Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts • Hacker News Board

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#201

Post by cryptonector » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 10:29 PM UTC

elbasti wrote: post #190

015a wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like this is a self-fixing problem. Either the betting apps/sites will go broke, or they'll get really good at pricing, which will a) push the pro bettors elsewhere, b) maybe bore the problem bettors. Ok, (b) won't happen, but at least (a) should maybe happen. Problem: the betting apps/sites won't be able to hire the pro bettors to help them.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#202

Post by WheatMillington » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 10:34 PM UTC

caeril wrote: post #167

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.

Gambling is the only way for some of us to make Sportsball interesting, and attempt to fit in with the absurdist normie culture in which we live. Realistically, there's nothing particularly interesting about the Dallas Frackers versus the Washington Rentseekers. But if you have money on the outcome, watching a game (with a sufficient supply of alcohol) is actually bearable. Edit: I'm explaining a real, actual reason…

That is the most insufferable comment I've read all year.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#203

Post by to11mtm » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 10:40 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…

I went to a local team baseball game and it was frankly depressing.

To see someone being put on the big screen to make some guess in a future inning with a plug for a bet site at a baseball game; frankly at this point just allow steroids again if you're selling out that bad.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#204

Post by bityard » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 10:41 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…

> you can always just take the same amount of money and bet it on the stock market.

I can't tell if you are promoting the stock market as a better or worse alternative to gambling?

If you meant the latter, you couldn't be further from the truth. The stock market, as a whole, represents the combined productivity of all the publicly traded firms in the country. Day to day, the stock market is unpredictably volatile. But over the long term (decades), it trends upward and by a large amount. There is no safer investment with the same kinds of returns and there is lots of research to prove it.

But short-term speculation and individual stock picking is much more akin to gambling.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#205

Post by to11mtm » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 10:45 PM UTC

astrange wrote: post #155

grecy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has a terrible potential to corrupt sport That ship sailed a looping time ago. Sports teams in the US are franchises. Like McDonalds. They exist to make profit. Lots of it. It has nothing to do with sport.

Nothing to do with sports except for all the time and effort they put into playing games?

I think one of the uglier examples was an NFL team local to me.

They had one of if not the 'worst' season in the last 15 years or so and really didn't care. But a huge part of that was because the way all of the season tickets, merchandise deals, etc etc, didn't matter if the team was any good. Semi-Ironically the economics were explained by a huge fan of them; he appreciated the business savvy.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#206

Post by harlanlewis » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 10:56 PM UTC

ssharp wrote: post #148

georgeecollins wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has a terrible potential to corrupt sport. When you can bet a lot of money on how long a college players plays, or how many points they get in a particular game, what's to stop them from having a relative make a bet and they just fake a cramp? The stock market is heavily regulated. I don't think you should ban sports betting, because like many vices it's easier to control if it is legal. According to Nate Silver,…

Oddly enough, several professional sports gamblers were aware of a NBA referee manipulating game from their data analysis, well before the NBA became aware of it. That was probably 10+ years ago and I suspect data analysis by the leagues is much stronger now. Still an insane line that needs to be walked between the leagues getting revenue from the sportsbooks and gambling not impacting that play.

Tim Donaghy (ref): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Donaghy

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#207

Post by bluGill » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 10:58 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #152

bluGill wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bookmakers can always lay the odds so that there’s equal money on each side No they can't. Large ones can, but the small ones sometimes cannot because they have to match the large ones but in a smaller pool. If everyone knows which team is going to win, diehard fans of the losing team will still bet on their team - large players capture that in their odds and break even. Small players don't have the same mix of cus…

Forgive me… This is not an area. I have much knowledge of… … But I thought even a small sports book could balance things properly by setting an appropriate pointspread? my parent has described a risk for the sports book that seems too assume the simple picking of winners and losers and not a pointspread?

The issue is the big players publish their spread. You have to at worst match them or everyone sends their money to the big players. You can beat them but not do worse. For bets on the local little league you can set your own spread but the big money is national (and international), sports where you have competition and so need to watch what they do. As a small agent you shouldn't bother calculating spread on the big games just match the large players.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#208

Post by henryfjordan » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 10:59 PM UTC

bodhiandphysics wrote: post #160

SoftTalker wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, making a small "fun" bet on a game is a way to make it more interesting. I've done it a few times and it really does. I'm talking maybe $20 though, I am far too frugal to put any real money at risk on a bet. I don't go to casinos for the same reason, I'd play a few hands or put maybe $20 into a slot machine and then I'd really start thinking about how I'm flushing my money down the toilet and I'd stop having fu…

no... if she's losing a steady 5% of $1000 bucks, she's paying 50 dollars to the casino. That's not enough for the casinos... her room costs more. The casinos want her to spending a lot more money. That's the really big problem of gambling... most people can do it in a relatively healthy way. But problem gamblers make the house most of their money. The house is strongly encouraged to find the problem gamblers and foc…

I haven't been to Vegas but I was shocked to learn that the minimum bet at blackjack tables is like $50-100. Too rich for me

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#209

Post by rincebrain » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 11:13 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…

As I said in the last discussion about this [1], I think outright banning just leads to worse outcomes, so you need to find a medium where you can minimize the abuse while still allowing people to get their hit enough to not go seek out unregulated forms.

I'm not fond of it either, but I don't have a better answer that doesn't seem like it's going to lead to worse outcomes.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41667521

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#210

Post by blueboo » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 11:19 PM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #123

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…

It has a terrible potential to corrupt sport. When you can bet a lot of money on how long a college players plays, or how many points they get in a particular game, what's to stop them from having a relative make a bet and they just fake a cramp? The stock market is heavily regulated. I don't think you should ban sports betting, because like many vices it's easier to control if it is legal. According to Nate Silver,…

It’s only “potential” insofar as bad behaviour may or may not be exposed sooner or later. I think it’s more useful to understand betting’s impact as a constant corrosive effect. Betting poisons the incentives