Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts • Hacker News Board

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#281

Post by JohnMakin » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 2:40 AM UTC

snapcaster wrote: post #240

JohnMakin wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you mean prohibition never works? Are you really going to claim legalizing sports betting a few years ago DIDNT increase gambling in the US? This doesn't strike me as a good faith comment just a platitude

> What do you mean prohibition never works?

exactly how it reads? can you point to any historical examples where it has?

> Are you really going to claim legalizing sports betting a few years ago DIDNT increase gambling in the US

No? Did not claim that at all?

> This doesn't strike me as a good faith comment

yours does strike me that way either; although mine definitely was in good faith.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#282

Post by vintermann » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 5:00 AM UTC

billti wrote: post #166

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.

I lived in Australia for quite a while. It's a terrible example of what can happen. There was recently a very good BBC article on it and the connection between sports, gambling, and marketing: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2yg3k82y0o Similar to many other toxic things, once the genie is out of the bottle and the government gets used to the revenue it generates, there is a large disincentive to tackling the prob…

For the government, it probably doesn't generate net revenue, because the government has to pick up a lot of the bill for gambling problems. Lobbying corruption, though, is another matter.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#283

Post by arder » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 11:04 AM UTC

alphazard wrote: post #214

Clearly the problem in all of this is that these markets are rigged. Imagine if the most knowledgeable investors were banned from trading stocks, or had artificially low bankrolls. It wouldn't be practical for individuals to invest in the market because everyone would assume they were getting ripped off, and the price was totally separated from the value of the business. The fact that the most successful investors ha…

The difference between a betting company the stock market is that in the stock market you have regulation to separate the exchange from the market maker. So in the stock market you go to the exchange, you buy or sell at the market price (or place an offer in the book) the exchange takes a commission but you're trading with a 3rd party. In the gambling world that generally doesn't happen, the exchange and the market maker generally are the same person - and there's good reason for that, if you can do it it's a better business model.

But either way, the same effect occurs. The sharks in the stock market profit from making good trades and in order to account for that the market makers have to quote a wider spread in the book, which effectively means the retail trader pays a larger spread. The net effect is money transfer from the retail trader to the smart trader. Would it be better for the market maker to just refuse to trade with the smart trader and then give the retail investor a better spread? Welcome to payment for order flow. Could a smart investor pretend to be a retail trader and get some good trades through Robinhood? Maybe, that's pretty analagous to what these guys are doing.

These are different mechanisms for the same thing but I'm not certain one is clearly morally superior.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#284

Post by chgs » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 11:36 AM UTC

glitcher wrote: post #108

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…

Similarly as Lewis Black likes to point out, we're one of only 2 countries that advertises drugs to ourselves.

Ibuprofen, paracetamol etc is advertised in the uk.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#285

Post by chgs » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 11:41 AM 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…

> But the way that advertising has its tentacles in our culture now... it's bad.

Yes. But half of HN works in the advertising industry.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#286

Post by baobabKoodaa » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 12:30 PM UTC

dawatchusay wrote: post #268

I just don’t understand how this kind of thing can be legal. How can you say “I’m running a gambling game, and if you’re not that good at it you can bet as much as you want and lose as much as you want, but if you are good, you’re not allowed to bet more than would hurt my bottom line.” I don’t understand how you can have different rules for different customers like this

Well, if you didn't have those rules, you wouldn't be running a gambling game for very long, because you would soon lose all your money to the pro bettors. So those rules exist by necessity.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#287

Post by burnished » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 1:46 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…

Holy hell you stepped on a nerve. I appreciate the perspective though, I've attended sportsball matches with friends and a couple bucks on the outcome would likely have made it more engaging.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#288

Post by grecy » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 3:03 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?

You should look at how other countries do professional sports.

The teams are not franchises, they can not simply "buy" whatever players they want, etc.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#289

Post by itsoktocry » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 3:45 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.

There's a big difference between betting on sports (zero sum) and buying stocks (ownership in a company), even if the latter can be silly at times.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#290

Post by Clubber » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 3:57 PM UTC

everforward wrote: post #168

umvi wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And, in the end, prohibition never works - bookies still and always will exist. I don't think that's exactly true. Laws introduce varying degrees of friction for citizens to do something. It's like entrepreneurship. If there are a bunch of laws in place making it hard to start a business, fewer people will start businesses. Some people will still create illegal businesses on the black market, but lots of law abidin…

That fails to acknowledge that a) the black market tends to be dramatically less safe b) it drives addicts underground where it's hard to identify and help them and c) the addicts this is meant to help will be disproportionately willing to participate in this new, much worse black market. Bookies scale very well, a small number of them could serve whatever clientele is still interested. It'll probably turn out simila…

>b) it drives addicts underground where it's hard to identify and help them

I'm not sure about B, it's pretty easy to identify an addict.

The problem I have with sports gambling is the massive commercialization and advertising. We don't tolerate it for cigarettes, and gambling addictions are much worse than cigarette addictions in terms of financial harm.

Gamblers know where to go, but the purpose of all the advertising is attract new gamblers, preferably the compulsive kind.

Another harm is what it does to the integrity of sports. There are famous cases like the 1919 White Sox and Pete Rose. The people who took part were banned for life for a reason.