ATB Verified
ATB Verified is a mark for one thing: a handicapper's record that we have checked ourselves against picks documented with a time before the games started, graded by a method anyone can see. It says the record is real. It doesn't say the next pick will win.
The standard
A record earns the mark only when every pick it counts was posted with a time stamp before the game started, the losers included, and every pick was graded the same published way: at the price and line the capper gave, with the stake in units he named at the time. We check the record against that documentation independently. We don't take the service's own spreadsheet for it.
Why most records fail
Most published records wouldn't pass, and not always because the capper is dishonest. The common faults are the same three.
Picks posted after the fact. A pick released "before the game" with no time stamp is a pick that could have been written at half time. Without the time, the record is just a claim.
Losers that disappear. Say a capper goes 30 and 20 at -110, betting one unit a game. That is 60 percent and 8 units up, which is good work. Leave six of the losers out and the same season reads 30 and 14, 68.2 percent and 14.6 units up. Nothing on the page is false except what isn't on it.
Units that change size. If the winners were five-unit plays and the losers were one-unit plays, the units won tell you about the sizing he chose after the results came in, not about his picks. A unit means something only when its size is fixed before the game.
I'd add a fourth, which isn't cheating at all: the price. A record graded at -3 means little to you if the line had moved to -3.5 by the time you could bet it.
What the mark doesn't mean
It isn't a rating and it isn't a recommendation. A verified record can be a losing one, and a short winning streak counts for very little whichever way it's documented. Any coin-flipper making 20 picks goes 14 and 6 or better about 6 times in 100, so I'd want a few hundred verified picks before I took a record as skill.
The mark appears on a review only where it has been earned, and the review says when the record was last checked. The rest of the record, whatever it shows, is set out under our review methodology, and what a capper is up against is covered in what cappers are.
Even behind a verified record, bet the same small part of your bankroll on every pick, so a bad month costs you a bad month and nothing more.