One strategic principle that has been applied to every competitive context is that there is an advantage to knowing one's adversary. The more a sports bettor understands about the way sports books operate, the better the position one is in to beat them. Along with Mike Rhoden, sports betting luminary Roxy Roxborough describes his recommendations for how to run things behind the counter in Sports Book Management.
After some introductory thoughts, Roxborough and Rhoden step through the most popular sports for betting, explaining how to write the game up on the line, how to move the line based on public betting, how to calculate bet payouts, hold percentages, and expected hold percentages. The authors also discuss the effects of parlays, teasers, and buying a half point on the book's bottom line. The information on hanging the line is pretty elementary, but even though the discussion on line movement isn't going to blow anyone away, I haven't seen precise recommendations on how to manage these situations in print before. The differences listed between betting on different sports are interesting as well, although, again, there aren't any big surprises here.
The book concludes with some advice about when to open a line for betting, betting limits, parlay cards, and other aspects of running a book. This information is more interesting to me because it's less obvious, although there's very little substance behind some of these topics. One chapter, Bookmaking Myths, discusses many of the public's misconceptions about sports book operations. This is the sort of stuff I want to read.
I do have a couple of complaints about Sports Book Management. The first is that I really can't tell who the target audience is. The book discusses the nomenclature of hanging a line. This information might be valuable to new sports book employees or novice bettors, but sports book managers already know this stuff cold. On the other hand, information on when to move a line is valuable to managers, but the folks taking bets at the window don't care.
Another objection I have is the self-serving nature of the book. One of the things I expect that most readers of this book will want to hear about is setting and adjusting the line. However, most of what the authors have to say about this is to consult a professional, external line-making service, for example, Las Vegas Sports Consultants. At the time the book was written, who was the main man at LVSC? Yup, it was Roxy Roxborough. I would have greatly appreciated a little better look behind the curtain here.
The book is published in a large format, but the word count is low and there aren't many pages here. Sports Book Management might have been a useful training manual for sports book employees, but it's not deep enough to make this work. The book could have been useful as a sports book management manual, but it doesn't work here either. It has a lot of very introductory material and, again, doesn't go deep enough into important book management issues such as shading lines. As far as sports bettors go, there's some information here that is likely to be valuable to those without intimate knowledge of what goes on behind the counter, but it's still ultimately disappointing.
I really like the topic of the book, and there is some good information here, but not enough to make me really recommend this book for anyone but the most serious sports bettors. I can't imagine anyone sitting on the house side of the counter would need this book. It doesn't help employees much, and any manager with a week of experience already knows this stuff. Completists will find something of worthwhile here, but there's not enough substance for me to give this book an enthusiastic recommendation.
Sports Book Management provides some interesting information about how to manage a sports book. Unfortunately, the authors don't provide enough information to make this a must-read by book employees, managers, or sports bettors. There is material here that's interesting, and it may be worth reading by serious students of sports betting information, but it's hardly a must-read.
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