If you believe everything you read on the internet, everyone has the ability to make as much money as they want without having to work for it. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, if something is too good to be true, it usually is. The get rich quick scheme often costs you money, the “sure thing” investment that is about to blow up often goes horribly wrong and the betting tipster on an unbelievable hot streak soon becomes a victim of variance.
However, all hope is not lost. There are plenty of resources out there that can help you, especially when it comes to betting. Interestingly, these resources are often the ones that don’t claim to offer a silver bullet solution to the problem of beating the bookmaker (because they can’t), but if used properly they can certainly provide useful information that will help empower bettors to become more successful in the long run.
Some bettors will choose to start with Google and cast a wide-open net to find betting-related material that can help give them an edge. There are also plenty of blogs out there with experts who are willing to share their expertise through articles, or podcasts for those who prefer to consume audio content. If you have the time to filter through a lot of noise, Twitter can also be a useful resource (especially when looking to build a network of people for knowledge sharing).
While there are many ways to find information to help improve your betting, the focus of this article will be to look at books which, either directly or indirectly, contain a wealth of information that bettors can use to their advantage. It was quite a challenge to filter this list down (we’ll have to feature some honourable mentions) and it should be noted that a range of books have been included to suit all types of bettor.
The Success Equation by Michael J. Mauboussin
To give it it’s full title, The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing is essentially about what all bettors need to understand: how both luck and skill can influence performance and results. It’s human nature to believe our positive results in betting are caused by our predictive skill, and the negative results are simply down the bad luck. While it is quite common to have this mind-set, it can be very dangerous when investing money based on this principle.
Mauboussin’s book will help bettors understand that it’s not quite as simple as being good and bad at betting. We need to be prepared to experience good and bad luck, no matter how skilled or unskilled we are. In short, if you want to be successful in betting, you need to be a skilled bettor but also benefit from some good luck.
As important as things like distinguishing causation and correlation, understanding uncertainty, and measuring the influence of luck are (and they are covered in great detail in the book), one of the most interest elements of Mauboussin’s book is his work on the paradox of skill. There is a great MLB example used to explain this paradox of skill, but it’s also one that bettors would be wise to apply to the competition within the betting market.
Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
There are quite a few books by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that could have made this list but Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder just about pips Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. While Taleb may divide opinion when it comes to his writing style, there is no denying the quality of his works and his intellectual capability (his past experience in the financial markets and position of Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering only further enhance his credentials).
While it isn’t completely necessary to read Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swann before starting Antifragile, it is probably well advised. Not only to become acclimatised to Taleb’s way of communicating his ideas, but because the three do have a natural progression to them and follow some sort of natural order. It could be argued the aforementioned titles are more directly related to betting and that Antifragile evolves into more of a social commentary, but the reason this book makes the list ahead of the others is that it does a good job of covering that old ground and still takes things a bit further. What’s more, if you are able to understand the concept of anti-fragility and apply it to your betting, it could yield some positive results.
