[HN Gopher] Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts
___________________________________________________________________
Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts
Author : JumpCrisscross
Score : 176 points
Date : 2024-10-01 04:01 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| joegibbs wrote:
| https://archive.is/20240930230439/https://www.bloomberg.com/...
| lostsoil wrote:
| The link is broken for me.
| joegibbs wrote:
| Strange - how about this one? https://archive.is/8xQmF
| robobro wrote:
| Works thanks
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Does look like I would have to get a lot more toxic thoughts
| before I would be able to keep up :(
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Titles ending "than you thought" always, always come across as
| condescending nonsense.
| recursive wrote:
| One time, my boss's boss told me "Whatever you heard, it's not
| true". I think I burst out laughing due to the apparent
| paradox.
| bettringf wrote:
| I worked at a quant sports betting trading company, on occasion
| it would send the employees to place annonymous few grand bets at
| physical shops because it's such a problem getting people to
| continue accepting your bets if you are any good.
|
| And found out that the more you bet, the more percentage
| commission you pay to exchanges like Betfair, which is quite
| contraintuitive - commission goes up with volume, not down.
|
| I also learned a few tricks of the industry - when you open an
| online account they look up your address on Google Maps to see
| what kind of place you live in.
| bionsystem wrote:
| > it's such a problem getting people to continue accepting your
| bets if you are any good.
|
| Why don't they just use those people to adjust their odds
| faster for everybody else ? Or do they limit the size you can
| bet rather than just banning you ?
|
| > I also found out that the more you bet, the more percentage
| commission you pay to exchanges like Betfair, which is quite
| contraintuitive - commission goes up with volume, not down.
|
| I guess they try to cream the most addicted people, seems quite
| intuitive to me.
| bettringf wrote:
| > Why don't they just use those people to adjust their odds
| faster for everybody else ?
|
| Volumes are not huge like in finance, you will lose more on
| the bet that you will make back in your marginally improved
| odds.
|
| > I guess they try to cream the most addicted people, seems
| quite intuitive to me.
|
| The professionals, not the addicted. The addicted expire
| quickly and they typically don't use exchanges anyway.
| bjourne wrote:
| Top sports books do that already. Lesser sports books don't
| have enough liquidity to react in real-time. In fact a simple
| winning strategy is to check what odds Pinnacle gives and see
| if any bookie offers better odds (arbitrage betting). It will
| only work for 2-3 bets before you're rate-limited though.
| makestuff wrote:
| Yeah this is the entire business model of oddsjam. They
| basically offer a service that compares all book odds to
| pinnacle and call it "plus EV betting".
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Why don 't they just use those people to adjust their odds
| faster for everybody else ?_
|
| The logic of bookies is simple: Don't do business with people
| who win more than they lose.
|
| It doesn't matter _how_ the customer is getting an edge. A
| brilliant algorithm? A complex arbitrage system? Deep insight
| from years studying the sport? Cheating? Time travel? The
| bookies don 't care.
|
| The only thing that matters is, if you win more than you lose
| you've got some sort of edge. And if you've got any sort of
| edge, it's more profitable not to do business with you.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Same for casinos. That's why they kick you out if you win
| too much or too often. They don't need to prove you did
| anything wrong like cheating. If you aren't making them
| money you're out.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Are you able to tell us more about your operation? Size, scale,
| profitability etc?
| blitzar wrote:
| My betfair commission was heavily discounted back in the day,
| but that was only on volumes of ~PS50,000 a day, and a fair bit
| more on weekends. Nevertheless their commissions were
| outrageously high, but the scale of the liquidity they had
| available was amazing.
| dgellow wrote:
| 50k a day, was that money you were betting? Or were you
| managing a betting service and betfair was the underlying
| exchange? I know very little about that world
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Legalizing sports gambling was a mistake_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41659458
| focusgroup0 wrote:
| money quote [pun unintended]:
|
| >In states that allow online betting, they found, the average
| credit score drops by almost 1% after about four years, while the
| likelihood of bankruptcy increases by 28%, and the amount of debt
| sent to collection agencies increases by 8%.
| christophilus wrote:
| It's interesting that a 28% increase in likelihood of
| bankruptcy doesn't produce more than a 1% hit to the credit
| score.
| bettringf wrote:
| It can't be 28% for the whole state, that would mean a third
| of the population are degenerate gamblers.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _can 't be 28% for the whole state, that would mean a
| third of the population are degenerate gamblers_
|
| Not how likelihoods work.
| bionsystem wrote:
| No. Say 100 / 100 000 people are degenerate gambleurs at
| risk of bankruptcy. +28% would mean 128 are now at risk.
| hinkley wrote:
| First rule of statistics: don't compare percentages
| unless they have the same denominator.
| bionsystem wrote:
| I didn't do that, did I ?
| everforward wrote:
| It does, indirectly. The percentage of people going
| bankrupt is X/100, but a percentage increase in that
| percentage is (X/100)*(Y/100).
| hinkley wrote:
| Say I've got a building full of people. 48% are male. 35%
| have blue eyes, 50% are over 50, and 22% are balding.
|
| You can start speculating on the relationship between age
| and hair status because they're both based on the same
| population: the inhabitants. Older people are more likely
| to be bald is a fair hypothesis.
|
| But if you start trying to make guesses about how many
| bald men are in the building, you have a problem, because
| you're making a common bad assumption that all bald
| people are male, but also now you're comparing a stat
| about the whole population to one about 48% of the
| population, which you don't do.
|
| When you're doing scientific experiments and you want to
| know these things, you set up the cohorts ahead of time
| to test your hypotheses. For instance a test group that's
| 100% men or 100% women. Or only people with blue eyes.
| That way any two correlations you're looking at are based
| on the exact same number of samples.
|
| And in this case as someone else already explained, the %
| is relative to total bankruptcies not the entire
| population, and the other is about the entire population.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _interesting that a 28% increase in likelihood of
| bankruptcy doesn't produce more than a 1% hit to the credit
| score_
|
| FTA: "Much to the surprise of Hollenbeck and his
| collaborators, falling credit scores and increasing
| bankruptcy filings weren't accompanied by an uptick in credit
| card debt and delinquencies. Financial institutions, it
| appears, are sheltering themselves from the fallout of online
| sports betting by lowering credit limits and otherwise
| restricting access to credit in states where it's legal."
|
| TL; DR The people going broke either don't have a credit
| score [1] because they were too poor to be lent to.
|
| [1] https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-
| repor...
| hinkley wrote:
| For every 35 people filing bankruptcy before gambling, there
| are now 45.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Should Sports Betting Be Banned?_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665630
| jfoutz wrote:
| The article appears to break gamblers into 3 groups.
|
| 1) casual players
|
| 2) problem players
|
| 3) professional gamblers.
|
| so basically casual players gamble something like 50 bucks a
| year. Problem gamblers get money however they can (and although
| it's unstated and I have no evidence, I think this is where the
| actual money comes from). And finally, people that can snipe the
| mispriced bets, and make a lot of money.
|
| Feels sort of submarine-ish. Casino's can't survive off casual
| players. They need the addicts to make payroll. The pros eat up
| casino margins.
|
| I dunno. Feels like a "I run a business, but I'm not really good
| at it so we need laws to force the pros out". Please don't
| regulate me, but regulate who can play.
|
| Interesting that it's in Bloomberg. Interesting that the casinos
| are so bad at laying odd they lose. I have no sympathy for anyone
| but the addicts. Those folks are sick and need help.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Casino 's can't survive off casual players. They need the
| addicts to make payroll._
|
| The fact that the pros are simulating problem players because
| then the betting apps give you _more_ leeway, _e.g._ by
| "send[ing] you bonus money" and raising your limits, paints the
| picture quite effectively in my book.
|
| > _Casino 's can't survive off casual players. They need the
| addicts to make payroll_
|
| To what degree is this true? Sure, a casino with a massive
| spend on free alcohol and structure needs a high profit margin
| to return its capital. But betting apps don't have those costs.
| jfoutz wrote:
| You nailed the key point my muddy intuition (and the article)
| failed to express.
|
| Pro gamblers simulate problem gamblers, so they can bet more.
|
| I said, "Casino's can't survive off casual players. They need
| the addicts to make payroll"
|
| > To what degree is this true?
|
| I don't know the ROI. It's hyperbolic, I'll freely admit
| that.
|
| But I think there is an important point. We let problem
| gamblers gamble more, and it's not fair pros take advantage
| of that dark pattern.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _don 't know the ROI. It's hyperbolic, I'll freely admit
| that._
|
| Being a bookie is making a market. As long as you do your
| maqth right, your potential for losses are capped--lots of
| small bets are actually _less_ risky in this respect.
| Problem gamblers are a cherry on top, far from essential to
| any gambling enterprise, particularly not one making a two-
| sided market.
|
| > _We let problem gamblers gamble more, and it 's not fair
| pros take advantage of that dark pattern_
|
| The pros are the beneficial bacteria checking how much the
| apps can prey on the problem gamblers.
| phs318u wrote:
| When the "cherry on top" (problem gamblers) is
| responsible for half your revenue (from the Bloomberg
| article), then that's not just a cherry. That's half the
| cake. And it's a really, really, big cake.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| It's still cake! The implied assertion is gambling
| enterprises _need_ problem gamblers. That if you restrict
| their ability to prey on problem gamblers, nobody gets to
| casually gamble.
|
| I know nothing about gambling. But I know a lot about
| market making and the math of being a bookie. And basaed
| on that, I don't think the claim is true.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I also no nothing about gambling and a lot more about
| market making.
|
| One major difference that may change the math is the tax
| rate. Illinois for instance just passed a 40% tax on
| sports betting.
| phs318u wrote:
| Well, I don't know much about market making but as a
| member of Gamblers Anonymous since 1998 I've seen just
| about every kind of devastation caused by every kind of
| gambling. In the last few years I've seen a significant
| increase in the number of very young men coming to us.
| Here in Australia, the gambling industry absolutely is
| laser focused on targeting young men using every
| psychological trick in the book, including such
| pernicious features as "Bet With Mates (tm)" which is
| explicitly designed to use peer pressure to lock in and
| escalate those in the group who may otherwise pull out.
|
| If we accept that almost 50% of revenue comes from 80% of
| gamblers (a diverse cohort) while the other almost 50%
| comes from 3% of gamblers (a far more uniform cohort),
| then of course betting companies would be absolutely
| defending against any change (regulation) that would
| impact the 3%. Furthermore they'd be remiss in their duty
| to their shareholders if they weren't trying to migrate
| gamblers from the larger cohort to the smaller.
| Yeul wrote:
| It will just be like meth and painkillers: everyone
| pretends there isn't a problem for years until it gets so
| bad that the government has to step in.
| consteval wrote:
| Intuitively I see all addictive industries the same. The
| Tobacco industry can, and does, make money off of the odd
| cigar at a house party. But ultimately, they rely on the
| constant addiction to have a business model.
|
| It's cheap, and easy, to make nicotine free tobacco like
| devices. You could lower your cost quite a bit - pretty
| good for the books! But it doesn't matter, and nobody
| with half a brain does it.
| dkrich wrote:
| This is backwards. Casinos offer huge cross subsidization
| opportunities like getting people to spend lots of money in
| clubs and bars or gamble on games like slots that have a huge
| house edge while apps have near zero cross subsidization
| opportunities and massive overhead. An app running at
| draftkings scale costs a lot to operate.
|
| I've believed for a long time and continue to that the math
| on these businesses just doesn't work. Eventually they won't
| exist because they aren't profitable.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Fair enough, I'm not knowledgeable about casino economics.
| Focussing only on the gambling, however, I'm scpetical they
| _need_ whales.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| They have shareholders expecting massive year-over-year
| revenue growth and are directly comparing themselves to
| the free-to-play/mobile gaming space where whales _seem_
| plentiful, so of course they are optimizing for whales
| long-term over sustainably building a low margin overhead
| product. You can see this almost directly in many of
| their advertising plans, Draft Kings and the others
| advertise just like the mobile games space. (They just
| have fewer places they can show their advertisements from
| old gambling advertisements laws.)
| hinkley wrote:
| And if you keep pulling on that thread: are casinos only
| profitable because they're laundering money?
| svantana wrote:
| If so, they are in trouble now that they've been
| disrupted by crypto and NFTs.
| pests wrote:
| What legal casino uses crypto or NFTs?
| hinkley wrote:
| Other way around. Easier laundering on these.
|
| There's a reason MMOs let you put money in and make hoops
| to take it out. Otherwise I can overpay for garbage from
| my "associate" and he can cash out free money with very
| little paper trail.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Bookmakers can always lay the odds so that there's equal
| money on each side. Then they're just taking a 10% rake
| with zero risk. If they start getting killed by pros
| they'll just move to the low risk strategy.
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| I wonder if street bookies make money "for someone" by
| somehow bringing lending in house. It would be the pair
| of activities that would be profitable. But they wouldn't
| have to be that good at bookmaking.
| gopher_space wrote:
| From my perspective the last thing an amateur bookie
| wants is an outstanding balance either way.
|
| Your only way of dealing with a bad debt is banning the
| person and letting the other amateur bookies know about
| it.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Bookmakers can always lay the odds so that there's
| equal money on each side
|
| No they can't. Large ones can, but the small ones
| sometimes cannot because they have to match the large
| ones but in a smaller pool. If everyone knows which team
| is going to win, diehard fans of the losing team will
| still bet on their team - large players capture that in
| their odds and break even. Small players don't have the
| same mix of customers and so will have to take that loss
| because they need to compete with the large ones.
|
| Of course overall the small players balance enough the
| 10% rake from less sure games over the years to make a
| lot of money but they can still lose 6 figures on some
| individual games. Small players are less a target for the
| pros (if only because they know their customer better and
| so won't accept the pros in the first place).
|
| Remember the small players are often running an illegal
| operation. They need their reputation of paying out so
| that customers don't go elsewhere to even turn them in.
| jayrot wrote:
| Also, for what it's worth, the idea that betting lines
| and odds are set to make "equal money on both sides" is a
| very simplistic and often ignorant talking point. It is
| quite possible if not common, especially on big games
| like the SB, for the books to have significant exposure
| to one side.
|
| Making betting lines is a crazy complex mix of the house
| essentially betting on an outcome themselves, tempered by
| a limit to exposure/liability as well as the need to keep
| lines in basic accordance with other linemakers.
|
| It's unreal how good these guys are most times.
| rsync wrote:
| Forgive me... This is not an area. I have much knowledge
| of...
|
| ... But I thought even a small sports book could balance
| things properly by setting an appropriate pointspread?
|
| my parent has described a risk for the sports book that
| seems too assume the simple picking of winners and losers
| and not a pointspread?
| gnatman wrote:
| This is sort of an "assume a perfectly spherical gambler"
| type problem.
| bluGill wrote:
| The issue is the big players publish their spread. You
| have to at worst match them or everyone sends their money
| to the big players. You can beat them but not do worse.
| For bets on the local little league you can set your own
| spread but the big money is national (and international),
| sports where you have competition and so need to watch
| what they do. As a small agent you shouldn't bother
| calculating spread on the big games just match the large
| players.
| Miraste wrote:
| DraftKings is profitable as of a few months ago.
|
| >gamble on games like slots that have a huge house edge
|
| This is what they're working on next: legalization of
| online casino-style games. They've already got seven
| states. Profit margins will only go up.
| burningChrome wrote:
| >> I've believed for a long time and continue to that the
| math on these businesses just doesn't work.
|
| These companies and their apps feels like they're framing
| this as a social media app. Get together with your friends,
| play against each other. Its very, very much like fantasy
| football which generates billions in revenue every year. To
| me, _those_ are the people and the money they 're aiming
| for - not the casino betters.
|
| I would assume this is the early stages of any market. You
| have a lot of companies jumping into the fray and trying to
| make it work. Then as time goes on, like you said, the
| money just won't work for them and at which point you'll
| see the standard consolidation where the companies who
| figure it out will still be there, possibly buy up some
| smaller companies and so on and so forth.
|
| It will be interesting to see if companies like Draft Kings
| and Fan Duel can outlast some of the bigger players coming
| in like BetMGM and other casino backed companies. I don't
| think we'll be seeing "Bob's Bets" app anytime soon, which
| would support your idea that this is most likely a loss
| leader for these casino's, and what's the threshold where
| they will pull out?
| adw wrote:
| > I've believed for a long time and continue to that the
| math on these businesses just doesn't work.
|
| Particularly for Las Vegas, the business may not be what
| you think it is. Vegas is, amongst other things, a global
| money laundrette.
| RobRivera wrote:
| Its not a matter of belief its a matter of math.
|
| Their net income is either positive or negative
| glenngillen wrote:
| They've existed in other jurisdictions for decades and seem
| to be doing very well financially.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| The aqusition costs are extremly high for online betting and
| online casinos. If you pay 1000 usd to aquire one customer it
| is not profitable if they gamble 50 usd / year.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Then online casinos are a bad business and shouldn't exist,
| just like breweries shouldn't exist if they can't break
| even selling to casual drinkers and need alcoholics to make
| a profit, and gun manufacturers shouldn't exist if they
| can't break even selling to one-or-two-gun owners and need
| wannabe-commandos and survivalist cosplayers to make a
| profit.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| I worked at a biotechnology company, we had thousands of
| clients but five of them were 80% of our revenue. In your
| world, should that business not exist as well?
|
| I don't understand the princple that revenue should be
| uniformly distributed as a condition for existing. How
| would you enforce this?
| butterfly42069 wrote:
| I presume one would just continuously uniformly
| distribute everything till they arrived at communism lmao
| consteval wrote:
| Or, if we decide to come back to Earth, we simply make
| the obvious restrictions on a case by case basis via cost
| analysis. Then we stop when we feel like it.
|
| For example, tobacco is now extremely restricted. That's
| an obvious industry that profits off of addiction. We
| went ahead and fixed that. The result? Millions of lives
| saved.
|
| Oh, but the spooky hypothetical communism! Come on kids,
| light up these cigs! They make you look cool and
| masculine! Oh woe is the modern American for being a
| commie!
| butterfly42069 wrote:
| What if I want to grow a plant and smoke it? Who are you
| to take that away from me? What if your experience of
| life doesn't align with mine, and my cost/benefit
| analysis for me personally is that I gain more from
| smoking than I lose?
|
| That aside, I wasn't advocating for smoking to defend
| capitalism, and think you appear disingenuous for
| suggesting that. Merely that that is the end route of
| just dividing everything equally. I'm willing to go out
| on a limb and say attempting to divide everything equally
| doesn't work.
|
| Edit: Apparently I'm arguing against someone I'm unable
| to reply to, go figure. Either way they appear to be now
| arguing for the status quo, over 18 regulated gambling,
| which I fail to see has anything to do with sharing
| equally, and for some reason they're acting like what
| they're advocating for is not the status quo. I think I
| may have stumbled into an argument with a nonsense
| Chinese LLM lol
| consteval wrote:
| > What if I want to grow a plant and smoke it?
|
| That's allowed: again, reasonable and obvious
| restrictions.
|
| > and my cost/benefit analysis for me personally is that
| I gain more from smoking than I lose?
|
| All well and good, but that goes out the window when you
| sell Tobacco.
|
| > I wasn't advocating for smoking to defend capitalism,
| and think you appear disingenuous for suggesting that
|
| It's not disingenuous IMO, it's obvious. Gambling is
| addictive, okay so let me draw a comparison to an already
| existing addictive substance that we've successfully
| regulated. Oh, look, tobacco!
|
| We managed to do that and not be communist. And everyone
| is all well and good and we're pretty much all over it.
| Turns out, only wins! So it can be done, was kind of my
| point.
| gcanyon wrote:
| I'm not claiming revenue must be even.
|
| And I'm assuming that the five customers actually
| benefitted from your company's work? If so, then they're
| not really comparable to gambling addicts, alcoholics,
| and gun fanatics, right?
|
| We already (poorly) enforce (weak) laws requiring casinos
| not to prey on addicts.
|
| We already (poorly) enforce (weak) laws requiring bars
| not to over-serve and alcoholics to get treatment
| sometimes.
|
| We do almost nothing about gun addicts.
|
| But commenting that something shouldn't be the way it is
| isn't a claim to know how to fix it.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Are those clients addicts who are ruining their lives
| with your product? If so, yeah you shouldn't exist, or at
| least you need to downsize and try to get that percentage
| way down.
| consteval wrote:
| It depends on what you're selling.
|
| > How would you enforce this?
|
| Case by case. We already do this, this isn't a
| hypothetical. You can't advertise tobacco anymore and
| guess what, lots less people addicted and we're saving
| literally millions of lives in the long run.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > The pros eat up casino margins.
|
| In games against the house, the house usually ensures that even
| with mathematically perfect play, that they will still have a
| margin (though, admittedly, it's a tighter margin than when a
| bachelor party is drunk and playing blackjack and hitting on 19
| because "I'm feeling lucky!").
|
| Most pros play against the other players (i.e. poker, etc.),
| and the rake is the rake, regardless of that - the old adage,
| "If you look around the table and can't figure out who the
| chump is, you're the chump" stands, i.e. you don't have to beat
| the house, you just have to beat Bob who flew in from Iowa (not
| intended to insult anyone or anywhere, just more exaggerate the
| casual player).
| orwin wrote:
| No, advantage betting is pretty much only against the houses,
| not against other players. While people who know the sport
| and manage to bet misplaced lines can be winning over a
| season, advantage betting is the only way to reliantly have a
| positive EV. Casinos and now sport betting apps try to
| prevent professionals to use this, but with the number of
| shit you can now bet on, and since you don't have to tie an
| account to your real identity yet, it is becoming very
| difficult to catch that, especially if you muddy the water
| with dumb bets.
| blitzar wrote:
| Outside of the US where gambling on sports has been the
| norm for decades, the bookies tend to run square books and
| just earn spread + commissions. To the point where pvp
| exchanges have been the dominant destination for betting
| for 20 years or so.
|
| These article (and others like it recently) just make me
| think US sports betting operations are operating on
| antiquated business model.
| orwin wrote:
| Yes, this is only because american sports give "line bet"
| and "prop bets", that anybody can exploit if two apps
| aren't coordinated. You can do line arbitrage (middling
| is the easiest, but professionals use props with weird
| maths and specific knowledge to make a living).
|
| If you only offer to bet on the money line, it makes it
| way harder for professional gamblers.
| blitzar wrote:
| A football game in the UK for example has ~60 markets on
| exchange for a single game with bets on everything from
| the result, handicaped result (multiple lines), the
| number of goals, the times of the goals, scorers of
| goals, half-time results, yellow cards, red cards, number
| of corners, number of shots at goal, time of first thrown
| in etc.
| adw wrote:
| All the tech piling into US sports books is British
| precisely because the British markets (particularly
| horses, football and tennis, but really everything up to
| and including political markets) are so much more
| sophisticated and there's a killing to be made exploiting
| the rubes in the Wild West.
|
| Really professional gamblers (eg Tony Bloom / Betlizard)
| are just hedge funds and what we're talking about in this
| thread is "trying to gain an execution edge".
| dustincoates wrote:
| > and although it's unstated and I have no evidence, I think
| this is where the actual money comes from
|
| The article links to a WSJ article that says this group of
| problem players provides more than 50% of revenue to the
| betting companies despite being just 3% of all bettors.
|
| > Of the more than 700,000 people in the SMU panel, fewer than
| 5% withdrew more from their betting apps than they deposited...
| The next 80% of bettors made up for those operators' losses.
| And the 3% of bettors who lost the most accounted for almost
| half of net revenue
| DrScientist wrote:
| > fewer than 5% withdrew more from their betting apps than
| they deposited... The next 80% of bettors made up for those
| operators' losses. And the 3% of bettors who lost the most
| accounted for almost half of net revenue
|
| That's a deliberately misleading representation - they offset
| the 80 against losses rather then the 3%. In terms of net
| revenue the 3% are less than half net revenue - not more.
| Yeul wrote:
| This is why Vegas is all about entertainment not just rows of
| slot machines.
| ebiester wrote:
| Vegas is about entertainment because it brings people to the
| rows of slot machines. And ideally, from their perspective,
| traps a handful of whales from every cohort.
| 015a wrote:
| I highly, highly doubt that the share of people who
| consistently stay in category 1 year-over-year is more than a
| couple percentage points. Lots of people put $50 in to try the
| whole thing out, lose, then never return. Extremely few people
| will then return in 2025 and be like "lets do that again".
|
| I cannot for the life of me understand why these apps can't
| make money off the pros, and instead need to ban them. Ignoring
| all the dumb promotions these apps do: Sports betting is zero
| sum, you're betting against the other players, not the house.
| The odds are set by who you're betting against. Literally, how
| does it not work out that the profit is just the money from the
| losers minus the house 30%-or-whatever cut? Is "pros" in this
| context people who also frequently abuse the (oftentimes wild)
| promotions these apps run?
|
| But, if it did work like that, the problem is even more
| apparent: these apps are at best a direct wealth transfer from
| addicts and idiots to corporations and pros. Wait, I just
| described the stock market, we're talking about sports betting
| :)
| elbasti wrote:
| Sports betting is zero sum, but the market is very
| inefficient. So you need market makers (the gambling sites)
| that will fill _any_ order and that set the initial price.
|
| The correct price is often not known for a short while, and
| that's when the pros bet. Immediately when the line (price)
| comes out, if they think the line is miss-priced, they will
| place large bets.
|
| Eventually the house realizes the mispricing and they change
| the line, but by that point a pro might have placed a six
| figure bet.
|
| So pros really are winning from the gambling sites, not from
| other gamblers.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Sounds like this is a self-fixing problem. Either the
| betting apps/sites will go broke, or they'll get really
| good at pricing, which will a) push the pro bettors
| elsewhere, b) maybe bore the problem bettors. Ok, (b) won't
| happen, but at least (a) should maybe happen. Problem: the
| betting apps/sites won't be able to hire the pro bettors to
| help them.
| an_account wrote:
| In sports betting you are betting against the house. If the
| sportsbook sets a bad line, you can lock it in and make money
| off of it.
|
| Horse racing is what you describe, parimutuel, where the
| house just takes a commission. But the odds shift even after
| you place your bet. Very different for traditional sports
| betting.
| nusl wrote:
| Sports betting has the side effect of making things surrounding
| sports themselves more toxic.
|
| Betting being as pervasive as it is, and only increasing, causes
| more people to view and interact with sports with bets or money,
| and thus can react negatively toward their losing teams.
|
| If there's a large number of angry, vocal "fans" jumping down
| your neck every time you lose a game or make a mistake that
| caused their bet to fail, there's a lot of negativity fabricated
| where the team or player merely played the sport as usual.
|
| Teams are made of humans, and humans make mistakes. This is
| normal for any sport or activity, but when you've got a chunk of
| cash in the game it turns into not-normal reactions.
|
| This also bleeds into other forms of sport, like esport, and
| feeds into some already-negative online communities. Games like
| League of Legends or DotA 2 come to mind.
|
| I really, really dislike the way sports betting has gone and how
| it's corrupted everything it touches.
|
| Couple the above with the way these companies effectively prey on
| betters likely to lose money, and even encourage them to bet and
| lose more, while at the same time stonewall those that actually
| know what they're doing and make money, these companies are scum
| and should be eradicated.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| It also infects players and referees. It's harder to trust
| referees in a sport where you know what the big bets are,
| whether or not the refs are actually cheating to try to change
| the outcome it's hard not to feel that they might be.
|
| Baseball alone has had some prominent sports gambling by
| players in its past change the record books. There's a bunch of
| interesting arguments for and against that maybe the records
| for Joe Jackson and Pete Rose should be reinstated now that
| sports gambling is so generally legal in so many more states
| than their time. There's a bunch of interesting arguments of
| how many of today's players might be "on the take" as much as
| or worse than those historic gambling scandals.
|
| Other sports have their own histories with it. Sports are
| different when you are wondering if even players are betting
| for or against themselves.
| bluGill wrote:
| Isn't there rules about anyone in a sport (players, managers,
| referees...) not being allowed to bet? I work with people who
| are not allowed to trade commodities because they are in a
| division where people who make those commodities store data
| that isn't yet public knowledge. The SEC knows who those
| people are and the list is sent to every broker to ensure
| they can't trade.
|
| If sports betting isn't checking on this and cracking down
| there is a major problem.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| As far as I know there's no central regulatory authority
| like the SEC. Every sport has its own Commission or
| Committee in charge, and many of them are profit motivated
| in weird conflict-of-interest ways that a government
| regulatory agency shouldn't be.
|
| In college sports alone the NCAA has been (badly) wandering
| from scandal to scandal for decades and dealing with the
| repercussions in increasingly baroque individual judgements
| (some schools are too big/make too much money to punish;
| other schools seem to be punished too much as scapegoats in
| their place), and increasingly strange forfeits and
| legislation-impacted regulations (such as the NIL system
| [Name-Image-Likeness] reshaping a lot of what used to be
| illegal in college sports ten years ago into a game [lit.]
| changing new sluice of money). Given how much the NCAA is
| dealing with all those scandals and the fresh regulatory
| burden of NIL, sports betting is probably not even on their
| radar until someone with too much power at the FBI says it
| is and picks a scapegoat school to suffer for the rest.
|
| It gets back to why there's so much debate that the MLB
| should either clean up its current act, _or_ reverse older
| decisions against sports betting players. There 's no right
| answer, and it is as much a question of how much of a
| regulatory body does the MLB want to be against sports
| betting in a year where most states have now made it legal
| in one form or another.
| snapcaster wrote:
| These apps should be banned. Gambling is a social ill with such a
| limited upside and so much harm it can't really be justified
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Agreed -- I will continue to shout it from every perch I can:
| politicians who are actively working to proliferate these apps
| should be (at least journalistically) investigated. I would bet
| on this being a well-above-random signal of either a personal
| gambling addiction or corruption.
| tombert wrote:
| I agree. Take stock option contract trading out with it.
| Infinity315 wrote:
| Stock options have legitimate uses. Like all tools, it can be
| misused.
|
| Stock options can be used as a tool to hedge against risk.
| tombert wrote:
| I know, but I think that they're overwhelmingly used for
| glorified gambling.
|
| It wouldn't bother me if it was just hedge funds or big
| corporations or multibillionaires who played with
| contracts, it bothers me that regular people do it too, and
| the average John Doe simply doesn't have the same multi-
| million-dollar option pricing algorithms that Goldman Sachs
| does. At that point, it feels like it's big corporations
| leeching money away from poorer people who don't know
| better.
|
| Full disclosure, I _do_ play with options occasionally, but
| I have mostly stopped, and I treat it like a casino, or as
| you mentioned to hedge against risk.
| hx8 wrote:
| Most of the volume of options trading is done by
| institutions. By price it's mostly large traders paying
| each other to mitigate risk. Some smaller traders are
| getting chewed up in the process, but they are throwing
| themselves into the machine.
|
| You make it sound like options exist for large traders to
| profit off individuals with access to less information.
| That's not how options are primarily used. That is
| however how sports betting is primarily used.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| So is alcohol - there are plenty of people who gamble
| responsibly and get enjoyment out of it. Taking away the entire
| thing rather than simply making sensible regulation and dealing
| with scumbag behavior by corporate bookies is throwing the baby
| out with the bathwater, not to mention extremely moralistic.
| And, in the end, prohibition never works - bookies still and
| always will exist.
| tombert wrote:
| Sure, but if people, for example, started to declare
| bankruptcy due to gambling addiction, doesn't that mean that
| taxpayers like you and I are effectively subsidizing these
| gambling institutions?
|
| That goes beyond moralism; most people don't want to pay
| higher taxes. I think that it's good that we have a safety-
| net for people who get into impossible levels of debt, but
| that does mean that we have an interest in figuring out ways
| to minimize how often bankruptcy is actually invoked.
| umvi wrote:
| > And, in the end, prohibition never works - bookies still
| and always will exist.
|
| I don't think that's exactly true. Laws introduce varying
| degrees of friction for citizens to do something.
|
| It's like entrepreneurship. If there are a bunch of laws in
| place making it hard to start a business, fewer people will
| start businesses. Some people will still create illegal
| businesses on the black market, but lots of law abiding
| citizens will just stop creating businesses because there's
| too much friction to bother.
| everforward wrote:
| That fails to acknowledge that a) the black market tends to
| be dramatically less safe b) it drives addicts underground
| where it's hard to identify and help them and c) the
| addicts this is meant to help will be disproportionately
| willing to participate in this new, much worse black
| market.
|
| Bookies scale very well, a small number of them could serve
| whatever clientele is still interested.
|
| It'll probably turn out similarly to drugs. Prohibition
| keeps your average citizen away, and makes the market much
| worse for anyone left in it.
| 0x5f3759df-i wrote:
| At the very least you should have to go to a physical location
| like a casino, having this stuff in your pocket at all times is
| insane.
| bentt wrote:
| The fact that ESPN itself has a sports betting app tells you all
| you need to know about the perversion of sports now that gambling
| is blessed by the government.
|
| I think I can live with the legalization of sports betting if
| there are strong restrictions against marketing and advertising.
| If you want to ruin your life that's your decision, and you can
| always just take the same amount of money and bet it on the stock
| market. But the way that advertising has its tentacles in our
| culture now... it's bad.
| ronsor wrote:
| I'm surprised that people seem to just now realize that sports
| betting is a bad idea. As you said, the worst aspect is the
| large amount of marketing and advertising these platforms
| receive; I wouldn't care if they weren't pushed so heavily.
| hluska wrote:
| People have known for years - that's the really terrifying
| part. Heck, when I was in business school I wrote a paper on
| the dangers of sports betting. There were many resources
| available then...and heck, Gmail invites were a rare
| commodity when I was in school.
|
| Edit - I just found a printed copy of the paper - I wrote it
| so long ago that the term 'sociopathic compulsive consumer'
| was being used. At the time, I found a lot of evidence of
| casinos using terms like 'instant gratification' in their
| marketing commmunications. This is over two decades ago.
| Heck, the actual paper is on a 3.5 inch floppy.
| vundercind wrote:
| I was briefly involved with a major sports & esports
| betting company. It was way grosser than I ever imagined,
| and they had multiple astroturf campaigns working on
| legalizing betting in more places.
|
| Took me from a generally laissez-faire attitude about
| gambling, to being entirely on board with simply outlawing
| at least that sector of it. So very nasty.
|
| (Incidentally, this did answer a question for me: "how did
| esports get so big so fast, financially?". Never made much
| sense to me. The money's in gambling, and it's _a fucking
| lot_ of money. Lightbulb went on and I felt dumb for not
| realizing it sooner)
| hluska wrote:
| I'm completely with you, my friend. I was in business
| school when I studied betting. All the stereotypes of
| business students are true - I could have suggested
| putting thalidomide into lollipops and nobody would have
| batted an eye.
|
| Despite that, my class had a serious problem with
| legalized gambling. One of the most free market
| absolutists I have ever met even concluded that gambling
| should just be outlawed. He was (and I believe still is)
| completely in favour of all drugs being legalized, but
| legalized gambling bothered him in a way that legalized
| crack cocaine never could have. What pushed him over was
| how they fund legalization campaigns with all these
| promises for help for addicts - they'll usually even
| offer to put a portion of total book into rehabilitation.
| And then as soon as it is legalized, they will
| specifically target people who could become addicted.
| wnissen wrote:
| Oh, no, are you serious? I thought esports was fun, maybe
| a little silly. It's the gambling? That's the big lift?
| Argh.
| vundercind wrote:
| It's where a _ton_ of the money in the overall sector
| comes from, and why a lot of the viewers are watching.
| There's a large audience that wants _anything_ to gamble
| on, and gaming's very convenient for streaming and stats-
| collection and such, plus it has frequent matches. There
| are sponsorships and all that, but I doubt those would be
| as big as they are without the gambling, either (the
| audience would decline significantly). Lots of the
| tournaments are funded wholly or in part by gambling.
| vharuck wrote:
| Before it was legal, most people's experiences with sports
| betting were small wagers between friends. Maybe a few large
| bets that they'll still talk about to this day. Gambling with
| friends or even just coworkers comes with natural limits: the
| size of one's bets is limited by others' aversions to risk,
| compulsive gambling is easily spotted, and the players'
| winnings/losings are zero sum.
|
| Yes, there were illegal bookies before legalization, and they
| had all the problems of legalized gambling plus more. But the
| law-abiding (or at least casually law-breaking) majority of
| voters didn't think increasing the prevalence of sports
| gambling would hurt. Not too mention all the revenue promises
| (more benefits, cuts to other taxes). It's no surprise
| legalization was politically popular.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah, making a small "fun" bet on a game is a way to make
| it more interesting. I've done it a few times and it really
| does. I'm talking maybe $20 though, I am far too frugal to
| put any real money at risk on a bet. I don't go to casinos
| for the same reason, I'd play a few hands or put maybe $20
| into a slot machine and then I'd really start thinking
| about how I'm flushing my money down the toilet and I'd
| stop having fun.
|
| My mother in law loves it, she will go to the casino and
| come home up $1,000 or down $1,000 and it's all just
| entertainment to her. She loses probably a steady 5% on
| average, which is exactly what the casinos want.
| bodhiandphysics wrote:
| no... if she's losing a steady 5% of $1000 bucks, she's
| paying 50 dollars to the casino. That's not enough for
| the casinos... her room costs more. The casinos want her
| to spending a lot more money. That's the really big
| problem of gambling... most people can do it in a
| relatively healthy way. But problem gamblers make the
| house most of their money. The house is strongly
| encouraged to find the problem gamblers and focus on
| keeping them.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| I haven't been to Vegas but I was shocked to learn that
| the minimum bet at blackjack tables is like $50-100. Too
| rich for me
| darth_avocado wrote:
| This. There's plenty of things in society that are similarly
| bad, legal, but have restrictions on how you can sell them.
| There's nothing inherently different about sports betting
| than options trading on a brokerage platform. But only one of
| them is advertised in every commercial break during a sports
| event.
| tomcam wrote:
| Now apply that same kind of thinking to legalized
| prostitution and human trafficking.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I'm far from an expert in the issue, but I think that most
| people that support the legalization of prostitution don't
| support the legalization of human trafficking.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| i think in both cases regulation is the key. for gambling
| there could be max $ per bet/month/year and for SW more
| testing and background checks to blacklist bad actors
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Okay!
|
| > worst aspect is the large amount of marketing and
| advertising these platforms receive
|
| Virtually no one is advertising prostitution or human
| trafficking -- certainly not to the degree that gambling is
| being advertised.
|
| By extension, it seems we can agree prostitution and human
| trafficking are not nearly as severe a problem as gambling.
| some_random wrote:
| That's a really bad example because prostitution by itself
| is victimless crime. In fact, it's perfectly legal when
| money doesn't change hands! With gambling you have a winner
| and a loser, so all the other issues end up downstream
| necessarily whereas human trafficking (and other issues
| with sex work) is an enabling tool for criminals running
| prostitution operations.
| jerf wrote:
| Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
|
| Those who do learn from history learn that we never learn
| from history.
| billti wrote:
| I lived in Australia for quite a while. It's a terrible
| example of what can happen. There was recently a very good
| BBC article on it and the connection between sports,
| gambling, and marketing:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2yg3k82y0o
|
| Similar to many other toxic things, once the genie is out of
| the bottle and the government gets used to the revenue it
| generates, there is a large disincentive to tackling the
| problem.
| caeril wrote:
| Gambling is the only way for some of us to make Sportsball
| interesting, and attempt to fit in with the absurdist normie
| culture in which we live.
|
| Realistically, there's nothing particularly interesting about
| the Dallas Frackers versus the Washington Rentseekers. But if
| you have money on the outcome, watching a game (with a
| sufficient supply of alcohol) is actually bearable.
|
| Edit: I'm explaining a real, actual reason for the value of
| sports betting for some people, but it seems that the
| Sportsball enthusiasts don't like desecration of their Holy
| Church. I apologize.
| dehugger wrote:
| If you loathe sports that much why are you forcing yourself
| to watch them? "Fitting into absurdist normie culture" is
| ludicrous. Are you not capable of making friends without
| drunkenly feigning interest in their hobbies?
| caeril wrote:
| Short answer: No, I'm not. People are generally extremely
| intolerant of others who deviate slightly from the norm.
| Having friends is a fun fantasy, though.
| freejazz wrote:
| > I'm explaining a real, actual reason for the value of
| sports betting for some people, but it seems that the
| Sportsball enthusiasts don't like desecration of their Holy
| Church. I apologize.
|
| Seems more like you are seething.
| shmel wrote:
| Why do you bother even watching it at this point? I think I
| watched exactly one soccer game in last 5 years (it was a
| final of something big, can't remember now), there are a
| lot of other interesting activities in life.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| That is the most insufferable comment I've read all year.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Most gamblers are casuals. I spend $5-10 a week during football
| and usually am down like $10 at the end of the year. It
| provides a lot of entertainment, sucks that some people can't
| control themselves but I shouldn't be punished for that.
|
| Agree that heavily regulating and perhaps banning advertising
| needs to be done.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Most gamblers are casuals. I spend $5-10 a week during
| football and usually am down like $10 at the end of the year_
|
| An annual cap of $500 on bets per social security number
| seems reasonable. At the very least, 10% of state's median
| income (a whopping $4,222 nationally [1]).
|
| [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N
| whatshisface wrote:
| I think a proportion of income would work better, because
| $500 would be a lot for some people.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a proportion of income would work better, because $500
| would be a lot for some people_
|
| Sure, if a state is willing to enforce that added
| complexity. I'd still have a hard cap to remove plausible
| deniability. Otherwise every trailer-park resident will
| be a millionaire while FanDuel _et al_ do a Facebook-can
| 't-tell-if-I'm-12-or-52 shrug.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| That argument can be made for and against anything (substance
| abuse comes to mind) which has consequences for society at
| large.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| Agreed. I've never been into sports and never watched more
| than a few minutes of any game. But for a few years I was in
| a small stakes weekly football pool and it made weekends
| really fun. Suddenly, I wanted to know if the Rams or the
| Dolphins won, and by how much. I was tracking the pool leader
| boards. I ended up being ahead about $20. That pool ended,
| and I never joined another one. But it was a mildly fun time.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| There are two possible outcomes:
|
| 1) I, a person who gambles neither casually nor as part of an
| addiction, will pay for gambling addicts; or 2) You will be
| punished in the form of your degeneracy becoming illegal.
|
| I'm not sure why you should be the one to get the free pass
| here.
| adw wrote:
| "perversion of sports" is a particularly American viewpoint, I
| think! The latent streak of puritanism, maybe. Yet, somehow,
| the NCAA (which is wage theft on a truly industrial scale) is
| morally okay. It's weird.
|
| (The intersection with US ad culture - for existence, drug ads
| on TV - is maybe also unique.)
|
| Sport has, as a business, always been random number generation
| for gambling purposes. Some, like horseracing, have basically
| no other point. Gambling is going to happen, and like weed,
| it's probably better that it's regulated and taxed than
| entirely underground. There's no more gambling content now than
| there was fantasy football content before, and fantasy football
| was gambling too.
|
| If we're looking for a perversion of sports, though, how about
| the NCAA's industrial-scale wage theft? US professional sports
| should have junior systems which pay the players like the rest
| of the world...
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| NCAA players are now being paid for what its worth
| adw wrote:
| The NIL loophole? Yeah, not really, and not enforceably,
| and examples of teams reneging are not hard to find.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Not NIL. lawsuit in court right now is reaching a
| settlement to directly pay players.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2024/05/24/nx-s1-4978680/house-ncaa-
| sett...
| adw wrote:
| 22% of revenue, not employees, colleges don't accept
| employer liability. This settlement should be rejected as
| unconscionable.
|
| Public universities (and private universities which
| actually care about education!) would be well advised to
| get out of the business of running professional sports
| teams, I think.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Big universities make way too much money from sports to
| ever get out of the business. Not only direct revenue but
| also alumni and sponsor donations.
| adw wrote:
| The university sector (both public and private) is a mess
| and this is one of the many, many ways in which that is
| true.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| Being compensated in kind with housing, food, and education
| (not to mention significant "grants" from boosters clubs and
| brand deals) is not the same as wage theft and it is verbal
| slight of hand to suggest otherwise.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| That only applies to scholarship athletes. Walk-ons get no
| such benefits. They're working for free while their school
| is pulling in $60+ million a year in TV money to watch them
| play and the head coach is making 7 figures
| adw wrote:
| If the players aren't employed by their teams, provided
| with healthcare and pensions and all the rest, then it
| absolutely is. The NCAA (for revenue sports) is a scam and
| everyone involved with any of it is morally bankrupt.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| >If the players aren't employed by their teams, provided
| with healthcare and pensions and all the rest, then it
| absolutely is.
|
| Why? They are being paid, fed, housed, and educated in
| exchange for playing sports at nearly the highest level.
| Where is the injustice? They live lives of opulence and
| leisure that kings of previous ages could not even dream
| of.
| bostik wrote:
| Funnily enough... considering how healthcare in the US is
| tied to employment, then professional athletes of _any_
| age should be covered for it by their employer.
|
| People who do pro sports are constantly pushing their
| bodies to the very limit of what they can do. With those
| constraints, accidents and overruns are much more likely
| to cause extended damage.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| College athletes get healthcare. They have team doctors
| and trainers, and for general healthcare if they aren't
| covered by their parents' insurance they will have
| insurance through the school (required) which will be
| paid out of their athletic scholarship. I don't know of
| any major university that would permit a residential
| student to not have health insurance coverage.
| NickC25 wrote:
| They aren't being educated.
|
| Outside of Stamford and the Ivies, I'd wager that most
| players, especially in football, are taking easy classes
| (and in some cases having tests taken for them) and even
| then, things are quite easy for them. They aren't taking
| physics, economics, etc.. that actually prepare students
| for the real world. There's not enough time for that.
|
| I saw it for myself at a big D1 football program. You
| think at a school like Texas or Alabama, a school that
| worships football above all else, would let their
| athletes be preoccupied with school? Come on now.
| LargeWu wrote:
| Elite football and basketball athletes at major programs
| are tiny, tiny minority of all student athletes in this
| country. I went to a decent regional state school (DII at
| the time) and I had advanced economics and math classes
| with a number of athletes, including football players.
| It's just not correct to generalize from the programs
| that are NFL feeder programs.
| consteval wrote:
| > The latent streak of puritanism, maybe
|
| The main problem is that addiction kind of goes around
| people's interests and their better judgement.
|
| Normally I agree, we don't need to be making 'moral'
| decisions for people. If they want to do something 'sinful' -
| like gambling - have at it.
|
| But the people who promote gambling have lots of money. And
| gambling is basically smoking. So, it gets hairy. They can
| lie, they can cheat, and they can manipulate people's minds,
| tricking them into doing something bad for them. And then the
| addiction does the rest.
| adw wrote:
| Absolutely addiction does; so we're going to ban alcohol
| (and weed), and then maybe move onto video games and books
| and and and and?
|
| Prohibition has generally been a lot less effective than
| regulation. The problem in the US, in my view, is much more
| the utterly-gutted effectiveness of the regulatory state
| than it is the existence of legal gambling.
| consteval wrote:
| There's a big slippery slope here.
|
| Who says we need to keep going? That's not a hypothetical
| question - who says? Why would we do that?
|
| I agree regulation is good, but prohibition is a type of
| regulation. There're also levels of prohibition - you
| don't need to prohibit all of it, maybe just the most
| obviously harmful.
|
| Like you can ban online gambling but keep casinos if you
| want. I don't know, I don't have the analysis on which is
| worse.
| gomerspiles wrote:
| Fine, but then the US has spent a terrifying amount of my
| money on sports and I want it all back if the point of
| their sophisticated pro-social spending (which strangely
| has to include private ventures getting handouts) is
| actually to extract wealth from the poor and the weak.
| thfuran wrote:
| >Who says we need to keep going? That's not a
| hypothetical question - who says? Why would we do that?
|
| Why wouldn't we? If we're legally precluding people from
| hobbies that could harm them, there's always going to be
| a worst legal one.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| There's an ugliest painting in most galleries, but that
| doesn't mean we ban them. If the worst legal hobby is
| beneficial, why would anyone want to ban it? At some
| point before that, a threshold will be reached where
| people feel that the harms of a ban outweigh the harms of
| the practice. I really don't see how this slope is
| slippery.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| So then you must have a clear set of principles on how to
| regulate gambling to maintain it as a healthy activity
| with no degenerate pathways?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| If alcohol and tobacco were discovered tomorrow, they'd
| probably end up schedule 1, and rightly so. If cannabis
| was discovered tomorrow, it would probably be
| unscheduled, and rightly so.
|
| We literally have a system of tiers of addiction versus
| potential value for addictive substances. A slippery
| slope argument is pretty silly when we literally already
| created a staircase.
| the_gorilla wrote:
| > Sport has, as a business, always been random number
| generation for gambling purposes
|
| I personally don't care about the business of sports. Most
| sports were just ways for children to get exercise and
| everything that came after it was a perversion. Fat men
| sitting on couches watching other grown men throw a football
| around isn't much better than those same men gambling on it.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > Yet, somehow, the NCAA (which is wage theft on a truly
| industrial scale) is morally okay. It's weird.
|
| Outside of top men's basketball and football programs, there
| is no real wage theft occurring. These minor sports are
| avocations for student athletes, and not businesses for the
| universities.
| jogjayr wrote:
| Outside of the places where money is being made, money is
| not being made.
|
| Edit: but even when money is being made, the athletes don't
| get it.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| I'm trying to frame the problem--not say there isn't a
| problem. Athletes is too broad a term. You're engaging in
| tautologies.
| jogjayr wrote:
| Sorry it sounded like you were saying there isn't a
| problem because you said
|
| > there is no real wage theft occurring
|
| I know you qualified it with
|
| > Outside of top men's basketball and football programs
|
| But that was my point. Where no one's making money, no
| one's making money.
| LargeWu wrote:
| No, but many of them are getting a free or discounted
| education. Is that not something of value?
| jogjayr wrote:
| It's non-zero value, but we can't say it's the market-
| clearing price for their services. And anecdotally the
| quality of that education is compromised.
|
| Student-athletes in the serious football and basketball
| programs spend a lot of their time at practice. During
| the season, travel to away games eats up much of their
| free time. They're "encouraged" to take only easy
| courses. There are reports of grading corruption so their
| GPA is high enough to remain eligible to play.
| highwayman47 wrote:
| Funny, probably 90% of HN was pro-legalizing this...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| HN sides with money at every opportunity, outsources their
| own morality to the govt, and complains that the govt
| shouldn't legislate morality.
| computerdork wrote:
| hmm, what post did you get that impression from?
| glitcher wrote:
| Similarly as Lewis Black likes to point out, we're one of only
| 2 countries that advertises drugs to ourselves.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| It has a terrible potential to corrupt sport. When you can bet
| a lot of money on how long a college players plays, or how many
| points they get in a particular game, what's to stop them from
| having a relative make a bet and they just fake a cramp?
|
| The stock market is heavily regulated. I don't think you should
| ban sports betting, because like many vices it's easier to
| control if it is legal. According to Nate Silver, the more you
| let people make bets on obscure things the more opportunity
| their is for participants to cheat. So you should probably
| restrict betting to things no one participant can control (like
| the score). You also should try to make it difficult for a
| person to lose too much. You can't stop it, but you could
| probably make it harder. In the stock market there is a
| "qualified investor" that is allowed to take much bigger risks.
| You could make rules to punish betting sites that accept too
| many bets from destitute addicts. It wouldn't be perfect, but
| you can have liquor laws without having prohibition.
| grecy wrote:
| > _It has a terrible potential to corrupt sport_
|
| That ship sailed a looping time ago. Sports teams in the US
| are franchises. Like McDonalds. They exist to make profit.
| Lots of it.
|
| It has nothing to do with sport.
| astrange wrote:
| Nothing to do with sports except for all the time and
| effort they put into playing games?
| to11mtm wrote:
| I think one of the uglier examples was an NFL team local
| to me.
|
| They had one of if not the 'worst' season in the last 15
| years or so and really didn't care. But a huge part of
| that was because the way all of the season tickets,
| merchandise deals, etc etc, didn't matter if the team was
| any good. Semi-Ironically the economics were explained by
| a huge fan of them; he appreciated the business savvy.
| rjbwork wrote:
| >It has a terrible potential to corrupt sport. When you can
| bet a lot of money on how long a college players plays, or
| how many points they get in a particular game, what's to stop
| them from having a relative make a bet and they just fake a
| cramp?
|
| Or get assaulted or murdered, internet death pool style? All
| kinds of really fucked up incentives are created by these
| legalized betting apps.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| I wonder how many people out there would take an assault
| charge to win a bet. Since there's a market you could even
| get investors. Get $10million together, bet it with high
| odds, take 25% cut, spend 10 years in jail, live out the
| rest of your life in comfort.
|
| Is any of that illegal besides the assault itself?
| stonogo wrote:
| Very much so. Even planning it, without carrying it out,
| would be subject to criminal conspiracy charges.
| Recruiting people to the scheme (even the investors)
| would be soliciting a crime. It's illegal to interfere in
| the outcome of the game once the bet is placed. Finally,
| once it was proven you rigged it, you'd probably be
| forced to return the winnings anyway.
|
| I'm sure an actual attorney could come up with even more
| reasons this is illegal.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Well darn.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I'd think you'd be VERY hard pressed to bet $10 million
| dollars, but I don't know that.
| jairuhme wrote:
| That's not new, RIP Pete Rose
| ssharp wrote:
| Oddly enough, several professional sports gamblers were aware
| of a NBA referee manipulating game from their data analysis,
| well before the NBA became aware of it.
|
| That was probably 10+ years ago and I suspect data analysis
| by the leagues is much stronger now. Still an insane line
| that needs to be walked between the leagues getting revenue
| from the sportsbooks and gambling not impacting that play.
| harlanlewis wrote:
| [delayed]
| nradov wrote:
| One participant can control the score in individual sports,
| like singles tennis or boxing (notorious for rigged matches).
| twobitshifter wrote:
| NBA bans Jontay Porter after gambling probe shows he shared
| information, bet on games.
|
| "Porter took himself out of that game after less than three
| minutes, claiming illness, none of his stats meeting the
| totals set in the parlay. The $80,000 bet was frozen and not
| paid out, the league said, and the NBA started an
| investigation not long afterward."
|
| https://apnews.com/article/nba-jontay-porter-
| banned-265ad5cb...
| nradov wrote:
| It seems crazy that he would risk his career over a bet
| considering that his regular player salary was so much
| higher than $80K.
| rapind wrote:
| It gets bad enough and I'll offer odds on who's throwing, how
| long until they are busted, and how severe the consequences.
| genericacct wrote:
| It's worse than bad, I have seen betting ads and placement in
| content that regular advertisers would not touch with a 10 feet
| pole, e.g. in pirated broadcasts
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Hot take: all advertising for any kind of gambling should be
| banned, and online gambling should be outright prohibited
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| The challenge is defining gambling, no? I agree with you,
| it's easy to determine all of the nasty gambling now. But by
| the time you know it's gambling as in addiction versus
| gambling as in a flawed but interesting part of a game, it's
| too late.
| to11mtm wrote:
| I went to a local team baseball game and it was frankly
| depressing.
|
| To see someone being put on the big screen to make some guess
| in a future inning with a plug for a bet site at a baseball
| game; frankly at this point just allow steroids again if you're
| selling out that bad.
| bityard wrote:
| > you can always just take the same amount of money and bet it
| on the stock market.
|
| I can't tell if you are promoting the stock market as a better
| or worse alternative to gambling?
|
| If you meant the latter, you couldn't be further from the
| truth. The stock market, as a whole, represents the combined
| productivity of all the publicly traded firms in the country.
| Day to day, the stock market is unpredictably volatile. But
| over the long term (decades), it trends upward and by a large
| amount. There is no safer investment with the same kinds of
| returns and there is lots of research to prove it.
|
| But short-term speculation and individual stock picking is much
| more akin to gambling.
| Eumenes wrote:
| My favorite grift with the sports app betting space being
| legalized is all the fake Indian tribes adopting the commercial
| software like Caesar, MGM, Draftkings, etc.
| htrp wrote:
| > Simulating addictive behavior, says Peabody, is an effective
| way to get online sportsbooks to send you bonus money and keep
| your accounts open. This isn't necessarily because operators are
| targeting problem bettors, he says; they're simply looking to
| identify and encourage customers who are likely to spend--and
| lose--the most. This just happens to be a good way to find and
| enable addicts, too.
|
| ML run amuck
| bbor wrote:
| Throwback to that post from this weekend about "too much
| efficiency is always bad"...
| ossobuco wrote:
| > Simulating addictive behavior, says Peabody, is an effective
| way to get dealers to send you free doses and keep your
| accounts open. This isn't necessarily because drug dealers are
| targeting problem drug users, he says; they're simply looking
| to identify and encourage customers who are likely to spend
| most. This just happens to be a good way to find and enable
| addicts, too.
|
| Imagine justifying drug dealers with this line of reasoning
| jollyllama wrote:
| The implication being that the apps are identifying signs of
| addiction in users and actively encouraging it? I shouldn't be
| scandalized but I must admit that I am.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Which one is BossmanJack?
| hirvi74 wrote:
| Much like many substance use disorders, I am inclined the to
| believe the substance is merely a self-medication technique for a
| deeper rooted issue.
|
| I am curious _what_ about the gambling makes it so addictive? I
| refuse to believe that people are addicted solely because of bro-
| science 's elementary understanding dopamine. What makes people
| continue despite the negative consequences in their lives? Is it
| the hope? The hope that if they win big, then a better life
| awaits them or that the money will fix all their problems?
|
| I am not sure if I have ever had a "real addiction^1," but I
| definitely have had psychological dependencies/self-medication
| strategies with things like video games and Internet usage.
|
| I am quite an introspective person, thus the underlying reasons
| were never a mystery to me. I wasn't "addicted" to gaming nor the
| Internet because they are just fun or entertaining. Each served a
| different purpose in my life. Mostly through out my early
| childhood and into my young adult life.
|
| With games, I felt that, in whatever virtual world I was playing
| in, that I was able to be _more_ than I could in real life. I
| could gain competence and mastery of "skills." I felt like I was
| a useful; a person people that could count on. My hard work would
| materialize right before my very eyes. Do <insert task> and get
| <insert reward>. I was no longer the [undiagnosed] weird, anxious
| and depressed person with ADHD. In the games, I was no longer
| "lazy" nor a "failure." People weren't trying to "discipline" the
| issues out of me. Games allowed me to be something the world
| would never allow me to be -- myself.
|
| The Internet was different though. I was like Ponce De Leon in
| search of the Fountain of Youth. I believed that there was some
| sort of knowledge, that once discovered, then all my problems
| would subside. Like some sort of metaphorical magical spell. Once
| I came across it, I would know it. The answers were out there,
| and I just needed to find them. However, much like Ponce De Leon,
| what I was looking for did not exist. But hey, at least I read
| and learned a lot. =D
|
| There has to be something deeper to gambling addiction. If so,
| then what is it?
|
| [1] I define addiction as a dependency in which one is unable to
| resist despite it causing real, tangible harm in one or more
| areas of one's life -- school, work, relationships, etc..
| thijson wrote:
| I don't understand what makes gambling addictive, but I do
| remember studies done on cats that we read about in psych 101.
| Cats had implants surgically implanted to their pleasure
| centers of the brain. A lever would trigger the implant to give
| them pleasure. If the lever gives pleasure everytime it's
| pressed, the cat would get bored of it. If the reward was
| random, the cat would sit there and press it all day. I think
| of slot machines in a similar way. I spent some time near
| Casino's. I heard about old people going there and wearing
| diapers because their greatest fear was getting up from the
| slot machine, and someone else sitting down at it and winning
| "their" prize. They thought that since it hasn't paid out for a
| while, it's due to pay out soon. They would play two machines
| side by side. Some people would have two jobs, one to pay for
| gambling, the other for living. It can be an addiction and can
| ruin lives.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| Interesting. I am going to try and find that study when I get
| off work. Based on your summary, it kind of reminds me of the
| "Rat Park^1" study a bit.
|
| I can and cannot believe people could be so addicted to
| gambling that they voluntarily wallow in their excrement. I
| used to have a family friend that worked a company that owned
| and operated many of those gambling machines. He said that
| they are basically all rigged (go figure). You know, kind of
| like claw machines -- it doesn't matter how well you aim. The
| claw's grip strength is algorithmically controlled. Thus, the
| claw give the illusion that one was actually close to
| snagging the prize.
|
| You are correct that gambling is an addiction that can ruin
| lives. Well, I guess all addictions can or else such issues
| wouldn't be classified as addictions. However, in the
| gambling addiction thread on here a few days ago. Someone
| cited some stat that stated that gambling addiction is the
| addiction with the highest rate of suicide. I did not verify
| that information, so take that for what it is worth, but I
| can believe it.
|
| [1] https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/what-does-rat-park-
| tea...
| ordu wrote:
| _> There has to be something deeper to gambling addiction. If
| so, then what is it?_
|
| I believe that B.F.Skinner and his pigeons answered this
| question.
|
| As a legend tells us, once upon a time Skinner's apparatus that
| controlled reinforcements for his pigeons got broken. But
| Skinner didn't noticed it and went home to sleep. In the
| morning when he came to his lab, he watched how a pigeon did
| weird things in his cage. The pigeon walked in circles, dragged
| one of his wings, and it was like the pigeon danced some weird
| dance. Skinner was very interested what is wrong with the
| pigeon, and it turned out that his apparatus gave random
| reinforcements to the pigeon all the night.
|
| Pigeon pushed the lever, and sometimes it got something
| crunchy, but mostly it didn't. Naive person might think, that
| it would lead pigeon to get frustrated and tired from the
| lever, but instead the pigeon doubled down and... Let me
| anthropomorphize to make things easier. It was like pigeon
| invented all kinds of omens and rituals to make the lever work.
| Like "I dragged my wing last time when lever had worked, so
| I'll drag my wing next time...", "ohh, it didn't work, lets try
| again, and again, ..., Yeah! it worked again, now I was
| standing on one leg, it seems to be the key to success".
|
| Skinner was very intrigued and he developed "variable ratio of
| reinforcements", which led him to sharpen his methods and he
| easily could turn a pigeon into a maniac that push lever
| obsessively and just can't stop. One of the key findings was
| that less frequent and seemingly random rewards working much
| better than deterministic rewards on each push of the lever.
| When lever "just works" pigeon gets as much rewards as it needs
| and then goes to sleep. But when lever works sometimes, pigeon
| pushes the lever more and doesn't stop when it got all it
| needs.
|
| Why brains do this to animals? I don't know what psychology
| thinks about it, I think that there are two possible (not
| mutually exclusive) explanations:
|
| 1. curiosity, a drive to learn how to control the reality
| around you. Maybe if you spend more time with the lever, you
| will learn how it works? Maybe you can learn how to get higher
| frequency of rewards? It would be beneficial.
|
| 2. it is a mechanism to create seeking behavior. If you get
| reward when doing something, then your brains would better
| believe that doing this is an interesting pastime. If rewards
| are rare, then your brains need to believe that it is a very
| interesting pastime, or you'd get bored in no time and die from
| hunger.
|
| When I was teen I often went with my father to pick mushrooms
| in the forest. It is a pastime which teaches you in no time at
| all to look everywhere for mushrooms. You can chat, but your
| eyes constantly searching the surroundings, your legs wander
| around to look behind or underneath of bushes. Now, when I'm in
| a forest, I habitually look for mushrooms, I feel urge to
| wander off the trail to check on something looking like a dead
| leaf: maybe it is a mushroom? This behavior is beneficial for
| animals and the ability to develop such a behavior is
| beneficial also. Gambling just exploits it.
| asdf333 wrote:
| maybe just get a job?
| gojomo wrote:
| Unironically, "blockchain fixes this".
|
| Decentralized prediction/betting markets, on public consensus
| ledgers (blockchains), can't exclude the best bettors. And, match
| bettors and clear markets with far less overhead/"vig" -
| resulting in fairer, market-set odds.
|
| That leaves less room for a small clique of enterprises whose
| profits are driven by problem betting, and thus capable &
| incentivized to engage in manipulative marketing, and misleading
| product offerings, to find and drive the vulnerable to
| "extinction". (That's a term of art in gambling design, see
| https://alum.mit.edu/slice/play-extinction-research-reveals-....)
|
| The regulation and licensing of privileged franchises to state-
| approved entities has made such entities _more_ able to exploit
| compulsive gamblers than a free and open system would.
|
| Many states have even gotten into the business themselves, with
| lotteries offering atrocious odds, promoted with deceptive
| advertising, overwhelmingly patronized by the poorer & more-
| innumerate.
|
| Go figure!
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/8xQmF
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