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The rising human cost of sports betting

nytimes.com

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Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#111

Post by majani »

erfgh wrote: post #70
slap_shot wrote: post #46

I'm pretty Laissez-Faire about things, but a recent interaction with gambling is making me reconsider: My friend got a lot of free credits from the major sports books and wrote some code that he felt could generate a profit. We all threw in a little bit of money and let the program do what it does. Within a month we started doing 1k a day in profit on 3k wagered. Right as we approached 30k in profit, every major book…

1k on 3k wagered sounds pretty suspicious. Also, the regularity you imply makes it even more suspicious. How did this program work?

They were probably taking advantage of the rush of companies into the US market. It's a common market penetration tactic to offer odds that are wildly favorable to the punters for the first few months.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#112

Post by majani »

gostsamo wrote: post #66
slig wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your program looks at past results and infers who's going to win somehow?

most likely this is betting arbitrage. check the odds on different bookmakers and try to find an opportunity where you can bet on both sides and win regardless.

Yup, especially in games like basketball where no draws are allowed

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#113

Post by dylan604 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #74
philwelch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sports betting has been legal in Europe for a very long time and we have yet to see a UEFA Champions League thrown.

That you know of. How does anyone know? Edits: Imagine the NFL learns that yesterday's NFC Championship game was fixed. What would they do? Make it public and destroy their entire enterprise? My guess is that many would hide it if they could, and the people involved certainly wouldn't want to talk about it. And imagine if they learn about it in 6 months, long after the Super Bowl. Just in terms of on-field results, h…

>That you know of. How does anyone know?

How many of those skied shots, sliced shots, etc were bad skill or skillfully done to ensure the line was what was needed/required?

It's a pandora's box to start looking at everything a professional athlete/ref/manager does through that lens. It's even worse if you've never done it yourself to see how easy it is to do the wrong thing that causes one to look amateurish.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#114

Post by dylan604 »

lancesells wrote: post #69
323 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we just legalize gambling, just like we should legalize drug use. People should be free to use drugs, drink alchool, or gamble.

For the most part agreed but should companies be able to use psychological tricks and techniques to get people using drugs, alcohol, and gamble?

You just described Facebook

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#115

Post by vgeek »

babypuncher wrote: post #73
vgeek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.theringer.com/2019/6/5/18644504/sports-betting-b... This is a long read, but is really insightful on how the industry really works. If you're a consistently winning bettor, you're going to get blocked pretty quickly when you're betting against the house. Why would a casino want to play a game where they don't have odds in their favor when they can just ban the sharps and feast on the casuals? With parimut…

I think that should be illegal. If we are going to allow casinos to operate at all, then we shouldn't allow them to discriminate against potential customers on the basis that said customers are better at the game. If that means their business model is no longer viable, then that is their problem.

This type of thing isn't exclusive to sports betting, either. Card counting isn't cheating, but is typically prohibited (when executed successfully) in most casinos due to the edge it gives players (which has been practically eliminated with shift to 7 decks, autoshufflers, etc.). When players figure out other edges, such as imperfections in the playing card printing process that gives them an edge in games like baccarat, they'll either get banned or not paid their winnings. It is very much a heads I win, tails you lose situation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Blackjack_Team

https://www.betstrat.com/betstrat-articles/the-phil-ivey-edg...

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#116

Post by PKop »

thebean11 wrote: post #97
PKop wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes I am. But is that relevant to the question at hand: if the punishments were more severe, would they decrease drug selling/use? How about if we banned Narcan, do you think that would affect the total number of opiate addicts long term? What if we cut off the hands of drug dealers? Or applied the death penalty to drug dealers? What if we rounded up all the addicts that commit so many crimes in cities today, a…

Yes I think cutting off arms would discourage drug use to some extent, but I think the price is too high. At some point a policy like that creates more suffering than it prevents. From your example on throwing people into the ocean, it sounds like you agree that a tradeoff exist here. Unless you actually think killing drug users is a good solution to reduce drug use? The question was never whether it was possible to…

>was never

Not true and there are many in this thread and elsewhere for years on the internet saying exactly this.

Thank you for conceding my point against the ridiculous argument that "prohibition is ineffective"... that no it is, it's only a matter of degree of punishment, which is what I said.

>more suffering than it prevents

This only matters in some utilitarian conception where all net suffering or utility or whatever is created equal.

No, I think drug dealers suffering is not the same as suffering of normal people wanting to live their lives in a productive and healthy way for their community. But this is what politics is for, conflict over interests, values, worldviews, and societal preferences.

It's also what all of criminal law deals with: justice for crimes isn't viewed the same as suffering of law abiding people or victims.

>a tradeoff exist here

Like the tradeoff exists for the death penalty of murders in that justice for that crime requires "harm" to be inflicted on the perpetrator, yes. But this isn't that profound of a concept.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#117

Post by bregma »

babypuncher wrote: post #79
shipman05 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my position for a while on so called "vices". Prohibition is ineffective and often does more harm than good, but allowing companies to advertise these products to young people and those who are susceptible to abuse is a net negative for society. Worst of all are government run lotteries. A state run lottery may be preferable to one run by organized crime, but running millions of dollars worth of ads wit…

State lotteries are a means to shift tax burden from the wealthy to the poor. Every time one is implemented to "support education", it is always followed by a tax break for the upper class, resulting in a net 0 increase in school budgets.

State lotteries are just a tax on the stupid.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#118

Post by wolverine876 »

dylan604 wrote: post #113
wolverine876 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you know of. How does anyone know? Edits: Imagine the NFL learns that yesterday's NFC Championship game was fixed. What would they do? Make it public and destroy their entire enterprise? My guess is that many would hide it if they could, and the people involved certainly wouldn't want to talk about it. And imagine if they learn about it in 6 months, long after the Super Bowl. Just in terms of on-field results, h…

>That you know of. How does anyone know? How many of those skied shots, sliced shots, etc were bad skill or skillfully done to ensure the line was what was needed/required? It's a pandora's box to start looking at everything a professional athlete/ref/manager does through that lens. It's even worse if you've never done it yourself to see how easy it is to do the wrong thing that causes one to look amateurish.

What is your solution? Should we just close our eyes to the threat?

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#119

Post by Teever »

PKop wrote: post #72
thebean11 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Effectiveness of prohibition is determined in large part on severity of punishments. The punishments for drugs are pretty severe in much of the US (multiple years in prison). Are you advocating for even harsher punishments than that?

Well, yes I am. But is that relevant to the question at hand: if the punishments were more severe, would they decrease drug selling/use? How about if we banned Narcan, do you think that would affect the total number of opiate addicts long term? What if we cut off the hands of drug dealers? Or applied the death penalty to drug dealers? What if we rounded up all the addicts that commit so many crimes in cities today, a…

You're describing the 'toddler having a meltdown in the grocery store because they want candy' course of action which I'll admit may have some sort of positive results in some situations but is more than likely to have massively unexpected consequences for the initiator.

We'd all like to feel like it was as simple as expressing our dislike at a situation to fix it, that solving problems is as simple as applying a linear amount of force that is proportional to the size of the problem but the world isn't like that.

Drug addiction, Organized Crime, racism, sexism, global climate change are all examples of Wicked Problems[0] and no amount of force behind a whimsical edict is going to solve them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#120

Post by majani »

dylan604 wrote: post #107
323 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the it's all because of betting. Celebrity culture is another major factor. Players are now becoming famous for being famous soccer players, like the Kardashians. It's irrelevant if they can play or not. How many followers you have on Instagram is now more important than how many goals you score.

Name a famous footballer that cannot play. The comparisons to the Kardashians is quite a stretch.

Yeah, I can only remember Rashford and Lingard trying that approach earlier in their careers but they quickly stopped it once their performance quality dipped
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