Robert L. Bacon, 1956
Secrets of Professional Turf Betting
Horse racing, 1956, and a cult book among people who have never placed a bet.
Long out of print and quietly famous. It gets passed between investors far more than between gamblers.
Lorenzo Ayres / 1 min
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Bacon is writing about how to bet on horses and he is really writing about how a crowd prices anything.
His central idea is what he calls ever-changing cycles. Whatever method the public has caught on to has already stopped working, because the money moving toward it has changed the odds. The public is permanently one race behind, and the professional's job is not to be smarter but to be earlier and then to move on before everybody arrives.
The one principle he actually states is to bet against the public at all times, and he is explicit that it applies to any game with a house percentage taken out of the pool, which includes the one I am in. That is true of every market I have ever looked at and it is not a comfortable thing to sit with.
It is a strange book to own and I would not lead with it at dinner.
COPPER the public's ideas and play at all times
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Build the engine
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- Claude Hopkins, 1923Scientific AdvertisingA hundred years old, free online, and still more useful than most of what got published last year.
- Gary Halbert, 1984The Boron LettersLetters from a copywriter to his son, written from federal prison, and better than that sounds.
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