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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

#311

Post by lnxg33k1 »

blacksqr wrote: post #226
lnxg33k1 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think I mostly agree with you in theory. But I was just thinking about something else, let's say that algorithms giving secure wins and counting cards at blackjack are allowed, people starts winning and casino start losing, they have loss and let's say that it's not convenient anymore to have a casino, and they go out of business, country loses a revenue stream for taxes, people loses their jobs, and an indus…

Then why not cut out the middleman and just have the poor write checks directly to the rich?

Because I think giving money to the rich is a side effect of the gambling process, not the main activity, no?

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#312

Post by majani »

aidenn0 wrote: post #148
majani wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Referees in all the top leagues still get paid average salaries yet they are the most powerful person on the field. They are the point of failure in modern sports

Maybe other leagues pay less, but mean NFL referee salary is about $200k. I suspect it wouldn't be cheap to pay one of them off, since getting caught risks prison time, damages, and millions in future income lost.

You have to look at it relatively. Fine the ref is getting paid $200k, but the owners in the box seats are worth billions, the gamblers in the front row seats are worth hundreds of millions, and the players are worth tens of millions. Any of those guys can slip the ref a life-changing amount of money if they really wanted to.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#313

Post by throwaway0a5e »

HWR_14 wrote: post #273
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. My gut tells me tax breaks are the exception and more often than not increased revenues are simply paired with boondoggle spending because money is fungible.

Your gut is wrong. Lottery revenues track with tax breaks in most states.

Care to back up your assertion with a citation from a non-idealogue source?

PA just had a bridge fall down because the same pattern of funds redirection I described prevented their "fix the roads" gas tax hike from doing more than treading water. The pattern I described is very, very common. My own state had the same problem using cigarette taxes to fund the schools.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#314

Post by vintermann »

animal_spirits wrote: post #8

Promotion of gambling should be likened to promotion of cigarettes. It should be illegal to advertise gambling, but I don't think it should be outlawed to gamble. People should be able to choose how they live their lives, but we should do all that we can to prevent mass manipulation through adverts in industries that are known to be harmful. I also think that alcohol and e-cig advertising should be outlawed as well.

There are two issues at stake:

* Should I be allowed to ruin my health with cigarettes?

* Should I be allowed to make money selling cigarettes?

Tobacco companies prefer that you ask the first question, but it's really the second question which is interesting. We may, if we wish, say yes to the first and still say hell no to the second.

It doesn't even have to mean national monopolies. We can allow microbreweries and cigar makers and cannabis greenhouses and what have you to flourish, but just aggressively restrict their rate of profit. So that if you get into those things, we know you're not doing it to get rich off others' suffering, because you accept that you'll only make a basic living off it (at best).

I for one would be totally OK with that, and I think that if the profit motive was successfully removed, things like alcohol consumption would drop like a stone, even if alcohol was cheap.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#315

Post by noxvilleza »

handoflixue wrote: post #251
noxvilleza wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The maximum win rates part is normally clear by the game (for example, for Roulette or Blackjack you can see odds) or otherwise regulated by local/government laws (e.g. for games of pure chance like slot machines). > and otherwise fully detail their "we throw out anyone that wins" policy up-front They can just ask the gambler to leave the premises - I cannot imagine some 'libertarian free market' solution which would…

> The maximum win rates part is normally clear by the game (for example, for Roulette or Blackjack you can see odds) That's the AVERAGE win rate. The maximum win rate is "if you make more than $10,000 in profit, we'll throw you out", and I've never heard of that being made explicit. The point is that if you're going to throw out people who win more than a certain amount, you're not actually offering a fair game. Ther…

> That's the AVERAGE win rate.

I thought that they were suggesting it's ~ the average winrate given optimal play.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#316

Post by brandonmenc »

vmception wrote: post #289
brandonmenc wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but I'll call you when my bookie puts his contract on the the blockchain.

not sarcasm, eventually nuanced web3 related posts will be the frequent front page articles, instead of hot takes about the parts not fulfilling their purpose and pretending its an irreconcilable issue with the concept for sports betting and prediction markets, the main limitation is the size of the bets possible, which is pretty boring after 5 figures so even if your bookie was pointing their oracle (api results) to…

How do you write a smart contract that knows the outcome of a game? Presumably this means reading the results from somewhere. What happens if the wrong outcome is published and then corrected later?

> which is pretty boring after 5 figures

Why? What is the limitation? Also, is that five figures of participants, wagers, or payout? Does that five figure limitation ever change?

A five figure limitation on payout dollars is too limiting today for sports betting. Definitely after a decade or two of inflation.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#317

Post by lmilcin »

mod wrote: post #281
lmilcin wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be so naive to even suggest that these businesses would allow you to earn money on them. These only exist to earn money for their owner. That's it. Just like any other establishment, you will be thrown out if you find a way to earn money on them rather than loose your own. Any casino that notices you are earning money regularly will do the same.

> Any casino that notices you are earning money regularly will do the same. Unless it's from other players, like in poker.

But in case of sports betting the money don't come from other people, it comes from the house.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#318

Post by slap_shot »

rdtwo wrote: post #269
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…

I don’t get it you guys are smart enough to do this but not smart enough to bypass a simple ban? If your system is that good it should be simple to recruit proxy betters in mass to use their accounts to beat the system. Like there are whole discord communities of resellers that do that and sell their tools for really good money

We've already started placing the bets across a dozen or so accounts to bypass this. That wasn't the point of the story.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#319

Post by uwuuwuuwu »

vmception wrote: post #252
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…

Oh! You might like the Web3 ecosystem! In the Web3 ecosystem (in this context that means Ethereum and Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible, popularized by a library called web3.js), people fork the current state of the blockchain to localhost, this allows you to test your transaction with many iterations to see if it can push the chain/contract to a subsequent valid state, if successful your code switches back to the…

This won't work as the inefficency you found will be found & exploited by generalized frontrunners when you submit it to the mempool (or any transaction that unconditionally generates profit with the current chain state), running these strats now requires cooperating with/bribing miners (as they get to choose which frontrunner won this block).

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#320

Post by vmception »

brandonmenc wrote: post #316
vmception wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sarcasm, eventually nuanced web3 related posts will be the frequent front page articles, instead of hot takes about the parts not fulfilling their purpose and pretending its an irreconcilable issue with the concept for sports betting and prediction markets, the main limitation is the size of the bets possible, which is pretty boring after 5 figures so even if your bookie was pointing their oracle (api results) to…

How do you write a smart contract that knows the outcome of a game? Presumably this means reading the results from somewhere. What happens if the wrong outcome is published and then corrected later? > which is pretty boring after 5 figures Why? What is the limitation? Also, is that five figures of participants, wagers, or payout? Does that five figure limitation ever change? A five figure limitation on payout dollars…

The smart contract gets its state updated by trusted external APIs, in that ecosystem they are called oracles. So they would use the same one they use in their web2 system, just write the results onchain instead of just in their database or just on a tv.

And yes the low side of the market is one of the reasons why people start trading in capital markets, other ways to make money with bets are too limiting even if you find an edge. There are usually a couple places around the world with higher amounts possible.

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