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Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged

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Re: Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged

#111

Post by brucen »

nl wrote: post #93
utnick wrote: post #10

There has to be more to this story. I would like to hear the bookmakers side of this. Perhaps the researchers were scripting or triggered some other kind of security tripwire. Winning $900 split across several different bookmakers is absolutely nothing in the sports betting industry. William Hill, one of the companies that the researchers claim restricted them is a multi billion dollar company. They aren't sweating s…

proof their bets were restricted are for bets on very minor football leagues (Australian semi pro football) That's... interesting. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-22/soccer-clubs-obvious-m...

It would be interesting to see where they are making their edge. I wouldn't be surprised if it's on a lot of these minor leagues with more uncertainty, as opposed to stuff like the EPL

Re: Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged

#112

Post by brucen »

mherrmann wrote: post #109

TL;DR: Researchers made $950 (8.5%) but say it wasn't worth the effort [1]. [1]: https://github.com/Lisandro79/BeatTheBookie

They really should have automated the bet placement from the outset, which would have made it worth the effort. Could probably make a few thousand $ before getting cut off, per person. Definitely a worthwhile venture, considering you could probably then sell off the software after using it for some more profits.

Sites like https://www.oddsmonkey.com/ are kind of on this track already.

Re: Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged

#113

Post by brucen »

scott_karana wrote: post #88
stephengillie wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the games weren't set for The House to make money, it would be a charity instead of a business.

I don't think your reasoning is correct. The entire lure of gambling is that some players can make money. The house always plays that up. But if the house always wins, that hope they're selling disappears.

I think it's more so there is a chance to come out ahead. E.g., everyone sitting on a pokie machine absolutely knows in the long run, the casino wins out. However they are hoping they are the 1/million that gets the jackpot and "beats" it. The same reason people buy lottery tickets I guess.

Other people simply like the social aspect of a lot of games (craps, poker, blackjack, roulette) and the excitement/thrill of seeing some big winners. You know in the long run you are losing X%, but still go to burn hours and have some fun.

Re: Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged

#114

Post by mherrmann »

brucen wrote: post #112
mherrmann wrote: post #109

TL;DR: Researchers made $950 (8.5%) but say it wasn't worth the effort [1]. [1]: https://github.com/Lisandro79/BeatTheBookie

They really should have automated the bet placement from the outset, which would have made it worth the effort. Could probably make a few thousand $ before getting cut off, per person. Definitely a worthwhile venture, considering you could probably then sell off the software after using it for some more profits. Sites like https://www.oddsmonkey.com/ are kind of on this track already.

I've qualified my comment - thanks.

Re: Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged

#115

Post by brucen »

antouank wrote: post #21

Yes, of course you can beat the "popular" bookmakers. Once you start beating them ( being profitable in value prices ) they will simply close/ban your account. Nowadays, it happens extremely fast ( in a day or a few hours, depending on your moves ). It's a well known tactic, and in practice, you cannot do anything about it ( other than keep opening new accounts in new names ). Try beating a betting exchange.

They did have betfair in the list - I wonder if they placed any bets there.

Re: Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged

#116

Post by au_gambler »

shakedown1 wrote: post #102
au_gambler wrote: post #67

A couple of suggestions to improve on this method. The authors' regression left an intercept or 'adjustment term' of 3.4% - 5.7%. For a perfect bookmaker, this intercept term would be equal to the overround. The number calculated unfortunately averages that overround between different bookmakers and at different times (overrounds often decrease over time). It might be more effective to adjust for the actual overround…

Interesting. Are you refering to kelly criterion?

There needs to be some degree of risk aversion given the uncertainties in estimating your edge. I am thinking more along the lines of a CRRA utility function - something a little less aggressive than kelly.

Re: Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged

#117

Post by brucen »

au_gambler wrote: post #67

A couple of suggestions to improve on this method. The authors' regression left an intercept or 'adjustment term' of 3.4% - 5.7%. For a perfect bookmaker, this intercept term would be equal to the overround. The number calculated unfortunately averages that overround between different bookmakers and at different times (overrounds often decrease over time). It might be more effective to adjust for the actual overround…

Raises an interesting point regarding a staking strategy. Given the bookmakers are going to cut you off, it potentially could be better to just go as hard as you can & live with the risk.

Alternatively, an interesting tweak would be to see what the best historical edge has been, and wait for the best opportunities to surface & only bet on those. Effectively you limit yourself by saying "I can only place N bets per bookmaker, what should my strategy be?"

Re: Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged

#118

Post by shakedown1 »

They could have reduced a lot of the work (calculating the mean across 32 bookmakers and applying a constant for the margin) by just taking the price from a highly liquid exchange like betfair, which is pretty close to a 100% efficient de-marginated line.

Although it still wouldn't have prevented their accounts from being limited.

Re: Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged

#119

Post by alkonaut »

The most interesting thing was left out: how did they find this data? Both historical and realtime is pretty hard to find. Ten years of odds from a dozen bookies looks like a massive task.

Next: how do you mask this behavior to not be obvious. Once you have a betting stratetgy the real difficulty is turning it into one that isn't obvious.

Re: Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged

#120

Post by soniman »

I've been trying my luck at tennis betting ( https://matchstat.com/profile/soniman ) and the only strategy that seems to work consistently is finding injured players and betting against them. Good example of an injured player is a player that limps (Andy Murray at Wimbledon this year). The computers don't watch matches so injured players can be overvalued by the models. Also, any British tennis player tends to be overvalued because the books are based in the UK. For instance there is an overweight British player named Marcus Willis that last week was a 1.01 favorite to win at a tournament in Las Vegas; he lost, apparently due to dizziness aka being fat. There are some other patterns that can be exploited but the highest return strategy has to be betting against injured favorites. However, I think that would probably require more tennis watching than I want to do. Maybe I could hire somebody on Mechanical Turk to watch tennis for me and report on players who appear to be injured or take medical time outs.
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