Review of Investing in College Basketball

Title:

Investing in College Basketball

Author:

Larry Seidel

Publisher:

AuthorHouse

Date:

2004

ISBN:

1-4184-8139-4

Pages:

368

Price:

$34.50

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@lvrevealed.com

March 15, 2006

One of the strange things about sports betting is that there are so many different approaches from which the public can choose. My approach tends to be heavily focused on the analytical. As one might expect, I tend to rely on computer models and disciplined conservative mathematics, discounting the pundits who pick largely based on "intangibles" and recent performance. However, by no means do I think my way is the only way to win. In Investing in College Basketball, Larry Seidel advocates a very different sort of method. He picks a single conference, studies it in depth, and uses detailed analysis and individual match-ups to handicap games.

Seidel uses a methodical and specialized approach to his NCAA basketball handicapping. He provides specific recommendations on how to choose a conference to follow and how to follow them. He indicates which statistics he thinks are important and which aren't. His approach is very disciplined, but also very qualitative. He doesn't use power rankings and doesn't mathematically compare teams' statistics. Those looking for algorithms aren't going to find them here. In Sports Book Management, Roxy Roxborough dismisses the idea that a bettor can gain an advantage over the books by concentrating on a single conference or region as a myth. This is contrary to Seidel's method. Who is right and who is wrong? I honestly don't know. I'm not convinced yet that anyone does.

The lack of specificity presents a problem for those trying to evaluate the effectiveness of Seidel's methods. Since we can't quantitatively define his strategy, we can only measure his interpretation of his results. This is not to say that I believe the author is being dishonest about how his system performs, but even granting the accuracy and completeness of his results, nobody can be sure that anyone but the author can gain an advantage by applying these methods. They may be a winner for Seidel's circumstances, but that doesn't mean that any other bettor can achieve similar results by following his lead.

About half the book is devoted to Seidel's step-by-step analysis of the Atlantic 10 conference during the 2003-2004 season. The author performs a pre-season analysis of the teams, and then breaks the season down into two parts, the pre-conference and conference schedules. Seidel prefers to not bet during the conference or post-season tournaments, so those games aren't discussed. He lists all the bets he makes, 52 bets in 35 games by my count, and claims a 71% unit-win rate. However, I couldn't find any information on how many units Seidel made on which games, so I can't test this claim.

Winning 71% is impressive. In Investing in College Basketball Seidel doesn't guarantee such a win rate, but he does nothing to disabuse the reader that they can achieve this, or even higher, returns. I'll be honest, I don't believe anyone can achieve a 71% win rate in the long term, so I believe the author does a disservice here. However, it's no more egregious than the claims made by most sports authors and pundits. In any case, the 71% is not as statistically impressive as it first sounds. In 17 games he bets the first half as well as the game, results we expect to be highly correlated. Disregarding these correlated bets, we can proceed under the assumption that Seidel has won 71% on 35 uncorrelated game bets. That's a record of 25-10. This is impressive, but the sample size is too small to draw any solid conclusions about the methods.

Investing in College Basketball provides some good suggestions about detailed handicapping of NCAA hoops. The author is disciplined and meticulous in his research. Admittedly, his methodology is different from my style, but I feel that the book lacks detail and not enough data are provided for the reader to be able to draw any strong conclusions about his methods. Some interesting information is here, but I was ultimately disappointed by this book. However, I suspect that there are others out there who find this work much more valuable than I. If they can turn these ideas into a long-term winning system, than more power to them.

Capsule:

Investing in College Basketball suggests that one route to being a winning bettor is to follow one conference in great detail and use that information to beat the books. Author Larry Seidel provides his recommendations on how to achieve betting success. The methods he espouses are qualitative rather than quantitative, and there are not enough data here for anyone to evaluate how effective his strategies are. I imagine a lot of folks will appreciate his techniques, but they really didn't impress me. Therefore, while this book does have some interesting and worthwhile information, I really can't bring myself to recommend it.