The Top 4 Books for Successful Betting, Betting on sports events can be fun. But it won’t bring any profit, if you don’t know some essential rules. In this case, you can learn more about different sports or read these books. They are not just about betting, they are about rules that can be helpful even in your daily life.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
This book was published in 2001 and has been reprinted three times since then. It has been translated into 20 languages and sold more than a million copies worldwide.
Nassim Nicola Taleb, a former lecturer at Oxford and Massachusetts universities and now professor emeritus of risk analysis at New York University Polytechnic Institute, will never win an award for his writing style, which at best can be described as rather prickly, and at worst as arrogant. But his shortcomings as a writer are forgotten when it comes to the substance of his work. Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets brilliantly reveals how we suffer from our inability to determine the probability of an event, and how this weakness manifests itself.
Taleb looks at the problem from the point of view of a financial industry worker, but stock market traders can easily be replaced by bettors, and you will realize how easy it is to confuse luck with knowledge in forecasting.
Taleb uses probability theory, basic statistics and behavioral biases in his calculations, along with a fair amount of leniency to the human mind–that is his way. Taleb is not even aware of the wide range of issues he covers, but his publication could not have been more timely, given the clear connection of these issues to the 2008 financial meltdown, the effects of which are still being felt around the world today.
This book does not contain winning strategies or forecasting techniques-it contains expert opinions on risk analysis. One of the main messages: it is important not to trust the experts completely and to properly assess your own ability to analyze.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist. He is the first non-economist to win the award. Kahneman’s work draws on psychological methods.
The central thesis of the book is the separation of two kinds of thinking. The first type of thinking is fast, instinctive and emotional. The second one is slow, more deliberative and logical. The book outlines the biases associated with each of these types of thinking. It highlights the results of decades of scientific research demonstrating that people place too much importance on human judgment.
In 2012, the book was named Best Book of 2011 by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail – but Some Don’t
This book is not only about betting, it contains valuable information about a skill that is essential to successful betting – the ability to predict. The book has been translated into 7 languages.
Nate Silver is the face of modern forecasting. He gained fame after he correctly predicted the presidential election results in every single U.S. state in 2012. But he has devoted himself more to baseball analytics.
The Signal and the Noise is a great textbook on probability and risk theory. The book explains why, despite mountains of data in areas such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and financial systems, the ability to predict correctly in these areas remains very limited, and experience is largely unsuccessful. But there are reverse examples, weather forecasters and some others. Silver reveals the secret to their success.
The Success Equation
Michael Mobussin is head of strategic planning at financial conglomerate Credit Suisse. Why can no one win two Champions Leagues in a row now, when in the early days of the tournament Real Madrid won the IEC five times in a row? The answer, according to Mobussin, lies in what he calls the “paradox of skill.”
Athletes have improved their skills over the last 50 years. Put Real Madrid from the 50s in today’s group of the LFC, and it could have lost every match. If athletes have gotten stronger, how has the role of luck changed?
While skill levels have generally improved, their proportion remains about the same. The level of forwards went up and the level of defenders went up. If the average skill level improves, the difference between the strongest and weakest skills decreases. As a consequence, luck becomes more important.
I hope these 4 Books for Successful Betting can help you in the long run.
