OK I know I'm pushing it a little bit with that title but hey, scared money don't make money and I didn't come here to pussyfoot around. I am an avid reader and during my heyday in the sports betting world, I did try to read just about every book that was remotely well received by the sharp community. So while this title may be a little tongue in cheek, I think it's at least fairly close to a definitive list.
I know I've been threatening to do this book review post for a while now so here goes. Here is a list of, really, the best sports betting books that I'm aware of from what I'll call "my era", or the "Pre DFS era". I have been a little out of the scene for a year or two now, so if there are some newer books out there it's possible that I missed them. If you are a sharp or trying to be one, or even if you aren't but you just like to read, I highly recommend you check out any of these books. I have often said that it is pretty remarkable how much information is out there just laying around, practically in the open. A lot of that comes from the books I'll be mentioning here. I'll have some at the end that aren't sports betting exactly, but are at least investing or poker related that I would assume anyone interested in this blog would also be into.
Anyway, here we go. In rough order of the biggest impact on me.
#1. "Conquering Risk, Attacking Vegas and Wall Street" by Elihu D. Fuestel and George Howard. 2010.
This book probably changed my life more than any other book I've ever read. This one really got it all going for me. I've talked about it before on here but this little, fairly short book has some very easy to follow and understand examples for pricing props that you can apply to tons of other things. This book has two parts, one on sports betting/Vegas and one on Wall St. The Wall St section is basically useless, honestly. But the entire Sports Betting section really is just useful nugget after nugget. It was written by Elihu Feustel who went by Justin7 on all the old school message boards. He was a very good and active poster and actually started Sports Book Review, better known as SBR with their famous message board. SBR, when it started, was a terrific idea and badly needed. Back in the old days when sports betting was decades away from being legalized and a little bit before my time, the landscape was like the wild west. (We'll call these days the "net-teller days"). Books would do all kinds of shady stuff, up to and including just complete exit scams. Good bye, the entire site, along with whatever money you had on there, is gone one day when you try to log in. It took a while for the market to sort itself out and there were lots of shady things going on and constant disputes between players and books. (And the players weren't always right, by the way). So there was a need for some sort of neutral, private, third party system who could at least give some kind of summary or warning about various different online sports books. They also acted as a de facto lawyer for players who had a dispute and nowhere else to turn to. (Now that I think about it, this situation is almost exactly like The Phantom Gourmet that I just talked about.)
SBR started off great and with the best intentions, but eventually they had to extract that value and started taking ads from sports books. That led to accusations of them getting paid for good reviews and protecting certain brands. I actually think it was more than just accusations but I'm not exactly sure. It almost doesn't even matter because the end result is that now no one really cares about or trusts SBR anymore. They're still around and Justin7 left them at some point when all this stuff was going on, but the damage was done. He kind of rubbed people the wrong way on message boards (and maybe was a little autistic-y now that I think about it?) and ended up being the face of the whole SBR debacle which I thought was unfair. He released this book right in the middle of it and I remember it got review bombed by all the people who were mad about SBR. I think that's one of the reasons I never really see or hear about this book that much. I know a lot of the more severe sharps had some issues with some of his math in the book too, if I remember correctly, but that was like circumsizing a mosquito in my opinion. The book is a low-level goldmine.
Anyway, this book quite literally has/had it all for anyone starting out. I guess it's pretty dated now as it is almost 15 years old at this point, but if you're new to this I 100% would recommend it. There's step by step how to build a WNBA and MLB model (neither of which would work today but I bet at least the WNBA one did in 2010). All kinds of push charts and really good explanations on them. The chapter on the Poisson distribution alone was honestly worth probably 50 times the cost of the book, if not (much) more. He goes into Wong Teasers, super bowl specific prop prices, oh and Correlated Parlays! That chapter alone was literally worth more than something like 4k times the cost of the book. (By the way, here's a fun little fact. After I read this book I was on one of the big message boards discussing it. I made a thread asking for a specific number that wasn't given in the book. I kind of can't believe it now that I think about it, but he gave the magic number that you need for a college football game to be an official, profitable, correlated parlay. CP's need the spread and the total to be close. How close? Well, I didn't know. But he did and he put it in that book. I wanted to know what that number would be for first half bets instead of full game bets. He immediately sent me a direct message saying "Do not talk about correlated parlays. Make your own database and figure it out but don't say anything publicly." So I wrote back something like "OK fine but you gotta tell me what the number is." And he wrote back "it's much, much higher {meaning you don't need as much correlation for half time bets as you do for full time} but figure it out yourself". That seemed fair enough to me).
He also has quite a few videos out there on Youtube where he walks you through how to price and beat props. It's insane to me how little attention this guy and his book and videos got. Some of his videos have less than a couple hundred views. And he's telling you, step by step, how to make easily 40-50k a year (back then). If you had any kind of hustle and could maintain at least a few square books year round you could easily double that figure, if not more. And I must have recommended "Conquering Risk" to at least half a dozen people in my group who were interested in what I was doing. Not one person bought it. I think the lesson there is that the vast, vast majority of sports bettors really don't actually want to win money betting at sports long term. I think deep down they feel like it's just a little bit too far-fetched for them. It's like trying to beat the lottery or a scratch ticket in their mind, maybe. I don't know. But anyway, as you can see, I recommend this book to everyone, even today.
Whew! I did not mean for that to be a commercial for Justin7 but I always felt like he was treated unfairly by the sharp community. I don't know everything about the SBR situation as it was right before my time. I'm not sure how involved he was or even exactly what SBR did, but I know I have the broad strokes right at least. I do know he gave a lot to the community, more than most. I didn't mean to write that much but here we are! Each one won't be nearly so long, don't worry.
#2 "Weighing The Odds In Sports Betting" by King Yao. 2007.
This book was one of the few around this era that some may call the "bible books" of sports betting. These laid the foundation for much of the future sports betting material. Much like Conquering Risk, there isn't a wasted page in this book. It covers pretty much everything you need to know to start making money betting on sports. Lots of good example on how to calculate EV and ROI, how why or when to hedge, parlay cards, prop examples. This book and Conquering Risk is where I got the idea on scalping/half scalping. There is a GREAT little nugget in here that I used for years and years. It's really simple, too. You bet NO on "Will there be a triple crown winner" in horse racing AFTER the Kentucky Derby. The logic is that almost everyone who bets that is betting YES so the NO is usually profitable already. But if you wait for the first race (The Kentucky Derby) to be over, that price will usually get way better even thought nothing really has changed. Someone had to win the Kentucky Derby. Everyone will be talking about "Can Horse X win the triple crown this year?!" and once people have a horse in mind they can root for, they'll be piling in on the YES even harder. So you wait for right before the second race and pound the NO. (Although I will say during the time I was doing this I'm pretty sure there was two triple crown winners? It hadn't happened in 100 years and then happened twice in like 3 or 4 or something. I still made money on this bet long term though, I'm fairly certain). Now that I'm looking at it, I might go back and re-read this book.
#3 "Sharp Sports Betting" Stanford Wong. 2009.
This is where "Wong Teasers" came from. I've talked about those plenty on here so I won't go into them again. It's pretty insane though that Wongs have been out in the public since 2009 and are STILL profitable to this day (at -110 which you can still find). Shows how ignorant most sports bettors are to be honest. There are lots of prop examples with step by step answers, too.
The two books above, by King Yao and Stanford Wong, along with this one: "Fixed Odds Sports Betting" by Joseph Buchdahl were what I would consider the 'bible books' of that era. Now, I'm not actually including "Fixed Odds" in my list because I got absolutely nothing out of that book. Everyone else seemed to though as all the sharp guys always recommended it. It's super dry and math heavy and I'm sure there are good nuggets in there that I missed but I cannot personally recommend it. I highly, highly recommend "Sharp Sports Betting" by Wong though.
#4 "Basketball On Paper" by Dean Oliver. 2003.
This book is still very much considered THE bible of betting on basketball. If you handicap basketball successfully, I'd say there's a 95% chance you've read this book. This book alone helped me make my NBA prop models which crushed for years and years (largely to learning about pace and its importance before everyone else figured that out). I unfortunately bought this on my kindle instead of physically buying it so it's harder to revisit. (Massive mistake, by the way. I wish I never bought a single book on Kindle. Nothing electronic is better than reading and owning a real physical book. Don't buy shit on Kindle.) But I was reading this step by step while I made my model and that alone made it well worth it, many times over. If you handicap basketball in any sense of the word or even just really enjoy it and you haven't already, buy this book right now.
#5 "Trading Bases" by Joe Peta. 2013.
This book is a little bit different than the ones so far in that it has a narrative structure. It's about the author, Joe Peta, who was a big time Wall Street guy who gets hit by a car and is bed ridden for a couple years. He decides to put his Wall St smarts to the test in a new arena; beating baseball. He comes up with an ingenious model. Probably the most unique way of handicapping I've ever heard of. I know I talked about it before in here so I won't get into it too much but I can't recommend this book enough. If you're not super into the math of sports betting, this is a great read. This is another from my "Kindle era" so I've forgotten a lot about this book, unfortunately. But I remember absolutely loving it.
#6: "Stat Shot. The Ultimate Guide to Hockey Analytics" by Rob Vollman. 2016.
Terrific little book on hockey analytics that was a couple years ahead of its time. Like Basketball On Paper, this was another one that I had open while I made my various NHL prop models. Tons of great info on all kinds of stuff. Even if you don't bet but like hockey, I would read this book. Hockey analytics have actually come quite a way since 2016 so I'm sure this book is quite dated. If you're looking for something to help you make a model, I'd probably look elsewhere as I'm sure there are newer, better books on the subject. But this was ground breaking 8 years ago and it certainly isn't anywhere near useless. I'd read this book again if I was still betting hockey.
#7: "Gambler" Billy Walters. 2024.
The most recent book on here obviously, by far. This is mostly an autobiography but I would read anything Billy Walters has to say. The last section of the book goes into some math and opens the hood a little bit into his operation. He does the old school way of capping which is assigning power rankings to each team and actually to each player. It's their value over an average player, so basically his own version of WAR. Honestly, this book is worth it for the chapter on Phil Mickelson alone. He absolutely TORCHES him. He and Billy Walters were friends and betting partners for a long time and apparently Phil is a pretty sick degenerate gambler. He doesn't say it outright I don't think but it sounds like Walters was betting for Phil and probably using him as cover. Phil could have saved Walters from going to jail for insider trading but didn't. He tells a pretty sick story in there about Phil wanting to bet on himself in the Ryder tournament for something crazy, maybe two million dollars? Walters says he turned it down because if anyone found out it would be a huge scandal. Even though he was 'betting on himself', aka the Pete Rose defense, it doesn't really matter. You can't have professional athletes betting on their own leagues, never mind one of the most famous golfers of all time. Shows how sick Phil is. If you like this blog you should have read this book already.
#8 "Mathletics, How Gamblers, Managers and Sports Enthusiasts Use Math In Baseball, Basketball, and Football" Wayne Winston. 2009.
Another Kindle book from way back so I don't remember a ton about this one. I just know that it helped me a lot with a more thousand feet up approach. Lots of great overall nuggets and insights into how to use math for making models and such. A great primer on analytics. There is probably an updated version of this book with all the new stats we have since 2009, but there is still plenty to be learned in this book.
#9 "Interception" by Ed Miller. 2023.
The first Ed Miller entry here. Ed has been writing poker books for a long time now and has since moved on to the sports betting world. This book has the advantage of being up to date and it's perfect for the semi-pro bettor. Someone who is legitimately trying to win at sports betting but who isn't thinking about quitting their job. Ed has a company that provides live betting data for sports books so he has a unique, inside look into that world. The book is largely about how live betting works from the sports books end and how one would go about beating them. If you bet live at all this book is for sure worth a read. And if you like it I would suggest checking out his other books as he has a ton. He is a very accessible author, meaning he doesn't try to talk over people's heads or get insane with math stuff like a David Sklansky or Mason Malmuth even though Ed Miller came from the same group of those two. (Another little fun fact: I played poker with David Sklansky a few times in Las Vegas. He was just as advertised. Weird, a little bit goofy, super tight and boring and spent the vast majority of his time wandering around the room with a missing blind button in front of his stack. I know he's considered one of the godfathers of poker theory and I've read most of his books and they were all fine for that era. But I lost a lot of the admiration and respect I had for him after playing with him a couple times. He was just so unbelievably tight and unimaginative that he was easy to play against. You just folded to or floated him. I also played with Mason Malmuth a bunch at the Bellagio. Similar to Sklansky but Mason was more of a player. They were both really standoff-ish and Mason had this super annoying thing where he'd constantly be coughing into his hands at the table. He'd put both hands up over his whole face and cough loudly, constantly, every time I saw him play. Mason was a bit more normal but they both seemed like weird dudes to me. Look up the shit David Sklansky was up to with girls underwear and parrots. I'm not kidding).
#10 "The Intelligent Poker Player" by Phillip Newall.
The first outright poker book in here. I'm including it because I've read dozens, if not hundreds of poker books, and none had the impact on me that this one did. I was a limit grinder for a long time and this book was a complete step by step walk through on how to beat mid limit games and why it works. It helped me form my overall strategy that I still use.
Honorable Mentions:
The following aren't strictly sports betting or poker but if you're here, I would bet that you would find them interesting:
"The Creature From Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin - A massive, sprawling book that goes from the very start of civilization up to today. If you're interested in money and how it came to be, definitely check this out. Among many, many other things, it talks about how the Federal Reserve started and what it really does and how evil central banking and printing money is. It's honestly a little bit scary. (Another fun fact time. A great little nugget I took from this book was how banks and interest started. When we first started with money, metallurgists were the first 'bankers.' People would go to them to get gold or whatever else they were using made, and eventually they would just leave their gold with them for good for a small storage fee. Eventually it became too cumbersome to physically go there and get and move their gold to pay for things, so they would use pieces of paper that showed their gold holdings at the 'vaults' and trade with them instead. They were in essence the first 'checks' or paper money. People eventually started to loan each other gold and loan each other these pieces of paper. The metallurgists then took it upon themselves to loan out OTHER peoples gold and pocketed the interest. When people found out about this they were obviously furious. The vault owners then cut the gold owners in on a small piece of their interest profits from loaning out the gold that wasn't theirs. This was the very start of banking as we know it today. So no one ever actually consented to banks lending out our money for themselves. They just did it and when caught, cut us in for a small piece). This book is massive and covers all sorts of things that you make you furious. If you found any of that interesting, read this book.
"The Lords of Easy Money" - I know I mentioned it on here before but this book is a more sober look at the Fed than Creature. I suggest reading those two together if you're into that kind of stuff. Written by an old school journalist (Chris Leonard) who has been covering the Fed for decades. It gives a good inside look at the people in the Federal Reserve and how it all works but without the sensational feeling of Creature. Very impressive at how accurate the detractors of money printing were in that they knew it would be impossible to stop once they started.
"Atlas Shrugged" - An absolute classic for a reason. I'm actually re-reading this for the second time right now. Absolute must read for everyone and my personal favorite book of all time. It's easy to read too, which might be surprising. I could honestly write a whole post just about this book but all I'll say is that I had super high hopes for it before reading and it still surpassed them. If you are going to buy it though, make sure you get a big copy. Like, literally a large copy of the book. It's massive and the one I got is really compact so the words are tiny. Get a nice big copy that you'll have forever.
"Crime and Punishment" - Another classic, this is quite a BIZARRE book. I know it's considered one of the classics but man is this book weird. Shockingly bleak, paints a clear picture of abject poverty in an abjectly poor country. Worth reading once in your life. Odd structure too where it's one long continuous story until the very end. Like, one chapter ends with something like "...he entered the room and sat down in a chair." Then the next chapter starts "Now in the chair, he....". Kind of jarring for some reason. I read this right after Atlas Shrugged as they seemed like polar opposites.
"XX" - A book about what would happen if we were to receive communication from aliens. One of the most enjoyable books I ever read. The author is a graphic designer and he does something super unique in this book. He used different fonts and sizes for different speakers. It works really well and made me surprised that I'd never seen that done before. Super unique book that is hard to explain. It even has a book within a book. If you like Sci-Fi or aliens at all, check this out.
Well I suppose that's it. I could go on a bit more but those are my rock solid recommendations. Looking back at this list, I do have to back off a bit of my 'best of all time' description. It's clear from looking at the dates of the books that I've been out of the sports betting book loop for a while, so I'm sure there are some newer books I don't know about. I still think a lot of these are required reading though if you are a sharp.
Leave a comment on here or on Twitter if you have anything to add. Bye for now!
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