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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

#241

Post by snapcaster »

htrp wrote: post #70

> Simulating addictive behavior, says Peabody, is an effective way to get online sportsbooks to send you bonus money and keep your accounts open. This isn’t necessarily because operators are targeting problem bettors, he says; they’re simply looking to identify and encourage customers who are likely to spend—and lose—the most. This just happens to be a good way to find and enable addicts, too. ML run amuck

Fucking disgusting. They're trying to write algorithms that ruin people's lives. It's one thing when you're causing indirect or second/third order harm (like many of us likely do) but jesus christ

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#242

Post by qb1 »

idontwantthis wrote: post #163
rjbwork wrote: post #130

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? Or get assaulted or murdered, internet death pool style? All kinds of really fucked up incentives are created by these legalized betting apps.

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?

Criminal conspiracy. The agreement to commit the crime is the crime. Not the assault. That is another crime.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#243

Post by HelloMcFly »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #66
HDThoreaun wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Most gamblers are casuals. I spend $5-10 a week during football and usually am down like $10 at the end of the year An annual cap of $500 on bets per social security number seems reasonable. At the very least, 10% of state's median income (a whopping $4,222 nationally [1]). [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N

I don't gamble outside of a few small wagers during March Madness. Having said that, I have a viscerally negative reaction to your proposal. It feels paternalistic to the point of near Puritanism. I don't want a laissez-faire free-for-all out there, I'm not saying "everything is fine as-is", but a government capped limit on how you waste your own money when the terms and odds are clearly communicated (unlike traditional scams, for instance)? I'll pass on that, and I'm confident I'm more of a "big government" proponent than most commenters in this community.

At a minimum I do think the government should limit advertising and crack down on incentives these sites gives to keep people hooked.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#244

Post by troyvit »

idontwantthis wrote: post #187
stonogo wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't give up. You just need more investors to spread the risk :)

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#245

Post by NickC25 »

LargeWu wrote: post #180
NickC25 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't being educated. Outside of Stamford and the Ivies, I'd wager that most players, especially in football, are taking easy classes (and in some cases having tests taken for them) and even then, things are quite easy for them. They aren't taking physics, economics, etc.. that actually prepare students for the real world. There's not enough time for that. I saw it for myself at a big D1 football program. You t…

Elite football and basketball athletes at major programs are tiny, tiny minority of all student athletes in this country. I went to a decent regional state school (DII at the time) and I had advanced economics and math classes with a number of athletes, including football players. It's just not correct to generalize from the programs that are NFL feeder programs.

Fair, but NFL feeder programs are not educating their athletes, including a number of athletes who will not make the NFL or NBA. They are getting little to no education and have no shot at turning pro.

Worse yet, the chase for more and more football money has screwed over regional conferences, which harms the run-of-the-mill student athlete in non-revenue sports (think track, swimming, tennis, etc) who has no pro aspirations. Why the hell is Stamford, a school on the west coast, in the Atlantic Coast Conference?

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#246

Post by CyberDildonics »

rjbwork wrote: post #130
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,…

>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? Or get assaulted or murdered, internet death pool style? All kinds of really fucked up incentives are created by these legalized betting apps.

Do you think that might be a little extreme? Where is a legal betting app allowing people to bet on that?

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#247

Post by makeitdouble »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #246
rjbwork wrote: post #130

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? Or get assaulted or murdered, internet death pool style? All kinds of really fucked up incentives are created by these legalized betting apps.

Do you think that might be a little extreme? Where is a legal betting app allowing people to bet on that?

At some point there is enough money triggered for a specific outcome of the game.

If hurting someone credibly increases the odds, it's not if but when will people cross the line.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#248

Post by CyberDildonics »

makeitdouble wrote: post #247
CyberDildonics wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that might be a little extreme? Where is a legal betting app allowing people to bet on that?

At some point there is enough money triggered for a specific outcome of the game. If hurting someone credibly increases the odds, it's not if but when will people cross the line.

"Revenue in the Online Gambling market is projected to reach US$97.15bn in 2024"

https://www.statista.com/outlook/amo/online-gambling/worldwi...

There is already $97 billion USD/year. Where is the evidence for what you're saying?

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#249

Post by troyvit »

I got out of ad-tech partially because our company was promoting some of the worst sports betting apps on the web. We knew how bad it was, but we had to make numbers, so everybody just pretended we weren't screwing up peoples' lives by using addictive algorithms to promote addictive products.

A lot of other comments are along similar lines, talking about how bad sports betting is. I agree with all that, but what I like is that pro bettors are using the same algorithms to make bank off of these predators. Maybe it'll create an arms race between gambling apps and professional gamblers, but I still hope that enough people follow this behavior and eventually break the model that gambling apps are using.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#250

Post by mrguyorama »

htrp wrote: post #70

> Simulating addictive behavior, says Peabody, is an effective way to get online sportsbooks to send you bonus money and keep your accounts open. This isn’t necessarily because operators are targeting problem bettors, he says; they’re simply looking to identify and encourage customers who are likely to spend—and lose—the most. This just happens to be a good way to find and enable addicts, too. ML run amuck

It's not ML run amuck, casinos and bookies targeted addicts since the beginning of time. This is using ML as legal cover. "We aren't targeting addicts, it's just that the magical math black box that we completely control and trained just so happens to make addicts spend more money"
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