Cover -- Half-title -- Series-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- CHAPTER ONE THE MAKING OF A GAMBLER -- CHAPTER TWO WHAT IS JAI ALAI? -- How the Game Is Played -- EQUIPMENT -- STRATEGY -- History of the Game -- THE BASQUES -- JAI ALAI IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY -- JAI ALAI IN THE UNITED STATES -- NORTH AMERICAN FRONTONS -- THE PLAYERS -- BETTING ON JAI ALAI -- The Spectacular Seven Scoring System -- But Isn't It Fixed? -- Other Betting Systems -- CHAPTER THREE MONTE CARLO ON THE TUNDRA -- I Was a High School Bookie -- Even crude mathematical models can have real predictive power. -- Crude mathematical models do not have real predictive power when there is real money on the line. -- Never argue with a 6-foot 6-inch 270-pound linebacker. -- Back to Jai Alai -- Monte Carlo Simulations -- Building the Simulation -- Breaking Ties -- Simulation Results -- Generating Random Numbers -- Passing Paper -- Perfect Evaluation -- CHAPTER FOUR THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET -- The Coming of the Web -- Parsing -- Languages of the Internet: Perl and HTML -- Why Real Programmers Hate Microsoft -- CHAPTER FIVE IS THIS BUM ANY GOOD? -- Probability versus Statistics -- Jai Alai Players and Baseball Players -- Estimating Player Skill from Statistics -- The Beauty of Curves -- How Often Does X Beat Y? -- The Hot-Hand Phenomenon -- Correlation versus Causation -- What's the Result? -- CHAPTER SIX MODELING THE PAYOFFS -- Pari-Mutuel Wagering -- Estimating the Payoffs -- Gambling and the Stock Market -- Measuring Our Impact on the Pool -- Field Trip to Connecticut -- The Problem of Overfitting Data -- Mathematical Modeling Techniques -- CURVE-FITTING MODELS -- NEAREST NEIGHBOR PREDICTORS -- SYSTEMS OF EQUATIONS -- DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION MODELS -- NEURAL NETWORKS -- CHAPTER SEVEN ENGINEERING THE SYSTEM.

Elegance in Software Systems -- Smoking Out Bugs -- The Millennium Bug -- Program Trading in Jai Alai -- The Jai Alai Maven -- On the Wire -- Otto the Autodialer -- Cryptography and Security -- Internet Gambling -- CHAPTER EIGHT PUTTING MY MONEY WHERE MY MOUTH IS -- A Gambler's Diary -- Epilogue -- CHAPTER NINE HOW SHOULD YOU BET? -- Having Fun Betting on Jai Alai -- The Best Bets in Jai Alai -- Rating the Players -- Using the Odds Board -- CHAPTER TEN PROJECTS TO PONDER -- Gambling -- Sports and Games -- People Prediction -- Financial Modeling -- Scientific Forecasting -- GLOSSARY -- FOR FURTHER READING -- BOOKS ON JAI ALAI -- ARTICLES ON JAI ALAI -- MATHEMATICS, MODELING, AND DATA ANALYSIS -- SPORTS, GAMBLING, AND PREDICTION -- INDEX.