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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

#291

Post by mindracer »

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,…

The BBC have a podcast called Sports Strangest Crimes. The most recent series was about Moses Sawbu who was match fixing in the lower leagues. Worth listening to it

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0jv3zvy

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#292

Post by gcanyon »

achierius wrote: post #278
gcanyon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not claiming revenue must be even. And I’m assuming that the five customers actually benefitted from your company’s work? If so, then they’re not really comparable to gambling addicts, alcoholics, and gun fanatics, right? We already (poorly) enforce (weak) laws requiring casinos not to prey on addicts. We already (poorly) enforce (weak) laws requiring bars not to over-serve and alcoholics to get treatment sometim…

Kinda weird to shoehorn in the last one, isn't it? People who own four guns aren't ruining their lives any more than someone who owns four laptops is. So long as they're not using them to commit crimes it's basically just a hobby, and the sort of person who needs a shed to store AR-15 accessories is actually going to be significantly less likely to misuse it than someone with only one or two guns.

I’ve read articles that (drawing from memory) say that 10% of drinkers are responsible for 90% of all alcohol consumed in the U.S. I haven’t read articles on it, but I assume gambling and gun ownership are similar.

I know people who:

1. Live remotely 2. Have (estimating, they’d never tell anyone the real number) over fifty guns.

Largely because they are convinced the big one is coming. The guns + ammo might be $50k of money spent?

Certainly it’s not as problematic as alcoholism or gambling addiction, but it’s not nothing. And I’m not blaming them, I’m blaming any gun manufacturer that depends on them for profitability.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#293

Post by gcanyon »

inkcapmushroom wrote: post #257
gcanyon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not claiming revenue must be even. And I’m assuming that the five customers actually benefitted from your company’s work? If so, then they’re not really comparable to gambling addicts, alcoholics, and gun fanatics, right? We already (poorly) enforce (weak) laws requiring casinos not to prey on addicts. We already (poorly) enforce (weak) laws requiring bars not to over-serve and alcoholics to get treatment sometim…

I don't get how gun fanatics fit into these other groups.

I’m not categorizing addicts, I’m categorizing the companies that prey on people who purchase vast quantities of their product against their own interests.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#294

Post by feoren »

itsoktocry wrote: post #289
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.

The gambling addicts who get their fix from the stock market are mostly not buying stocks. They're mostly buying puts and calls, which are much closer to bets (you win big or you lose it all), and much closer to zero-sum (either you or the guy you bought it from loses). If they are just buying straight stocks, it's either a meme stock like GME or multiple-leveraged.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#295

Post by not2b »

scrivna wrote: post #274
not2b wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretend to be 1,000 people, and each sock puppet bets $10k.

Who’s taking the other side of the bet though? No smart bookie will dig themselves in such a hole, it would obviously be fraud and they’d stop accepting bets

One of the massive platforms, like DraftKings. They won't even notice. The point of all this is the effect of making sports betting legal.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#296

Post by mass_and_energy »

qb1 wrote: post #242
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?

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

A predicate action must be taken in order for this to stick. However, this can be literally anything to move down the proposed path of conspiracy. So if you made the plan then downloaded the app, that's criminal conspiracy

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#297

Post by cat12 »

ktc1 wrote: post #232
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…

Could you not just bet with the Asian bookmakers? (sbo, pinnacle, ibc etc.)

Pinnacle (not sure it's 'Asian', I believe their main offices are in Toronto) takes a lot of action on major markets. For smaller markets such as player props, Pinnacle takes very little. If you were confident in beating major markets, such as EPL or NFL, Pinnacle will very regularly take $50k a click, with rebets possible. However, if you're betting major markets, even the 'softer' books such as DraftKings would probably be willing to take a lot as well.

The soft books usually kick out or limit players if they are beating smaller markets such as player props, team props, derivatives (for example, a 1Q team total, etc). A 'sharp' book such as Circa or Pinnacle might not explicitly limit an individual player, but in general they don't offer as many markets, so it's not an apples to apples comparison.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#298

Post by cat12 »

blitzar wrote: post #37
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…

My betfair commission was heavily discounted back in the day, but that was only on volumes of ~£50,000 a day, and a fair bit more on weekends. Nevertheless their commissions were outrageously high, but the scale of the liquidity they had available was amazing.

~£50,000 a day in trading volume, that's a lot! What markets were you trading on?

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#299

Post by cat12 »

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…

How were you compensated? You mention 'shops', so I'm guessing this was in the UK?

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#300

Post by paipa »

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…

I thought the point of bet exchanges was that you're betting against other users, so the exchange doesn't have to care how good you are or how much you're betting. Why would they add friction for high rollers? Old bookmaker habits, or they're more than just a platform provider and are participating in the markets?
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