Review of Fixed Odds Sports Betting

Title:

Fixed Odds Sports Betting

Author:

Joseph Buchdahl

Publisher:

High Stakes

Date:

2003

ISBN:

1-84344-019-9

Pages:

224

Price:

£12.99

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@lvrevealed.com

September 5, 2005

Interest in betting on sports is a global phenomenon, and the United States doesn't hold a monopoly on pundits who write about how to beat the sports books. In Fixed Odds Sports Betting, Joseph Buchdahl takes a very mathematical approach to beating the books. This book is hard to find in the United States, but can be acquired from several different sources over the Internet.

First, by "fixed odds sports betting" Buchdahl refers to the type of wagers that are familiar to most sports fans. This is where the bettor knows exactly how much they will either win or lose at the time they place their bet. By way of contrast one can think of the stock market, where a bettor may win or lose more if one's stock does especially well or poorly. While "spread betting" is becoming more popular in some sports markets, fixed betting is still predominant. It's unfortunate that the author of this book chose to call attention to this difference in the title. I believe that doing so is more likely to confuse than inform the reader.

Buchdahl begins with some introductory material that includes some gentle but necessary mathematical background followed by an analysis of some common bets available at sports books. Fixed Odds Sports Betting is very UK-centric, as one might expect from an examination of the book's front matter. Both an understanding of British English and some familiarity with British Premier League football will prove helpful to the reader.

Buchdahl doesn't spend much time discussing handicapping, instead preferring to statistically evaluate the work others have done in rating teams. Consequently those looking for handicapping guides will find a few reasonable references to other sources for this material but little in this particular book to assist in this regard. On the other hand, I found the methods that Buchdahl does use in this book to be interesting, sound, and somewhat novel. It's not that there are any amazing breakthroughs in this book, just that his approach to evaluating the data to be a little different than I've read from other authors.

The author also spends considerable time on the issue of money management, comparing several different betting strategies. I believe Buchdahl's math is correct, and some of his evaluations are interesting and fresh, but I believe the way he goes about constructing his arguments is likely to be at least as confusing as enlightening. For example, he makes comparisons between systems that use fixed and proportional bet sizes that I don't think are appropriate. The affect these two types of betting strategies have on a bettor's bankroll are so divergent that Buchdahl does readers a disservice by comparing them at all. On the other hand, the author's examination of Kelly betting in the face of inaccurate information about the bettor's edge is interesting and worthwhile.

Buchdahl has a lot of interesting things to say in Fixed Odds Sports Betting, and he often analyzes sports betting situations in some truly novel ways. On the other hand, this novel approach can sometimes be confusing to the reader. Those who are well read on the subject of sports betting and are looking for some new ways to analyze bets and money management are likely to find Buchdahl's book worthwhile. Those who are less well versed in the sports betting literature, and especially those who are exclusively interested in American sporting events, will probably find other sources of information more to their liking.

Capsule:

Joseph Buchdahl has written a book designed to help readers beat their bookies at sports betting. The target audience for this book resides in the UK, so other audiences will need to translate its ideas to receive its full value, although the ideas are universal enough to make this possible in most cases. The author takes a mathematical approach to winning at sports betting, and his methods are both sound and somewhat novel. This makes the book interesting to well-read sports bettors, but I don't think I'd recommend it to those who haven't already exhausted most of the good book on the subject available on the market.