Live data from Hacker News

Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting?

washingtonpost.com

21–30 of 106 posts

Re: Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting?

#21
> The decision “could have repercussions in areas that go well beyond sports betting: gun control, immigration, sanctuary cities...”

And this is why the SCotUS will not make a landmark decision causing a "dam burst." The Justices can certainly limit their decision in many ways, and it'll be interesting reading the opinions that they produce. But I don't think they've been interested in drastic changes for quite some time.

Re: Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting?

#22
post #10
post #3

(Preface: I'm not particularly interested in the ethical debates around gambling with this comment, though I personally think it's something people should be allowed to do.). I've been slowly getting into Machine Learning for a while now, and have been looking for projects to accelerate my focus. I also happen to like to gamble (responsibly), so I've recently started researching how to apply Machine/Deep Learning to…

I think you would be better off using more well known statistics for betting (ie. multivariate regressions, t-tests, etc..). These stats methods are less of a black box than ML (neural networks, etc..) so you'll be able to understand why they have chosen specific bets and you'll be able to tweak them easier. ML is often just stats under the hood in most cases -- I think I am targeting neural networks specifically wit…

Yeah, I used Machine Learning as a blanket term for both potentially Neural Nets as well as a traditional statistical methods. Good call out though.

Re: Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting?

#23
post #3

(Preface: I'm not particularly interested in the ethical debates around gambling with this comment, though I personally think it's something people should be allowed to do.). I've been slowly getting into Machine Learning for a while now, and have been looking for projects to accelerate my focus. I also happen to like to gamble (responsibly), so I've recently started researching how to apply Machine/Deep Learning to…

This discussion could be of interest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15523186 tldr: keep it fun; if you bet professionally, you'll run into hurdles from bookies.

Thanks!

Re: Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting?

#24
post #6
post #3

(Preface: I'm not particularly interested in the ethical debates around gambling with this comment, though I personally think it's something people should be allowed to do.). I've been slowly getting into Machine Learning for a while now, and have been looking for projects to accelerate my focus. I also happen to like to gamble (responsibly), so I've recently started researching how to apply Machine/Deep Learning to…

You might enjoy this old article about Bob Voulgaris on ESPN. He was/is a very successful NBA gambler that over time started to use some machine learning techniques. http://www.espn.com/blog/playbook/dollars/post/_/id/2935/mee...

Thanks for the link!

Re: Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting?

#25
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as an American, the choice in our society isn't between "voluntarily allow its citizens to be taken advantage of" and not that. It's between allowing gambling to be run by organized crime and creating a system that enables at least a modicum of accountability.

> It's between allowing gambling to be run by organized crime and creating a system that enables at least a modicum of accountability. The government (via the NCAA) has already made it illegal for college athletes to accept money for anything related to sports. IMHO that ban has worked well for college athletes, and the feds should simply extend the ban to the rest of society and make pro sports illegal.

>The government (via the NCAA) has already made it illegal for college athletes to accept money

What? The NCAA has nothing to do with it. The US federal government independently created regulations that make payment of student athletes undesirable regardless of whether the NCAA even exists. Title XI requires that all collegiate athletes receive identical opportunities and benefits, which clearly doesn't make sense for sports that aren't profit centers if cash compensation is added to the mix.

>the feds should simply extend the ban to the rest of society and make pro sports illegal.

Why? This clearly doesn't solve a gambling issue, as you can already place bets on NCAA events. And further, it doesn't really make sense given the economic structure and social mores of the contemporary United States. Aside from the fact that a ban on pro sports would fly in the face of centuries of case law prohibiting arbitrary government interference with private enterprises, I'm fairly certain that any representative sample of the contemporary US population would find your proposition both strange and unnecessary.

Re: Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting?

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you've ever spent any time in an American casino, but the sports book is not where you find 'really old people', except perhaps the handful of older guys betting on horse races. And at the sports book area, chances are that you aren't going to encounter the sort of obvious problem gamblers that you see glued to the video poker and slots.

Right but you can modify sports games to become more like regular games. For example I claim you're making a sports bet but structure the game so that it's identical to slots. That's what they do in Kentucky to basically make legalized slot machines

The phenomenon you're describing is a real conundrum (and it's an emerging issue in my home state of Texas), but at the end of the day can be settled by a more stringent state or federally-enforced definition of what qualifies as a slot machine, especially when it's fairly obvious that using replays of old sport events to determine payout is not at all the same thing as letting the outcome be settled by a random number generator.

Re: Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting?

#27
post #20
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just ban gratuitous advertising? I believe we do it with cigarette companies.

My opinion is that Australia should ban gambling advertising. I also believe that Australia should also remove the electronic poker machine licenses from the Returned Services Leagues, and I also think that Australia should toughen up the mandatory anti-problem-gambling information at venues licensed for gambling, and in applications designed for gambling. I also think that the laws around ATM withdrawals at gambling…

As another Australia, I strongly agree.

Gambling/bettings have put a lot of work into getting their slimy tentacles into sports clubs and RSL's and perpetuating this idea that gambling/betting is inherently part of sport, which it's not, but they're happy to lure people and profit off them all the same.

If we reigned them in, I really don't think anything of value would be lost.

Re: Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting?

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. This is probably true among your demographic but it's not true of the biggest whales for casinos: really old people. My grandparents wouldn't break the law to gamble but given the chance would blow hundreds of dollars on slots in a single visit to a casino. And they would go as often as possible because they liked the attention casinos gave them and they had nothing better to do. Sure maybe legal gambling w…

Gambling hasn't always been so difficult. It's a practice with a long social history, often including attempts to stamp it out. Out of all of that, my impression is that it is generally not viewed as characteristically a vice of the old. How are things different now? Do you think it's just that if you grow up around legal gambling and you're the type to waste everything you have on it, you won't have any money left t…

Its a nasty addiction that’s been layered with a veneer of legitimacy.

Re: Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting?

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. This is probably true among your demographic but it's not true of the biggest whales for casinos: really old people. My grandparents wouldn't break the law to gamble but given the chance would blow hundreds of dollars on slots in a single visit to a casino. And they would go as often as possible because they liked the attention casinos gave them and they had nothing better to do. Sure maybe legal gambling w…

I'm not sure if you've ever spent any time in an American casino, but the sports book is not where you find 'really old people', except perhaps the handful of older guys betting on horse races. And at the sports book area, chances are that you aren't going to encounter the sort of obvious problem gamblers that you see glued to the video poker and slots.

We're definitely just trading anecdotes here, but I assume you've never spent any time inside the local TAB in a rural Australian town; It's not exactly filled to the brim with young professional up-and-comers.

My experience in Australia doesn't generalise perfectly to the US, of course. I wonder how much it does at all. That lack of certainty doesn't stop me from worrying what things would look like if it translates well across our societies.

Re: Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting?

#30
post #2

As an Australian, living in a society where betting is legal albeit fairly regulated: I sincerely hope not. The reason for that hope is that gambling and gambling advertising, with the rise of online betting sites and smartphone apps, has started to become a fairly genuine social issue. With advertisements like this one ( https://twitter.com/sportsbetcomau/status/863634984682233856 ) [note: Ben Johnson recently was f…

Note that we pretty much have widespread, legal gambling in the US.

Lotteries, and then there are tons of casinos.

Post reply on HN