Houdini didn’t argue. He tested.

In the 1920s, Harry Houdini sat on a Scientific American committee that offered a cash prize to any spiritualist who could show real powers under fair test conditions. He didn’t need to call anyone a fraud. The prize was never paid.

Touts sell a claim too: that they can beat the market. Most show you a hot streak or a win rate with no prices attached. Neither is proof. This is a fair test, open to anyone, any time.

One year, three picks a day, every pick public

1. Send us the website where you sell your picks. That’s how we know you’re a tout, and it gets you a free BetChecker Premium account for the whole year: we never take money from anyone we audit.

2. Post three picks every day for a year in the app, at least 10 minutes before each game: the side, the line, the price and the sportsbook. Full-game spreads, totals and moneylines in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, WNBA and college football and basketball. Skip a day and the entry ends: no picking only the days you feel good about.

3. We timestamp each pick, check the price against that sportsbook, and record the market’s closing price just before the game. After it, the final score.

4. Every pick counts and every pick is published daily, from the first one. Nothing is edited, deleted or left out, and no one picks the best stretch afterward (“last 42 picks”).

5. You agree to the audit and to publication when you enter. That is the whole price of entry.

The one number that is hard to fake

Beat the close. How often your price was better than the market’s fair closing price, and by how much on average. A lucky week can fake a win-loss record. It can’t fake this for a year.

Results. Win-loss, and profit at $100 a pick at the price you posted. Units, stars and “locks” don’t count: every pick is $100.

Skill or luck. How likely it is that a picker with no skill, at the same prices, would do as well.

The Million Dollar Challenge

$1,000,000 to each tout who passes. Free to enter, no purchase necessary, US residents 21 and older. The official rules set out exactly who can enter, how picks are graded and how the prize is paid.

Beat the market for a year, and we’ll say so by name

After a full year of three picks a day, you pass if you did both: beat the market’s closing price on average by more than luck can explain, and made money at the prices you posted. Do that, and your name and record go at the top of this page.

A picker with no skill paying a normal sportsbook cut finishes about 2.4 points behind the close. Passing takes finishing ahead of it, over 1,000 picks. Luck can’t do that. Only real skill can.

Think we got it wrong? Show us.

Every formula we use is on Learn, and How we know explains why the market’s price is the referee. If you find a mistake, tell us. We fix it, publish the correction, and credit you if you want.

Free picks are graded either way

We already grade the free picks that big handicapper sites post publicly, the same way. A free pick isn’t the premium record, though. The challenge is how a tout shows us that one.

Entered so far: none yet.

The challenge has been open since October 2026. The first tout to enter goes here, with every pick.