Closure

So far all I have given you is excuses. I’ve tried to explain why this blog dried up but not really what happened in the meantime, at least not in terms of the books I read. The blog updates may have stopped but the reading didn’t. It slowed down because of the drugs but it certainly didn’t stop. Anyway, the blog was at least a couple of weeks behind the curve anyway as I had read a bunch of books I hadn’t blogged about by the time I stopped updates. So without (too much) further ado I want to list all the books I read in 2010 but didn’t blog about, including brief review comments as appropriate.

#71. Twitchhiker by Paul Smith – one man’s attempt to get halfway around the world relying only on offers of help from Twitter. Interesting idea, less interesting book as I recall. I did learn that Pete McCarthy of McCarthy’s Bar fame was dead though while reading this book, which made it a little more interesting.

#72. Marching Powder by Rusty Young – much more like it! A fascinating insight into one of South America’s toughest jails and a great story that is well told to boot.

#73. The Ice Man by Philip Carlo – OK, it’s an American book about an American contract killer in America written by an American. But burglarised? Seriously? Someone needs to beat that word out of them. Also I recall this book ending rather suddenly, when it could have gone on and been so much better. We get the full story of this Mafia hitman while he’s a free man but don’t get much of his story when he gets caught and banged up. How did he feel? How did he cope? More on the arrest, on the hunt for him and on his capture would have rounded it off much better.

#74. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne – before I read this I was convinced I knew the basic premise and that in involved a hot air balloon somewhere along the way. Err, nope. Was that a mis-remembered image from the Steve Coogan film or something from the Willy Fogg cartoon? And if you have clicked that link and watched the YouTube video try getting the theme tune out of your head now. Anyway, no balloon but not a bad little story really even if Passepartout mes across as a complete dick.

#75. Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich – one of the many books about the MIT blackjack gang that is supposed to have taking the Las Vegas casinos for a fortune and forced numerous rule changes as a result. It was adapted into a film too, 21, but that was a steaming pile of crap. The book is better, but that’s not too difficult. In fact 21 is one of the reasons I haven’t seen The Social Network yet. Not being on Facebook is one reason but quite enjoying the Ben Mezrich book (The Accidental Billionaires) and fearing another shitty film adaptation is the main one. But then The Social Network is supposed to be alright isn’t it?

#76. Ugly Americans by Ben Mezrich – another ‘true’ story, this one about American traders getting rich off the Asian markets but I can’t help but wonder how many of these people are composites of several individuals and how many of the events truly happened. Mezrich seems to go in for these so-called true stories but I can’t help but think they are rather sensationalised. Most true stories don’t sell because they are dull and need sexing up a bit.

#77. Breaking Vegas by Ben Mezrich – I think this was called Busting Vegas in the US but it seems to be Breaking Vegas over here. Certainly my copy is Breaking. Another MIT blackjack story, this one supposedly more true than the other as it mainly revolves around Semyon Dukatch (although the spelling of his name changes a couple of times) and the second of the blackjack gangs. Dukatch even offers a bit up himself at the end of the book, a short chapter on the techniques used, to add an air of authenticity. The same doubts about how true the tale is come to the fore though. It has the pub story vibe. Imagine you’re in the pub with a few mates and you’re telling a tale. How accurate are the main points of this story? Are any of them embellished for effect or to make you look better in this tale? Yeah, right!

#78. Playing the Moldovans at Tennis by Tony Hawks – another supposedly true story and ever the cynic I am left wondering whether the little twist in the tale really happened. Tony Hawks sets out to play the Moldovan football team at tennis. We follow him on his journey trying to track down the players and get various parties to agree to let him play them at tennis but there are a few bits in there that just make you think “my, that’s convenient and makes for a better story to recount when you get home”. Or at least they made me think that, you may be more forgiving.

#79. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson – I’m not 100% sure why the book I have says Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on the front when the story itself seems to be called The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Does anyone know what this book is actually called? I have the Wordsworth Classics edition and like a lot of these old classics the publisher seems to have gone all out to make it hard to read. Some of it is the author’s fault, such as the  excessively long paragraphs,  but the publishers haven’t helped by using a small font and really packing in the text. It doesn’t say so on the cover but this volume includes a few other of Stevenson’s short stories too. I wasn’t too bothered about The Merry Men, Will O’ The Mill (throughout which I was thinking of Evil Edna for some reason), Thrawn Janet and Olalla but Markheim and The Treasure of Franchard were rather enjoyable.

#80. Cat Confidential by Vicky Halls – it was shortly after Cat had died and I felt I owed it to the new cat(s) we were getting to make their lives with us as comfortable as possible so I thought I’d try to get inside the mind of a cat a bit more by reading this book I bought for the missus a few years back. It made me think about a few things from a cat’s perspective, things I might not have considered otherwise so it served a purpose I guess.

#81. Cityboy by Geraint Anderson – I used to read the Cityboy columns in one of the free London evening papers so when this book came out I bought it in an airport for a bit of light holiday reading. And that’s what it is really. It’s supposed to be a true account of one man’s career in the city, lifting the lid on the excesses and cityboy lifestyle but once more the cynic in me throws a massive shadow of doubt over bits of it which somewhat spoils it. Without that suspension of disbelief books like these don’t really work. I really object to books dressing themselves up as true stories when many of the characters and events are composites. But then as I said earlier, unless it is sexed up a true story won’t sell.

It is now the end of October, and with Cityboy in the bag I have exceeded my target for the year and I still have two months left. Yes! But with the side effects of the drugs cranking up things were to slow down rather.

#82. Hold’em Poker by David Sklansky – I was in one of my limit hold’em phases and wanted to take things back to basics.

#83. Any Utterly Impartial History of Britain by John O’Farrell – this is a chunky volume, as one would expect bearing in mind it covers two thousand years of British history, so it took a while to get through. This is the ideal sort of book for me though as it is educational without being dry. John O’Farrell is amusing at times (the material doesn’t allow for too much comedy) but has also taken the time to get his facts straight which obviously helps with a book like this. The missus got the sequel (An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain) for Christmas but I am doing the decent thing and letting her read it before I pinch it. I might be waiting a while though as she reads much more slowly than I do.

#84. Witch and Wizard by James Patterson – I had taken a rare trip into town, going round the shops with the missus for reasons that currently elude me when we came across people giving away hundreds of copies of this book to passers-by. A free book – I’m having that! It seems it was being given away partly to promote the new book in the series but I was willing to give it a go as James Patterson is a renowned thriller writer. This series is more aimed at teenage kids but overall the book’s not bad. It’s mainly setting the scene for a long series of books but the writing is decent, the main characters develop at a decent pace and I reckon tweens would rather enjoy it.

#85. Definitive Guide to Betting on Horses edited by Nick Pulford –  as a gambler I figured a refresher course on the basics of horse racing wouldn’t hurt. This is another that took a little while to get through though, for various reasons.

#86. Amazon Kindle User Guide – it’s now just after my birthday now so early December and I have only read four books since end of Oct. The drugs really kicking in but I have also picked a couple of long books to slog through in that period. Once I had hit the target I decided I should tackle some longer works as I had nothing to lose. Perhaps that is why I read the Kindle User Guide cover to cover. Who reads instruction manuals these days? I read this one and at several points went “coo, that’s clever.”

#87. Blood, Sweat & Tea by Tom Reynolds – I actually read the Kindle version of this but I can’t seem to find that on  Amazon now so I have linked to the paperback instead. Whatever, it’s just a blog in ‘print’ format really and one that doesn’t always work that well as context is sometimes lacking. I wouldn’t rush out to buy/download it, honestly.

#88. Soul Identity by Dennis Batchelder – yes, I read it because it was free on Kindle. It’s an interesting concept – your eyes can be used to determine whether your body is the current vessel for a given soul which means one can take advantage of a service allowing one to store life lessons and valuables ready to be passed on to the next body containing your soul in order to give that ‘you’ a headstart in life – which helps enormously as otherwise it’s fairly standard thriller material with the usual plot twists and character traits evident. It builds towards a sequel but I won’t be rushing to seek it out. If I come across it cheap on the Kindle I may read it but otherwise I shan’t bother.

#89. Screen Burn by Charlie Brooker – I really like Charlie Brooker but for some reason I don’t find myself compelled to seek out his every work. I rarely remember to watch Screenwipe or Newswipe when they are on. I missed his zombie thing (Dead Set?) and I don’t read his Guardian columns, not even online. But then again had I spent the last few years reading his regular Guardian columns I wouldn’t have had any use for this book as it is a collection of said columns from a few years back. It’s actually just a lazy reprinting of loads of stuff Brooker has written before which must make it a cheap book to print (just like the Jeremy Clarkson books I read at the start of the year). But it means I get to enjoy a few hundred pages of Brooker vitriol all in one go and that is a glorious thing. A man not afraid to swear when it is needed, and to do so properly and in full rather than alluding to the swearword by asterisking out key letters. He’s a fantastically grumpy misanthrope who writes a beautifully immature column when he wants to. I must watch more Brooker.

#90. ‘F’ in Exams by Richard Benson – when I go to someone’s house I tend to look at their bookshelves. You can judge a person by the general decor of their house but that’s their public persona. They know that side of them is open so they can manipulate how they are perceived. They can hide their collection of porcelain dolls so you don’t think them weird, especially if they are a man in their 30s. But it is harder for someone to really sanitise their bookshelves, which is why I like to have a nose around when the opportunity presents itself. At christmas I went up to stay with the missus’ parents and thus had a neb around and grabbed this for a bit of light reading. After all, when the opportunity to have a quick read of someone else’s books presents itself I often take it with both hands. The book was supposed to be genuine exam question answers but I have my doubts as to how many were actually real (how many times have I written that recently?) and how many were written for comedic effect by someone other than the person taking the test. This is not a book I would by and is probably better suited to an email or website but it passed a few minutes nonetheless.

#91. Balderdash & Piffle: One Sandwich Short of a Dog’s Dinner by Alexander Games – another borrowed read and this time it was much more like it. I love words so to hear about the history of some more esoteric words and phrases is a joy. I really enjoyed the TV series when it was on (although that was in part due to the fact that it was presented by Victoria Coren) and while this book wasn’t up to the same standard it was a pretty good read.

#92. Dawn Of The Dumb by Charlie Brooker – back to my bookshelves now and more Brooker columns from the Guardian. I’m not sure I got this finished by the end of the year so should I count it as number 92? Can I pull the “I’ve started so I’ll finish” Mastermind trick with books too?

Excluding books I didn’t complete in the calendar year (including the first and last book in this blog) I make that 90 books in a year. My target was 80 so I haven’t done badly. In fact I am quite pleased with how things have gone. It’s nice to be able to quantify my reading speed in terms that everyone can understand. I read around 90 books a year. Without the drugs in the last couple of months I would have easily pushed 100 I reckon. Ah well, 90 is a more than respectable total.

And that’s it from me. I have proved over recent months that I am bloody useless at updating this blog so from now on I probably won’t bother. I set out to see how many books I could read in a year – and also see what variety of books I read in that time – and I have documented the challenge to a greater or less extent here so it feels like job done. I will still be trying to read as many books as possible but I don’t feel the need to blog about them any more. I think it’s probably best for all involved if I just draw a line under things now.

Thank you for reading and I hope we meet again, perhaps on a different blog I don’t update for several months.

Mat

#68. Enemy Number One

Enemy Number One by Patrick Veitch

This was the first of my holiday reads, assuming you don’t count the Costa Blanca guidebook, which I don’t as I’d started reading that before we left the UK and finished it before we landed in Spain. Not that it really matters, of course.

Patrick Veitch is a professional gambler whose main income comes from horse racing and in this book he outlines many of the methods he has used over the years to take a small fortune off the bookmakers. But it’s by no means a “how to” guide, a recipe book that can be followed to instant riches. What would be the point of such a book? Anything that points out flaws in something can be used to address those flaws and close the loopholes and opportunities that were being highlighted in the first place. If Veitch detailed all the methods he has used to sting the bookies for millions they would immediately read his book and tighten up their operations such that no-one, including Veitch, could take advantage of them in the same way again. Common sense really. So rather than having it all laid on a plate for you, you have to read between a few lines and make a few educated guesses as to what Veitch did at times.

Is it worth it? That depends, doesn’t it? If you’re a gambler (like me) then it probably is worth it. If you’re not a gambler then I don’t see this book being of the slightest interest to you, unless you like reading about how people make a few million quid. There’s not too much boasting and gloating in a Loadsamoney vein, thankfully, but as with any tale of someone making a lot of money there will always be an undercurrent of them being “considerably richer than yow”.

Veitch operates on a different level to most of us but then again he has to. He’s well-known to all the bookmakers and if Veitch wants to back a horse chances are he knows something that isn’t already factored into the odds and this worries bookmakers as it effectively means they are offering odds that are too large. To counter this Veitch has to hide his bets from the bookies, employing an army of agents and sub-agents to place his bets for him, and in placing his bets they are obviously made aware of what a successful professional punter is backing so if they wanted to put a few quid on for themselves then who can stop them? I guess that’s their wages – they are effectively paid in information.

This is a large part of Veitch’s tale and truth be told it won’t be relevant to many people but it’s interesting all the same. It’s quite odd but I suppose many gamblers see it as a badge of honour when the bookmakers acknowledge your bets worry them. With online accounts they can restrict your stakes or even close your account; in the betting shops they can refuse your bets or limit your stakes and on the course they can refuse to accept your bet, limit your stakes or slash the odds on offer to you. All these things are a sign that you’re too good for the bookie, which is why it is something of a status symbol to receive a letter saying your account is being closed by a firm. It’s not happened to me yet, thankfully, but then I take care to protect the accounts I really care about by taking certain counter-measures. I also use Betfair a lot, and they will never close down or restrict an account. Quite why Patrick Veitch didn’t just pile into Betfair I don’t know.

The story also has an element that may appeal to the non-gambler out there: Veitch gets embroiled in some nasty business and as a result finds himself receiving threats and has to go into hiding, change his name and what have you. It all sounds quite serious but I wonder how much has been dramatised to make it a better story. That said, I don’t want to make light of what sounds pretty scary and all but I’m a cynic by nature. Incidentally, I don’t think kidnapping and death threats are essential if you want to make it as a professional gambler. I bloody hope not anyway!

Ultimately this book isn’t going to change my life and make me a fortune but I did have a moment of clarity shortly after finishing it. We’re not talking a road to Damascus style awakening here but it was a fundamental truth that hit me. I’d been reading about the sums that Veitch had been splashing about and the returns he was making on that when I realised I have been far too risk averse in my gambling so far and this risk aversion was costing me. It’s in my nature to be quite cautious, especially with money, but just as you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs you can’t make a significant profit from gambling without putting a few quid at risk.

Veitch talks about pressing edges (which is form reading in his case) and I began to realise I wasn’t pressing my own edges enough. I have a portfolio of numerous systems and services covering a variety of sports of which horse racing is just one. These systems and services all vary in terms of performance and returns and it dawned on me that I should be upping the stakes on those that show a proven level of performance over a decent period of time – pressing the edge that they clearly have. And that’s all there is to it; it’s hardly rocket science I’m sure you’ll admit but it’s helped me significantly already. I was understaking in those areas that have the potential to generate excellent returns and in doing so reducing my bottom line, but not any longer. I have been careful not to overstretch myself and take undue risks though, I’m not a complete madman. But as Patrick Veitch says, you need to be part brain surgeon and part mad axeman to do well in this game. I have the brain surgery side of things sewn up in the amount of work I put in to my betting but I needed to up the mad axeman levels to reap the proper rewards. Thanks for helping me see the light Patrick.

#64. Secrets The Pros Won’t Tell You About Winning Hold’em Poker

Secrets The Pros Won’t Tell You about Winning at Hold’em Poker: About Winning Hold’em Poker by Lou Krieger and Sheree Bykofsky

Surely a contender for the longest title on a book I will read this year. In fact it takes up almost the entire front cover. Yes, I am well aware that the front cover of a book should make it clear what the book is so the title usually occupies a good chunk of the space but often publishers use larger fonts to achieve that effect. No need for that here as the title is just ridiculously long. And this is probably the longest paragraph I have written about a title.

Oh, I remember this book now. I finished reading it several weeks ago so I had to grab it off the top of the pile and flick through it again as a reminder of what it’s all about. And yes, I realise that the title is probably a bit of a clue as to the contents. But it’s not so much the actual contents I wanted to mention here, it’s the formatting of them that stands out for me. Let me try to elaborate…

The authors are poker/gambling authors and journalists who play quite a lot of poker. They themselvers are not poker professionals. Numerous professional poker players have written books and generally speaking they are crap. Alright, not crap as such but they could be a lot better than they are.

Often they are poorly-written, Doyle Brunson being one of the worst offenders on that front. His Super/System books have long been regarded as poker bibles, especially the chapters on no-limit hold’em. But they are so badly written that it’s hard to get much useful stuff out of them. Brunson may be one of the most successful poker players ever but he’s a lousy author. And the same is true of many of the others who have tried to cash in on their success at the tables by writing a book. Dan Harrington’s cash game and tournament books are probably the exception to the rule as they are very clear and well-written.

Books written by poker pros tend to be somewhat lacking too. Maybe some of what makes a great player is hard to put down in words. So much of the game is situational and there is usually no one right way to play any hand. Ask any experienced poker player a question about how to play a hand and the answer they give will usually be “It depends.” And that’s true so often in poker. The right course of action depends on many things, including your table image, the action to date, history with your opponent and so on. With more and more attention be paid to the metagame too it is hard to analyse hands and situations in a vacuum. Because of all of this the pros tend to mostly write the same things. They will give advice about playing tight-aggressive poker and not doing what your opponents expect you to do and so on but they hold a lot back. Part of this is because these guys rely on their skills and the edge those skills give them to make a living. They don’t want to put all their best plays down in a book so that others can learn how to beat them, that would be massively counter-productive for the poker pro. But I think there is also some stuff they simply can’t put into words. They have a feel for the game that they were maybe born with or perhaps developed over many years. You can’t teach someone to have exactly the same midset as you have.

So Krieger and Bykofsky set out to write a book that fills in some of those gaps, teaching you the things the pros either couldn’t put into words or that they didn’t want you to know. And because they are both experienced writers it is to be hoped that this book won’t be as poorly written as Brunson et al. That’s the theory anyway.

I honestly would have expected respected gambling writers to have structured this book very differently to the way they have opted for. The book is around 250 pages long and is broken into 11 chapters – I don’t have a problem with any of that. But each chapter is then broken up into way too many subsections, so much so that the contents listing at the front of the book takes up 10 pages! This structure would work if each subsection were a separate playing tip such that each subsection within a chapter is self-contained. But that’s really not the case here. It honestly reads as though most chapters have been written as proper continuous prose before being artificially broken up into these subsections. So you’ll have a concept introduced in one subsection and midway through that you’ll get a subsection break and it will continue in the next subsection. It’s massively frustrating and makes it much harder to read and to get the message across in my opinion. This book could have been so much better had more thought been given to the structure.

As I said earlier, I read this book a few weeks ago. Can I remember any of these secrets I was promised? In a word – no. I seem to recall there was a lot about playing in position and exercising proper bankroll management but that’s the same sort of advice you get in most poker books so I don’t think this one has really lived up to its title.

#59. Bigger Deal

Bigger Deal by Anthony Holden

Nearly seven months on from the original Big Deal I bring you the sequel – Bigger Deal. It’s subtitled “a year on the new poker circuit” and it was overdue given how out of date the first book now seems. That’s not Holden’s fault though, he wrote a book that captured the game and the scene as it was then (back in the late ’80s) but in recent years poker has changed massively and unfortunately dated Holden’s excellent work. He was up to the challenge of bringing things up to date though and decided to spend another year as a poker professional (sort of).

I say sort of as Holden wasn’t a full-time poker pro during the time covered by this new book (summer 2005 to summer 2006). He was also masquerading as the classical music critic for the Observer, which is quite different to playing poker. And in the last 15 to 20 years the poker scene has changed significantly too so Tony is not walking back into the same world he left at the end of Big Deal.

Since Holden last wrote a poker memoir the game has seen online poker come along and change the whole landscape for ever. The so-called Moneymaker Effect has been massive. For those of you not up on such matters, the Moneymaker Effect is a massive explosion in the number of poker players – both online and live – accredited to the fact that an online poker player by the name of Chris Moneymaker won the main event at the 2003 World Series of Poker after qualifying via a $40 satellite tournament rather than paying the $10,000 entry fee. When people saw that you could turn $40 into several million dollars (Moneymaker won around $2.5 million for winning the main event but made a lot more in sponsorship and endorsements afterwards) they all wanted in.

The sneaky bastards in the American government put a bit of a cap on things by sneaking through the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) in 2006 on the back of the SAFE Port Act (an anti-terror measure) which made it illegal to transfer funds from a financial institution to online gambling sites, effectively killing Neteller et al’s trade in the US and seriously pissing off Party Gaming and others. But best not get me started on this right now.

In Big Deal our author played in the WSOP main event as part of a field of 167 players. In 2006 he does the same but this time the field numbers nearly nine thousand! There’s that Moneymaker Effect for you. And rather than chasing a grand prize of just over a quarter of a million, they are now battling for a first prize of around $12 million. The poker scene has changed.

What you get with this book is exactly what you got with Big Deal. Much of Holden’s life is laid bare and his love affair with poker shines through. He soon adapts to the crazy new world of online poker but also retains his affection for live play, even though his tourney results often aren’t exactly stunning. But to the reader the results are not that important. What matters is the quality of the writing, which is fantastic. Anthony Holden writes a good book, I’ll give him that. I’m a poker player and poker fan, which may help, but the prose is gripping but also ticks along at a nice speed so you feel as though every word is taking you somewhere, and somewhere you want to go too.

There’s not a great deal more to say about this. If you like poker then I think you’ll like this book. If you liked Big Deal then this is more of the same really, and that’s a good thing. If you like good writing but have never played poker then I still think there is something in this for you. Give it a go and find out, eh?

#55. Betting To Win

Betting to Win by Prof. Leighton Vaughan Williams

Yep, back to the sports betting but fortunately for those of you who don’t really care for such topics this is the last of them.

This is an odd little book, all things considered. The author is “Professor of Economics and Finance, Director of the Betting Research Unit, and Head of Economics Research at the Nottingham Trent University” and his career in academia shines through. The book has over 50 chapters, each only a few pages long and as such it reads more like a collection of newspaper columns or perhaps research summaries. There is little flow at times so it can all feel rather disjointed. Sure, it makes the book much easier to dip in to, and means one can fairly readily open the pages and look something up that one has read before if you can recall roughly what the subject matter was without having to scan through page after page. But it doesn’t make for a particular pleasing cover-to-cover read.

That said the book seems pretty well researched, certainly if the appendices and bibliography are anything to go by. You get the feeling that like many an academic who has turned his hand to writing a book, anything he says and any statistics he quotes can be trusted and that should one wish to one can check up on the author via the sources listed in the back of the book. That’s reassuring when the book is all about ways in which you can make money from sports betting. You want to be sure that any trend identified in the text is genuine before you put a penny down on it.

Betting To Win starts in the same way as many books on sports betting – with an overview of the main ways in which one can place a bet. Bookies, the Tote, spreads and exchanges are all covered along with a few tips for using each of them. Part two is a collection of 29 short chapters each passing on a small piece of advice aimed to help the reader make a profit. The gambler’s fallacy is introduced, risk and uncertainty are compared and contrasted, and the author discusses whether multiple bets make sense. All of these chapters are designed to get the reader thinking about how they gamble rather than giving specific advice as to what to back. Part three covers the Tote in more detail, including the US system. It’s a pretty short section because the Tote isn’t that useful over here as we have many other options to get a bet on. The same is not true of other countries though so it’s worth knowing about it, in principle at least. Part four covers the spreads in more detail and includes details of arbitrage and what the author has dubbed quarbs (quasi-arbs). Interesting to know about but even now, many years on from when it was first introduced, sports spread betting has yet to catch on in a big way so this section probably won’t be of much interest to many. Part five has more on the exchanges but as this was written back in 2002 it’s a little sketchy and there is a lot more to be said on this subject in other books, some of which I have reviewed recently. The book ends with a look at the 2002 World Cup using England’s opening match against Sweden to compare the various betting mediums (media?) to see which is best. It’s an interesting exercise but little more than that really.

This book will not tell you what to back in order to get rich but it ought to set your mind whirring and get you thinking about ways in which you might make a few quid. It certainly did for me. When I first read it several years back I ended up filling several pages of a nearby notebook with ideas and angles to investigate further. When I read it again recently I made a few more notes, some of which it transpires were almost identical to those I made years back but hadn’t followed up on.

Incidentally, till I got my hands on this book I didn’t even know there was a Betting Research Unit. It sounds ace and I’d love to know more about it but a google search turns up very little of any use. Surely they must have produced loads of reports containing information that sports bettors like myself would find incredibly valuable. Why is it based at Nottingham Trent Uni, why not go independent, start a publishing arm and get these reports out there on sale and make a few quid? I’d really like a better idea of what they do and how often they churn out a report as well as what they have covered in the past.

I’m getting there, we’re nearly up to date now. The pile of books waiting to be added to this blog is a lot smaller than it was a few days back. There’s still four more books to tell you about though, and I am halfway through another so I’d better get on with updating this blog soon or there will be five books in that pile.

#53. Beating The Odds

Beating the Odds by Rob Eastway & John Haigh

I’m still sticking to the sports betting theme but with a slight twist for this one as it’s more about the maths behind sports (hence the subtitle “The hidden mathematics of sports“) than how to actually profit from gambling on sports. It makes for an odds little book but it rather appealed to me and I have now read it two or three times in the last 18 months or so.

The aim of the book is to highlight some of the ways in which maths is hidden in sport and what role it has to play. We’re not talking betting strategies here though. The examples include how to make the roundest football from regular polygons, the best way to take a penalty, how the scoring system in boxing, figure skating and gymnastics can lead to some unlikely results, where best to aim on the dartboard and so on.

Some of it just boils down to basic game theory but that doesn’t make it any less interesting as you actually get to see how game theory works in contexts that you are more likely to be familiar with. I have a reasonable understanding of game theory anyway (it’s something I have been drawn to for many years, increasingly so as I got into poker where it can apply heavily) but to see it in the context of a penalty shootout rather than the usual prisoners’ dilemma is somewhat refreshing.

I really ought to stop using “somewhat” as often as I do. For some reason I have found myself using that and “per se” a lot recently and I have no idea why.

Anyway, back to the book. The authors have been careful not to bog the reader down with unnecessary detail such as formulae and complicated maths where it just isn’t warranted and as a result the book is pretty accessible to anyone with a reasonable grasp of even basic maths and an interest in sports. There is an appendix where all the meaty maths can be found, along with explanations as to why some of the answers to the various problems littered throughout the text are indeed correct so if you want all the gory details you can get them.

Who would this book appeal to? Well, me for a start. Anyone else with an interest in sport and a least a passing interest in maths and how it can affect the outcome of various events. Maybe anyone who understands the salient points of most sports and understands GCSE maths too. It’s a nice read, quite a fun read and an interesting one too so if I were you I’d grab a copy and give it a go to see what you think. It has a lot of interesting stuff in there and I think you might get a lot out of it.

#52. The Definitive Guide to Betting Exchanges

The Definitive Guide to Betting Exchanges edited by Paul Kealy

The last book on Betfair (and others, for there is more than one exchange despite what Nigel Paul may think) for now, and I think I’ve saved the best for last. A chunky volume with over 250 pages and despite the page layouts (it uses a column-style layout common to all books in this Racing Post Expert Series which doesn’t actually fill that much of the page with text) there is a lot in here.

The book opens in the traditional manner with a look at what betting exchanges are and how they came about plus an overview of the major players in this market. This book was written in 2005 by which team Sporting Options, gg.com and intrade.com had disappeared but there place had been taken by the likes of Betonbet, Betbull and Parbet. There was no shortage of businessman looking to cash in on the exchange phenomenon by starting their own version of Betfair but as none could really attract the business that Betfair attracted then (and still does) they gradually fell by the wayside as they failed to deliver the profits they hoped for and promised investors. That leaves us with Betfair and Betdaq as the main two these days and even now Betfair is much bigger than Betdaq in terms of promotion, marketing and market share. This is one area of life in which it would be better for punters if there was a monopoly with everyone competing on just one exchange as that would increase liquidity and make the pricing of markets that much more competitive.

But I digress.

After the usual opening chapters comes a number of chapters specific to various sports. There’s one on snooker, rugby (league and union), tennis, cricket and so on. Oh, and horse racing and football, of course, which actually get a few chapters each. These sport-specific chapters highlight what to look for when it comes to betting on or trading markets related to this sport in an attempt to put the reader one step ahead of the average mug punter. For example, the racing section gives an overview of each of the British racecourses with pointers as to the running styles that do well there so you can take an informed view as to which horse to back (or lay) in-running. The football chapters contain a lot of data on how the winning chances of a team vary with how long is left in the match and the current situation, e.g. how often will favourites win if they go 1-0 down in the first half, that sort of thing.

As such there is a lot to get your teeth into and thus a lot around which to build a concrete betting or trading strategy. This certainly isn’t just another “back high, lay low” manual, it has genuine strategy information in it and is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in sports betting on the exchanges.

#51. Successful Matched Betting

Successful Matched Betting by Geoff Harvey

If the cover image on the last book was cheesy this one is just downright confusing. It appears to be a mouse pointer clicking on a star that is going supernova with a circuitboard and Scalextric track background. Quite what that has to do with betting exchanges I have no idea.

Yes, we’re sticking with the Betfair theme for a little bit longer. This 2002 effort was probably one of the earlier books on the subject, and I think the oldest I have on the subject in my library. As a consequence it does at least recognise that there is more than just Betfair out there as it takes in Betdaq (who are still around today) and others such as Sporting Options (effectively bought out by Betfair when Sporting Options collapsed) and gg.com and intrade.com (neither of which survived the early days of exchanges as far as I am aware). The book is quite dated now though with many more markets on offer (albeit at fewer exchanges) and the screenshots included no longer bear a great resemblance to today’s screens but that is always a risk with a book of this nature.

Does it tell us anything new? Are there strategies in here that aren’t in any other book on the exchanges? Basically, is this book worth buying if you already have a book on the exchanges or understand how they work and how to trade on them? Hang on while I just check as it was a couple of weeks ago at least when I read this…. actually, yeah, there may be. Towards the end the author looks at some statistics and digs out a few trends and figures that are quite interesting, more so than in other similar works anyway.

For example, he compares the record of favourites of horses at a couple of racecourses, using made-up data most likely but that’s not really relevant as he’s trying to prove a point. And that point is that favourites may have a better winning record at one course than another but may not when average odds are taken into account. If favourites at one course start around evens on average and have a higher strike-rate than favourites at another course where the average starting price of the favourite is more like 2/1 then all you’re really saying is that shorter-priced horses win more often – and that’s nothing new. The author is encouraging the reader to think about stats in context. It’s no good opposing favourites at a given course or in a given race without knowing more about the strike rate compared to the average odds and so on.

There’s also a quite nice piece on the difference between the median and the mean and what this means to gamblers. This is something that is often overlooked in simple texts.

Given this is a pretty slim volume and is now around eight years old I’d suggest only bothering with it if you can pick up a copy cheap. I wouldn’t pay cover price for it these days as there are better books out there, one of which is coming up shortly…

#50. Lay, Back and Think of Winning

Lay, Back and Think of Winning by Nigel Paul

Continuing the matched betting theme we come to a book I bought around five years ago according to Amazon, which means I have probably read it at least twice before this latest viewing. Which is interesting, as I couldn’t recall much of it when I read it this latest time.

It’s subtitled “Guaranteed winning systems for the betting exchange” which makes me chuckle for a few reasons:

1. Betting exchange – singular? Yes, even back in 2005 when this book was written Betfair was the dominant exchange but it was by no means the only one. And nothing in here is specific to Betfair, at least not in terms of strategy, so would apply equally to Betdaq or any of the other smaller exchanges so why isn’t the subtitle in the plural? If the author thought the strategies worked only on Betfair, not only is he wrong but why not replace “the betting exchange” with “Betfair” in the subtitle?
2. Guaranteed – oh, really? So if I lose money you’ll give me it back will you? Pfft! Nothing is guaranteed when it comes to gambling
3. It’s just so incredibly cheesy, even more so when you look at the image on the front cover of cash literally raining down on some cheesy actor/poseur in a suit.

So what are these guaranteed strategies that will see you showered in money? And why is the money shown in the front cover image American currency when the book is aimed at the British market? Is it because the publishers have just used a standard image off the internet and didn’t really care what currency it showed as long as it was cheesy?

I’m going to give away the book’s secrets now: back at a higher price than you lay a selection for and you’ll make money. Yep, that’s about it. Nothing there that you couldn’t get for free all over the internet and common sense for gamblers anyway. If you back at horse at 10/1 and let someone else back it with you (i.e. you lay it) for 5/1 for the same stake then if the horse wins you win more from the back than you lose on the lay and if the horse loses then the stake you win from the lay covers what you lost on the back. You have, in effect, a free bet at 5/1 (or whatever the difference between your back and lay prices is). And if you vary the stakes between the back and lay you can ensure a profit whatever the result. That’s trading – and this book – in a nutshell.

The front cover promises strategies for a variety of sports, from horse racing to golf, tennis, football and cricket. What you actually get is general strategies (along the lines of back high, lay low) with specific examples from various sports including numerous Betfair screenshots to show the markets at different points to illustrate how the trade was made. All this book really has to offer is a big advert for Betfair, an overview of trading and a bit on how weight of money shifts prices about on the exchanges but you could pick all that information up for free on the internet if you Googled about a bit.

So not a great deal to recommend about this book, certainly not at the £14.99 cover price, but if you can pick up a cheap copy on Ebay or somewhere and are interested in sports trading on Betfair then it may be worth investing in a copy but otherwise I wouldn’t bother.

#49. Game, Set And Matched

Game, Set and Matched by Iain Fletcher

Let’s see if we can’t get back on track shall we? My computer has been a bit poorly sick the last couple of weeks as I picked up a malware infection and needed the help of the good people on the Geek Police forum to help clean it up. But I’m all ship-shape now and ready to catch up with the books I have read since I last updated this blog, oooh, ages ago now.

And we start with another book on sports betting, this time by former professional cricketer Iain Fletcher. This particular book focuses on betting exchanges (primarily Betfair) and follows Fletcher’s journey as he learns about the exchanges, matched betting and tries to make a profit spending a year on the exchanges.

The back cover blurb says the author was subbed £5,000 by Betfair and given a year to see what he could turn it into. Which is interesting, as nowhere in the body of the book does the author give the impression that the money is anything but his own. It makes for a more interesting read when you’re 100% behind the author in his quest for profits and to think that he’s actually playing with someone else’s cash and doesn’t have his life (OK, not literally) on the line when it comes to a mid-table rugby league match spoils the illusion somewhat. It’s odd though that the tone of the main text and the back cover blurb differ so much on whose cash Fletch is risking.

What you have, in essence, with this book is part diary and part strategy manual. There is a lot one can learn about matched betting , about the betting exchanges in general and about Betfair in particular from this book. The less you know about these subjects the more you can get from these pages but even for an old hand such as myself there are a few snippets that make it all worthwhile. But it’s also a journey through a year as a professional (sort of) gambler, seen through Fletcher’s eyes. The book mixes an interview with Betfair founder Andrew ‘Bert’ Black with advice on trading horse racing, cricket, tennis and so on. In mixing the gambling with what is going on around him Fletcher has come close to creating sports betting’s equivalent of Anthony Holden’s seminal poker work, Big Deal I suppose.

But is this book any good? It’s given me a few ideas, and shortly after reading it I was trying my hand at trading on the exchanges again, after a few vaguely successful forays into this area many years ago. However, a few days later I was running for cover with the trading long behind me as I remembered why I stopped trading all those years ago. It’s hard work for little return, basically. Your reading of markets has to be spot on and you need to be able to predict price movements with great accuracy. You also need the right tools (basic internet access and a Betfair account are not enough these days) and the right mentality. I had the tools I thought I needed (and indeed the helped) but what I didn’t have was all the right know-how to get the best out of these tools (where should I set my stop-loss? Should I be using a trailing stop-loss instead? Should I just be looking to scalp odd ticks here and there? etc.) and consequently the right mentality as I hate not knowing how to play the game perfectly. To be a successful trader you need a lot more than this book could ever teach you. But it’s a step in the right direction.