Best sports gambling books according to redditors
We found 12 Reddit comments discussing the best sports gambling books. We ranked the 10 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 12 Reddit comments discussing the best sports gambling books. We ranked the 10 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Nice question, I only got a lengthy answer:
Skills you need
Mathematics: Obviously the problem is mathematical. The math itself is really easy but I think you need to understand some of it. There is no book that contains everything you need to know for Soccerbetting (to my knowledge). A good guide to it, including many other games than Soccerbetting is The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic. This book is a little to much but if you go through it, you should have a deeper understanding. This will cover only the math of Gambling not of the modelling itself.
Building the actual Model: This is a machine learning problem (you could use analytical math like Poisson Distribution but I don't think that will get you far). I think if you have no skills this part is the hardest, since you need a lot of intuition for math (in my opinion). I suggest you try some examples from scikit-learn in python. Unfortunately, I never read a good book about this topic.
Betting Markets: Being successful in betting takes a little more than math an programming, you have to know where to place your bets, why betting is Europe is not a good idea etc. For this I would suggest to not hang out on this subreddit, most people get a lot of stuff wrong. Here I would suggest the first two chapters of How to Find a Black Cat in a Coal Cellar.
Programming: This part is also fairly easy. I suggest you use python, it contains everything you need in handy packages that are easy to use. I would not recommend to use Excel since at some point you will outgrow it and restart from the beginning. This part takes some work but not some actual skills.
Automation: Since most of us have a steady job we don't have time to deal with this stuff everyday. My model for example runs on a raspberry Pi and sends me a mail what I should bet on. I only check the logs on the weekend. You have to write a lot of scrapers. This part took the longest. I suggest to use Linux (I guess you have to I you don't want to pay for a sever). Here I suggest Bash and or C++.
Psychology: You will fall for all fallacies in the book, so I think knowing them makes you avoid certain things, here I can suggest The Science, Psychology & Philosophy of Gambling
The most important: Endurance, Balls and Self-Honesty: It takes a lot of set-backs and tears to get this fully working. At the beginning your model won't work and simply loose. You will think that this was a stupid idea and think about giving up. The model or the scraper breaks just as you are on vacation with your girlfriend and you spend the entire day in the hotel room fixing this thing (this actually happened to me). This needs a lot of endurance. I for example had some bad bugs in my model that cost me a little money and you really start to doubt yourself, so you need the balls to pull this through. Self Honesty is important such that you don't bullshit yourself. In that sense, that you always try to tell yourself that your model is working (at the beginning it doesn't) and you need the honesty to tell yourself that it is not fine, this is not just bad luck and needs additional work. For this part, a partner can really help. Just talking about it really makes you understand more and you can bullshit yourself but hopefully not your partner.
All in all I think having a good analytical thinking in combination with some honesty and healthy self-doubt will allow you to learn everything you need.
Skills I have:
As an example I can tell you which skills I have: I got a Masters-Degree in Engineering and am currently finishing my PhD in Theoretical Physics. So modelling stuff and math is kind of my job. I had to learn to program during my studies. I didn't know anything about gambling when I started out and did not read any books. I just try to think about it a lot and derive the math myself, that helped enormously.
Edit: I think it is also important to know what you don't need: A passion for football. I don't know shit about football and never watch it (only sometimes my local team). I even think knowing about football is a disadvantage since you open up to certain fallacies like "I know better than my model".
Smart Sports Betting: https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Sports-Betting-Advanced-Psychology-ebook/dp/B00ONCDQ52
You Are An Author: So Write Your F-ing Book: https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Author-Write-Your-ebook/dp/B01LWJVHX4/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Mein Trump: https://www.amazon.com/Mein-Trump-Hitler-Donald-Micropenises-ebook/dp/B01F26JKZM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1481665144&sr=1-1&keywords=mein+trump
I go into full detail in my recent book, but here's the summarized process.
1: Test idea with an article, attempt to build email list.
2: Ask email list questions about what they need to learn, test sample chapters.
3: Outline book.
4: Word vomit and sort of follow outline.
5: Edit heavily.
6: Release to email list, have giveaway in book, make people email you for it.
7: Ask them for honest review and referral if they enjoyed it.
I sold to my 50-person email list and friends, but made sure I got reviews. Everything was word of mouth and Amazon SEO. I fully believe if people don't talk about your book ... like they didn't with my Trump book ... it's not as good of an idea as you think. But you do need to get your CORE audience to check it out -- make sure 100-ish people read your book before you give up. And get 20-plus reviews for credibility, plus a great cover and description.
Check out BookinaBox.com for more info -- it's a startup that I'm a freelancer for. They hire the company, I do the interviewing off of an outline someone else made -- then rewrite it crisply. The book has their name on it, not mine.
My first book used a simple cover design on Fiverr. $5. It's a horrible idea ... unless you go with a simple picture like I did.
For my second, a friend's girlfriend, who is an up and coming designer, offered to do it for fun. Because the idea was ridiculous.
I designed the third myself using Canva.
I'm a ALL OUT or NOTHING kind of guy. It doesn't make sense to pay a mediocre designer. Make a VERY simple design yourself or for $5.
... then if you have success, or if you truly have the capital, hire someone GREAT and pay handsomely. No in betweens. Same with editing.
Mediocre designers, copywriters and developmental editors are worthless. Great designers, copywriters and developmental editors are priceless.
trading bases
conquering risk
logic of sportsbetting
weighing the odds in sports betting
​
Depends on what you want. I look at a lot of academic papers for more technical idea generation but these are some decent reads. Joe peta, author of trading bases just came out with a golf book that I haven't read yet
Emphasise on American sports, but lots of good basic info everyone should know.
https://www.amazon.ca/Sharp-Sports-Betting-Stanford-Wong/dp/0935926240
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/0935926305/ref=pd_aw_fbt_14_img_2/185-6452705-3156847?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=M8XVPFKB25H5JBQNCHG5
I don't think this is correct. If you take for example the Favourite-longshot-bias;
All of this comes down to the efficient market hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis
One could argue that the betting market is Semi-strong-form efficiency or Weak-form efficiency but it certainly is not strong-form efficient. This would imply that:
> "investors cannot consistently earn excess returns over a long period of time".
So betting would be pointless
Edit: This exploits are there but most people have a to low payroll to cash in on them
Edit2: Paper about testing the efficient market hypothesis for sports betting https://www.jstor.org/stable/1832139 (sadly its with data from 1983)
Edit3: Sry the paper is behind academic paywall, but they describe their findings in "The Economics of the National Football League: The State of the Art" on page 229 you can find that on google books if anyone is interested.
There is some good advice here already but would suggest the basics book on amazon called ‘Betfair trading made simple’ as others say it is simple but I guess it is in the title haha! X
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Betfair-Trading-Made-Simple-Ultimate/dp/1980887039
Trading Bases is a great book, however I wish he expanded more on his model.
I am currently reading a old copy of Betting Baseball by Michael Murray, http://www.amazon.com/Betting-Baseball-Michael-Murray/dp/0977878708. I wish I could find out more info on this guy, but it seems pretty scarce. He brings up an Offensive Rating formula, I don't have the book with me right now, but its something like X = AB OB% SLG * .975. It basically gives you how many runs that player is worth. So far its a great book.
You need to know some programming to develop a model, if you learn web scraping that will be enough to gather data for a model. You should be able to learn how to do this online.
For books, I'd highly recommend reading these:
Fortune's Forumula - A great book about the Kelly Criterion but touches on a whole range of subjects, a fantastic read.
The Signal and the Noise - Very famous book about prediction in general.
Conquering Risk - Very good book about sports betting (relatively unknown)
Calculated Bets - About creating a model and automated betting system for a relatively unknown sport.
Who's #1? - A book about rankings systems, aimed at ranking sports teams but the authors previously wrote a book on ranking websites (like google search algorithm type stuff). The basis for my dota model came from this book.
I'd recommend everyone to read Fortune's Formula and The Signal and the Noise, even people not interested in modelling. They're both awesome reads.
Calculated bets is a pretty cool read if you're interested in modelling, the author has a really quirky writing style that's entertaining.
Conquering risk is basically about exploiting bookmakers, picking off mistakes. Not really about modelling but still pretty cool.
Who's #1 is a really good intro to making a model for predicting sports imo, there's some very simple ones that will get you started.
Pretty much any book that joseph buchdal has written
I recommend this as a first book
https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Find-Black-Coal-Cellar/dp/1843440679/ref=la_B00J2FMFOI_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1550934118&sr=1-3