Looking for a book for solving finance related problems

[JossBeaumont]

Hello,

I appologize in advance for being a bit off-topic, but I used to read this forum a lot and I thought it's the best place to get some serious advice given the nature of my questions.

I am building a sport betting system based exclusively on a database with the historical results of sport bettors as well as their wagers in real-time.
In short, I follow the bets of the most profitable bettors depending on their past results.
I have compilled all the data of the bettors in spreadsheets and I am running all sorts of statistics about them.

The problems I am confronted to are highly related to finance and statistics and I am looking for an advice on a good book that would help me to solve these problems mathematically.

Here are some examples of the kind of problems I am working on:

- Mr X has made 10 000 wagers with an average ROI of 8%.
Mr X gives me a tip on an event with a 1,4 odds. What is my expectation on this bet given the informations I have about Mr X.
Most generally how to rate mathematically the bettors based on their performance and the number of wagers I have about them in my database.

- How likely is it that Mr X. is in fact a lucky looser and how should this impact my bets?

- What is the optimal amount to assign to a bet in order to lower maximally my variance and optimize my profit depending on the bettor performance, the number of historical bets I have about him, the size of my bankroll, the number of bets I am able to take everyday, etc...(I guess this would have something to do with the Kelly Criterion but how to apply it optimally in my case...?)

I am working with Excel so if you have also a book that explain how to do these tasks in excel that would be great.

Thanks for your help!

 

[NVP]

hey mate

sounds interesting .............but trust me this is opening up more and more and more of a can of worms unless you start to make some bold decisions on where you focus


also I would over complicate bet size etc too much ....its just more complication and worry...keep it simple and don't overcomplicate


excel-wise theres plenty of decent books out there with financial functions and explanations ....just read the examples and you will find what you need

regarding the bettors you are following then for me (assuming they are giving you the correct / true performance) then experience and number of trades is the deciding factor .............someone providing 8% return over 10,000 trades is pretty impressive vs someone providing say a 20% return on ony say 500 trades to date

sample size is all and I would also recommend you segment the data if that bettor has multiple markets ......eg Tennis , football , golf etc ................invariably finding the Expert in his field is the holy grail .....and surprisingly most Experts don't realise where thye are truly strong or truly weak without someone running the numbers on them .............that's what high performance coaches are paid to do ........

good luck
N

 

[JossBeaumont]

Hey mate and thanks for your answer!

regarding the bettors you are following then for me (assuming they are giving you the correct / true performance) ...

That's the very heart of my problem : "assuming".
I want to determine mathematically how likely is it that they show the true performance given the number of wagers they made and their ROI.

then experience and number of trades is the deciding factor .............someone providing 8% return over 10,000 trades is pretty impressive vs someone providing say a 20% return on ony say 500 trades to date

Yes, obviously, the deciding factor is there. But I have a lot of bettors to compare and a lot of data to compute. That's why I am looking for mathematical answers.

also I would over complicate bet size etc too much ....its just more complication and worry...keep it simple and don't overcomplicate

I don't want to overcomplicate anything but I also know that money mangement is more than a crucial point for building any successful trading system... So after "keeping the things simple" for several month I want to go one step further and find mathematical answers to questions such as:

" What is the optimal percentage of my bankroll that I should assign to a tip given by a 2000 wagers/15% ROI bettor comparing to a bettor with 10000 wagers/6% ROI ?"

excel-wise theres plenty of decent books out there with financial functions and explanations ....just read the examples and you will find what you need

I have already bought some books but these are to general and I get lost in a lot of useless topics for my questions.

That's why if someone could give me an advice on the best book where I would find solutions to these kinds of question I would be very happy.

Thanks !