ever change.

Recommendation

We cannot recommend Option 1 of Smart Money Law, as it simply doesn't work.

If you can get the guy to reply to your emails, then Option 2 may be a different matter completely - we don't know if those picks would be the same as the ones we came up with, as we don't even know which sports / leagues he analyses each day.

We cannot comment further on Option 2 as we were unsuccessful in our numerous attempts to buy this version.

So, we're still looking for that elusive single-game sports betting system that delivers a minimum of a 75% win rate, which we feel is the threshold below which the system would not be profitable.

In the meantime, we'll keep tracking this system (updated stats will appear in the table at the top right of this page), in the vain hope that its performance improves.

We have also decided to request a refund for Smart Money Law, on the basis that the claims on the website are not achievable, and in its place, we are going to try something else we found that looks promising.

So, if you're trying to find a sports betting system that delivers what it promises (for the NBA and MLB only), then we recommend that you read 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 you don't like the idea of the large bet sizes that are a consequence of a progressive betting system, and you don't mind trying something that's not exactly sports betting, but is a way to win thousands of dollars a month, then take a look at Roulette Killer (System R1). The system is simple to use and only costs about $50 USD, and we'll be publishing our usual warts-and-all review as soon as we can.