Good books, beside the ones in the FAQ?

[npc]

Listen to the Beet Man. What Miller says about Kelly is just plain wrong. I like an awful lot of what's in the book, and I applaud the author for tyring to instill a sense of conservatism in bankroll management into his readers, but he clearly just does not understand this particular topic.

I don't know anyone who bets "strict Kelly" since I don't see a whole lot of people making $1173.47 bets out there, and it's easy to misunderstand Kelly and hurt your bankroll badly, but it has been mathematically proven that if you *know* your winning percentage, Kelly betting is the best betting method for bankroll growth.

If Kelly isn't working, then either one doesn't understand it or one doesn't really know their edge on each bet. In sports betting it's VERY tough to know what your real edge is, and many, perhaps most, winning sports bettors overestimate it. But if you have a firm grasp on what you're doing, you can't expect to grow your bankroll faster by using a method other than Kelly.

[rjp]

npc, you hit the nail on the head: knowing your winning percentage and calculating your edge on a sports bet.

No one knows what their winning percentage will be over the next XXX amount of games--if you did then it's obvious how to spread your money.

I don't really care either way if you don't agree with the argument Miller makes in his book, but I've never met anyone that is able to accurately calculate their exact winning percentage and edge they've got on each bet. Estimating (which I do) is totally different from know for sure, and if you do know then as I said, my hats are off to you, and I'd love to buy whatever it is you're selling.

[beetman]

You properly utilize Kelly in sports betting by betting fractional Kelly amounts. 1/4th of the recommended Kelly amount is fairly commonly used.

The argument against using Kelly because you don't "know your exact edge" could just as easily be used to argue that you shouldn't be making the bet in the first place! How do you know you actually have an edge, period?

Here's a very simple example--say I decided to bet the Browns last week at +7.5 -110. I then shopped around and discovered that a well known "square" book had +7.5 +105. The break even rate at +105 is 3.6% lower than it is at -110, so it would be quite foolish if I didn't increase my bet size given that I'm getting +105.

[rjp]

We can agree to disagree, and this seems to have been beat to death in the Probability forum.

Most bettors will go broke using the example you provide--only worring about winnings, and not about losses.