Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts • Hacker News Board

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#221

Post by BobaFloutist » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 12:58 AM UTC

some_random wrote: post #169

tomcam wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now apply that same kind of thinking to legalized prostitution and human trafficking.

That's a really bad example because prostitution by itself is victimless crime. In fact, it's perfectly legal when money doesn't change hands! With gambling you have a winner and a loser, so all the other issues end up downstream necessarily whereas human trafficking (and other issues with sex work) is an enabling tool for criminals running prostitution operations.

The weirdest thing is that (paid) prostitution is completely legal as long as there's a camera involved and you distribute the recording.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#222

Post by aseipp » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 1:16 AM UTC

caeril wrote: post #192

dehugger wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you loathe sports that much why are you forcing yourself to watch them? "Fitting into absurdist normie culture" is ludicrous. Are you not capable of making friends without drunkenly feigning interest in their hobbies?

Short answer: No, I'm not. People are generally extremely intolerant of others who deviate slightly from the norm. Having friends is a fun fantasy, though.

I don't watch sports and have plenty of friends. This sounds firmly like a you problem, I'm afraid.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#223

Post by vehemenz » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 1:46 AM UTC

jogjayr wrote: post #179

LargeWu wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but many of them are getting a free or discounted education. Is that not something of value?

It's non-zero value, but we can't say it's the market-clearing price for their services. And anecdotally the quality of that education is compromised. Student-athletes in the serious football and basketball programs spend a lot of their time at practice. During the season, travel to away games eats up much of their free time. They're "encouraged" to take only easy courses. There are reports of grading corruption so t…

They still get admission to a university with lowered standards and a credential at the end of the day. A lot of these scholarship athletes aren't college material and wouldn't get in otherwise. There's some value there.

It's kind of like rich kids who are bad students paying for admission into elite schools. Obviously there's value, otherwise they wouldn't have their parents pay for it.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#224

Post by Terr_ » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 1:47 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…

Policy towards pathological gambling, along with drugs, is an interesting and deep philosophical hole: To what extent do those things represent a kind of biochemical slavery, and if one cares about freedom/autonomy, should that mean letting people enslave themselves, or does it mean blocking them in the name of more freedom/autonomy overall?

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#225

Post by Vegemeister » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 2:00 AM 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…

Keeping the average citizen away is a dramatic improvement. The pre-legalized-gambling era is in living memory, and we know what it was like.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#226

Post by jogjayr » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 3:35 AM UTC

vehemenz wrote: post #223

jogjayr wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's non-zero value, but we can't say it's the market-clearing price for their services. And anecdotally the quality of that education is compromised. Student-athletes in the serious football and basketball programs spend a lot of their time at practice. During the season, travel to away games eats up much of their free time. They're "encouraged" to take only easy courses. There are reports of grading corruption so t…

They still get admission to a university with lowered standards and a credential at the end of the day. A lot of these scholarship athletes aren't college material and wouldn't get in otherwise. There's some value there. It's kind of like rich kids who are bad students paying for admission into elite schools. Obviously there's value, otherwise they wouldn't have their parents pay for it.

Like I said it's non-zero value. But is it more value than a fair wage, negotiated without artificial restrictions? Why can't they grant the athletes admission and give them the option of either studying tuition-free, or pay tuition but earn a salary for playing?

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#227

Post by hi-v-rocknroll » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 4:05 AM UTC

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

That would be totalitarian and goes against how open societies work. So not banned, but constrained to sensible limits. Speculative investment markets should also be limited because they are also non-value-add activities.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#228

Post by FireBeyond » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 4:27 AM UTC

henryfjordan wrote: post #208

bodhiandphysics wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Get off the Strip. In Fremont you can play $10 tables. Most casinos even on the Strip you can play $25 (not saying this is good) but the $50-100 minimums are usually reserved for Friday and Saturday nights.

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#229

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 4:40 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…

[deleted]

Re: Pro bettors disguising themselves as gambling addicts

#230

Post by im3w1l » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 6:16 AM UTC

victorbjorklund wrote: post #36

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Casino's can't survive off casual players. They need the addicts to make payroll. The fact that the pros are simulating problem players because then the betting apps give you more leeway, e.g. by "send[ing] you bonus money" and raising your limits, paints the picture quite effectively in my book. > Casino's can't survive off casual players. They need the addicts to make payroll To what degree is this true? Sure, a…

The aqusition costs are extremly high for online betting and online casinos. If you pay 1000 usd to aquire one customer it is not profitable if they gamble 50 usd / year.

Acquisition cost is basically an auction. Different casinos try to outspend each other on advertising. If the lifetime value of an average customer trends down then the acquisition costs will come down too.