Secret To Sports Betting / Sport Betting System Reviews / The Champ Selections Review

The Champ Selections Review

Review Date: 6 August 2009
Our Reference: System 5

Current Record
Sport	Actual	Claimed
	86 - 82 - 1	86 - 81 - 2

Having been members of John Morrison's Sports Betting Champ since December 2007, we received information about his new MLB "premium picks" service in May 2009 via his customer email list.

The sales page promised a "fool-proof done-it-for-you handicapping service that guarantees to uncover winners you can bet on."

Basic Facts

Our Experience

Given that we already recommend Sports Betting Champ for both NBA and MLB, we were obviously very interested, and because John stated that he was "going to be limiting this new membership to only 300 NEW premiere members", we decided to sign up.

By the time we did this, the bi-weekly memberships had already sold out, but looking at the prices of the monthly vs. yearly subscriptions, the yearly one was obviously much better value, so we opted for that.

We began to receive our daily picks on 27 May 2009, and placed our first wagers the next day.

Until we could verify that this system did produce winning picks, we bet small, and over the course of the next four days, bet a total of $480.20 on 11 games.

Of these 11 games, there were six games that lost, and five that won.

Because the first four games all lost, that depleted our funds considerably, and by the time our initial experiment was over, we were $350.85 out of pocket.

While we accept that sports betting is a long-term proposition, we could not go on losing money at that rate, so we stopped placing real money on these games, and continued to track the performance of his picks, as we do with all the systems we review.

Actual Results

So, how did his premium picks fare?

Well, we tracked The Champ Selections until 2 August 2009, and here are the results, on a day-by-day basis:

NOTES:

1. The Win/Loss Record for each day shows how many of the picks won, how many lost, and, if a third number is shown, how many were a push.
2. The Made/Lost Money (Flat Wager) column shows whether you would have made or lost money, across all the picks for that day, if you bet a flat amount on each game. We use $50 USD for tracking purposes, but the actual number doesn't matter as long as you're consistent.
3. The Made/Lost Money (To Win) column shows whether you would have made or lost money, across all the picks for that day, if you placed a bet to win a specific amount. Again, for tracking purposes, all of these bets were to win $50 USD, which means that the actual amount we'd have had to wager would vary based on the odds of the game(s) involved.

So, the overall win rate from the 169 games we tracked was a very lowly 50.89%, which is not much better than tossing a coin.

It's worth bearing in mind that, in Major League Baseball, the underdog wins about 44% of the games anyway, so to increase the win rate by six percentage points is really not that great.

In terms of money, then:

• If you'd bet a flat $50 USD per game, you'd be $385.77 USD in the red
• ¢ If you'd bet to win $50 per game, you'd be $324.71 USD in the red.

At this point, we felt two months was long enough to ascertain whether the system really performed as promised, and we applied for a refund.

John did reply, reiterating that sports betting is a long-term investment, and that he's never had a losing season in 28 years of betting, but we were not convinced.

What We Like About The Champ Selections

• Unlike his main service, Sports Betting Champ, which is a three-game progressive betting system, this is a single-game system, which should mean bet sizes and risk are minimised
• The picks are delivered to you by email in plenty of time to place your bets

What We Don't Like About The Champ Selections

• Our biggest issue with these so-called "premium picks" is that the win rate is way too low, and after two months of betting, we'd be out of pocket by over six times our bet size. As the whole point of sports betting is to make money, this is clearly a problem.
• You have to be careful with the way that results are reported. There was one occurrence where John claimed a push on an Under 9.5 bet, but as the two teams scored a total of ten runs, we counted that as the loss it should have been. If John managed to get a better line on that game when he placed his own bet, then good for him, but if the official pick is listed at Under 9.5, that's the basis on which the official record should be judged.
• We especially don't like the fact that when this service was launched, it was limited to just 300 members, but if you visit The Champ Selections website now, you'll find no mention of a membership cap. We infer from this that he's had a lot of cancellations (ours included), or that it was a cheap marketing ploy to persuade people to sign up. We've nothing against genuine limited memberships, but to then remove those limits after the fact is unethical.

Recommendation

There is no way that we can recommend The Champ Selections when the performance was so poor.

It may well be that over the next ten months of picks, the system will produce a reasonable profit, but two months should be a fair trial for somebody who makes such bold claims about his statistics PhD and his expertise in sports betting.

In the interests of making a fair review of The Champ Selections, we did email John on 3 August 2009 to ask if we could receive his picks for the rest of the year, for tracking purposes only (and yes, we did suggest a way this could be done that would keep both parties honest), so that, at the end of that time, if there was a complete turnaround, we'd be able to write a glowing review and recommend his premium picks, but so far, we've had no response.

It's also worth noting that John has added a similar service for NCAAF / NFL since we signed up for the MLB picks, but as we haven't joined the football picks service, and as the football season hasn't started at the time of writing this review, we clearly can't comment on how accurate these picks will be.

So, although it seems as though his ability to pick single games is somewhat lacking, we are still happy to recommend his main Sports Betting Champ service for NBA and MLB, where his record is still excellent (88.68% and 97.92% respectively).