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

arxiv.org

121–130 of 158 posts

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

#121
post #8

"Send enquires about this paper to our newly acquired private island in the Bahamas." :-) One of the most depressing things I realized when I learned to count cards, and confer upon myself a small but meaningful advantage in the game of Blackjack, was that the casinos simply ask you to leave if you win too much. That put an upper limit on the rate at which one could win. The folks who figure out slot machines have a…

That's because you get greedy, if you walk away every time with a 500-1000 dollar, they wont notice.

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

#122
A bookmaker's tissue prices (the initial market prices they offer up), are not intended to be a measure of probability. They are meant to be a measure of expected Weight of Money (WoM).

A bookmaker's job is not to accurately reflect odds of occurrence, but to ensure a balanced book of liabilities. There are many books covering this going back hundreds of years and is the principle discovery of those who gathered at Tattersalls coffee shop on the Strand and invented modern bookmaking (via horse racing), and for whom there is named an enclosure on all 55 British racecourses to this day.

The tissue has to be "over-round", (i.e. the probabilities they represent have to add up to over 1.0, or 100%) because sometimes a market will look at the prices, see that the odds are very much in the favour of a selection and act accordingly. As such, the WoM causes a market to move.

This is not news. If you have a reasonable idea of true odds and you are being offered different odds, Kelly (who worked with Shannon - the creator of Information Theory), established the optimal stake to bet at each stage. A substantial amount of research has been done on Kelly Criterion and its application because it underpins many a hedge fund strategy: it works for fixed odds games, fiscal markets and bookmaker markets just as well.

There are trading opportunities here, and there is a wide community of people who look to exploit inevitable market moves using exactly this technique: establish average industry odds, look to where betting exchanges are and bet accordingly, moving out of the market when a profit comes to you.

The bookmakers don't care - you've helping get turnover up, and they know increasing turnover through the market is the best way to get balanced liabilities.

On a horse race, they might offer prices that give up an over-round of 110%-130% most days, but on Premier League Football which has a much, much higher turnover, and WoM is far more predictable (due to team loyalties coming into play), over-rounds can be as low as 102%.

These markets are therefore more likely to provide value to the authors' methods, however I note they are making the majority of their bets between 5 and 1 hours before a game, and therefore to some extent are able to factor in team selection and some of their results might be the result of a market inefficiency: team line-ups aren't announced until 60 minutes before kick-off.

Now, here's two major downsides:

1. Bookmakers will eventually end up closing their accounts, because winners are never welcome long-term.

2. There is a reason why successful gamblers don't publish. Even Thorpe who invented card counting and blackjack basic strategy realised publishing (which was his academic need) ultimately caused him to need to do something else: he ended up privately and quietly running a hedge fund.

These guys are probably finished within 2 weeks of this paper going around, and what's more because now a whole ton of people will go to implement this method, bookmakers will adapt and simply move from tissue to industry average as quickly as possible, whilst limiting even more players to reduce liability exposure (as has been the style in recent years).

EDIT: I only skim-read the paper when I wrote the above. Now I've read it a little more closely I am even more convinced there is nothing to note here, and also, their accounts have already been limited or closed.

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Casino licenses are contingent upon offering a fair game at stated odds. The odds are allowed to benefit the house, of course, since that's how running a casino becomes a sustainable, profitable enterprise, but the stated odds cannot be dynamically changed in the middle of the game to benefit the house. Published blackjack odds depend on "dumb" reshuffles. If the house is "smartly" reshuffling the deck to reduce hous…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that not being allowed to count means that you should treat odds as if the cards were extracted from an infinite stack with a given statistical distribution of cards. Reshuffling when you only extracted a low number of cards from a finite stack basically approximates the infinite stack, so, the odds should be exactly as expected.

That would be true if the casino always reshuffled after a certain number of cards came out.

But a dishonest casino could do the same card counting that players can do, and reshuffle when the count favours the players.

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

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you could always count from the sidelines and bet only in advantage spots. Not very practical I suppose but card counting in general seems pretty implausible these days

One strategy I know of is to have multiple people. One person sits at the table and always bets low, the other always bets high but only sits down if the person at the table signals to them that the odds are good (They can be off doing other stuff while the low-better is doing the counting, so they're not just standing around waiting). You're still right though, the odds aren't that great and once they get a hint you…

That was the strategy used in the '21' movie with Kevin Spacey which was actually based on a true story!

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

#125
post #106
post #8

"Send enquires about this paper to our newly acquired private island in the Bahamas." :-) One of the most depressing things I realized when I learned to count cards, and confer upon myself a small but meaningful advantage in the game of Blackjack, was that the casinos simply ask you to leave if you win too much. That put an upper limit on the rate at which one could win. The folks who figure out slot machines have a…

I would love to hear more about your story. I have always thought about learning to count cards, instead of say learning a new language. Can't you just go to another casino until they kick you out, and repeat? Do you actually make money now that you can count?

I went to high school in Las Vegas, so when I went to college everyone "assumed" I could count cards. After realizing it was a losing strategy to tell people that couldn't count, I looked up the basic strategy.

I wrote a computer program to simulate the game and the strategy and had the computer play hands until it was winning consistently. Generally it wasn't so much "counting cards" as it was "counting face cards and 10's, and changing your betting strategy based on that count."

Just thinking about the mechanics of a card deck, face cards, 13 card suits, etc. Turned out to be really useful in playing Bridge as well.

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

#126

A bookmaker's tissue prices (the initial market prices they offer up), are not intended to be a measure of probability. They are meant to be a measure of expected Weight of Money (WoM). A bookmaker's job is not to accurately reflect odds of occurrence, but to ensure a balanced book of liabilities. There are many books covering this going back hundreds of years and is the principle discovery of those who gathered at T…

Interesting.

You say: "The bookmakers don't care - you've helping get turnover up, and they know increasing turnover through the market is the best way to get balanced liabilities."

And then: "1. Bookmakers will eventually end up closing their accounts, because winners are never welcome long-term."

Is there any rational behind bookmakers not welcoming long-term winners?

It seems like a bookie is very similar to a market maker on the stock exchange. Why would a market maker care if an investor makes money as long as he can flatten his positions every hour or so and make profit with the spread.

Isn't it accurate to say that bettors are competing against each other and the bookie is just taking a fee for making the market?

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

#127
post #33

I don't totally understand why the bookmakers would limit their accounts. The bookmaker wants to balance his book for each game to make sure he makes a profit no matter what the outcome is. To balance their books they might give better odds for an outcome than what a statistical model might suggest. But what difference does it make if the bettor who helps them balance their books is a consistent winner or not? Do the…

Don't try to overthink it: imagine the bookies having a dashboard that shows everybody's win rate (or alternatively, how much the bookie is losing) and then they ban or limit the top performers. Instant and legal profit for them.

Shouldn't they try to maximize their profits overall and minimize their risk at the same time rather than try to maximize profit for each of their clients individually?

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

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

in your opinion, is there any practical benefit over just using half kelly?

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your reasoning is correct. A bookmaker setting the odds presumably would hire the most accurate handicapper analytics team to set the odds appropriately, then take their cut. In paramutual betting, you need only be better than the average bet..and there are a lot of stupid betters. You know the odds pretty well by posttime.

My reasoning is that the 'invisible hand' of many less informed bettors leads to market efficiency in aggregate, particularly in highly liquid markets. Greater liquidity in parimutuel markets makes for odds that are less of a moving target, but it leaves fewer mispriced prospects to capitalise on. So not only do you have to beat a fairly efficient market, but you have to beat it on average by a margin equal to the pa…

I can see what you are saying. I would say however that most $$ players in the stock market have analytic teams, etc. If instead, a substantial portion of the players in the stock market placed their bets on randomly chosen stocks, the aggregate would be much less efficient and that could be exploited.

I've sat and watched people betting on horses for a long time. The majority choose based on the name or color of the horse (sentimentalist), the going favorite (risk averse), the longest odd (big paydayists). Many others play on weaker signals (owner, jockey). A few bet on the advice of experts in the daily form, and these probably do make the market more efficient. In aggregate, from my own experience at Golden Gate Fields where the take-out is 14%, my average ROI was around -6 to -10%. This suggests that I was beating the market, but the takeout was killing me.

So I've imagined that in a decentralized paramutual pool with minuscule or zero takeout, and given a common population of betters, I'd make a steady profit.

I should add that another advantage of paramutual over bookmaker odds is the pool maintainers do not care if you are a winner or a loser, and won't freeze your accounts on you.

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your reasoning is correct. A bookmaker setting the odds presumably would hire the most accurate handicapper analytics team to set the odds appropriately, then take their cut. In paramutual betting, you need only be better than the average bet..and there are a lot of stupid betters. You know the odds pretty well by posttime.

My reasoning is that the 'invisible hand' of many less informed bettors leads to market efficiency in aggregate, particularly in highly liquid markets. Greater liquidity in parimutuel markets makes for odds that are less of a moving target, but it leaves fewer mispriced prospects to capitalise on. So not only do you have to beat a fairly efficient market, but you have to beat it on average by a margin equal to the pa…

Do you think there's an opportunity to run a "free" service with no take, but selling services to large/automated clients and/or selling data?
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