Review of Betting Baseball 2007
- Title:
- Betting Baseball 2007
- Author:
- Michael Murray
- Publisher:
- --
- Date:
- 2007
- ISBN:
- 978-0-9778787-0-3
- Pages:
- 246
- Price:
- $27.50
April 10, 2007
Last year I reviewed Michael Murray's Betting Baseball 2006.
This year's edition contains some significant updates over last year,
enough so that the new guide is worth reviewing by comparison.
The first noticeable change is the book's binding. In previous years,
Betting Baseball was spiral bound in an 8 1/2" by 11" format.
This year the book is professionally bound in a trade paperback format.
Even though I'd greatly prefer to have a pile of loose-leaf papers with
excellent information than to have the most attractive book that doesn't
have anything worthwhile to say, it's still worth noting that the packaging
of the book is a significant step up.
Added to the new volume is a chronological narrative where the author
aligns many of the topics in the book with bets he placed during the
2006 season. Overall, I'm not a big fan of this change. Doing so
moved several topics around, and I think some of the flow of the book
suffers as a result. This would all be a beneficial trade-off if the
narrative portions contributed to the reader's ability to make winning
bets, but although Murray lists some wagers he makes in these passages
as well as his results, he provides hardly any information on what
factors drove him to make these bets. I'd like this narrative if it
provided insight on how to apply the methods in this book to specific
situations, but it appears to be superfluous to me.
Another improvement in the 2007 edition, though, is the editing. My
biggest objection to the 2006 edition was that because of the large
number of errors, it was hard to trust much of the rest of the
information it contained. Murray has gone to great lengths to make
corrections, and Betting Baseball 2007 is greatly
improved as a consequence. Kudos to the author for doing the hard
work to make sure his book is useful to its audience.
Most of the information is an updated version of what appeared in
earlier editions. However, some subtractions seem to have occurred.
Most notably, I can't find the day/night totals splits that were in
last year's edition, which seems odd to me as that's valuable information
for totals bettors. Also, Murray's new information on money management,
particularly with regard to Kelly betting, is, unfortunately, problematic
in a way consistent with most of the sports betting literature, which is
to say, misinformed. On the other hand Murray has added some information
on bets on the results of the first five innings of games. Unfortunately,
with the withdrawal of Pinnacle from the US sports betting market, this
has less utility than Murray probably hoped when the section was originally
written.
Murray's 2006 book was a useful reference for those who are serious
about betting baseball. Many of the flaws in that addition have been
addressed for 2007, making Betting Baseball 2007 even
more valuable. In my opinion there's still room for improvement,
though. I believe Murray could do a better job tying all of his
data together into a coherent methodology for bettors, for example.
Still, this is a good book that has gotten better, and I believe that
most baseball bettors would be well advised to take a close look at it.
Capsule:
Betting Baseball 2007 is a significant upgrade over the
2006 edition. While the binding and packaging has been significantly
improved, even more important is the editing and fact checking, which
gives me more confidence in the data contained in this edition than in
years past. There are still areas in which I think the book could
be improved, and some useful information from last year's edition seems
to be missing in '07. However, previous editions have been useful, and
the 2007 update is better, so Betting Baseball 2007 is
resource that I expect most baseball bettors will find to be valuable.
Note: I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher.
I have no other interest, financial or otherwise, in the success of
this book.
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