Jim Jasper's book Sports Betting was published in 1979 and is now out of print. In the book the author provides an analytic approach to being a winning professional baseball and football bettor. It's a fair question to ask whether a book published over 25 years ago has anything relevant to say on this topic. Certainly, parts of the book are obviously dated, but I believe the answer to this question is, "yes".
Jasper begins his book analyzing baseball. Jasper is a computer programmer by trade, and he uses an algorithmic approach to spot favorable betting situations. Sports Betting was written before the personal computer revolution of the early 80s. Consequently, he assumes the reader does not have access to computer hardware. So, while his system is fairly labor intensive, it does not require a computer to carry it out. It should be fairly straightforward, however, for someone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of computer programming to automate most of the calculations this system requires.
I don't have any idea if Jasper's baseball methods still work today, but from my analysis of them there's a reasonable chance that they will, and even if they're not directly applicable it should be straightforward to adapt them into a winning system. Again, the author's methods are moderately complex and very systematic. They also seem like they might be a reasonable way to handicap baseball games. These days I expect that every sports book that makes its own lines to have access to similar information, but there may still be enough hunch bettors out there to make Jasper's approach viable.
In the next section Jasper discusses professional football betting. This information is less analytic than his baseball techniques. In fact, I would guess that much of his advice is no longer applicable to today's NFL. Some of what he discusses may be interesting to contemporary sports bettors, but I doubt there is enough of value in these sections to make this book worthwhile to them.
Given how different circumstances are now compared to when the book was written, it's impossible not to chuckle at some of the issues Jasper discusses. Jasper laments not having nationwide access to trustworthy sports books, the lack of quality information resources available to sports bettors, and simplifies his systems to make them accessible to those without computers. I can only presume that the author is pleased with the way the Internet has improved the situation for sports bettors. Still, these are minor quibbles that don't affect the value of the author's books.
Even though Sports Betting is long out of print, copies are still available on the secondary market. This book may have been written over a quarter century ago, but it still has some interesting things to say about professional baseball handicapping. I would think that those who have an interest in analytical baseball betting would find this book worth seeking out.
Jim Jasper's Sports Betting may not be the most current book on the topic, but its analytical approach to baseball wagering makes it a better book than the majority of what's currently in print. Some of what the author has to say is very obviously dated, and I doubt that the football betting information is terribly useful. However, the reader should easily be able to adapt this material to the modern era. Those interested in a well thought-out, algorithmic approach to baseball betting will probably be satisfied if they can find a copy of this book at a reasonable price.
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