Here are 100 books that 20/20 Sports Betting fans have personally recommended if you like
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I was a mailman when I became obsessed with card counting at blackjack. Not having enough money to play at a pro level, I decided to sell a mathematical formula I’d devised for evaluating games and systems. I offered it for sale through gambling newsletters at $100. I immediately had big sales because no one had ever seen a method for estimating card counters’ win rates. I got letters from college math professors asking me how I’d come up with the math. So, I started my own blackjack newsletter where I published my discoveries. I was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame in 2002 and soon had big investors funding my play.
Really fun true stories about six gambling legends. Titanic Thompson never entered an official PGA event, yet made more money playing golf than most of the top pros in his era, often by beating the famous pros at their own game. Minnesota Fats never won a major pool tournament, but made so much money traveling from city to city to hustle the local pool sharks he became a legend in the Midwest pool halls. Johnny Moss cut his gambling teeth in illegal poker games in Texas and Oklahoma, then went on to win the first two World Series of Poker championships in 1970 and 1971, winning nine WSOP bracelets in total, his last one in 1988 at the age of 81, making him the oldest WSOP bracelet winner ever.
In this classic book, Jon Bradshaw singled out from the world of full-time gamblers six men who consistently win - the men who year after year, deal after deal and proposition after proposition come away with their pockets filled and their sense of infallibility intact.
Bradshaw follows three legendary poker players - Johnny Moss, Pug Pearson, and Titanic Thompson; tennis player Bobby Riggs; pool player Minnesota Fats and backgammon player Tim Holland. His evocation of ambience and his dramatic description of the games themselves are fascinating but Bradshaw also deftly probes their minds and hearts as he attempts to…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I was a mailman when I became obsessed with card counting at blackjack. Not having enough money to play at a pro level, I decided to sell a mathematical formula I’d devised for evaluating games and systems. I offered it for sale through gambling newsletters at $100. I immediately had big sales because no one had ever seen a method for estimating card counters’ win rates. I got letters from college math professors asking me how I’d come up with the math. So, I started my own blackjack newsletter where I published my discoveries. I was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame in 2002 and soon had big investors funding my play.
In-depth interviews with eight of the most successful modern-day gambling pros. Billy Walters, the most successful sports bettor in Las Vegas history, had a 30-year winning streak and was so feared by the Vegas sports books, he had to hire “runners” to place his bets because the casinos refused his action. Tommy Hyland ran the biggest and longest-lasting blackjack team in history, winning millions from casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. Alan Woods has won hundreds of millions using a computer system to beat the race tracks in Hong Kong. The interview format makes for truly compelling reading, as you get to learn these gamblers’ secrets in their own words.
Get into the minds of the greatest gamblers of all time. Read in-depth interviews with eight masters of the games. Learn how they think, how they play, and what made them successful.
The interview subjects include: Billy Walters (sports betting), Chip Reese (poker), Doyle Brunson (poker), Mike Svobodny (backgammon), Stan Tomchin (backgammon and sports betting), Cathy Hulbert (blackjack and poker), Alan Woods (blackjack and horse racing), and Tommy Hyland (blackjack).
I was a mailman when I became obsessed with card counting at blackjack. Not having enough money to play at a pro level, I decided to sell a mathematical formula I’d devised for evaluating games and systems. I offered it for sale through gambling newsletters at $100. I immediately had big sales because no one had ever seen a method for estimating card counters’ win rates. I got letters from college math professors asking me how I’d come up with the math. So, I started my own blackjack newsletter where I published my discoveries. I was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame in 2002 and soon had big investors funding my play.
The author, a former casino executive, exposes the industry’s “comp system,” through which casinos give away more than a billion dollars in “complimentaries” every year, as an enticement to get people to gamble. Although the book appears to be aimed at amateur gamblers looking for casino freebies (room, food, booze, show tickets, etc.), the information in this book has been devoured by professional gamblers at the highest levels because it reveals the inner workings of how players are evaluated and rated, with tips on how to look like you’re betting more than you are, how to look like you’re losing when you’re winning, and basically how to look dumb when you’re smart. I personally made a lot of money from the information in this book.
Win every time you gamble? Is that possible? It is if you play for comps.
Every year, U.S. casinos give away more than a billion dollars worth of amenities to customers in return for their gambling action. These giveaways, known as “comps” (short for complimentaries), range from parking and drinks to gourmet meals and airfare. Are you getting your share? From nickel slot players to $500 a hand blackjack high rollers, Comp City has shown tens of thousands of gamblers how to get free casino vacations.
Since the first publication of Comp City, author Max Rubin has been teaching gamblers…
AcClaim is a dark, high-society romance about Beatrix Winslow-Hale, a successful romance author who believes desire can be negotiated and controlled—until enigmatic billionaire Dorian Wolker crosses the line between consensual surrender and violation. Publicly humiliated and emotionally shattered, Beatrix turns to Manon de Rochemaure, her fiercely loyal best friend and…
I was a mailman when I became obsessed with card counting at blackjack. Not having enough money to play at a pro level, I decided to sell a mathematical formula I’d devised for evaluating games and systems. I offered it for sale through gambling newsletters at $100. I immediately had big sales because no one had ever seen a method for estimating card counters’ win rates. I got letters from college math professors asking me how I’d come up with the math. So, I started my own blackjack newsletter where I published my discoveries. I was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame in 2002 and soon had big investors funding my play.
The four areas of a Las Vegas casino where you’d be likely to find the most professional gamblers would be the poker room, the blackjack pits, the race and sports book, and the video poker machines. Bob Dancer is one of the most successful video poker pros ever. He’s written numerous books on the subject, has put together highly-profitable video poker teams, and is widely recognized as the game’s top expert. This is his story about how he came to Las Vegas with $6,000 and within six years had won $1 million from playing video poker. Video poker is one of the most overlooked areas of professional gambling and one of the most accessible to players starting with a small bankroll.
Bob Dancer is the best known video poker player and writer in the world. In just six years, after coming to Las Vegas with a $6,000 bankroll, Dancer won more than $1 million playing beatable machines. Million Dollar Video Poker recounts the events of those six years, with stories about his meteoric ups and downs, and lessons for players of all skill levels. Video poker is one of those rare casino games that can be beaten by a talented and informed player, and Dancer explains how it’s done. Never before has a top video poker professional shared so many of…
As the kid of tournament bridge and Scrabble players, I’ve been hooked on games my whole life. None more so than poker, which has helped me make a living both at the tables and as a writer. I’m currently working on a TV adaptation of Ship It Holla Ballas!
In a self-conscious effort to re-enact Positively Fifth Street’s reimagining of the writer’s journey,Grantland Magazine assigned Colson Whitehead to cover the 2011 World Series in exchange for the $10,000 entry fee. He falls short of matching McManus’ success on the felt, but that’s not really the point: the meat is in the interaction between the poker and Whitehead’s struggle with depression. Which might be unbearable in the hands of anyone other than Colson Whitehead, maybe the best there is at crafting sentences that will make you laugh and wince at the same time.
From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys • “Whitehead proves a brilliant sociologist of the poker world.” —The Boston Globe
In 2011, Grantland magazine gave bestselling novelist Colson Whitehead $10,000 to play at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. It was the assignment of a lifetime, except for one hitch—he’d never played in a casino tournament before. With just six weeks to train, our humble narrator took the Greyhound to Atlantic City to learn the ways of high-stakes Texas Hold’em.
Poker culture, he discovered, is marked by joy, heartbreak, and grizzled…
I’ve been playing card games since childhood, and have had a parallel interest in the mathematics behind the games for nearly as long. While I didn’t visit Las Vegas in person until 2000, the stories of how that city was built around the gaming industry quickly came to fascinate me. Digging into the details of the people who have made that city what it is and have come to make their way in the desert has been a fascinating sidelight that has enhanced my recent work writing books on gambling mathematics.
Grandissimo is a biography of Jay Sarno, the entrepreneur who built Caesars Palace and Circus Circus on the Las Vegas Strip and then lost his empire.
It is fascinating to see read about how Caesars Palace started with humble beginnings before rising to its current prominent place of the Strip. The book’s title is taken from Sarno’s last great obsession: a new Las Vegas mega-resort that was never built, and the story of how that project never happened is just as interesting as the tales of how the other casino resorts succeeded.
Jay Sarno built two path-breaking Las Vegas casinos, Caesars Palace (1966) and Circus Circus (1968), and planned but did not build a third, the Grandissimo, which would have started the mega-resort era a decade before Steve Wynn built The Mirage. As mobsters and accountants battled for the soul of the last American frontier town, Las Vegas had endless possibilities—if you didn’t mind high stakes and stiff odds. Sarno invented the modern Las Vegas casino, but he was part of a dying breed—a back-pocket entrepreneur who’d parlayed a jones for action and a few Teamster loans into a life as a…
"A profound and often affecting story of resilience." —Kirkus Reviews
The Silent Women, an extraordinary novel inspired by the real women of Oak Ridge, Tennessee—the Manhattan Project’s “Secret City," where thousands kept the deadliest secret of World War II—is a sweeping, absorbing, and deeply human story about chosen…
I’ve been playing card games since childhood, and have had a parallel interest in the mathematics behind the games for nearly as long. While I didn’t visit Las Vegas in person until 2000, the stories of how that city was built around the gaming industry quickly came to fascinate me. Digging into the details of the people who have made that city what it is and have come to make their way in the desert has been a fascinating sidelight that has enhanced my recent work writing books on gambling mathematics.
No list of Las Vegas entrepreneurs is complete without Bob Stupak, the marketing mastermind who successfully sold many tourists on a visit to Vegas World, a small casino at the far northern end of the Las Vegas Strip.
The self-described maverick challenged the more established Las Vegas casinos throughout his career, culminating in the building of the Stratosphere Tower which now anchors the Las Vegas skyline. His story mingling success and failure is skillfully told here by a titan of Nevada journalism.
Of all the modern Las Vegas casino operators, none had more flair than Bob Stupak. The self-proclaimed "Polish Maverick" rose from humble origins as the son of a Pittsburgh boss gambler to head one of the largest privately owned casinos in Las Vegas, the infamous Vegas World. Stupak parlayed a small slot joint into a $100 million-a-year gambling operation by manipulating the local and national media with outrageous stunts and promotions. His headline-grabbing handiwork is now the stuff of Las Vegas legend.
Remember Vegas World's VIP Vacation? Stupak's cleverly worded advertisements flooded millions of mailboxes around the country and appeared…
I’ve been playing card games since childhood, and have had a parallel interest in the mathematics behind the games for nearly as long. While I didn’t visit Las Vegas in person until 2000, the stories of how that city was built around the gaming industry quickly came to fascinate me. Digging into the details of the people who have made that city what it is and have come to make their way in the desert has been a fascinating sidelight that has enhanced my recent work writing books on gambling mathematics.
Many people, including Bill Bennett from Forgotten Man, played big parts in the building, opening, and subsequent operation of the Luxor Casino in Las Vegas. They tell their stories in Super Casino.
I am a big fan of logistics in general, and found the details of what goes into the Las Vegas casino industry in the 1990s (just before I started visiting Las Vegas and writing about gambling mathematics) to be a fascinating look behind the scenes.
Las Vegas was a mob town built on restlessness and hunger, on glitter, greed, and the firm belief that anyone can get lucky once. But in the last decade Las Vegas has had its own change of fortune, transforming itself from a gambler's fun house to one of the country's top family vacation spots. Now Pete Earley--the investigative journalist and award-winning author who stormed Leavenworth in The Hot House--takes us inside today's colossal theme casinos, in a fascinating look at the life, death, and fantastic rebirth of the Las Vegas Strip.
I love a romance where the hero has his viewpoint changed by the woman he falls in love with. He might become a better family man, or transform his politics, or change his priorities, but it all cases loving her alters him. Additionally, I love a heroine who is exceptional in a distinct way but overlooked or dismissed by others. They can be bluestockings or spinsters, reformers or quiet and shy, but they’re all steadfast and they all derive strength from the hero’s support. In short, the love they find together makes them better people.
I loved this book because Penelope is supposed to be a means to an end, but she ends up being Bourne's everything.
Bourne wants revenge. He believes that his happiness lies in recovering the land that he foolishly lost in a card game. Penelope proves to him that regaining his legacy is not enough. She helps him rediscover the man he would have become if he hadn’t lost everything that mattered to him.
When he lets himself love her, he chooses to abandon his quest for revenge so he can be worthy. Bourne is an absolute sweetheart by the end and is completely devoted to his wife.
A decade ago, the Marquess of Bourne was cast from society with nothing but his title. Now a partner in London's most exclusive gaming hell, the cold, ruthless Bourne will do whatever it takes to regain his inheritance—including marrying perfect, proper Lady Penelope Marbury.
A broken engagement and years of disappointing courtships have left Penelope with little interest in a quiet, comfortable marriage, and a longing for something more. How lucky that her new husband has access to an unexplored world of pleasures.
Broken Boots, Redeemed Soul: A Veteran’s War with Sin and Salvation
by
Brian Lofton,
Broken Boots, Redeemed Soul: A Veteran’s War with Sin and Salvation, is a raw and faith-centered memoir about life after military service—and the internal battles many never see. Brian Lofton shares his journey through addiction, shame, identity loss, and spiritual distance, revealing how the hardest struggles often begin after…
Economics isn't really a good starting point for financial market analysis for the simple reason that its models are wildly inaccurate. As behaviorial economists like Daniel Kahneman have been showing, irrationality and the inability to measure risk properly are a very big component of the investment and trading decisions. But statistical risk management is also sloppy when applied to human behavior because people are not objects that reliably behave the same way under similar circumstances. So when you read an economist about markets or an engineer about risk management, you're missing a lot of the story. In the end, technical analysis is fascinating because how and why humans behave is an enduring mystery.
The subtitle is The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System that Beat the Casinos and Wall Street. This book is an easy-to-read narrative of the intersection of the grimy underbelly of betting--with high-minded math. It reminds you that trading is not conducted in a clean little bubble. Technical analysis can give you an edge, but trading is still engaging in battle with opposing forces; strategy and tactics can count as much as building an elegant technical system.
Your opponent on the trading battlefield will try to trick you, like a general in real warfare. He may keep selling and selling after you have bought, triggering a sell signal in your trading system. He is hunting for your sell signal. The mechanical response is to sell—your system says sell, and you should follow your system. To exit a position when the market goes against you is named a stop,…
In 1956, two Bell Labs scientists discovered the scientific formula for getting rich. One was mathematician Claude Shannon, neurotic father of our digital age, whose genius is ranked with Einstein's. The other was John L. Kelly Jr., a Texas-born, gun-toting physicist. Together they applied the science of information theory—the basis of computers and the Internet—to the problem of making as much money as possible, as fast as possible.
Shannon and MIT mathematician Edward O. Thorp took the "Kelly formula" to Las Vegas. It worked. They realized that there was even more money to be made in the stock market. Thorp…
