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

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31–40 of 106 posts

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

#31
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.

I recently moved to Chicago and the amount of people blowing large amounts of money on scratch off tickets is insane.

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

#32
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…

A lot of the venues seem to only exist for the poker machines, not that it would be a bad thing for them to go away.

Where I previously lived we would occasionally go for meals at our local pub and the dining area was pretty much always quiet, I doubt that they would exist if they were relying on dining income.

Australia also has the Melbourne Cup horse race/ public holiday, where there is a culture of having a bet. People who otherwise would never look into gambling bet on that race, I think it acts as a gateway to further gambling and normalises gambling even further.

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

#33
post #13

Gambling/lotteries basically only harm people with innumeracy; ergo why should it ever be prohibited?

You can fully understand the -EV of gambling yet still act against your own self-interest by engaging in it.

(Most) humans aren't emotionless machines, even highly intelligent people engage in self-destructive behaviour despite recognizing it as such.

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

#34
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.

Uhhh, what?

The illegality of paying college employees fair wages has resulted in for profit companies/universities making hundreds of millions of dollars off of people.

Why should we extend that and allow MORE people to be exploited?

It is crazy to me that people support making it literally illegal to pay workers wages.

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

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fo…

Title IX was only created in the 70s, the government created the NCAA as a self-regulatory organization in the early 1900s so that they wouldn't have to get involved and regulate sports directly themselves.

> 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

The new research on health outcomes for pro athletes is more than enough to overcome the requirement for non-arbitrariness. And given how many other strange and unnecessary laws there are, this might not be as serious of an issue as it seems.

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

#36
post #32
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A lot of the venues seem to only exist for the poker machines, not that it would be a bad thing for them to go away. Where I previously lived we would occasionally go for meals at our local pub and the dining area was pretty much always quiet, I doubt that they would exist if they were relying on dining income. Australia also has the Melbourne Cup horse race/ public holiday, where there is a culture of having a bet.…

The venues existing just for the poker machines is essentially incontestable.

In this article (http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/north/news-story/535a0090...) about the shadiness of the Preston RSL, they admit that the bar and bistro lose money, and the only thing keeping them in the black is gambling.

(Don't get me started on cup/derby day. That whole situation is a mess.)

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

#37
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 too have considered this [0]. You don't really need to scrape, old data is there via retrosheet and current data is available as XML and JSON via gdx.mlb.com (e.g. for 2017 [1]). Of course, beware the terms of use, but if it's just for yourself, I'd say no prob.

As for predictive analytics themselves, you can dig into all the metrics you want, but training/backcasting is how I'd approach it.

0 - https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues/43

1 - http://gdx.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2017/

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

#38
post #5
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…

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.

>>> between allowing gambling to be run by organized crime and creating a system that enables at least a modicum of accountability.

By that logic nothing should be illegal as making anything illegal simply creates a black market. Some things are bad. Some things are just evil and need to be banned. Laws are meant to prevent people from doing things they otherwise would want to do.

Gambling is a classic vice. If people want it banned then they should be able, through government, to ban it. That has happened at the federal level already. Rather than attempt to lawyer their way out from under the ban, states should lobby their people to elect reps that will change the federal law.

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

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that we pretty much have widespread, legal gambling in the US. Lotteries, and then there are tons of casinos.

I recently moved to Chicago and the amount of people blowing large amounts of money on scratch off tickets is insane.

This is true nationwide. People making < ~$13,000 spend 9% of their income on lottery tickets on the average.

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

#40
post #13

Gambling/lotteries basically only harm people with innumeracy; ergo why should it ever be prohibited?

You can fully understand the -EV of gambling yet still act against your own self-interest by engaging in it. (Most) humans aren't emotionless machines, even highly intelligent people engage in self-destructive behaviour despite recognizing it as such.

And human brains are totally wired for gambling addiction.
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