I recently bought this book after a recommendation from a commenter I've been trading e-mails with. I didn't realize it, but I've heard a couple interviews with this guy already before. He's 'gingfacekillah' on X and is a good follow (if he'll confirm you). He did a good interview on the Circle's Off podcast and another good one on the Pinnacle YouTube channel. (It's amazing the amount of good, real sports betting information Pinnacle puts out. They are truly unafraid. Pinnacle really is the top of the food chain, I don't care what anyone says). You can search Andrew Mack on Youtube and find a few more of his interviews. They're worth watching, he's a good communicator and obviously a really smart guy. He's not super nerdy either.
Before I start, let me say that I think this book is good at what it's trying to do, probably worth reading if you're a modeler or trying to be one, I don't regret reading it and I might even get Volume II which is specifically about props. But I shit you not, I actually threw this book on the ground in frustration while reading it. Not even kidding. Let me explain.
The first couple chapters of the book are good. I was practically licking my chops during the first chapter, thinking I found a real hidden gem. He explains modeling as a concept really well and gives you access to all kinds of ready made models and calculators in Excel. The book is probably worth it for the negative binomial calculator alone, which I will make use of when/if I continue to model. There's a section in the beginning where he goes through different kinds of distributions, including negative binomial and poisson, and where you can apply them. (Embarrassingly, the whole concept of 'distributions' was/is kind of foreign to me. I just learned about poisson and only attacked markets where I could use it. So this chapter was illuminating for me).
However, once you get into the nitty gritty of each model, you might be as disappointed as I was. Every single model he shows you uses only one piece of data: the final score. That's it. (Actually one model gets as deep as Home points scored, Home points allowed, Away points scored, Away points allowed). Each model is just excruciatingly, brain numbingly, massaging final scores and excel functions and coefficients into, I guess, a working model. Then there's a model at the end that models all the models together. It is as infuriating as it sounds.
Now look, the models almost certainly do work, especially for small market stuff, which he points out. He even makes the point that they're perfect for obscure sports where you don't have access to advanced stats. Something like Icelandic Women's Basketball. And if you can make money using it and betting on obscure stuff like that, all the power to you. But if this is what modeling is in 2025, if this is how you beat sports, I can honestly say that it just is not for me anymore. It's soulless. There is no joy in it, no artistry, no thinking deeply about the sport. It's just Excel add-on and function after add-on and function. Models modeling models.
Maybe I'm just not smart enough to really get it. That's certainly possible, if not probable. Computer science, big data, messy Excel functions, these have never really been my thing. But I have won a good amount of money from betting on sports for more than a decade, and a lot that came from self made models, so it's not like I'm some random guy picking up a book he doesn't understand and shitting on it. The basic logic of what he's doing isn't lost on me. And this book would almost definitely appeal to people who come to sports modeling from the computer science/engineering world. But personally, I had a real, visceral reaction to this book and his whole approach. Which, again, I'm not saying doesn't work. I'm sure it does! And the reviews on Amazon at least are pretty glowing. But it is just so godamn soulless! It's probably how a robot would try to beat sports, which probably appeals to some people.
I realize as I'm writing this that this probably says more about me than the book. But as good as his interviews are and as good as he probably is at winning money through modeling, I really haven't seen or heard much about this book or him until I specifically looked for it. It didn't seem to create much buzz that other books have.
So I don't know. It probably is worth reading if you're trying to make money modeling these days. If I read this when it came out I probably would have given it more of a chance. It's actually, somehow, 6 years old now so it might even be a little dated. And he keeps saying in it that it's for beginners and how he's moved on to R and Python. Maybe people nowadays just come equipped right out of the box with way more skill and knowledge with Excel and data science. My high school typing classes were on typewriters! I guess I am a little bit of a dinosaur with this shit.
It's 40 bucks and you can read it in an hour so it's not like it's a huge investment. If you're here, there's a good chance you'll get something out of it, and like I said, I probably will get Volume II on props. But even the fact that there's a book like that out there, dealing with props specifically, with 'beginner' concepts in them like mean loss reversion and log loss and ridge analysis and excel functions 6 lines deep is discouraging. I'm pretty sure the prop jig is up and has been for a while now. Like I said before, I used to handicap props with a pen and paper when I started, and I made good money doing it. Boy has that changed.
And by the way, this is going to sound really cunty, but there's a little something off/weird about the author. I don't know. The picture he put of himself on the back of the book is a weirdo gym selfie, complete with him flexing in a tank top and a half duck face. And his X profile pic is like an instagram face-tuned cartoon selfie of himself. And during one of the interviews I saw of him, he had his whole background very oddly blurred out. I don't even know what the fuck it means or what I think it means or what I'm trying to say. There is just something slightly off-putting about all of it I can't quite put my finger on. Like an uncanny valley type of thing.
So that's about it. In summation, I thought it was an interesting book, I got a little something out of it, I'll probably buy volume II. I also viscerally despised it, threw it on the ground while reading it, will probably never pick it back up, and think the author might not exactly be a human being. So take from that what you will.
In other news, the Stanley Cup finals start tonight. No props tonight but I might have some up for this series if anyone even gives a shit. Like I mentioned at the top, I've been learning about distributions more broadly and have discovered the negative binomial one. It's apparently much superior to poisson but it's harder to use (you have to plug the players total season long data into it. So for instance, for SOG, you'd need to put in his game by game results for the entire season. It doesn't sound all that hard and if/when I get back into it, I'll figure out a way to do it. But it'll definitely take more time for each player). I never considered the fact that using poisson could be the issue with my props so there's a little ray of light of hope for me and props in general. But I'm finding it harder and harder to even care all that much about sports anymore. It just feels silly sometimes. When I think about all the full Sundays I spent in front my TV and computer, all through my twenties and then some, it does feel like a bit of a waste. Like a bread and circus kind of thing. I saw a video recently of this Toronto Maple Leafs fan in his basement 'man cave', all completely dekked out in Maple Leafs shit. He was actually wearing hockey pads and a helmet! His entire life was being a fan of a hockey team. It was beyond pathetic and I thought I don't want to be even in the same universe as a guy like this. Especially considering the devastating transformation Canada has gone through the past 5 or so years. Like, you're a 40 plus year old man wearing a hockey helmet and pads with a 20 year old mans name on your back, rooting for a team that wouldn't even know if you died, all while your country turns into Canada-a-stan. Nobody can afford a house, your money is fake, your government openly hates and discriminates against you, and you're literally crying because a hockey team lost. It all just feels wrong. I'm not even sure exactly what I mean or how I feel. I'm going through some changes myself, just the way I feel and the way I see the world. And I'm not sure that betting a hundred bucks on a few props here and there is something that is or should be important to me anymore. I don't know! I think I will at least try out the negative binomial thing, if not for hockey then maybe baseball or football. And if I start making good money again maybe I'll feel different. But we shall see. Either way, I'll discuss it here and I'll always keep this going.
That's about it for today. I'll probably have something like a Part II to my last post. It was really rambly and I ended up discussing like three different topics I've wanted to get off my chest for a while and I don't think I did a great job getting my points across. I need to think about everything some more. I just finished a great Jared Taylor book that I had to mail a check to buy since it's banned on Amazon. Spicy! Maybe I'll touch on some of that stuff again and I'll have a crypto post up sometime soon, and of course my alien post will be here someday. I've been reading like a mad man too so I will have another book review post too.
Talk soon, thanks for reading, bye for now!
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