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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

#331

Post by asdff »

wolverine876 wrote: post #298
asdff wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happened simply because the rich wanted to gamble. Vegas was built into what we knew it because organized illegal gambling was pushed from the city of LA to the unincorporated sunset strip in what is currently west hollywood, and then out of california entirely. The very people that were prosecuted for gambling in LA found politicians in Nevada who had water and electricity from the hoover dam, but no people or in…

I meant, why has gambling recently become legal in much of the country, not why did it become legal in Las Vegas.

Because the millennial generation had been making online sports bets illegally in the years before hand, there was a large market, and investors pressured regulators to legalize it for them.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#332

Post by ecf »

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.

> Promotion of gambling should be listened to promotion of cigarettes

E-Sports has a terrible problem with this, and many organizations are solely supported by gambling site sponsors.

Kudos to Riot for outlawing the practice with League of Legends. I wish Valve would do the same.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#333

Post by latchkey »

brandonmenc wrote: post #326
vmception wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Again, what happens if the oracle gets it wrong? The problem I have with this scenario re: sports betting is that it decouples the trust of scoring games and paying out bets - which is not a "feature" for bettors. If I'm using a reputable, "centralized" sports book, they have a reputation at stake. They have more of an incentive to accurately score games than a third party oracle. If they pay out in error, they are l…

Check out chainlink ( https://chain.link/ ). Effectively, third parties are incentivized to run oracles which provide the data, and they all have to come to a quorum.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#334

Post by brandonmenc »

latchkey wrote: post #333
brandonmenc wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, what happens if the oracle gets it wrong? The problem I have with this scenario re: sports betting is that it decouples the trust of scoring games and paying out bets - which is not a "feature" for bettors. If I'm using a reputable, "centralized" sports book, they have a reputation at stake. They have more of an incentive to accurately score games than a third party oracle. If they pay out in error, they are l…

Check out chainlink ( https://chain.link/ ). Effectively, third parties are incentivized to run oracles which provide the data, and they all have to come to a quorum.

Thanks. I will look at this.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#335

Post by vmception »

brandonmenc wrote: post #334
latchkey wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out chainlink ( https://chain.link/ ). Effectively, third parties are incentivized to run oracles which provide the data, and they all have to come to a quorum.

Thanks. I will look at this.

And there are plenty of other competitors to chainlink too

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#336

Post by csin »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #328
HWR_14 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would bookmakers ever take bets from someone they don't expect to make money from? Well, bookmakers like to minimize their risk. So, suppose Person X is going to bet on team A, but most people have already bet on team B. The bookmaker thinks team A is far more likely to win, but he still takes the bet. Then he goes from being a gambler to having a balanced book and making a known profit regardless of who wins.

But if my goal is to minimize risk and I consistently see a single person making winning bets, why would I take that bet? It's just bad business.

Most sportsbooks do eventually limit the bets sizes for consistent winners. But if word gets out, all you do is ban winning bettors and take on losing bettors. No one would want to play with you, and your business suffers. So it's a balancing act.

This is why the popular sportsbooks still allow big bets for reputation's sake.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#337

Post by csin »

jbc1 wrote: post #220
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…

What do you mean by "free credit", "3k wagered" and "limited to pennies on the dollar"? Did they stop you from betting completely? Introduce a really low dollar limit per bet? Gub your accounts?

Free credit: Most sportsbooks give you signup bonus/free money. The caveat is that you have to make enough bets to unlock the free money. Hence drawing customers to bet more.

3k wagered: They were betting 3 thousand dollars everyday.

Limited to pennies on the dollar: Most likely a hyperbole. Most sportsbooks will eventually limit your betsizes to say $40 maximum bet on said event.

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