U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#121

Post by nikisweeting » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:28 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #105

seibelj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the USA, which has very relaxed alcohol laws. I can walk into most pubs/bars in my city and find people getting extremely drunk for example, as well as a retail liquor facilities. There are huge social consequences to drinking. If you look at an entire society you have some people that will have problems with it and some people that won't. You may fall into the "won't" pile but surely society benefits if we…

We have anti-drunkenness laws in the US to deal with people who drink to much. AFAIK, no such laws exist with respect to gambling.

That's not entirely true, most international gaming businesses follow strict anti-gambling-addiction regulations like using self exclusion databases, implementing daily limits, and doing pre-emptive problem gambling detection.

Allowing problem gamblers to blow all their money hurts the whole industry because then they go broke and don't have any more money to gamble with. The industry has started to recognize that in the last 5-10 years and many measures have started to be implemented to catch problem gamblers and restrict them before they lose all their money.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#122

Post by z3t4 » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

joobus wrote: post #32

Except for stocks, bonds, options, futures, and forex. Wall St is the only authorized online gambling establishment.

You can't go to the bank at a casino and say you want to sell your "investment" at the roulette table. Stocks is all about spreading/avoiding risk.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#123

Post by Broken_Hippo » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #105

seibelj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the USA, which has very relaxed alcohol laws. I can walk into most pubs/bars in my city and find people getting extremely drunk for example, as well as a retail liquor facilities. There are huge social consequences to drinking. If you look at an entire society you have some people that will have problems with it and some people that won't. You may fall into the "won't" pile but surely society benefits if we…

We have anti-drunkenness laws in the US to deal with people who drink to much. AFAIK, no such laws exist with respect to gambling.

Um... not really. Anyone that wants to get drunk and stay drunk buys a large thing of vodka for a cheap price and goes home. Buy 2 on saturday if your state doesn't sell on Sunday. If you restrict it much more than that there is an easy black market.

Most of the laws don't really deal with people that drink too much. Bars might need to stop serving if someone is inebriated enough. There might be public intox laws, which occasionally get folks arrested for walking home instead of driving. Drunk driving laws, because it is bad And sometimes there are limits to hours and things.

None of these things deter anyone determined and I'm guessing more than one of them catch more folks that don't have a big problem than the ones that do.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#124

Post by drusepth » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

tkxxx7 wrote: post #85

shkkmo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how is that different from hedging your bets? Insurance is gambling. The servicer is the house and always wins (unless they screw up). That is not to say that gambling can't serve purposes other than entertainment, because it can. That doesn't make it not gambling.

> So how is that different from hedging your bets? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the difference is, no one is betting that you actually do have an unforeseen incident, so there is no bet to hedge against.

If you weren't betting that you would have an unforeseen incident (rephrased as: if you were betting you wouldn't have an unforeseen incident), why would you pay anything?

Paying $X is saying "I bet something will happen to me, so I need this service so I don't get screwed over." Otherwise, why buy pay anything at all?

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#125

Post by njarboe » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #87

jrockway wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is insurance not gambling?

Insurance is the precise opposite of gambling; instead of concentrating reward, it distributes risk. When you buy insurance you're not betting that something bad will happen to you, you're hedging your otherwise implicit bet that something bad _won't_ happen to you.

So gambling by insurance companies is ok, just not people. Unless it is an insurance co-op (which I think would be great), there is always entity on the other side with the concentrated risk.

It seems so many laws are about protecting people from themselves, but then we need exceptions from them for society to work at all. Like you can't legally invest in a non-listed company if you are not an accredited investor. Maybe we should make this distinction more formal and universal. Society could have an official and transparent way a person could enter the class of people who are expected to be responsible for their actions.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#126

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #119

Dylan16807 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hedging is when you act to counteract [part of] a bet. So you're right, insurance is like hedging a bet. Which makes it roughly the opposite of betting, in most uses. (If you "hedge" so far you're unbalanced in the other direction, you're not actually hedging your bets any more. "Hedge funds" aren't really for hedging if you use them as a primary investment.)

> Which makes it roughly the opposite of betting, in most uses. In what way is it opposite? How is more betting somehow the opposite of betting? Let's say I bet $10 that team A will beat team B with 1:10 odds (I would win 100) and then team A does really well so at half-time I bet $10 that B will beat team A with 1:2 odds (I would win 20) I have now hedged my bets and I will at least break even. Under your understand…

That's complicated because you're changing your bet as the odds move, which is pretty gambly.

If you were doing both bets before the game started, at about the same time, then the second bet would effectively not be gambling. Not because of your motivation, exactly, but because it reduces the variance in how much money you'll have at the end of the game.

If you buy a matched pair of tickets so that you guarantee a $60 output, that's not gambling. Even if you come out ahead no matter what. (who was dumb enough to sell that to you?)

Let's say you had a bet on team A forced upon you, because of where you live or something. At that point buying a matching bet on team B is an anti-gambling behavior that removes variance from the system. It's the equivalent of insurance.

If you then keep buying team B, then you're gambling in the other direction. If you buy so much insurance that you make a profit on losing items, you're gambling. But that's not how insurance normally works. It normally pays out less then what you lose, because of deductibles and the time wasted.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#127

Post by njarboe » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #64

cdumler wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of insurance is such that individuals share the burden to cover random, life-impacting events. From the consumer side, insurance is the purchase of a service to cover any a future debt falling under the category of the service, ie. an unforeseeable, unintentional act of damage by or to the consumer. I have no intention of burning down my house. I pay so that if it were to happen, I am not stuck paying off…

So how is that different from hedging your bets? Insurance is gambling. The servicer is the house and always wins (unless they screw up). That is not to say that gambling can't serve purposes other than entertainment, because it can. That doesn't make it not gambling.

Insurance is good. Gambling is bad. How could they be the same thing?

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#128

Post by pnw_hazor » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #23

I see this as a bad thing, but I've still been able to place sports bets in the US online for years, and I logged into ACR today and played an hour of NL holdem, and my computer wasn't seized by the FBI. No one has yet described the actual consequences of this, and as far as I can tell, there haven't been any.

Do it in Washington State and it is a class C Felony.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#129

Post by paulcole » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:47 PM UTC

jstarfish wrote: post #113

paulcole wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just rephrasing it. How about: I'm betting State Farm $12 a month my apartment will burn down before I die or move out.

At the individual level, it seems a lot like gambling but insurance is not about individuals, it's about the pool. You and a million other people give State Farm $12 so that in the event of fire or flood affecting a subset of the pool, there's enough money collected to pay out to make claimants whole. There are no "winners" in the insurance game, only losses. If they have to pay you, you've already lost both the prem…

> At the individual level, it seems a lot like gambling but insurance is not about individuals, it's about the pool.

How do you think casinos and bookies work? They spread their risk by setting lines and odds and taking a vig.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#130

Post by r00fus » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 10:58 PM UTC

On one side, I'm not liking this ruling as it's a weird reversal on freedoms.

On the other side, gambling acts as a one-way function on money, allowing laundering. So reducing the ability for laundering is a good thing.

Finally, gambling can easily destroy family finances so it's good policy to curb it on those grounds as well - requiring the gambler to visit an establishment means potentially less nets-eggs being broken to feed a habit.