Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts • Hacker News Board

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#181

Post by makestuff » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 8:43 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #39

bionsystem wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah this is the entire business model of oddsjam. They basically offer a service that compares all book odds to pinnacle and call it "plus EV betting".

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#182

Post by jogjayr » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 8:44 PM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #151

jogjayr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of the places where money is being made, money is not being made. Edit: but even when money is being made, the athletes don't get it.

I'm trying to frame the problem--not say there isn't a problem. Athletes is too broad a term. You're engaging in tautologies.

Sorry it sounded like you were saying there isn't a problem because you said

> there is no real wage theft occurring

I know you qualified it with

> Outside of top men's basketball and football programs

But that was my point. Where no one's making money, no one's making money.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#183

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 9:03 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #127

snapcaster wrote: post #44

These apps should be banned. Gambling is a social ill with such a limited upside and so much harm it can't really be justified

So is alcohol - there are plenty of people who gamble responsibly and get enjoyment out of it. Taking away the entire thing rather than simply making sensible regulation and dealing with scumbag behavior by corporate bookies is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, not to mention extremely moralistic. And, in the end, prohibition never works - bookies still and always will exist.

[deleted]

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#184

Post by hx8 » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 9:04 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #146

Infinity315 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock options have legitimate uses. Like all tools, it can be misused. Stock options can be used as a tool to hedge against risk.

I know, but I think that they're overwhelmingly used for glorified gambling. It wouldn't bother me if it was just hedge funds or big corporations or multibillionaires who played with contracts, it bothers me that regular people do it too, and the average John Doe simply doesn't have the same multi-million-dollar option pricing algorithms that Goldman Sachs does. At that point, it feels like it's big corporations leec…

Most of the volume of options trading is done by institutions. By price it's mostly large traders paying each other to mitigate risk. Some smaller traders are getting chewed up in the process, but they are throwing themselves into the machine.

You make it sound like options exist for large traders to profit off individuals with access to less information. That's not how options are primarily used. That is however how sports betting is primarily used.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#185

Post by singleshot_ » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 9:05 PM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #63

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…

Most gamblers are casuals. I spend $5-10 a week during football and usually am down like $10 at the end of the year. It provides a lot of entertainment, sucks that some people can’t control themselves but I shouldn’t be punished for that. Agree that heavily regulating and perhaps banning advertising needs to be done.

There are two possible outcomes:

1) I, a person who gambles neither casually nor as part of an addiction, will pay for gambling addicts; or 2) You will be punished in the form of your degeneracy becoming illegal.

I’m not sure why you should be the one to get the free pass here.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#186

Post by dangitman » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 9:06 PM UTC

vharuck wrote: post #84

ronsor wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that people seem to just now realize that sports betting is a bad idea. As you said, the worst aspect is the large amount of marketing and advertising these platforms receive; I wouldn't care if they weren't pushed so heavily.

Before it was legal, most people's experiences with sports betting were small wagers between friends. Maybe a few large bets that they'll still talk about to this day. Gambling with friends or even just coworkers comes with natural limits: the size of one's bets is limited by others' aversions to risk, compulsive gambling is easily spotted, and the players' winnings/losings are zero sum. Yes, there were illegal booki…

[dead]

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#187

Post by idontwantthis » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 9:12 PM UTC

stonogo wrote: post #176

idontwantthis wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many people out there would take an assault charge to win a bet. Since there’s a market you could even get investors. Get $10million together, bet it with high odds, take 25% cut, spend 10 years in jail, live out the rest of your life in comfort. Is any of that illegal besides the assault itself?

Very much so. Even planning it, without carrying it out, would be subject to criminal conspiracy charges. Recruiting people to the scheme (even the investors) would be soliciting a crime. It's illegal to interfere in the outcome of the game once the bet is placed. Finally, once it was proven you rigged it, you'd probably be forced to return the winnings anyway. I'm sure an actual attorney could come up with even more…

Well darn.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#188

Post by 015a » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 9:18 PM UTC

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…

I highly, highly doubt that the share of people who consistently stay in category 1 year-over-year is more than a couple percentage points. Lots of people put $50 in to try the whole thing out, lose, then never return. Extremely few people will then return in 2025 and be like "lets do that again".

I cannot for the life of me understand why these apps can't make money off the pros, and instead need to ban them. Ignoring all the dumb promotions these apps do: Sports betting is zero sum, you're betting against the other players, not the house. The odds are set by who you're betting against. Literally, how does it not work out that the profit is just the money from the losers minus the house 30%-or-whatever cut? Is "pros" in this context people who also frequently abuse the (oftentimes wild) promotions these apps run?

But, if it did work like that, the problem is even more apparent: these apps are at best a direct wealth transfer from addicts and idiots to corporations and pros. Wait, I just described the stock market, we're talking about sports betting :)

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#189

Post by mcmcmc » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 9:20 PM UTC

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…

Hot take: all advertising for any kind of gambling should be banned, and online gambling should be outright prohibited

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#190

Post by elbasti » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 9:27 PM UTC

015a wrote: post #188

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…

I highly, highly doubt that the share of people who consistently stay in category 1 year-over-year is more than a couple percentage points. Lots of people put $50 in to try the whole thing out, lose, then never return. Extremely few people will then return in 2025 and be like "lets do that again". I cannot for the life of me understand why these apps can't make money off the pros, and instead need to ban them. Ignori…

Sports betting is zero sum, but the market is very inefficient. So you need market makers (the gambling sites) that will fill any order and that set the initial price.

The correct price is often not known for a short while, and that's when the pros bet. Immediately when the line (price) comes out, if they think the line is miss-priced, they will place large bets.

Eventually the house realizes the mispricing and they change the line, but by that point a pro might have placed a six figure bet.

So pros really are winning from the gambling sites, not from other gamblers.