SPORTS BETTING: A Winner's Handbook

by Jerry & John D. Painter Patterson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 9, 1985

All life is six-to-five against,"" Damon Runyon once warned. For those who bet on sporting events, the odds are far longer. This worldly-wise guide from a pair of Las Vegas-based pros, however, might just help amateurs avoid steady losses, or even do better than break even. The bad news is that success demands a great deal of hard work. Patterson (a computer-industry dropout best known for his books on blackjack) and Painter (who claims to be the only licensed classroom teacher of sports handicapping at an American college) favor a statistical (as opposed to trendline) approach; by-the-numbers analyses, they calculate, can give disciplined bettors an advantage of about 16% over their bookmakers. Nearly half the text is devoted to football (college as well as professional); basketball gets around a 15% piece of the action, with major-league baseball, the most exhaustively documented sport, accorded even shorter shrift. The authors offer step-by-step instructions for getting down in various ways. In the case of an NFL or NBA game, for example, there are five possibilities: backing the favorite (and laying whatever number of points are specified in the bookie's line); backing the underdog; betting the over-point total (meaning that the combined scores of both teams must exceed a designated level); betting the under-point total; and, mirabile dictu, passing, i.e., ignoring the contest. In the opinion of Patterson and Painter, college underdogs are the ""easiest"" gridiron proposition to handicap, with pro favorites rated the most difficult. The authors offer many potentially useful guidelines--e.g., 75% of all NFL contests have point totals less than 35 or greater than 45--but they make clear that winning football bets require substantial amounts of diligent research. Roughly the same principles may be applied to basketball games, though the authors warn there is a paucity of dependable data on many college clubs. Baseball is something else again; owing to the streaky records that punctuate the long season, it pays to play the angles, e.g., betting the home team to Win the first game of a new series. Nonetheless, they discuss at some length a statistical handicapping tool called the total-base factor, which affords a comparatively accurate gauge of a club's capacity to score runs (but don't apply it to the St. Louis Cardinals). Covered as well are money-management techniques, the use of personal computers, and information sources (including a service owned by the authors). While this entry may not enable would-be high rollers to make a killing on their sporting bets, its commendably responsible advisories could save them from dropping a bundle.

Pub Date: Dec. 9, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Perigee/Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1985

Categories: NONFICTION