Columnist Jeff Haney: It’s a vintage year at Gambler’s Book Shop

Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2001 | 11:33 a.m.

Jeff Haney's sports betting column appears Wednesday. Reach him at 259-4041 or haney@lasvegassun.com.

Pity anyone who has not yet discovered the Gambler's Book Shop.

For that matter, pity any sports fan who relies on the mainstream marketplace for his reading fix.

As Sports Illustrated noted last week, Isiah Thomas recently wrote a book on how to succeed in business -- just after he ran the CBA into the ground.

Not long ago, Rick Pitino came out with one of those winners-never-quit books -- and then quit coaching the Celtics in the middle of the season.

Are these actual books, or parodies?

One is reminded of the old Letterman bit in which bizarre new titles were added to the NBC library.

("Ed! The Ed Hearn Story")

So thank heaven for the Gambler's Book Shop, where heading into another football season, sports gambling's marquee authors again have the best of it over their mass market counterparts.

"All of the most astute professional handicappers in the city come in here to get the books and read them," said Peter Ruchman, general manager of the Gambler's Book Shop (630 S. 11th Street, gamblersbook.com).

"Their attitude is not, 'I'm set in my ways and I'm just going to keep doing the things I've been doing all along.' It's that they want to see how other pros perceive the same things they're looking at."

This summer's loudest buzz is being created by two new books on sports handicapping, both with an emphasis on pro football.

Historically, sports betting has been an elusive topic for authors. As a discipline, it has not yielded the kind of classic works we've come to know and love on, say, poker or horse racing.

Stanford Wong's "Sharp Sports Betting" and Dan Gordon's "Beat the Sports Books" might change that.

"It's not common to have (even) one really good new (sports betting) book come out in a season," Ruchman said. "To have more than one is highly unusual.

"Both books are less than a week old, so it's hard to say what kind of an impact they will have. But they both have the potential to make a great impact."

Wong, who made a name for himself as an expert on various forms of casino gambling, turns his attention to sports betting for the first time.

"SSB" outlines the basic (and some advanced) math involved in betting sports, focusing on the NFL. Teasers, totals, money lines and Internet wagering are discussed.

The chapters on NFL proposition bets and analyzing the NCAA basketball tournament alone are worth many times the $19.95 cover price.

Some of the ideas presented in "SSB" are geared toward intermediate-level gamblers rather than absolute beginners.

Realistic, down-to-earth sentences such as, "If you have no edge then your optimal bet is zero" will scare off the "500-star lock" crowd.

But if you can't be bothered to spend 20 bucks to learn this stuff, it's likely you shouldn't be betting at all.

In "Beat the Sports Books," Gordon concentrates almost entirely on NFL wagering.

A former handicapping columnist for several major newspapers, Gordon offers step-by-step instructions on how to make and update your own power ratings, and how to use your own line to find value against the point spread.

A generation ago, the poker literature gave us the term "white meat" -- meaning raw, powerful information, with no fluff, no filler, no whimsy. The white meat.

It's fair to say that in sports betting, Wong and Gordon are serving up the white meat.

Among other titles drawing attention at the Gambler's Book Shop are:

* Pro and college football workbooks by Phil Steele, Marc Lawrence and Jim Feist.

* Las Vegas handicapper Andy Iskoe's annual studies on teasers and totals.

"My philosophy is you have to have a foundation in sports handicapping -- like a writer who would rely on 'The Elements of Style,' " Ruchman said.

He motioned to the stacks of football publications in the store.

"If you can pull a pearl out of each one of these, that's what you're looking for as a bettor," he said. "These books are like our 'Elements of Style.' "