Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 106 posts

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

#41

Post by billysbeanes »

dchuk wrote: 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…

Baseball is appealing because the game state can be accurately modeled as a state machine. Don't let this fool you -- the impact of variation is much higher for a single baseball game, than for another sport.

I've won 4 of my last 9 baseball "futures" bets, with more than 2-1 payoffs (some were to make the playoffs, or o/u games won, etc.) That's the way to bet on baseball -- use a large sample size. It's easy enough, once the futures lines come out, to find bets that clearly have a positive expected outcome, when using advanced sabermetrics (the baseball term for "statistics" aka Moneyball).

Unless this is a passion, take the time you have allocated to running the analysis, and use it in a healthy manner. Or multiply it by your hourly wage. Then read fangraphs or BP to find the exploitable futures lines.

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

#42

Post by billysbeanes »

kodablah wrote: post #37
dchuk wrote: 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/…

Worth noting that this field is reaching diminishing returns due to analyses. You might be 2% better than a stock analysis, but that's usually not a sufficient edge to exploit profitably unless you're talking HUGE numbers.

Finding a problem someone has, solving it with analysis, and offering to license/sell it to them (once it's proven to work) is probably more lucrative.

Unless you're chasing the variable rewards skinner box. In that case, I'd probably just take up a cocaine habit -- it'll be cheaper.

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

#43

Post by jccalhoun »

mmirate wrote: post #13

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

On one hand, I can see this. Having worked in a casino, my gut reaction is, "If you are that dumb then you deserve to lose everything." But on the other hand, there is the societal good of not having people throw away their money and spend it on things like paying their rent/mortgage and healthcare and education and not be a burden to society.

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

#44

Post by Paul-ish »

hug wrote: 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…

In the USA advertising cigarettes through certain mediums is illegal. I wonder if the same could be done for sports betting.

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

#45

Post by dominotw »

jccalhoun wrote: post #43
mmirate wrote: post #13

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

On one hand, I can see this. Having worked in a casino, my gut reaction is, "If you are that dumb then you deserve to lose everything." But on the other hand, there is the societal good of not having people throw away their money and spend it on things like paying their rent/mortgage and healthcare and education and not be a burden to society.

I would say there is more social good in banning junk food. Imagine the healthcare cost savings.

Gambling would be pretty low on social good list.

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

#46

Post by FigBug »

hug wrote: 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…

> Ben Johnson recently was found to be on PEDs

Recently? Wasn't he caught in 1988?

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

#47

Post by Kalium »

sandworm101 wrote: post #38
Kalium wrote: 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.

>>> 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 peopl…

It's true - no prohibition is ever perfect. And gambling, along with prostitution and drinking, are the classic vices. You're right on all those points.

Gambling is something that already exists a number of places in the US in many forms. Lotteries, casinos, poker games, office betting pools, and more are cultural mainstays. You're not going to be able to get rid of it quickly or easily, nor make it stay gone. People really like their games of chance.

Even if I did agree with you that gambling is just evil and needs to be banned.

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

#48

Post by hug »

FigBug wrote: post #46
hug wrote: 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…

> Ben Johnson recently was found to be on PEDs Recently? Wasn't he caught in 1988?

I mean, on a universal timeline that's pretty recent.

(I have no idea who Ben Johnson is or was. You are probably correct, and I probably look silly.)

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

#49

Post by CamperBob2 »

sithadmin wrote: post #26
opportune wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 numb…

Or, the government could just butt out and let consenting adults gamble if that's what they want to do with their time and money.

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

#50

Post by hug »

Paul-ish wrote: post #44
hug wrote: 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…

In the USA advertising cigarettes through certain mediums is illegal. I wonder if the same could be done for sports betting.

It's banned in Australia, too. Our cigarette packets also can't have any branding, must be a drab olive colour, and must have a graphic warning about the medical dangers of smoking. (Think "picture of a gangrenous foot" on the front 3/4 of your cigarette packet.)

Something similar, minus the gangrene, should be done for gambling.

Post reply on HN