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Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

bloomberg.com

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Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#91

Post by adw »

blitzar wrote: post #38
orwin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All the tech piling into US sports books is British precisely because the British markets (particularly horses, football and tennis, but really everything up to and including political markets) are so much more sophisticated and there's a killing to be made exploiting the rubes in the Wild West.

Really professional gamblers (eg Tony Bloom / Betlizard) are just hedge funds and what we're talking about in this thread is "trying to gain an execution edge".

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#92

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

sickofparadox wrote: post #86
adw wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"perversion of sports" is a particularly American viewpoint, I think! The latent streak of puritanism, maybe. Yet, somehow, the NCAA (which is wage theft on a truly industrial scale) is morally okay. It's weird. (The intersection with US ad culture – for existence, drug ads on TV – is maybe also unique.) Sport has, as a business, always been random number generation for gambling purposes. Some, like horseracing, have…

Being compensated in kind with housing, food, and education (not to mention significant "grants" from boosters clubs and brand deals) is not the same as wage theft and it is verbal slight of hand to suggest otherwise.

That only applies to scholarship athletes. Walk-ons get no such benefits. They're working for free while their school is pulling in $60+ million a year in TV money to watch them play and the head coach is making 7 figures

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#93

Post by adw »

sickofparadox wrote: post #86
adw wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"perversion of sports" is a particularly American viewpoint, I think! The latent streak of puritanism, maybe. Yet, somehow, the NCAA (which is wage theft on a truly industrial scale) is morally okay. It's weird. (The intersection with US ad culture – for existence, drug ads on TV – is maybe also unique.) Sport has, as a business, always been random number generation for gambling purposes. Some, like horseracing, have…

Being compensated in kind with housing, food, and education (not to mention significant "grants" from boosters clubs and brand deals) is not the same as wage theft and it is verbal slight of hand to suggest otherwise.

If the players aren't employed by their teams, provided with healthcare and pensions and all the rest, then it absolutely is. The NCAA (for revenue sports) is a scam and everyone involved with any of it is morally bankrupt.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#94

Post by michaelt »

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…

> Why don't they just use those people to adjust their odds faster for everybody else ?

The logic of bookies is simple: Don't do business with people who win more than they lose.

It doesn't matter how the customer is getting an edge. A brilliant algorithm? A complex arbitrage system? Deep insight from years studying the sport? Cheating? Time travel? The bookies don't care.

The only thing that matters is, if you win more than you lose you've got some sort of edge. And if you've got any sort of edge, it's more profitable not to do business with you.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#95

Post by adw »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #85
adw wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"perversion of sports" is a particularly American viewpoint, I think! The latent streak of puritanism, maybe. Yet, somehow, the NCAA (which is wage theft on a truly industrial scale) is morally okay. It's weird. (The intersection with US ad culture – for existence, drug ads on TV – is maybe also unique.) Sport has, as a business, always been random number generation for gambling purposes. Some, like horseracing, have…

NCAA players are now being paid for what its worth

The NIL loophole? Yeah, not really, and not enforceably, and examples of teams reneging are not hard to find.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#96

Post by consteval »

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.

Intuitively I see all addictive industries the same. The Tobacco industry can, and does, make money off of the odd cigar at a house party. But ultimately, they rely on the constant addiction to have a business model.

It's cheap, and easy, to make nicotine free tobacco like devices. You could lower your cost quite a bit - pretty good for the books! But it doesn't matter, and nobody with half a brain does it.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#97

Post by consteval »

hermannj314 wrote: post #50
gcanyon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then online casinos are a bad business and shouldn't exist, just like breweries shouldn't exist if they can't break even selling to casual drinkers and need alcoholics to make a profit, and gun manufacturers shouldn't exist if they can't break even selling to one-or-two-gun owners and need wannabe-commandos and survivalist cosplayers to make a profit.

I worked at a biotechnology company, we had thousands of clients but five of them were 80% of our revenue. In your world, should that business not exist as well? I don't understand the princple that revenue should be uniformly distributed as a condition for existing. How would you enforce this?

It depends on what you're selling.

> How would you enforce this?

Case by case. We already do this, this isn't a hypothetical. You can't advertise tobacco anymore and guess what, lots less people addicted and we're saving literally millions of lives in the long run.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#98

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

adw wrote: post #95
HDThoreaun wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NCAA players are now being paid for what its worth

The NIL loophole? Yeah, not really, and not enforceably, and examples of teams reneging are not hard to find.

Not NIL. lawsuit in court right now is reaching a settlement to directly pay players.

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/24/nx-s1-4978680/house-ncaa-sett...

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#99

Post by kjrfghslkdjfl »

bentt wrote: post #53

The fact that ESPN itself has a sports betting app tells you all you need to know about the perversion of sports now that gambling is blessed by the government. I think I can live with the legalization of sports betting if there are strong restrictions against marketing and advertising. If you want to ruin your life that's your decision, and you can always just take the same amount of money and bet it on the stock ma…

[dead]

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#100

Post by jgalt212 »

adw wrote: post #81
bentt wrote: post #53

The fact that ESPN itself has a sports betting app tells you all you need to know about the perversion of sports now that gambling is blessed by the government. I think I can live with the legalization of sports betting if there are strong restrictions against marketing and advertising. If you want to ruin your life that's your decision, and you can always just take the same amount of money and bet it on the stock ma…

"perversion of sports" is a particularly American viewpoint, I think! The latent streak of puritanism, maybe. Yet, somehow, the NCAA (which is wage theft on a truly industrial scale) is morally okay. It's weird. (The intersection with US ad culture – for existence, drug ads on TV – is maybe also unique.) Sport has, as a business, always been random number generation for gambling purposes. Some, like horseracing, have…

> Yet, somehow, the NCAA (which is wage theft on a truly industrial scale) is morally okay. It's weird.

Outside of top men's basketball and football programs, there is no real wage theft occurring. These minor sports are avocations for student athletes, and not businesses for the universities.

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