Books on Sports Betting

[lunchmeat]

Any recommendations for a good book on Sports Betting? I'm definitely a beginner, but I was able to understand HEPFAP when I first started playing poker so I think I can handle something fairly advanced...

I've heard a lot about Stanford Wong's book, is this the way to go?

[David Steele]

I just got it based on Mason's recent review here, and it seems pretty good. It is well written at least but not so advanced. I am planning on giving it to a friend who bets a lot of sports and knows nothing technical.

D.

[Redhotman]

the book is good, it covers the mathmatics.
(but it doesnt give much advice on handicapping)

checkout the website www.sharpsportsbetting.com (http://www.sharpsportsbetting.com)

[npc]

Wong's is the best book I've read on sports betting.

As another poster pointed out, it doesn't cover handicapping, but then I think there are some serious flaws (or at least potential flaws) to what I would call the "technical analysis" approach to handicapping. That is, if you're looking for historical trends as a basis for betting, you need to make sure that it's not only a real trend (through some fairly advanced statistical analysis) but you must also have some confidence that the betting community isn't aware of this trend and betting it as you are. In general, it's not possible to have a high degree of confidence that the latter condition holds, which makes sports betting (based on this sort of analysis) a risky (ahem) proposition.

If I were to become serious about sports betting, I wouldn't place a non-entertainment level bet unless I had a computer model to evaluate the strengths of teams that had at least two years of statistically significant wins. Perhaps that's just me.

[Redhotman]

There are very few people who can consistantly make money beating a sportsbook. To eb honest, i think its a lost cause.