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

Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 311 posts

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#31

Post by JumpCrisscross »

phs318u wrote: post #29
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't know the ROI. It's hyperbolic, I'll freely admit that. Being a bookie is making a market. As long as you do your maqth right, your potential for losses are capped--lots of small bets are actually less risky in this respect. Problem gamblers are a cherry on top, far from essential to any gambling enterprise, particularly not one making a two-sided market. > We let problem gamblers gamble more, and it's not fai…

When the "cherry on top" (problem gamblers) is responsible for half your revenue (from the Bloomberg article), then that's not just a cherry. That's half the cake. And it's a really, really, big cake.

It's still cake! The implied assertion is gambling enterprises need problem gamblers. That if you restrict their ability to prey on problem gamblers, nobody gets to casually gamble.

I know nothing about gambling. But I know a lot about market making and the math of being a bookie. And basaed on that, I don't think the claim is true.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#32

Post by orwin »

FireBeyond wrote: post #26
jfoutz wrote: post #17

The article appears to break gamblers into 3 groups. 1) casual players 2) problem players 3) professional gamblers. so basically casual players gamble something like 50 bucks a year. Problem gamblers get money however they can (and although it's unstated and I have no evidence, I think this is where the actual money comes from). And finally, people that can snipe the mispriced bets, and make a lot of money. Feels sor…

> The pros eat up casino margins. In games against the house, the house usually ensures that even with mathematically perfect play, that they will still have a margin (though, admittedly, it's a tighter margin than when a bachelor party is drunk and playing blackjack and hitting on 19 because "I'm feeling lucky!"). Most pros play against the other players (i.e. poker, etc.), and the rake is the rake, regardless of th…

No, advantage betting is pretty much only against the houses, not against other players. While people who know the sport and manage to bet misplaced lines can be winning over a season, advantage betting is the only way to reliantly have a positive EV. Casinos and now sport betting apps try to prevent professionals to use this, but with the number of shit you can now bet on, and since you don't have to tie an account to your real identity yet, it is becoming very difficult to catch that, especially if you muddy the water with dumb bets.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#33

Post by kasey_junk »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31
phs318u wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the "cherry on top" (problem gamblers) is responsible for half your revenue (from the Bloomberg article), then that's not just a cherry. That's half the cake. And it's a really, really, big cake.

It's still cake! The implied assertion is gambling enterprises need problem gamblers. That if you restrict their ability to prey on problem gamblers, nobody gets to casually gamble. I know nothing about gambling. But I know a lot about market making and the math of being a bookie. And basaed on that, I don't think the claim is true.

I also no nothing about gambling and a lot more about market making.

One major difference that may change the math is the tax rate. Illinois for instance just passed a 40% tax on sports betting.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#34

Post by nusl »

Sports betting has the side effect of making things surrounding sports themselves more toxic.

Betting being as pervasive as it is, and only increasing, causes more people to view and interact with sports with bets or money, and thus can react negatively toward their losing teams.

If there's a large number of angry, vocal "fans" jumping down your neck every time you lose a game or make a mistake that caused their bet to fail, there's a lot of negativity fabricated where the team or player merely played the sport as usual.

Teams are made of humans, and humans make mistakes. This is normal for any sport or activity, but when you've got a chunk of cash in the game it turns into not-normal reactions.

This also bleeds into other forms of sport, like esport, and feeds into some already-negative online communities. Games like League of Legends or DotA 2 come to mind.

I really, really dislike the way sports betting has gone and how it's corrupted everything it touches.

Couple the above with the way these companies effectively prey on betters likely to lose money, and even encourage them to bet and lose more, while at the same time stonewall those that actually know what they're doing and make money, these companies are scum and should be eradicated.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#35

Post by Yeul »

jfoutz wrote: post #17

The article appears to break gamblers into 3 groups. 1) casual players 2) problem players 3) professional gamblers. so basically casual players gamble something like 50 bucks a year. Problem gamblers get money however they can (and although it's unstated and I have no evidence, I think this is where the actual money comes from). And finally, people that can snipe the mispriced bets, and make a lot of money. Feels sor…

This is why Vegas is all about entertainment not just rows of slot machines.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#36

Post by victorbjorklund »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20
jfoutz wrote: post #17

The article appears to break gamblers into 3 groups. 1) casual players 2) problem players 3) professional gamblers. so basically casual players gamble something like 50 bucks a year. Problem gamblers get money however they can (and although it's unstated and I have no evidence, I think this is where the actual money comes from). And finally, people that can snipe the mispriced bets, and make a lot of money. Feels sor…

> Casino's can't survive off casual players. They need the addicts to make payroll. The fact that the pros are simulating problem players because then the betting apps give you more leeway, e.g. by "send[ing] you bonus money" and raising your limits, paints the picture quite effectively in my book. > Casino's can't survive off casual players. They need the addicts to make payroll To what degree is this true? Sure, a…

The aqusition costs are extremly high for online betting and online casinos. If you pay 1000 usd to aquire one customer it is not profitable if they gamble 50 usd / year.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#37

Post by blitzar »

bettringf wrote: post #9

I worked at a quant sports betting trading company, on occasion it would send the employees to place annonymous few grand bets at physical shops because it's such a problem getting people to continue accepting your bets if you are any good. And found out that the more you bet, the more percentage commission you pay to exchanges like Betfair, which is quite contraintuitive - commission goes up with volume, not down. I…

My betfair commission was heavily discounted back in the day, but that was only on volumes of ~£50,000 a day, and a fair bit more on weekends. Nevertheless their commissions were outrageously high, but the scale of the liquidity they had available was amazing.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#38

Post by blitzar »

orwin wrote: post #32
FireBeyond wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pros eat up casino margins. In games against the house, the house usually ensures that even with mathematically perfect play, that they will still have a margin (though, admittedly, it's a tighter margin than when a bachelor party is drunk and playing blackjack and hitting on 19 because "I'm feeling lucky!"). Most pros play against the other players (i.e. poker, etc.), and the rake is the rake, regardless of th…

No, advantage betting is pretty much only against the houses, not against other players. While people who know the sport and manage to bet misplaced lines can be winning over a season, advantage betting is the only way to reliantly have a positive EV. Casinos and now sport betting apps try to prevent professionals to use this, but with the number of shit you can now bet on, and since you don't have to tie an account…

Outside of the US where gambling on sports has been the norm for decades, the bookies tend to run square books and just earn spread + commissions. To the point where pvp exchanges have been the dominant destination for betting for 20 years or so.

These article (and others like it recently) just make me think US sports betting operations are operating on antiquated business model.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#39

Post by bjourne »

bionsystem wrote: post #15
bettringf wrote: post #9

I worked at a quant sports betting trading company, on occasion it would send the employees to place annonymous few grand bets at physical shops because it's such a problem getting people to continue accepting your bets if you are any good. And found out that the more you bet, the more percentage commission you pay to exchanges like Betfair, which is quite contraintuitive - commission goes up with volume, not down. I…

> it's such a problem getting people to continue accepting your bets if you are any good. Why don't they just use those people to adjust their odds faster for everybody else ? Or do they limit the size you can bet rather than just banning you ? > I also found out that the more you bet, the more percentage commission you pay to exchanges like Betfair, which is quite contraintuitive - commission goes up with volume, no…

Top sports books do that already. Lesser sports books don't have enough liquidity to react in real-time. In fact a simple winning strategy is to check what odds Pinnacle gives and see if any bookie offers better odds (arbitrage betting). It will only work for 2-3 bets before you're rate-limited though.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#40

Post by phs318u »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31
phs318u wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the "cherry on top" (problem gamblers) is responsible for half your revenue (from the Bloomberg article), then that's not just a cherry. That's half the cake. And it's a really, really, big cake.

It's still cake! The implied assertion is gambling enterprises need problem gamblers. That if you restrict their ability to prey on problem gamblers, nobody gets to casually gamble. I know nothing about gambling. But I know a lot about market making and the math of being a bookie. And basaed on that, I don't think the claim is true.

Well, I don’t know much about market making but as a member of Gamblers Anonymous since 1998 I’ve seen just about every kind of devastation caused by every kind of gambling. In the last few years I’ve seen a significant increase in the number of very young men coming to us. Here in Australia, the gambling industry absolutely is laser focused on targeting young men using every psychological trick in the book, including such pernicious features as “Bet With Mates (tm)” which is explicitly designed to use peer pressure to lock in and escalate those in the group who may otherwise pull out.

If we accept that almost 50% of revenue comes from 80% of gamblers (a diverse cohort) while the other almost 50% comes from 3% of gamblers (a far more uniform cohort), then of course betting companies would be absolutely defending against any change (regulation) that would impact the 3%. Furthermore they’d be remiss in their duty to their shareholders if they weren’t trying to migrate gamblers from the larger cohort to the smaller.

Post reply on HN