Trading Bases: How a Wall Street Trader Made a Fortune Betting on Baseball

--Alan Moores . It would be easy to call out Peta for cynically using sport for financial gain—and he can be unnervingly detached when crunching numbers—but it’s clear that he loves the game itself as much as the winnings. Reengaging with the world by joining his love of statistical analysis to baseball, Peta created a reliable system for beating Vegas odds throughout the 2011 Major League season. From Booklist Peta, a successful Wall Street trader, found himself confined to a wheelchair in early 2011—he had suffered multiple injuries after being struck by an ambulance as he was walking in Lower Manhattan—and then fired by his employer, Nomura Securities. Moreover, he asks a number of salient questions, such as: How can businesses on Wall Street and beyond apply the thinking used by ba

"Entertaining Read" according to nacnud. Don't go thinking you're going to read this book and make money betting on baseball. This guy had a lot of time on his hands, a Wall Street background, and a very firm grasp of Sabermetrics in order to develop his "model" that lead to his success. I wish I had been one of his friends that gave him money in 2011 because I got killed on betting on MLB last season (and I've been watching MLB for over Entertaining Read Don't go thinking you're going to read this book and make money betting on baseball. This guy had a lot of time on his hands, a Wall Street background, and a very firm grasp of Sabermetrics in order to develop his "model" that lead to his success. I wish I had been one of his friends that gave him money in 2011 because I got killed on betting on MLB last season (and I've been watching MLB for over 30 years, and I studied every starting pitcher every day). That being said, if you w. 0 years, and I studied every starting pitcher every day). That being said, if you w. Too much baseball and not enough in the way of algorithms and mathematics One of the best books I've read on predictive modeling is Steven Skiena's book Calculated Bets: Computers, Gambling, and Mathematical Modeling to Win (2001). In this book, Prof. Skiena describes a project he did with his students modeling the game of Jai Alai. Predictive modeling has been applied successfully in sports betting, so when I saw the book Trading Bases, I bought it. Unfortunately, the books dives deeply into the minutia of baseball, without providing much meat when it . "A smart book about numbers wrapped in an enlightening memoir." according to Chad M. Supp. I bought Trading Bases on the recommendation of the smartest guy writing about baseball today, Joe Sheehan. My interest was in the author's application of modern sabermetrics to create an edge in baseball wagering. I was fascinated by this process, and very much enjoyed the author presenting the numbers in step-by-step detail (he shows his math). However, the parts of Trading Bases I found most interesting were the memoir chapters that describe the author's experience with Wall St

An ex–Wall Street trader improved on Moneyball’s famed sabermetrics and beat the Vegas odds with his own betting methods. He would apply his risk-analysis skills to Major League Baseball, and treat the sport like the S&P 500. In Trading Bases, Peta takes us on his journey from the ballpark in San Francisco to the trading floors and baseball bars of New York and the sportsbooks of Las Vegas, telling the story of how he created a baseball “hedge fund” with an astounding 41 percent return in his first year. Here is the story of how Joe Peta turned fantasy baseball into a dream come true. Joe Peta turned his back on his Wall Street trading career to pursue an ingenious—and incredibly risky—dream. And he explains the unique methods he developed. Along the way, Peta provides insight into the Wall Street crisis he managed to escape: the fragility of the midnineties investment model; the disgraced former CEO of Lehman Brothers, who recruited Peta; and the high-adrenaline atmosphere where million-dollar sports-betting pools were common.