Review of Secrets of Professional Sports Betting

Title:

Secrets of Professional Sports Betting

Author:

Michael Kochan

Publisher:

Cardoza Publishing

Date:

2008

ISBN:

1-5804-2256-X

Pages:

252

Price:

$19.95

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@lvrevealed.com

October 11, 2008

You can tell the difference between winning and losing sports bettors by how they approach the games they bet on. Losers bet on games or teams they like or plan to watch, their analysis is no deeper than what you see on TV or read in magazines, and they don't tend to understand by how much various situations (such as injuries or home field/court) affect betting lines. In Secrets of Professional Sports Bettors, Michael Kochan tells us what he thinks are the factors that are important for winning sports bettors to consider.

The book begins with the basics. Kochan explains the line, totals, and money line wagers before moving on to basics of money management. This is well-covered ground, and I don't see anything in this portion of the book that would make me especially recommend this material. That said, it's not horrible, either.

The author provides two chapters on "dos" and "don'ts" for successful handicapping. I was unimpressed with the "dos", but I think his "don't" list is pretty decent. One of his "don'ts" he titles "Don't Focus on Past Statistics". What he really means is that one shouldn't put too much weight on trends, especially those that include games that don't involve the team members or coaching staff that currently comprises that team. I wouldn't use the word "statistics" to describe this, but I agree with the sentiment.

Unfortunately, this chapter is the high point of the book, and the rest goes down hill rapidly. Kochan claims to have knowledge of how to be a winning sports bettor, but I see no evidence of that from this book. Frankly, his analysis doesn't bear any resemblance to the successful sports bettors I know. Instead, he sounds an awful lot like the casual sports fans make it possible to for truly knowledgeable bettors to make money betting on games. His analysis is no deeper than the talking heads one sees on televised sports shows, and I would no sooner take sports betting advice from them than from an average elementary school student.

Kochan is a fan of hedging bets when I believe it's inappropriate. He advises buying points when betting on totals in the NFL in situations where anyone who has done the math knows it's unprofitable. He says silly things, such as, "When making long-term season win bets with teams, it is more secure to bet on teams under rather than over. Why? Because of the injury" It makes me wonder if he realizes that when a good player is injured, it benefits that team's opponents exactly as much as it hurts the team on which that player plays. Kochan writes passages such as, "Regardless of the spread, you want to put your money in good hands," and "... you should bet the game, not the spread." He advises betting on teams with good players and against teams with bad players, seemingly without understanding that these factors have been incorporated into the line.

Kochan's comments are patently silly and indicate that the author doesn't really understand sports betting. He makes a lot of statements about mathematical concepts, such as buying points, but he shows no indication that he has analyzed these things mathematically. In fact, Kochan shows no evidence of any mathematical aptitude at all. Many of his claims could (and should have been) verified empirically, but they haven't been. In fact, his conclusions are quite wrong based on the data I have accumulated. His approach seems to be based on common sense rather than careful analysis, and I just don't believe that this sort of knowledge is sufficient to beat the sports betting market these days.

I think most, but not all, of the advice in Secrets of Professional Sports Betting is poor. What advice I do think is worthwhile is almost hidden in pages of uniformed opinion. I'm sure there are people out there who are such bad sports bettors that they would benefit from this book. Unfortunately, in order to improve further to become a winning sports bettor, I feel that they'd have to unlearn most of what they picked up from this book. Consequently, I think that this book does more harm than good.

Those who know enough about sports betting to identify the many places where Kochan's book goes off track won't learn anything from the few decent parts. Those who don't possess this judgment are much more likely to be harmed by the information that's wrong than helped by what's right. Consequently, I can't recommend this book to anyone. The best things I can say about it are that it's fairly well copy-edited, and it's not the worst book on sports betting I've ever read, but it's not worth reading, not by a long shot.

Capsule:

Michael Kochan's Secrets of Professional Sports Betting contains a few pieces of good advice for sports bettors. Unfortunately, these are buried in a whole book filled with poor information. I have a hard time believing that Kochan is really a winning sports bettor, and on the off chance that he is, I feel that he's done a poor job of communicating what it takes with his readers. In any case, the rare good information in this book isn't so good that it's worth wading through the misinformation to find, so I can't recommend that anyone buy or read Secrets of Professional Sports Betting.