[HN Gopher] The rising human cost of sports betting
___________________________________________________________________
The rising human cost of sports betting
Author : jbegley
Score : 117 points
Date : 2022-01-31 14:42 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Promotion of gambling should be likened to promotion of
| cigarettes. It should be illegal to advertise gambling, but I
| don't think it should be outlawed to gamble. People should be
| able to choose how they live their lives, but we should do all
| that we can to prevent mass manipulation through adverts in
| industries that are known to be harmful.
|
| I also think that alcohol and e-cig advertising should be
| outlawed as well.
| tonystubblebine wrote:
| I spent some time in Montana and was shocked to see how many
| businesses have "casinos" attached to them. I never got to look
| inside but I think these are basically a small room with a few
| slot machines. They were everywhere. For example, I ate at a
| chinese restaurant and there was a side room advertising poker
| and keno.
|
| I came away feeling like there was a web that would catch every
| single person in the state who had a predilection for gambling
| addiction.
|
| The weirdest sign I saw was attached to a gas station casino:
| "Weekly grand prize jackpot: $50." That was hard to parse
| coming from tech salaries that a $50 grand prize would motivate
| anyone.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Cook county IL (the county that encompasses Chicago)
| legalized some forms of gambling (not in Chicago). Gas
| stations, bars & even hair salons now have game rooms in
| them.
|
| I find it pretty sad as there is no glamor at all in dunking
| dollars into bad slot machines at a shell station. But I
| didn't find the scratch off tickets they sold at the counter
| glamorous either.
| vgeek wrote:
| https://features.propublica.org/the-bad-bet/how-illinois-
| bet...
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/illinois-video-
| gambling-w...
|
| These are interesting reads regarding slot parlors in
| Illinois. It gets repeated in every locale that legalizes
| slots. Big promises of increased tax revenues, then the
| actuals are 10%-30% of the forecasts, but by then the horse
| is already out of the barn. I've looked at a few state
| level gaming commission data sets and backed out the math,
| and even in backwoods areas, penny slot machines generate
| $20/hr average ($240/day) in gross income (even though
| they're called penny slots, you can easily lose $20 in
| under 60 seconds based on speed of play, number of lines
| and bet sizing-- all of which are heavily optimized to
| trigger reward centers in the brain), so even with
| expensive $5-10k machines, the recovery time is pretty low,
| so they'll just metastasize as much as legally allowed.
| lgdskhglsa wrote:
| Growing up in Las Vegas, it was common for me to see a slot
| machine room in grocery stores and gas stations. Most movie
| theaters, bowling alleys, restaurants, etc were in the
| casinos. I've known a few people with gambling addictions,
| and it's definitely not easy with slot machines every where
| you go. But the casinos pay the State's bills, so it's easy
| to see why regulation is hard to come by.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Every movie, series or other thing where people grab the bottle
| to handle their heartache, happiness or socializing is an
| advertisement that you should drink.
|
| It's going to need a huge transformation in society to change
| those advertising channels. Just like the movie cig industry
| was a long term process.
| shipman05 wrote:
| This has been my position for a while on so called "vices".
| Prohibition is ineffective and often does more harm than good,
| but allowing companies to advertise these products to young
| people and those who are susceptible to abuse is a net negative
| for society.
|
| Worst of all are government run lotteries. A state run lottery
| may be preferable to one run by organized crime, but running
| millions of dollars worth of ads with product tie-ins (Harley
| Davidson, car companies, cruises, etc.) all while claiming to
| "support education" is outrageous.
| PKop wrote:
| >Prohibition is ineffective and often does more harm than
| good
|
| I don't believe this is true, though it is often parroted as
| so.
|
| Effectiveness of prohibition is determined in large part on
| severity of punishments.
|
| It is imperfect, and will always be. But it can absolutely
| work to minimize the behavior being targeted.
| thebean11 wrote:
| > Effectiveness of prohibition is determined in large part
| on severity of punishments.
|
| The punishments for drugs are pretty severe in much of the
| US (multiple years in prison). Are you advocating for even
| harsher punishments than that?
| PKop wrote:
| Well, yes I am. But is that relevant to the question at
| hand: if the punishments _were_ more severe, would they
| decrease drug selling /use?
|
| How about if we banned Narcan, do you think that would
| affect the total number of opiate addicts long term?
|
| What if we cut off the hands of drug dealers? Or applied
| the death penalty to drug dealers?
|
| What if we rounded up all the addicts that commit so many
| crimes in cities today, and degrade the quality of life
| with tent cities strewn everywhere, and threw them all
| into the ocean...do you think that would decrease drug
| use?
|
| Of course it would. What I'm pushing back against is the
| absurd claim that the problem is intractable in terms of
| "decreasing some behavior through disincentivization",
| which isn't true.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Maybe you're on to something. Just think about how much
| drug use we could stop if we just rounded up _everyone_
| in the country and executed them!
| thebean11 wrote:
| Yes I think cutting off arms would discourage drug use to
| some extent, but I think the price is too high. At some
| point a policy like that creates more suffering than it
| prevents. From your example on throwing people into the
| ocean, it sounds like you agree that a tradeoff exist
| here. Unless you actually think killing drug users is a
| good solution to reduce drug use?
|
| The question was never whether it was possible to curb
| drug use with the legal system (that seems like a straw
| man), but whether the cure is worse than the disease, or
| whether an alternative cure might be better.
| PKop wrote:
| >was never
|
| Not true and there are many in this thread and elsewhere
| for years on the internet saying exactly this.
|
| Thank you for conceding my point against the ridiculous
| argument that "prohibition is ineffective"... that no it
| is, it's only a matter of degree of punishment, which is
| what I said.
|
| >more suffering than it prevents
|
| This only matters in some utilitarian conception where
| all net suffering or utility or whatever is created
| equal.
|
| No, I think drug dealers suffering is not the same as
| suffering of normal people wanting to live their lives in
| a productive and healthy way for their community. But
| this is what politics is for, conflict over interests,
| values, worldviews, and societal preferences.
|
| It's also what all of criminal law deals with: justice
| for crimes isn't viewed the same as suffering of law
| abiding people or victims.
|
| >a tradeoff exist here
|
| Like the tradeoff exists for the death penalty of murders
| in that justice for that crime requires "harm" to be
| inflicted on the perpetrator, yes. But this isn't that
| profound of a concept.
| thebean11 wrote:
| > Thank you for conceding my point against the ridiculous
| argument that "prohibition is ineffective"
|
| It depends what you mean by effective and ineffective.
| Nuking San Fransisco would prevent tons of drug use, but
| is not an effective way of solving society's ills.
|
| > This only matters in some utilitarian conception where
| all net suffering or utility or whatever is created
| equal.
|
| Drug laws not only hurt drug users, but further
| criminalize nonviolent users who commit more crimes, fund
| organized crime (here and especially in other countries),
| cost billions of dollars to society in court systems,
| prisons, police officers, and lost productivity.
|
| If your solution to that is literally kill people without
| a trial for drug use then some of those clearly wouldn't
| apply, but that's honestly a pretty sick worldview. I'm
| not sure if you're younger or maybe lived a more
| sheltered life and weren't exposed to drug users or
| similar groups of people, but you might change your tune
| if you knew someone affected by it (whether they were a
| user or the parent/child/spouse/friend).
|
| I wonder what you think of other countries which have
| much lower rates of drug abuse yet don't impose
| punishments as harsh as the US?
| Teever wrote:
| You're describing the 'toddler having a meltdown in the
| grocery store because they want candy' course of action
| which I'll admit may have some sort of positive results
| in some situations but is more than likely to have
| massively unexpected consequences for the initiator.
|
| We'd all like to feel like it was as simple as expressing
| our dislike at a situation to fix it, that solving
| problems is as simple as applying a linear amount of
| force that is proportional to the size of the problem but
| the world isn't like that.
|
| Drug addiction, Organized Crime, racism, sexism, global
| climate change are all examples of Wicked Problems[0] and
| no amount of force behind a whimsical edict is going to
| solve them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem
| lacksconfidence wrote:
| Not OP, and not advocating it, but I suspect with respect
| to drugs the problem isn't the amount of punishment. It's
| the liklihood of punishment. Imagine a dystopia where
| everyone takes a drug test every day, and if someone
| fails they go to jail. It seems likely drug use would
| plummet due to enforcement (and special ways to get
| around it would spring up for the select few).
| airstrike wrote:
| Prohibition and its enforcement aren't a zero cost affair,
| not to mention second-order effects
| throwawaynay wrote:
| Drug dealers are routinely executed in countries where the
| death penalty exist for drugs, it doesn't seem to stop
| them. People were sentenced to 20years in prison for a
| joint in the US, that didn't stop most people from trying
| it.
|
| And you really can't deny the "do more harm than good"
| part. "don't take a very small risk for your health or we
| will hang you" doesn't exactly seem like harm reduction.
| steve76 wrote:
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Seems like it is much harder to get drugs in Singapore
| than in Seattle. Prohibition might not be absolute, but
| it seems effective at reducing the number of people using
| drugs. Is that a good or bad policy goal, and is it worth
| the costs? That a political question, but the answer to
| that is separate from whether prohibition works or not.
| throwawaynay wrote:
| >That a political question
|
| That's not political, it's science, statistics, facts.
| Prohibition = more overdoses, more violence, more
| untreated addiction, younger users, richer criminals,
| more abuse from the police, more corruption, less
| incentive to educate yourself/learn a trade when you come
| from a poor area, more likely to be BORN addicted to
| drugs because your mom was terrified of getting help
| before/when she was pregnant, more likely to get aids,
| more likely to have your life completely and permanently
| ruined.
|
| This whole debate can end in one word: Portugal. There is
| no debate really, only ignorance.
|
| And btw it's not hard to get drugs in any city. I don't
| know a place on earth where you can't get drugs in an
| hour or two, besides rural areas.
| robrenaud wrote:
| It's unclear that the numbers are in your favor. As far
| as I can tell, as of 2018, the US had 600 opiate users
| per 100k, Portugal had 250, and Singapore had 30.
|
| https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/10/portugal-opioid
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/singapore-is-
| winning...
| xorfish wrote:
| Yet, Singapore had a death rate due to opioid overdoses
| of 0.16 per 100'000 inhabitants and Portugal 0.25 per
| 100'000. I'm sure if you'd include the draconian
| punishments in Singapore, then there is a clear winner in
| which country does the least harm to its citizens.
|
| The US had a rate of 13.69 per 100'000.
| throwawaynay wrote:
| So Portugal has twice as less addict than the US, even
| though drug users don't risk anything legally, while in
| the US using drugs once can mean decades in jail.
|
| "Singapore has the world's highest percentage of
| millionaires, with one out of every six households having
| at least one million US dollars in disposable wealth."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore
|
| Singapore is a 5 million people country.
|
| Prohibition isn't the important factor here.
|
| Dealers get shot on sight in Brazil or in The
| Philippines, that's not just prohibition, that's state-
| sponsored murder, at scale and that doesn't stop anyone.
|
| It's not unclear if you're not looking at an extremely
| small subset of extremely rich and privileged people.
| PKop wrote:
| The harm we are reducing is decreasing the amount of drug
| users, and the attendant crime and degradation that comes
| with them, within the environment that non-drug users
| have to live in.
|
| We'd be reducing the harm to _them_ and in a subjective
| way, to the overall community. That some people 's "harm"
| will increase is obvious but this is a price many are
| willing to pay to achieve a better society for
| themselves.
|
| In summary, "we will hang you" isn't "harm" but justice,
| and the solution to the "harm" that needs to be
| decreased.
|
| > it doesn't seem to stop them
|
| Sure it does, it decreases overall drug use, where it is
| harsh enough.
|
| >that didn't stop most people from trying it.
|
| Did it decrease overall drug use vs when these laws were
| relaxed? Yes. Mostly though the penalty for drug dealers
| needs to be harsher. Additionally, there is a hierarchy
| of drugs, and in US the biggest problem is hard drugs /
| opiates. We should focus enforcement and punishment
| efforts at those, while also not enabling the addiction
| of users.
| throwawaynay wrote:
| >In summary, "we will hang you" isn't "harm" but justice
|
| Most of the harm coming from drug use is coming from
| prohibition.
|
| Hanging drug users or drug dealers is not justice, it's a
| bigger crime than any type of drug deal.
|
| >Additionally, there is a hierarchy of drugs, and in US
| the biggest problem is hard drugs / opiates. We should
| focus enforcement and punishment efforts at those, while
| also not enabling the addiction of users.
|
| And this have absolutely nothing to do with drugs
| dealers. This problem was created by the likes of Purdue
| Pharma. Jailing drug dealers does absolutely nothing to
| stop Americans from getting hooked on opiates
| PKop wrote:
| Hanging drug dealers isn't worse than the harm they cause
| to the community, and many individual lives.
|
| >Purdue Pharma
|
| Regulation against them and restrictions on opiates has
| helped to decrease that form of opiate use.
|
| Obviously, Purdue Pharma executives should be harshly
| punished, much more than they have been. Why shouldn't
| they? They perpetrated a great crime and suffering,
| willingly lying and causing addiction, to so many people.
| That they should suffer for it and that there is a great
| need to deter other drug companies / doctors from doing
| the same is abundantly clear. It is not mutually
| exclusive from also targeting street drug dealers of
| fentanyl and other synthetic opiates which is the problem
| now though.
| kbenson wrote:
| So, what, that guy that sold weed before legalization
| caused more harm from his actions than hanging him would
| cause, and yet we've legalized it and everyone is fine
| with it now?
|
| Or perhaps It's all arbitrary and decided by laws and the
| actual harm doesn't necessarily map directly onto illegal
| activity. If that's the case, maybe we should be careful
| about statements that hanging a drug.dealer causes less
| harm than they cause to communities.
|
| Direct sale of water could be regulated, making people
| that sell it without license criminals. You'll have a
| hard time convincing me that selling water provides harm,
| but there would be just as much reasoning behind a
| statement saying as much.
| PKop wrote:
| Let's deal with the immediate problem of opiates, meth
| and other hard drugs, the addiction of which is ravaging
| cities where drug users are a blight on society with
| their tent cities, needles, feces, crime, vandalism,
| assaults, robberies, etc.
|
| You don't want to focus on that you want to misdirect to
| weed and.... water? What the hell does this dumb analogy
| have to do with anything in reality?
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Prohibition aides and cultivates an underworld which
| operates outside the bounds of legality.
|
| Rather put a high tax, like tobacco products, do the state
| can make a boatload of money from vices rather than
| enriching the criminal underworld and indirectly funding
| illegal guns, sex trade, rackets etc...
|
| Anecdotally, my own country banned alcohol and cigarette
| sales during the first lockdown. The black market rose from
| nowhere and made a filthy amount of money. You can guess
| whether or not the violent crime rate has increased of
| decreased.
| babypuncher wrote:
| State lotteries are a means to shift tax burden from the
| wealthy to the poor. Every time one is implemented to
| "support education", it is always followed by a tax break for
| the upper class, resulting in a net 0 increase in school
| budgets.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Every time one is implemented to "support education", it
| is always followed by a tax break for the upper class,
| resulting in a net 0 increase in school budgets.
|
| My gut tells me tax breaks are the exception and more often
| than not increased revenues are simply paired with
| boondoggle spending because money is fungible.
| bregma wrote:
| State lotteries are just a tax on the stupid.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| No, it's a tax on the hopeless.
| margalabargala wrote:
| People like to say this because it's a nice sound-bite
| that lets people feel like they themselves are not among
| the stupid.
|
| It ignores the reality that poverty is a causative agent
| for lacking the appropriate math skill to recognize that
| playing the lottery is not a good financial choice, and
| self-perpetuates that poverty.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Most people buy lotto tickets so they can spend a few
| minutes in blissful daydream before they come crashing
| back down to their financial reality. It's like a very
| cheap drug. It makes them feel good, so it serves a
| purpose. Feeling good is good.
| kesselvon wrote:
| Poor people don't buy lotteries because they're a good
| investment, they buy them because its fleeting hope that
| they'll escape their circumstances.
|
| Probability is like...a Grade 5-6 concept.
| nerdponx wrote:
| So it's still a tax on poverty, by way of it being a tax
| on hope/aspiration.
|
| Ergo, it can go straight to hell and does not belong in a
| civilized society.
| lupire wrote:
| 6th grade math ability is above median for adults.
| missingrib wrote:
| I think poor people understand the math behind the
| chances of winning the lottery.
| JackFr wrote:
| Why? Because the expected value is negative?
|
| If that's the heuristic for defining stupid, we better
| revisit auto insurance, which also has a negative
| expected value.
|
| On the other hand, maybe variance and skewness (to say
| nothing of kurtosis) have values (and costs) which a
| rational analysis needs to consider. Some people might be
| willing to pay to shed variance, while others might pay
| to take it on depending on the value of their assets and
| their time horizon.
| slap_shot wrote:
| How about fast food or unhealthy food/drinks? And would you
| change anything about how prescription medication is
| advertised?
| mdoms wrote:
| Prescription medication advertising is banned everywhere in
| the developed world except USA and New Zealand.
| slap_shot wrote:
| yes, so the question is what would he/she change about how
| it is advertised in the US (or I guess in new zealand)
| lancesells wrote:
| I've noticed they go hand in hand. Fast food or junk food ads
| showing amazing looking food that doesn't actually look that
| way, insurance ads to make sure you're a little worried, and
| then medication to solve many of the ills from eating junk
| food.
| [deleted]
| Raidion wrote:
| I honestly agree with you, but am worried about the precedent
| it would set. If you start banning stuff because of addiction,
| does it apply to things like soda or fast food? Would it apply
| to things like baseball cards or other collectables?
|
| This is a really tricky problem, as there is clear evidence
| that these things hurt society as a whole, but it's hard to
| draw the line who is making deliberate choices about their
| gambling/smoking/drinking, and who is hooked.
|
| Is there a politician somewhere that will try to ban Facebook
| because of the 'addiction' potential? I'm usually not much of a
| slippery slope guy, but it does seem weird, especially since a
| lot of this would be done by regulation, not legislation.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Idk people say its hard to draw the line but it doesn't seem
| like it would be. Here's the line: no advertising for
| cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, e-cigs. Why this line? these
| are pretty obviously unhealthy for people. Why not some other
| line? Well lets take a poll and see what we are willing to
| do. And then if people think it is important to ban other
| types of advertising then that can be a new line drawn later.
| lupire wrote:
| what about cryptocurrency? stock trading? American football
| (concussions)? Cars?
| animal_spirits wrote:
| We don't have to make a blanket statement that covers all
| cases. I don't see how this is a slippery slope when
| there is so much friction to get even one of these
| industries banned from advertising. Do you really think
| politicians will ban CAR advertisements? Let's be
| reasonable about this
|
| EDIT - Okay I think I see a concrete reason why gambling
| advertising should be illegal. The gambling industry
| makes money by negatively affecting people i.e. gambling
| wins if you lose. That's literally it. The gambling
| industry does not make money when their users win. They
| are specifically advertising so that more users lose. The
| car industry makes money by providing you a utility. The
| car industry is not advertising so that more people die
| in car crashes. But gambling on the other hand _is_
| advertising to get more people to lose.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| E-cigs? If you don't use shady THC oil juice from overseas,
| there is absolutely no proof that they are more dangerous
| than, say, smoking weed or even obesity. The lung injury
| incidents that made the news 2 years ago were due to
| illegally imported juice that was contaminated with vitamin
| E IIRC.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It's not like we don't have experience with making gambling
| illegal.
| acomjean wrote:
| the comedian Mitch Hedberg had a bit about this.
|
| "You know how they advertise a casino, they always show a guy
| winning money, but that's false advertising. Because that's
| what happens the least. Perhaps when they advertise a hamburger
| they could show a guy choking. This is what happened once."
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Mitch was the best! RIP.
| mgh2 wrote:
| No system is perfect. Laws are made to protect the majority,
| not the minority. It takes a lot of effort individually to find
| out what is ethical, and education seldom teach these.
|
| Freedom of religion and separation of church and state helps
| create a collective conscience to enact laws, but at the end it
| comes down to each individual's responsibility to search for
| the truth - an effort that advertising can easily tamper with.
| We could use more stringent laws for advertising.
|
| Note that the gaming and crypto industries have parallels with
| gambling, both targeting the younger population (least able to
| control addictions)
|
| Disney (a media conglomerate) was initially opposed to sports
| betting, but once covid hit their bottom line, they turned to
| this opportunity once it was legal.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27514437
| lupire wrote:
| > Laws are made to protect the majority, not the minority.
|
| That's not what the US Constitution says.
| mgh2 wrote:
| Sure, but the elite has close ties with Washington, that is
| a crude truth
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Gambling is like drug use, some people are clearly addicted to it
| and will ruin their lives over it.
|
| How does society respond to this fact? War on drugs, war on
| gambling, etc.
|
| Hmmmmm
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Or, instead of declaring war on it, you can regulate it like we
| do with legal drugs. Ban advertising in most venues, print a
| disclosure of the dangers on every ad and over the door of
| every establishment, treat it like the danger it is.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| There was a huge push for banning violent video games in the
| 90's - the book "Masters of Doom" covers it. John Carmack and
| John Romero actively fought for it. Before that, people wanted
| to ban violent movies in the 60's.
|
| The more I think about government policies pushed by the likes
| of NYT, it seems indistinguishable from Chinese Communist
| Party's clamp on their population. Banning things for the
| greater "good" of the society. NZ just banned Tobacco/Cigs.
| This stance of prohibition from progressives is very unamerican
| and troubling in the context of US's core values.
| 323 wrote:
| No, we just legalize gambling, just like we should legalize
| drug use.
|
| People should be free to use drugs, drink alchool, or gamble.
| lancesells wrote:
| For the most part agreed but should companies be able to use
| psychological tricks and techniques to get people using
| drugs, alcohol, and gamble?
| dylan604 wrote:
| You just described Facebook
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Right. As long as we also we have hard measures to deal with
| those whose personal choices begin impacting their fellow
| citizens.
| kritiko wrote:
| state run gaming, limit the bets people make, allow them to
| "win back" their UBI
|
| everyone's a winner, baby!
| Tenoke wrote:
| Sadly, state run gambling aka national lotteries typically
| offer you much worse returns than anything in the casino.
| ben7799 wrote:
| I think it's just a matter of time before we see a Super Bowl or
| World Series thrown due to the legalization of Sport betting...
|
| We have been here before and seen all of this before and it's
| really hard to believe history won't repeat itself.
|
| It's stupid all the way down.
| dylan604 wrote:
| As always, Hollywood has already shown us the results with The
| Last Boyscout
| webkike wrote:
| Matter of time? The World Series has already been thrown, it
| was called the black Sox scandal and as far as I know it didn't
| even require sports betting to be legal
| hattmall wrote:
| Legal sports betting makes it less likely to have the game
| thrown. The Athlete salaries far outpace the potential gains of
| an individual bettor so you need bookmaker involvement but the
| legal books are so large that they don't won't one-sided games
| or any particular outcome. They are able to balance their books
| and make money like never before by keeping an even line.
|
| It's only when the house is constrained in their ability to
| balance that fixing matches make sense. Even 10 years ago my
| local bookmaker use to fly to Panama on big weekends with a
| suitcase of cash to lay off, now he just uses a few apps on his
| phone.
|
| Something small might get corrupted but I doubt the rate for
| major events would be any higher.
| majani wrote:
| Referees in all the top leagues still get paid average
| salaries yet they are the most powerful person on the field.
| They are the point of failure in modern sports
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Maybe other leagues pay less, but mean NFL referee salary
| is about $200k. I suspect it wouldn't be cheap to pay one
| of them off, since getting caught risks prison time,
| damages, and millions in future income lost.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Legal sports betting makes it less likely to have the game
| thrown.
|
| Wow, that is Orwellian.
|
| > The Athlete salaries far outpace the potential gains
|
| That's only true for a few top athletes, and ignores others
| (referees, coaches, etc.), and the fact that careers are
| short. For example, in American football, you only have to
| buy a kicker or long snapper, who can easily change the game
| (as long as it's reasonably close). NFL referees aren't even
| full-time employees.
|
| > you need bookmaker involvement but the legal books are so
| large that they don't won't one-sided games or any particular
| outcome
|
| After seeing all the brazen fraud and deceit in American (and
| other) business, costing lives, tanking the global economy,
| causing climate change, fixing LIBOR, pushing crypto scams,
| etc. etc., we should believe that bookmakers would never take
| that risk? They must be an especially risk-averse, honest
| group!
|
| Also, not all gambling is legal.
| philwelch wrote:
| Sports betting has been legal in Europe for a very long time
| and we have yet to see a UEFA Champions League thrown.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| That you know of. How does anyone know?
|
| Edits:
|
| Imagine the NFL learns that yesterday's NFC Championship game
| was fixed. What would they do? Make it public and destroy
| their entire enterprise? My guess is that many would hide it
| if they could, and the people involved certainly wouldn't
| want to talk about it.
|
| And imagine if they learn about it in 6 months, long after
| the Super Bowl. Just in terms of on-field results, how do
| they fix the problem? Take back the trophy from a team and
| city that thought they won it six months ago? Replay the game
| in August?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >That you know of. How does anyone know?
|
| How many of those skied shots, sliced shots, etc were bad
| skill or skillfully done to ensure the line was what was
| needed/required?
|
| It's a pandora's box to start looking at everything a
| professional athlete/ref/manager does through that lens.
| It's even worse if you've never done it yourself to see how
| easy it is to do the wrong thing that causes one to look
| amateurish.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| What is your solution? Should we just close our eyes to
| the threat?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >What is your solution?
|
| Did I just get a promotion to CAS[0]? Time to update my
| CV. I feel special. Time for me to start accepting
| bribes.
|
| It's sport. It's humans. There is no solve. People want
| to do it, they will find a way to do it. There are other
| people that will take advantage. To the point that those
| in charge of $sportingEvent (FIFA, Olympics, Cycling) all
| "fall victim".
|
| > Should we just close our eyes to the threat?
|
| Only if you want to miss the entertainment.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_Arbitration_for
| _Sport
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > It's sport. It's humans. There is no solve.
|
| People say that about a lot of things, but we humans have
| moved out of caves, created science, machines,
| governments, freedom, etc etc. We can do something about
| our condition.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yes, we also have religion. Some would view that as big
| of a vice as gambling etc. Not sure your point is
| carrying much weight with me.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| What do you believe? There is nothing we can do about our
| society? Everything is inevitable?
| fullshark wrote:
| Another use case for crypto!
| aidenn0 wrote:
| My understanding is that college basketball is the worst team
| sport:
|
| 1. One player can significantly affect the outcome
|
| 2. The players are being paid peanuts
|
| 3. shaving points can be very lucrative to the fixers without
| actually affecting the outcome of the game.
|
| A 5 figure payout just to win a game by less than expected can
| look like a great deal to a college athlete
| caddemon wrote:
| I'm not sure why betting on college sports is legal at all. I
| believe when MA legalized gambling they said pro sports only.
| thehermit wrote:
| I think it's unlikely a game that high profile would be the
| target of a betting scheme. Much more likely some everyday
| regular season games, or even specific portion of a game are
| manipulated. You can bet on things that are way more in your
| control to win if you have that kind of influence such as a
| single players performance over a game, one quarter/inning, one
| hole of golf, etc
| majani wrote:
| My conspiracy theory is that if the US ever makes the World Cup
| Final, it will 100% be thrown
| ratsmack wrote:
| >The rising human cost of <put_your_favorite_thing_here>
|
| There are many, many vices that people struggle from such as
| drinking, drugs, obsessions like food, and just obsessive
| spending in general. There are just a lot of people that cannot
| control some aspect of their life, but they generally make up a
| relatively small minority. These types of articles are an attempt
| to guilt-trip the vast majority of people that generally excel at
| life, because they use good judgement and rational thinking.
|
| There are always going to be people that fall by the wayside, so
| I'm not going to feel guilty enjoying a little entertainment
| every now and again that a very small minority of people struggle
| with.
| mharty wrote:
| Meanwhile, > 6% of people in the US have alcohol use disorder,
| yet advertisements for alcohol are literally everywhere.
| mdoms wrote:
| Two things can be bad at the same time. This is an article
| about gambling, not alcohol.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| It's not a 1:1 comparison. For one thing, the regulations are
| different. There are few if any restrictions on online gambling
| advertising, whereas alcohol ads are disallowed from using
| imagery that might appeal to children, can only be run in
| places where at least 70% of viewers are adult, etc.
|
| But more importantly, the nature of the product and the intent
| of the creators is different. Alcohol vendors for the most part
| don't want people to get addicted to alcohol, and most of their
| revenue doesn't come from addicts (90% of American adults drink
| at least socially).
|
| Gambling, and gambling advertisements, are deliberately
| designed to hook people to it as an addiction. Only 25% of
| Americans regularly gamble, and just 2% of gamblers produce 50%
| of industry revenue.
| bglazer wrote:
| While the statistics for alcohol consumption may not be as
| drastic as gambling, a large percentage (>20%) of alcohol
| revenue comes from heavy drinking. Here's a study from the
| UK.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30136436/
|
| Also, what makes you think alcohol vendors don't want
| addicts? My impression is that while they don't actively
| promote alcoholism, they mostly don't care.
| slap_shot wrote:
| > Gambling, and gambling advertisements, are deliberately
| designed to hook people to it as an addiction.
|
| > Only 25% of Americans regularly gamble
|
| > and just 2% of gamblers produce 50% of industry revenue.
|
| Very interesting. Do you have sources for these?
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Google exists, bro.
|
| > Gambling, and gambling advertisements, are deliberately
| designed to hook people to it as an addiction.
|
| What do you think all the $500-1000 "free cash starts" that
| the NFL is constantly advertising are supposed to do?
| There's a reason that free loosies were banned in the
| Tobacco Control Act of 96. For-profit companies don't give
| stuff away for free unless they think they'll get way more
| than that back from a portion of freebie recipients.
|
| > Only 25% of Americans regularly gamble
|
| https://www.statista.com/topics/1368/gambling/#dossierKeyfi
| g...
|
| > and just 2% of gamblers produce 50% of industry revenue.
|
| https://www.promisesbehavioralhealth.com/addiction-
| recovery-...
| cletus wrote:
| History will I believe judge the Roberts court harshly for all
| the negative effects and misery it has caused in the 2010s. The
| gutting of campaign finance reform means politicians are
| effectively owned by PACs and corporations now. Gutting the Civil
| Rights Act because "we don't need Federal preclearance anymore"
| (followed quickly by 20+ states quickly enacting the kinds of
| voting restrictions the Civil Rights Act was intended to curb).
| And of course the accessibility of gambling in the form of sports
| betting.
|
| It should be clear that gambling is really bad for some people.
| Gambling addicts have the highest rate of suicide of any addicts
| [1].
|
| Most people either don't gamble or can gamble responsibly. What
| kept this system in check was that gambling was relatively
| inaccessible in our daily lives. That provided a useful barrier
| to entry. It's simply too convenient for people who can gamble on
| their phones while waiting for their Starbucks.
|
| This became an issue on Twitch last year with the rise of
| gambling (ie slots) streams. Some streamers defended it as
| entertainment (never mind that they're getting paid millions of
| dollars). But we restrict access (or at least convenient access)
| to many activities that can become more problematic if they're
| too convenient. Liquor licensing, age restrictions, locations of
| venues, that sort of thing.
|
| We've seen this in Australia with poker machines ("pokies" aka
| slot machines). In the Eastern States social clubs, pubs and the
| likes can have them. And they make a fortune. This creates huge
| gambling problems and has for decades. By comparison, Western
| Australia does not have pokies and is better off for it.
|
| Sports betting is gambling really no different to slot machines.
| It's slightly better because there's not the immediate feedback
| loop and there is some skill but it is gambling and easy access
| to it is bad for many people.
|
| [1]: https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/problem-
| gambl...
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >The gutting of campaign finance reform means politicians are
| effectively owned by PACs and corporations now.
|
| Whoah now, you're saying that documentaries critical of Hillary
| Clinton shouldn't be able to be legally distributed? Because
| that was the origin of Citizens United
| capital_guy wrote:
| It's a non-sequitur to lead from the cause of the case to the
| decision handed down. The Court always has the ability to
| moderate its opinions. One can simultaneously believe that a
| documentary should be able to be distributed within range of
| an election and also that money is not a form of speech, or
| that corporations do not have the same speech rights as
| people.
| [deleted]
| gexla wrote:
| lucas_membrane wrote:
| Where else can the poor buy hope?
| diskzero wrote:
| One of the greatest professional shames of my life was being part
| of a fantasy sports for profit startup. We received tens of
| millions of funding from a company that is one of the major sport
| book operators in Las Vegas. What I first thought would be a fun
| way for friends to play with a little more "skin in the game"
| exposed me to some very bleak and dystopian ways that technology
| could be used to extract resources from those who could least
| afford it.
|
| I suppose it is no surprise to anyone semi-aware of how casinos
| operate that the house will always win. Would it be a surprise to
| learn that the data being generated by fantasy sports app
| customers were being used to actively create situations where
| they would lose, or at least reduce, the amount of their
| winnings? It shouldn't be.
| mikeodds wrote:
| Can you give any examples of how the data was used to increase
| losses? Quite interested.
| diskzero wrote:
| I feel as if I comment with too much detail, I may be
| contacted by the Attorneys General of various states. In the
| early days, things were totally unregulated. Odds, statistics
| and other variables could be adjusted or manipulated.
| Automated accounts could hedge against, or join with, elite
| players. All trades, team compositions, trends and statistics
| were visible internally. Think of all the ways that one could
| abuse high frequency trading and apply them to sport betting.
| It could be very ugly.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Ah so a cryptocurrency exchange then.
| rkk3 wrote:
| What is the rising human cost? The only real data they presented
| was that sports betting is now legal in 30 states when it used to
| only be legal in Nevada. Gambling and other addictions have
| always had a societal cost.
| jpthurman wrote:
| I'm glad to see a report on this - I hate to see the NFL actively
| promoting gambling with their biggest stars lining up for the
| commercials. I'm sure in their eyes it will "promote" the game
| but it will ruin the lives of many. My grandfather had a gambling
| problem and was an easy mark in his latter years - something like
| this would have been a dark pit of cyclical losses and broken
| relationships
| sxg wrote:
| This is interesting because legalized gambling is the perfect
| example of the discrepancy between individual autonomy in
| theory versus practice.
| paxys wrote:
| The biggest problem IMO is that it is impossible for the sports
| industry to go all-in into betting while also remaining neutral
| as far as the games themselves go.
| Guest42 wrote:
| I agree but also wish that a similar sentiment was applied to
| modern investment strategies.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| What do you mean by modern? My understanding is that the rise
| of index funds has been the biggest trend in this space over
| the past 20-30 years. Riskier bets like individual stock
| picking, or "experts" that con others with dubious ways of
| predicting the future, have been around forever.
| [deleted]
| michaelt wrote:
| Well, there are various other modern trends:
|
| * All stock market stuff _feels_ modern, because 15-year-
| olds don 't talk about it but 25-year-olds do. So it
| _feels_ like something that wasn 't really around/popular
| when you were young.
|
| * Some would say retailer investors who want to buy
| individual stocks should be holding them for the long term
| - and that a mobile app, letting you trade on the go, is an
| anti-feature.
|
| * The rise of Reddit's Wall Street Bets, who glorify moves
| that seem really dumb.
|
| * The rise of Cryptocurrencies, and/or their marketing to
| unsophisticated investors. If I put my entire life's
| savings into Dogecoin, does that mark me as someone so dumb
| you should save me from myself?
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| Apps like robinhood encourage and even gamify frequent
| trading at the expense of naive investors and because
| that's where brokers make money. Coinbase and their ilk
| do the same in the crypto market. Frequently trading
| stocks, and doing anything in crypto is just as much
| gambling as betting on a sports game, appeals to the same
| demographic, and is just as destructive.
|
| Yes, stock picking and penny stock scams have been around
| forever, but it has never been so easy.
| [deleted]
| mistrial9 wrote:
| agree - I suspect that people who have not seen a full, social
| gambling disease to its real extent, do not appreciate the
| depth of its impacts on everyone involved.
| paganel wrote:
| I can confirm that sports betting is also slowly eating away at
| what is left of the game of football (soccer, for US HN-ers) over
| here in Europe.
|
| We've got the English Premier League and the Champions League
| that are (maybe) still free of this cancer, as in (maybe) their
| results and general play are as close to 100%-fair as one can
| get, but outside of that it's the Wild West.
|
| The second leagues in most of Central and Eastern Europe (I used
| to go to such matches before the pandemic) are pretty much a
| fantasy league for betting, there's almost no sporting merits
| anymore when it comes to the game itself. The situation persists
| if one goes higher up the chain and further West, maybe not as
| dramatic and especially not as visible but if you know where to
| look and how to look at things it all becomes clear(er). In other
| words the game is pretty much gone, to paraphrase a famous
| /r/soccer meme.
|
| And I didn't go into the incredibly high psychical toll this
| phenomenon has on the people who are actually addicted to this
| s*it (pardon my French). I saw a close friend of mine going
| through it relatively recently and is hell, I wouldn't wish it on
| anyone, not even on my biggest enemies.
| 323 wrote:
| I don't think the it's all because of betting.
|
| Celebrity culture is another major factor. Players are now
| becoming famous for being famous soccer players, like the
| Kardashians. It's irrelevant if they can play or not.
|
| How many followers you have on Instagram is now more important
| than how many goals you score.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Name a famous footballer that cannot play.
|
| The comparisons to the Kardashians is quite a stretch.
| majani wrote:
| Yeah, I can only remember Rashford and Lingard trying that
| approach earlier in their careers but they quickly stopped
| it once their performance quality dipped
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's not like either of them have been well managed the
| past few seasons. They were skilled enough to catch the
| attention that brought them to where they are. Maybe they
| focused too much on the attention and less to what got
| the attention in the first place. That's unfortunately
| part of the gaffer's job to manage the players off the
| field as much as the tactics on the field.
| MrFantastic wrote:
| Betting on footie seems like a long term loser.
|
| The bookmakers cut guarantees you will lose over the long run.
| mdoms wrote:
| Are you saying that players are throwing games due to sports
| betting? Can you give an example? I'm not doubting you, I have
| never followed football so I have no idea, I'm just curious.
| Especially about your statement "...if you know where to look
| and how to look at things it all becomes clear(er)".
| philk10 wrote:
| No specific example but this article gives an idea of what's
| going on - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-11789671
| paganel wrote:
| > Can you give an example?
|
| It's in Romanian, because this is the league I follow, but
| something like this [1], maybe Google Translate can help,
| basically a player (incidentally, playing for the team I
| follow) letting in a goal just because (the goal on YT in
| here [2]). Maybe that was still because of a genuine mistake,
| but searching for "pariuri site:https://liga2.prosport.ro/"
| returns many other articles related to suspected betting in
| the Romanian second league.
|
| Also, at a (much) higher level club owners like Napoli's De
| Laurentiis might be crazy enough (I do personally see him
| capable of that) to be directly involved in this sort of
| stuff.
|
| There was a very suspect thing happening at the end of last
| season in Italy, basically Napoli needed a (relatively easy)
| home win in the last stage against a smaller opponent which
| had nothing to gain anymore, but they didn't, the match ended
| 1-1 [3], so Juventus (one of Napoli's biggest rivals) got
| their CL place instead. As a Juventus fan I saw that as very,
| very suspicious, especially as I could have sort of guessed
| beforehand that that sort of thing would happen.
|
| And before anyones says: "no Serie A club owner would do such
| a highly illegal thing!" a couple of months ago Sampdoria's
| (now former) club owner got arrested because of some other
| illegal shenanigans (afaik not betting-related)
|
| [1] https://liga2.prosport.ro/cupa-romaniei/se-va-sesiza-
| comisia...
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/Gl4gkgL25wE?t=237
|
| [3] https://www.espn.com/soccer/report/_/gameId/582783
| dylan604 wrote:
| >[2] https://youtu.be/Gl4gkgL25wE?t=237
|
| oh muh gawd! i've done that very thing myself. i didn't
| know i could make money doing it.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I thought it was a European thing but it's worldwide.. sadly.
| slap_shot wrote:
| I'm pretty Laissez-Faire about things, but a recent interaction
| with gambling is making me reconsider:
|
| My friend got a lot of free credits from the major sports books
| and wrote some code that he felt could generate a profit. We all
| threw in a little bit of money and let the program do what it
| does. Within a month we started doing 1k a day in profit on 3k
| wagered. Right as we approached 30k in profit, every major book
| limited our maximum wagers to pennies on the dollar, effectively
| making the system worthless.
|
| So this product exists when the customer loses money, but ceases
| to exist when the customer makes money. It's sort of an odd
| product in that regard.
| financetechbro wrote:
| Odd or have they adopted the same practices that casinos have
| in order to ensure that the house always wins
| slap_shot wrote:
| casino and sports books are the same thing and are the
| unusual product I am describing
| vgeek wrote:
| https://www.theringer.com/2019/6/5/18644504/sports-betting-b...
|
| This is a long read, but is really insightful on how the
| industry really works. If you're a consistently winning bettor,
| you're going to get blocked pretty quickly when you're betting
| against the house. Why would a casino want to play a game where
| they don't have odds in their favor when they can just ban the
| sharps and feast on the casuals? With parimutuel wagering
| (horse racing, exchanges like BetFair-- there aren't major
| exchanges in the US, not enough margin for gambling lobby to go
| for yet) where you're wagering against other players, you won't
| get banned, since you're not consistently taking money from the
| house.
| chrismcb wrote:
| Sports betting isn't exactly being against the house. In
| sports betting the house takes bets on both sides and then
| charges a percentage. Oh wait, you seem to understand this.
| The op was talking about making sports bets but being against
| the house.
| phillc73 wrote:
| There was a period, maybe 15 years ago now, where I had my
| online accounts at pretty much every major UK bookmaker
| either closed or highly restricted. One new account had a
| profit of something like PS350 in the first first week, and
| then it was heavily restricted. It wasn't like I'd taken them
| for thousands! In the end, I was fortunate enough to have one
| contact in one bookmaker who flagged my account, allowing me
| to bet a decent amount for a good while (Thanks Corals!).
| Eventually I just shifted everything to Betfair.
|
| In Australia bookmakers are obliged by law to stand a minimum
| bet size, based on the event and location (country vs metro
| horse racing for example). [1]
|
| [1] https://www.championbets.com.au/bookmakers/minimum-bet-
| limit...
| SilasX wrote:
| Why can't they switch to a user driven system where they
| don't place bets at all but just receive bid/asks from users,
| like the prediction markets do? Then they don't have to worry
| about bettors being better predictors than they are and can
| just take a cut of the flow.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I think that should be illegal. If we are going to allow
| casinos to operate at all, then we shouldn't allow them to
| discriminate against potential customers on the basis that
| said customers are better at the game. If that means their
| business model is no longer viable, then that is their
| problem.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I believe this is a naive comment, and I have a reason to
| point it out. That is, what is "illegal" and not is not as
| bright a line as many people are taught. A deep examination
| of gambling systems, all of the parts, will show that this
| legal-vs-illegal belief on the part of the gambler, is core
| to maintaining order over time. Yet, game operators and
| their allies, know very well, and in real life can,
| manipulate the odds of the outcomes of the process. ( _edit
| clarify_ ) Once a neutral observer, say people here,
| actually learn that part, further inquiry can show that the
| predation of others for profit, the physical control of
| common spaces, and control of life-and-death level inputs,
| such as weapons and their use, are also known to, and are
| used, by the operators. There are dozens of corollaries to
| this game analysis. I hope that the reader of these words,
| will understand them.
| sjtindell wrote:
| Predatory tactics, facilitating addiction, not good. But
| what you're saying feels to me like a rule that says you
| aren't allowed to play betting games unless you take every
| single bet. What? Consider that for yourself. Every person
| on the street who walks up to you and says "I bet you
| that...", you are required to take that bet? Or you're
| never allowed to make a bet again? We as people pick and
| choose what bets we take.
| dandanua wrote:
| People who run casinos or gambling businesses always have
| predatory nature. This is the rule everyone should be
| aware of.
| recursive wrote:
| The house already provides a list of which bets players
| can make, and what the odds are.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the reader of those rules believes they are true. You are
| teaching others right now, that they are some kind of
| true, specifically in a statistical way. This thread is
| overflowing with examples that counter those game rules.
| recursive wrote:
| No. They're a list of bets you can make, and at what
| odds. If you think they're wrong, you can bet against the
| house. But you can't make up your own bets or odds, like
| the guy in the street from the example.
| vgeek wrote:
| This type of thing isn't exclusive to sports betting,
| either. Card counting isn't cheating, but is typically
| prohibited (when executed successfully) in most casinos due
| to the edge it gives players (which has been practically
| eliminated with shift to 7 decks, autoshufflers, etc.).
| When players figure out other edges, such as imperfections
| in the playing card printing process that gives them an
| edge in games like baccarat, they'll either get banned or
| not paid their winnings. It is very much a heads I win,
| tails you lose situation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Blackjack_Team
|
| https://www.betstrat.com/betstrat-articles/the-phil-ivey-
| edg...
| slap_shot wrote:
| This is exactly my point. I'm not against outlawing casinos
| (i think you should be able to do pretty much whatever the
| eff you want with your body and money).
|
| BUT if we are going to allow them, should we allow them to
| only let people play when they lose?
|
| The decision to let them exist is as arbitrary as the
| decision to allow them to only play when they when.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| >([I] think you should be able to do pretty much whatever
| the eff you want with your body and money). ... The
| decision to let the exist is as arbitrary as the decision
| to allow them to only play when they [win].
|
| How do you square that with giving people autonomy? You
| can do what you want with your money, but you can't play
| if you don't feel like you are gonna win... there is an
| inherent contradiction there.
| hillbillydilly wrote:
| its the classic hn libertarian take. empowered teens with
| freedom technology, saying one thing (body autonomy, no
| regs!) but, actually with regulations they're just
| smarter regulations cause I'm smart
| renlo wrote:
| Found it amusing reading this thread, thinking of
| gambling companies paying their lawyers to argue that
| gambling is "skilled based". Then, after gambling is
| legalized, they'd ban all of the skilled players so we'd
| go back to "luck based" gambling that their lawyers just
| argued was skilled based.
| wahern wrote:
| > then we shouldn't allow them to discriminate against
| potential customers on the basis that said customers are
| better at the game.
|
| Why? All that will do is remove the option, or perhaps move
| it to some place seedier. Gambling is entertainment and
| fantasy, afterall.
|
| If you accept the conceits that 1) it's a form of
| entertainment, and 2) we permit gambling because it's
| easier to regulate when it's above ground, then why create
| a rule that will all but eradicate some of the most popular
| games? The _potential_ to beat the house (or "the system")
| is part of the thrill of certain games; that it has its
| limits seems irrelevant except for those who approach
| gambling as something other than entertainment. It seems
| only at the limit--that the potential is absolutely
| illusory, even for amateur play, or that the potential is
| unlimited, implying unsustainability and therefore
| existence of some hidden element--that something
| indisputably fraudulent is occurring.
|
| Admittedly, maybe we shouldn't have casinos at all. They
| come with all manner of negative externalities and thorny
| social dilemmas. But that's typical--perhaps even a
| fundamental characteristic--of most forms of adult
| entertainment.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Well, I think I mostly agree with you in theory. But I was
| just thinking about something else, let's say that
| algorithms giving secure wins and counting cards at
| blackjack are allowed, people starts winning and casino
| start losing, they have loss and let's say that it's not
| convenient anymore to have a casino, and they go out of
| business, country loses a revenue stream for taxes, people
| loses their jobs, and an industry doesn't exist anymore, or
| it goes black and doesn't pay taxes anymore, you need to
| invest money in police and investigations in order to catch
| unregulated games houses, betting people might be or not be
| paid, criminality gets its way, and everything can happen..
| I am not sure but I think I agree with you in theory, in
| practice I think we would end up fighting another
| unfightable underground market at even a bigger cost to
| human life, it's just another human dependency that you
| can't fight starting from casinos or dealers, you need to
| start it at schools
| thebean11 wrote:
| Wow, that's pretty amazing. Have you considered giving it a
| shot in-person in Vegas, assuming it's not super high
| frequency? Could potentially make a lot of cash before they ban
| you.
| slap_shot wrote:
| we've started spreading the bets across lots of different
| accounts. the issue is we don't know which leg of the bet is
| going to be the one that profits, so you run the risk of one
| account winning too frequently and getting flagged.
|
| If we did that same thing in person we would need a lot of
| random ass poeple. But it's definitely something we've
| considered.
| gjs278 wrote:
| erfgh wrote:
| 1k on 3k wagered sounds pretty suspicious. Also, the regularity
| you imply makes it even more suspicious. How did this program
| work?
| majani wrote:
| They were probably taking advantage of the rush of companies
| into the US market. It's a common market penetration tactic
| to offer odds that are wildly favorable to the punters for
| the first few months.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Not OP, but if I had to guess, the coder just looked for the
| most favorable 'prop bets' that books use to get the casuals
| in the door and took advantage of those favorable odds.
|
| Not really any other way to do it without fixing games.
| [deleted]
| nikcub wrote:
| If anybody is further interested in this, a recent YouTube
| video by Spencer Cornelia went behind the scenes of a similar
| operation that is still running:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N05vGcw_tI
|
| They are betting the spread between different books and most of
| their operation involves keeping accounts live and with
| placement capacity
| hooande wrote:
| These numbers aren't believable. There's no way to consistently
| make $1k on every $3k wagered. Possibly for weeks, or even a
| couple of months. But there is no method of betting on
| professional sports that can do that over any significant time
| period.
|
| If you got to the point of betting $30k a day, you were
| definitely going to get limited by the sports books. They also
| can and will arbitrarily limit the amount of money that you can
| withdraw. Sports books are really only designed to deal in that
| much money with a limited set of people who exhibit very clear
| patterns.
| slap_shot wrote:
| lol
| RedAlakazam wrote:
| Did you guys achieve this by creating a model for all kinds of
| different sports or did you hunt the arbitrage from different
| betting providers?
| slap_shot wrote:
| It only works for one sport and requires analyzing a ton of
| historical data and prop bets from all of the books.
| gjs278 wrote:
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah. People are supposed to lose. They get cut off if they're
| too succesful.
|
| Even worse is the addictive nature of it. Making money like
| this is like a dose of dopamine straight in the reward center
| of the brain. People literally lose everything gambling.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Isn't this how every major betting operation works? I'm not
| counting lotteries because although you could argue that you
| are "betting" on some numbers anyone with a 6th grade education
| that there is no difference in expected outcomes if you choose
| different numbers.
|
| Why would bookmakers ever take bets from someone they don't
| expect to make money from?
| crubier wrote:
| There is actually a difference in expected outcomes at
| lottery if you choose different numbers. Commonly played
| number will be shared among all winners, so your share will
| be less than with rare numbers.
| slig wrote:
| Does your program looks at past results and infers who's going
| to win somehow?
| gostsamo wrote:
| most likely this is betting arbitrage. check the odds on
| different bookmakers and try to find an opportunity where you
| can bet on both sides and win regardless.
| majani wrote:
| Yup, especially in games like basketball where no draws are
| allowed
| slig wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense, thanks!
| [deleted]
| bluedino wrote:
| Since covid started, it seems like every other commercial these
| days is for either sports betting (FanDuel, DraftKings) or online
| casinos (all of the big casino companies have an 'online'
| counterpart)
|
| They all advertise some sort of $100 risk-free bets or something
| of that nature.
|
| Was this some sort of concession to physical casinos since their
| customers weren't able to come on-site and gamble?
| bondarchuk wrote:
| All I know is that here in the Netherlands, online gambling
| used to be illegal but it was legalized somewhere last year.
| Now advertisements for this stuff are also allowed, because
| "people need to be made aware of the legal offerings" (in
| contrast to the illegal ones).
| jrockway wrote:
| I think the timing is unrelated. There was a supreme court
| ruling in 2018 that paved the way.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Yep, it's unrelated. In Michigan, in-person sports betting
| became legal the very same day the NBA paused their season
| due to Covid. Online was always going to come after that, and
| took about 10 more months before it opened up. There wasn't
| any particular rush.
| dosethree wrote:
| If your interesting in more about this check out the recent HBO
| Real Sports episode
| wolverine876 wrote:
| An interesting question (to me) is how legalization of gambling
| happened politically? For a long time, there was a strong
| political consenses against it. Where is the religious right, for
| example?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Wagering on sports is "endemic and acceptable and so mainstream
| that it is now a major pillar of American entertainment," said
| Timothy Fong, one of the directors of the gambling studies
| program at U.C.L.A.
|
| A rhetorical technique: Make the problem seem inevitable, make
| any opposition seem powerless. Then make the question about the
| rest of society adapting to it - everyone has to adapt so the
| gambling industry can make money. It's becoming the same thing
| with climate change and the fossil fuel industry (and related
| vested interests).
| Raidion wrote:
| I mean, would you say the "we've lost the drug war" falls into
| that rhetorical technique? Is that just saying "everyone has to
| adapt so the pot industry can make money?"
|
| Or "pandemics are inevitable, we can't contain them, so
| everyone has to adapt so the pharma industry can make money?"
|
| Seems like calling out that form as a "rhetorical technique" is
| not useful in determining the quality of the argument.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Do you think sports gambling is _not_ inevitable? Because until
| relatively recently, it was illegal in the US outside of Vegas
| and it still very much happened. Whether it was a local bookie
| or offshore betting websites, anybody that wanted to gamble
| already was. The only difference is that none of it was taxed.
| allturtles wrote:
| But with ease of use and advertisements, you can dramatically
| grow the set of people who want to gamble.
|
| I watch football with my kids, and now they want to try
| gambling, after seeing thousands of sports book ads. I find
| it really depressing.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Are you saying the volume of gambling hasn't and won't
| increase? My impression is quite the opposite, but I could be
| wrong.
|
| I don't think it's inevitable at all. We could make it
| illegal again; it was that way for a long time, until very
| recently, and the change was due not to politics but a court
| decision.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/9uRHi
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20220131144657/https://www.nytime...
| Austin_Conlon wrote:
| The messages tennis players receive after losses from gamblers
| are vile.
| mdoms wrote:
| What an oddly written article. So Delany, the flagship character
| in the narrative, bet a bit of money and then his wife caught him
| so he stopped. Is he the best example they could have found?
| Sports betting and gambling in general is incredibly destructive
| and unbelievably difficult to kick for full-on addicts. Gambling
| addiction is no joke.
|
| For some far more compelling journalism on the terrible
| consequences of gambling addiction I recommend this ABC Australia
| article on Australian pokies (that's "slot machines" if you're
| American, "fruit machines" if you're British).
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-26/widow-of-addict-who-t...
|
| Or this SMH article of various peoples' stories
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/i-wanted-to-be-caught-in...
| allturtles wrote:
| Where do you get "bet a bit of money"? The article says "he was
| gambling away the family 401(k) on his phone." It also says "I
| started doing it compulsively. I would win $5,000 and say, 'Now
| I know what I am doing.'" So he was making individual bets of
| thousands of dollars. Since he as doing it "compulsively" that
| probably means more than one such bet per day. Doesn't sound
| like a "bit of money" unless this guy was extremely wealthy.
| mateo411 wrote:
| I think the human interest story is sadder than you realize. In
| addition to being a gambling addict, Delany is also a Jets fan.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| I am sure only Jets fans truly appreciate your humor.
| patorjk wrote:
| They probably used him as an example because he runs a podcast
| on gambling addiction. It says he was gambling away his 401k,
| which sounds pretty serious. They may have also used him as an
| example to make it easier for gamblers who come across the
| article to find help.
| mavhc wrote:
| sport, it's so interesting that no one ever thought of betting on
| the result or taking drugs while watching it
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