Top tipster lands record-breaking win

If you fancy having a flutter on the gee-gees, you could do a lot worse than ask for a tip from Paul Jacobs.

The 51-year-old Liverpudlian, who now lives in Stanmore, has won The Racing Post Naps – the biggest horse racing tipping contest – for a record fifth time.

The odds of him picking up the £4,000 winning cheque were slightly in his favour given that he’s the senior tipster on price betting comparison site Easyodds.com and also presents on Setanta Sports.
Run over the course of seven months and based on selecting just one horse a day – approximately 215 tips in all – Paul came out on top of a field which was represented by the UK’s top professional tipsters.

Describing the competition’s format, he explains: “You get an imaginary £1 stake per day and the person that comes out with the biggest level stakes profit wins. This year only five tipsters out of 60 came out in the black and my profit winning figure was £50.16, the next best was £18, so it was quite a big margin as far as this contest is concerned.”

The only surprising aspect of his win was the fact he accomplished it despite not initially being a lover of the sport. As he explains: “It’s real funny that as a kid I, like many youngsters, used to watch Grandstand on a Saturday afternoon, but the one sport I wouldn’t watch and instead went out to play football in the garden, was when the horse racing came on.”

And what is the father-of-two’s secret of his success? “It’s lots of homework, analysing the form and weighing up so many factors….going, form of yard, breeding of the horse, distance I could go on and on!”