If a casino or sportsbook allow unlimited losers, they shouldn’t be able to cut off winners. Conversely, if they cut off winners, they should be required to reimburse loses above a statutory limit.
In a healthy economy “Tails I win, heads you lose” businesses should not be allowed to succeed.
scoofy · 9h ago
Gambling should not be trivially easy to participate in. That's the real problem.
If we're pretending it's entertainment, then it shouldn't matter that winners get shut down... because it's just supposed to be fun. If we're not pretending it's entertainment, then we need to deal with the fact that it's a huge negative payoff vice we shouldn't be allowing to happen easily (make it legal and rare).
The idea that we're trying to create "fairness" in a business that basically wouldn't exist if the operators don't have a guarantee of success is ridiculous. We can either require sports betting agencies to have betting lines that require their bets be balanced or we can basically ban them from becoming a large industry.
kelnos · 6h ago
I personally think of gambling as entertainment, but that's a luxury of mine, as I don't have a gambling problem. On the (infrequent) occasions I gamble, I pre-set a limit and never spend/lose more than that. If it's gone, I'm done. Every now and then I lose that money so quickly that it's not fun, but that happens so rarely that I generally feel like I've enjoyed myself and have paid an appropriate amount for that enjoyment.
Paying for entertainment is a normal activity. People do it every day. But gambling feels different: you can pay a nearly unlimited amount for it. There are usually limits in other forms of entertainment. I can only see so many movies in a theater in a day. I can only go to so many concerts. The number of board games I can buy is limited by the storage space in my house.
I'm sure there are exceptions in some types of entertainment I haven't thought of, though.
incangold · 3h ago
Another example of “entertainment” with scope for unconstrained spending: digital goods in the less scrupulous kinds of video games
jplrssn · 13h ago
Insurance companies are supposed to operate in this way, but some are happy to take your money as long as they believe they can profit and only start enforcing policy violations etc once you've become a net liability.
gruez · 11h ago
>and only start enforcing policy violations etc once you've become a net liability.
No, they'll just hike premiums or refuse to insure you.
skippyboxedhero · 12h ago
That isn't what is happening.
Earlier this year, sportsbooks lost a lot due to punter-friendly outcomes (a series of favourites winning), and they didn't cut people off. Doing this is extremely bad for business because: people won't come back, and you aren't giving customers the opportunity to lose that money back to you.
So what you are seeing when people are limited is not this but arbing line moves between bookmakers, people bearding for someone else, etc.
One of the articles mentions stuff relating to player behaviour - for example, if you bet on Australian Rules Football, you bet every game for multiple weeks then it doesn't matter if you win or lose, there is going to be a limit - there is a grey area, but the majority of people being limited don't fall into this category. They are just people doing stupid stuff (I have done this, I used to arb line moves 20 years ago in the UK, I have been banned everywhere, it is stupid and I should have been banned).
beambot · 9h ago
Why should arbing line moves between bookies be stupid or banned?
This is what market makers doing 24/7 on public stock markets. This is what creates "efficient markets".
nly · 9h ago
Yeah, I got gubbed everywhere in the UK as well.
When Betfair first came on to the scenes the traditional online (and offline) bookmakers were like fish in a barrel for arb bets.
I still remember when the first major bookmaker (pretty sure it was BetVictor) started tracking Betfair markets automatically. Now they all do it.
1970-01-01 · 13h ago
We're just doing it wrong with all-cash betting. We need to change the game to include goods. Don't like your shirt? Go bet it at the casino. If you lose, the casino takes it and goes to sell it at auction. If you win, you get some cash to go buy and own a new shirt.
parpfish · 13h ago
If you bet your shirt, you should only be allowed to win other shirts. Or maybe a matching pair of pants.
SketchySeaBeast · 12h ago
I feel like you've just invented extremely unwieldy chips.
Kinrany · 7h ago
That's not a problem, we'll just replace shirts with special wooden tokens of the same color
rightbyte · 13h ago
Ye well there is room for improvements.
I have done sports betting like three times, when I realized the odds were bonkers, and retrieving the money after winning was an extreme hazzle that took weeks with photocopies of passports and gas bills and what not. Paying the bets took a minute.
I mean, online betting is a shady business. Physical casinos at least have some sort of brick wall to bang your head against.
gruez · 11h ago
>and retrieving the money after winning was an extreme hazzle that took weeks with photocopies of passports and gas bills and what not. Paying the bets took a minute.
Blame the AML/KYC/income tax regulatory regime. Placing a bet doesn't require KYC any more than spending $10k at a club doesn't require KYC. However once the casino needs to disburse money Uncle Sam suddenly wants his cut and to make sure it doesn't go to Bad People.
rightbyte · 1h ago
It is not really KYC though since we didn't meet or even talk or chat?
PaulHoule · 13h ago
Was watching the Kentucky Derby at a party, thought it might be a hoot to bet the favorite to show [1] on my phone but I didn’t quite do it. I would have won but it could have been a hassle to get paid.
[1] A heuristic to minimize your losses, because favorites are underbet, if you have minimal information
dist-epoch · 13h ago
> retrieving the money after winning was an extreme hazzle that took weeks
that has nothing to do with sports betting. it's the same with trading stocks/forex/..., it's KYC/AML
paxys · 13h ago
Yup I have used these apps, and it takes 10 seconds to deposit and withdraw money. They have every incentive to make it as seamless as possible, otherwise they aren't going to get repeat customers.
thrance · 5h ago
> In a healthy economy “Tails I win, heads you lose” businesses should not be allowed to succeed.
That's every gambling place/app, should they all be made illegal? Not that I'm disagreeing...
armchairhacker · 5h ago
Polymarket seems OK (or at least unethical for a different reason): the prize pool is entirely from the gamblers’ money, and evenly distributed to the winners.
I don’t think Polymarket does this, but I also think it would be OK if the casino takes a cut of the prize pool, as long as it ensures that winners never receive less than they bet. For example, the casino may receive $losers/n (they pick n, $losers = total bets of losers), and winners receive $bet($losers(n - 1)/n + $winners)/$winners, $winners = total bets of winners, $bet = their bet).
Then it’s “tails = I win you
lose, heads = we both win someone else loses, except nobody wins if everyone gets heads but that’s extremely unlikely (especially with more than 2 options)”.
david422 · 13h ago
I don't disagree - but also realize that the other option is not to play.
gaze · 13h ago
This is such an old moral argument. Do you think society should protect people from the nearly unlimited downside inherent to having bugs in human behavior exploited or do you think that doing this is wrong and that it's in fact immoral to stop people from being punished by their own bad decisions, because that's what they deserve.
singleshot_ · 13h ago
I think society should protect me (degree in mathematics, non-gambler) from harm caused by betting companies in the form of increased bankruptcy filings for problem gamblers.
I think it’s immoral to allow their bad decisions to raise costs for those of us who do not care who wins the Big Game.
kelnos · 6h ago
In reality, though, it will end up being cheaper for society (and therefore cheaper for you) to just protect people from being exploited by others who know who to manipulate the human psyche.
There's a vague parallel with the homelessness problem in my city: I would rather my tax dollars go toward giving people stable housing for free (along with job placement, drug addiction treatment, etc.), because any other use of that money (clearing out tent encampments, jailing addicts, etc.) doesn't actually fix the problem, and ultimately costs more in the long run. (And meanwhile, the city is dirty and I feel less safe walking around in it.)
Sure, giving someone housing for free isn't "fair" to all the people who work hard to pay their rent or mortgage, but sometimes fairness doesn't give us (all of us, not just the people involved) the best outcomes. And it may not be "fair" to limit what businesses are allowed to "sell" to consenting adults, but I am willing to accept that some businesses will not be as profitable if it means society is healthier.
gaze · 6h ago
Fairness is the word people use but what I think they’re alluding to is adherence to some natural order of things, and that this itself is the measure of a healthy society. That might be the divine right of kings or it may be the order established by the invisible hand of the market. These arguments never go anywhere because it’s just an axiomatically different moral framework.
JKCalhoun · 13h ago
If someone goes into it eyes wide open, sure let them hand over the paycheck meant to buy new clothes for their kids. (Or not?)
When, as has been pointed out in this thread, people are instead being deceived and told the playing field is level, yeah, no we should not allow that.
personjerry · 13h ago
To play devil's advocate, why do you get to decide what's a "bug in human behavior"? If they're happy about it... ?
kelnos · 6h ago
We don't get to decide individually, but we as a society get to decide, via our (hopefully representative) governments.
This kind of argument is not particularly interesting; the entire point of a discussion board is for everyone to post and discuss their opinions, which will naturally differ sometimes. Asking what amounts to, "why are you allowed to have that opinion?" is pretty pointless.
Teever · 12h ago
This sounds like a productive path to take the conversation but it isn't.
Let's demonstrate that by just jumping to the end of this reasoning -- severely mentally retarded adults -- can they consent to sex? Why or why not?
aquariusDue · 12h ago
Is water addicting? /s
We can endlessly debate morality, ethics and all that regarding lots of things, but in my humble opinion gambling could be reduced to:
"Would people still engage in those games of chance if there was no monetary aspect to it?"
And then how many of those people who would still engage with them are "notorious" gamblers on whom those games had a clear negative impact (in most people's eyes).
Kinrany · 6h ago
This is easy to legislate at least: casinos must use play money that no one is allowed to exchange back for real money.
mlinhares · 13h ago
That doesn't work for vices in general, there has to be an externally imposed limit.
paxys · 13h ago
Over the last few years watching sports (in the USA at least) has been unbearable. Every other ad is for gambling apps. Broadcasters show live betting odds on TV alongside the game. Announcers and analysts are constantly talking about their favorite parlays. All athletes have endorsement deals with bookmakers and encourage young fans to participate. Sports leagues themselves have close partnerships with the largest gambling companies.
And who ensures everything is happening above board and there is no fixing? Don't worry, self regulation works.
skippyboxedhero · 12h ago
There was match fixing in the US before legalization. In fact, the US is one of the only places where you have had major sports events being fixed due to gambling, despite gambling being legal in many other places.
One of the greatest incentives to stop match fixing comes from having regulated operators who will report unusual betting behaviour. For example, the massive problems with match-fixing in low-ranked tennis has been tackled by bookmakers.
There is an issue with advertising but that is unrelated to the match-fixing one. The latter is one of the absolute oldest lobbying lines the Republicans used when they were getting all their money from Adelson (it was accompanied with some mad intellectual gymnastics about how sports betting at casinos was also magically unaffected by this, same with underage gambling).
zem · 13h ago
the fact that having your game constantly interrupted by ads didn't in and of itself make watching sports unbearable just shows how bad the downward pressure on what is considered acceptable is. gambling ads will probably become the new normal in a couple of years.
MrMember · 8h ago
I'm in favor of legal sports betting but there needs to a serious crackdown on advertising during events and league partnerships. The UFC has an official sportsbook partner. In the UK a book sponsors the second tier of soccer. It's out of control.
I would guess this is not true for betting exchanges where backers and layers are directly connected to eachother and the exchange takes a small cut of every transaction regardless of which side wins or loses. I wouldn’t have thought it would matter to them if you were a consistent winner because your repeat business helps to provide liquidity to the exchange.
cameldrv · 11h ago
Regular sportsbooks (i.e. non-exchange, they're making the market) don't necessarily want the "liquidity." At least many years ago when I was doing this professionally, there were "sharp books" and "square books."
The sharp books more or less operated the way you're describing. They would try to set the line as close to the true odds as possible. They knew who the sharp bettors were, and they may have limited their bets to some degree, but they would take them and adjust the lines accordingly. You have to be a very good bookmaker for this strategy to work, because every line that's a little bit off is going to get pounced on for the max bet.
The square books' strategy was to keep the sharp bettors out by limiting their bets severely or kicking them out entirely. This also lets them set the lines in a way that makes them more money, because there are a number of biases recreational bettors tend to be subject to. In particular, they tend to overbet on favorites, and they tend to underappreciate the home team advantage. There's also an effect where people will tend to bet on their favorite team, and so teams from large markets get more bets than teams from small markets. By moving the line a few percent one way, they can make significantly more money on average.
skippyboxedhero · 12h ago
This is how Asian books work, they move prices early, and make it back on volume (this is not a wholly geographical designation, Pinnacle Sports is also an Asian book but operates in the Caribbean...iirc).
The problem in the US is that it is a highly competitive market so you have to acquire your customer base every weekend, and these customers don't actually care so much about prices. So having weaker prices is a more effective way to deliver the product. In addition, US gamblers like parlays, parlays are more profitable, have lower volume per bet, and (so far) the economics of the Asian book don't work for this market (i.e. get syndicates to bet your lines early).
joezydeco · 13h ago
I thought the same thing, and that's typically how pari-mutuel betting works (horsetracks, Jai-Alai, etc).
But if some whale comes in and wants to drop a large bet, I suppose the house doesn't want to sit around and wait for the same amount of action on the other side before they take the bet or the game starts. And now they're exposed if the whale wins.
No comments yet
dist-epoch · 13h ago
This might come as a surprise to you, but the more volume you trade, the higher commission you pay (in percentage terms) on sports betting exchanges.
BetFair calls it the Expert Fee :))
If you make more than $100k profit, you pay 40% extra Expert Tax on it :)
In a physical betting space, usually located in casinos, I can also get free drinks. There’s also other stuff to do and it requires actual physical effort to be there and bet all the time.
Online sports betting is a mug’s game.
I made a few hundred dollars and have quit for a couple of years now once I learnt that they can kick you out for doing too well.
parpfish · 7h ago
I can see some benefits to in-person sports betting.
Putting money on a game you don’t care about can make it exciting.
Getting a bunch of people watching a game together with money on it is a way to drum up a crowd of enthusiastic temporary fans for any game, which might lead to a fun high energy atmosphere.
The problem is that the crowd will likely have divided rooting interests and things could get… confrontational
devonsolomon · 13h ago
I had deep-access to this industry in a past career - the way online sportbooks talk about their customers in private is all you need to know to know that this isn’t business, it’s predation.
Akasazh · 12h ago
Care to share stories?
blinded · 13h ago
Hard agree. Would never work for a gambling or gambling adjacent company.
parpfish · 13h ago
Too many people are willing to do sketchy stuff if you can frame it as solving fun math/ML problems, and I have to admit that a sports gambling company would have a lot of fun data to play with.
But too often the ability to turn everything into a math problem lets you easily abstract away the reality of what you’re doing
jeffbee · 13h ago
But would you invest in one? The VC firm for which this orange site is the public mouthpiece has backed lots of them.
blinded · 10h ago
Nope. Not directly.
paulbjensen · 13h ago
I recently read about a story in my local newspaper (Colchester UK) about someone who stole £13,000 from his girlfriend's phone via her banking app so that he could fund his gambling addiction. He was found guilty of theft and sent to prison.
I wonder if there is any merit in building an app that helps gambling addicts by letting them play the same games that they would play on their phones, with a few caveats:
1 - It's all virtual money, just like a demo account on a stock trading service where you can test it out without real money being involved. You don't use real money, and the app is free to download and play. The goal isn't to make money from the app, it's to help treat gambling addiction.
2 - Where the games would tempt you to place another bet and say "better luck next time?" or "so close" and tempt the player to make another bet, this game would do something different:
- When a player loses on their go, it would say "if you'd staked real money, that would have cost you £2 etc".
- It would also remind you of the total balance, and say "if you'd played for real, then you would be down £200 tonight, but because you played this game instead, you've saved yourself £200."
- When a player wins on their go, it would say "congratulations on winning, that was your first win in the previous 6 go's".
The idea is to change the cognitive behaviour of the player so that a) they get to play a game that they enjoy playing and find addictive to play, but crucially b) they don't lose any money, and because they are shown the reality of what gambling is like from an accounting perspective, their cognitive association with gambling is changed.
It's better to play a fun game for free then to play a game that drains you of all your money.
How is that idea. Good, bad?
pjc50 · 13h ago
Such things exist, but for the gambler the crucial thing is the possibility of winning real money. Also apps that don't make money don't pay for advertising themselves.
(Compare vs gatcha, which doesn't allow you to cash out. Predictably there's also gatcha simulators if you just want to roll for things meaninglessly)
sokoloff · 13h ago
For a while, advertising for-money online poker was not legal in some jurisdictions. So “ParadisePoker.com” (a real money site) couldn’t advertise.
Free-to-play/play money site paradisepoker.net however somehow found the money to advertise extensively. It was a real mystery…
PaulHoule · 13h ago
… when I got a real smartphone I wanted to try Fate/Grand Order because I was a fan of the fanart but when I saw the summon screen it used the same visual language as slot machines and I lost interest.
plorkyeran · 11h ago
The only thing worse than gacha slop is games which manage to be pretty good in spite of being gacha.
kelnos · 6h ago
That assumes that the addiction is to the game itself, and not to the hope of winning real money. If you take the real money out of it, I expect many people with a gambling problem just won't be interested.
whoisyc · 10h ago
While I am generally against gambling and would like to see more social and legislative action against it, I would advise against forming opinions based on news pieces like the one you mentioned in the beginning of your post, because news has a bias towards reporting only the most extreme events without giving you the full picture of how prevalent (or not) they actually are.
If anything news is like a mirror image of gambling. People vastly overestimate how likely they will hit a jackpot the same way they vastly overestimate how likely they will die in a plane crash.
HK-NC · 13h ago
Some people just want to piss their money away. I know people that spend hundreds, thousands even on opening magic boxes in games which have "rare" items in them, the games dont even have a marketplace to make the money back.
dole · 13h ago
Virtual money doesn't mean anything, gamblers will bet the max knowing they're not losing anything.
parpfish · 6h ago
What if the app had you drop some amount of your own money into an escrow account, and the. You get it back when you demonstrate “healthy” behavior?
paxys · 13h ago
Plenty of such apps exist. In fact before gambling was legal all apps had to use fake money. And no one used them. Unless you can replicate the rush that comes with winning real cash you aren't really providing an alternative.
mrandish · 9h ago
This has always been true of physical casinos as well. If you win over time, you'll be 'uninvited' - as demonstrated by how quickly casinos will ban anyone they think is card counting in blackjack (which isn't illegal or against to rules).
I guess I'm surprised anyone is surprised that casinos do this and always have. There has never been anything "fair" about a casino's relationship with players. Your only role in the relationship is to, on average over the long run, lose money. Their role is to take your money. A "sharp" player is anyone who consistently plays in a way that, on average over the long run, makes money, breaks even or minimizes your losses below the expected rate of return in the casino's financial model.
Any player who is not a sharp, is a 'valued customer' (aka 'playing like a consistently predictable loser'). Casinos have always been adept at spotting any players who behave in ways more like a sharp than a valued customer.
foogazi · 7h ago
Should be restricted to accredited bettors
Either complete a probation period to show proficiency or
demonstrate sufficient net worth
sharkweek · 13h ago
It has taken over the lexicon of most major sports to the point I can barely stand watching most of them now…
NFL broadcasts lean so heavily into betting odds, parlays, prop bets, everything… it’s so obnoxious hearing about X player hitting the over, only to go to a commercial offering some free money if you place a certain sized bet.
I really hope (but am not holding my breath given how much money is involved at this point) they ban sports betting advertising in the future.
gffrd · 13h ago
I’ll go further: I hope they ban sports betting altogether.
It was a mistake, and we should accept that.
lenerdenator · 13h ago
You can't ever truly ban it; there's always a guy who's willing to operate a racket. The question is, can you reduce the harms?
We went wayyyyy too permissive with sports betting by allowing it online. It should be something that you can do at a casino, but on your phone, at home, alone? That's just begging for serious harm to the addicted.
triceratops · 12h ago
They were talking about banning gambling advertisements, not gambling itself. Banning gambling is a terrible idea.
parpfish · 13h ago
It feels like gambling talk has largely replaced fantasy team talk on most broadcasts, and I wonder what role fantasy sports* played in all of this.
Did fantasy sports have a causal role as a gateway that slowly normalized gambling, or were they just reflecting that there has always been a latent thirst for gambling and fantasy sports were the only socially acceptable way to scratch that itch?
* not talking about “daily fantasy” stuff which was just blatant gambling pretending to be fantasy sports to exploit a loophole
anthomtb · 13h ago
In the pre-online sports betting days, was there a legal way to bet on a game besides going to a casino and visiting the sports book? I remember newspapers publishing odds but still have no idea how people made wagers (other than physically visiting a casino).
pjc50 · 13h ago
UK used to do this via bookmakers, who ran either high street shops or at the race being bet on.
Yup those odds were for entertainment purposes only wink wink
lenerdenator · 13h ago
There's basically no redeeming value to online gambling.
When gambling was legalized in my area in 1990s it brought at least some working-class jobs and tax dollars. Now, those tax dollars were funded by people with an addiction, but they at least went somewhere local. And you can still go gambling occasionally and get a good meal and some drinks and maybe see a show. Worst comes to worst, at least in my state, you can sign an affidavit banning yourself from the casino floor.
Online gambling is just a Skinner box designed to take money out of severely addicted people's pockets. That's it. You can speed run racking up losses because the games are shorter and can be done faster. The sites operate out of jurisdictions that have loose regulations on the games. For all you know they could be making it not only unlikely, but impossible, to win.
Watch a few YouTube docs on a streamer named BossManJack if you want to see just how consuming it can get.
triceratops · 12h ago
I remain amazed that we managed to ban tobacco advertising but alcohol and gambling, also harmful and addictive vices, continue to be advertised.
Both have very little societal value, other than alcohol's traditional role as a lubricant of social interaction, and there's no reason to actively promote them.
FWIW I love alcohol. I don't gamble because I don't enjoy it, but I have nothing against gambling.
Wobbles42 · 12h ago
Tobacco because a trendy social cause. Alcohol did once too but that was 100 years ago or so.
triceratops · 10h ago
Prohibition banned alcohol not ads, a clearly terrible idea. And tobacco remains legal to sell and consume.
skippyboxedhero · 13h ago
There is redeeming value: it is fun and harmless for most of the population.
The same people that I have seen rage against other people gambling will also argue in favour of legalising drugs which are more addictive and can cause psychosis.
In addition, making it illegal does not stop actual addicts gambling. You can go offshore and get completely unregulated services, that comply with no regulators on harm prevention. The US was the largest sports betting market in the world when it was illegal in every state bar Nevada.
Also, online providers maintain lists of self-excluded people with state regulators (to be clear, the state holds the list, people put themselves on the list and are banned everywhere). Casinos are significantly less regulated in this area because, due to the nature of the product, is not possible to put in limitations to the product (for example, reality checks, loss limits, giving you access to data on your usage).
All regulated sites have third-party verification of their games by specialist testers and state regulators. Every change to every line of code that touches a regulated service is reported. It is not possible for operators to lose at casino games because of the scale, and you think they are willing to destroy it all to get your $10 faster?
The issue with online gambling is: some people cannot resist telling what other people (usually people poorer than them) what to do, and some people have not thought the alternatives through.
epolanski · 12h ago
I don't know, I see your point but I personally know few people addicted to gambling, the damage they do themselves and their families is the worst I've seen of any addiction, including drugs.
If a family father gets addicted to some drugs it's bad, but somewhat limited in impact, if it comes to gambling, those people ruin their families, very quickly.
skippyboxedhero · 12h ago
Most countries in the West have hordes of homeless people everywhere...is it the gambling?
Saying a drug addiction has a "somewhat limited" impact is delusional. Particularly as addiction is an inherent property of taking drugs, that is not the case for gambling.
epolanski · 12h ago
Maybe I wasn't clear, and please understand both my parents suffered of addictions.
If my father or mother got high or drunk every evening I did not. Terrible, pitiful, psychological nightmare, sure.
But I was not intoxicated.
On the other hand, I've seen the impacts of ludomania. When parents go broke or accumulate unpayable debts that's something you cannot recover with rehab and that will have insane implications for the whole family for decades.
I hope you understand now what I mean.
One of my best friends SO suffers of ludomania, a court has ordered his salary to be paid to her, and she gives him an 80€s monthly allowance. They got lucky, another family I know got completely ruined in the course of few weeks.
By the way, I'm polish/Italian, and we don't have hordes of homeless people, I don't think I've ever seen a single homeless person in my life in Poland.
sokoloff · 12h ago
> debts that will last generations
That’s something that should be banned.
Debts should die as part of settling the decedent’s estate. (The US got this right, and I thought most of the world did as well.)
skippyboxedhero · 12h ago
Okay...but they are still alive? Poland has tens of thousands drug and alcohol-induced deaths, you can lose your money doing anything: gambling, women, bad business, job loss, etc. Many, many more people will have lost all their money because of alcohol in Poland than gambling...you only care about one of these things. The only explanation is that you care about people losing money in ways you don't approve of.
epolanski · 12h ago
> The only explanation is that you care about people losing money in ways you don't approve of.
I don't see a way for this discussion to find a middle ground.
Ludomania is classified as a mental disorder and a very real illness.
I've seen it's effects along the effects of other addictions and my two cents is that it can be more devastating to people surrounding the addict than others.
Misery is misery regardless of the disorder, addiction or illness, we don't need to have a competition between it.
But it is very important to underline that gambling is not only increasingly legal but increasingly deregulated too.
rectang · 12h ago
Do you support any regulation of anything, or any laws for that matter?
ryoshoe · 12h ago
>Also, online providers maintain lists of self-excluded people with state regulators (to be clear, the state holds the list, people put themselves on the list and are banned everywhere).
There's and ongoing lawsuit alleging sports betting platforms sent promotions targeted to users on the exclusion list to encourage a relapse in their gambling addiction.
No, that lawsuit doesn't allege that, as the article explains. Self-exclusion lists are not maintained by gambling companies, so there is no way to market to them (and also, the lawsuit is being brought by a city...not an authority responsible for regulation). Just generally, there is no upside to doing this either. It makes literally zero sense if you apply rational thought.
What the lawsuit alleges is that at-risk users with promotions. This is undoubtedly true because people who have gambling addictions use gambling products and there is no way to identify someone with a gambling addiction prior to them using the product (contrary to what the article says, there is no way for companies to identify these users either, there are multiple third-party vendors in the industry who claim to have developed ML models to identify at-risk behaviour...none of them work).
The lawsuit does not identify whether these users opted-out of promotions (every regulated provider has this option...if you don't want these promos, just turn them off). And does not identify what aspect of existing regulation is insufficient (as I just explained, if you are a gambling addict, you have the option of being unable to open an account at any regulated provider).
In other words, this is the equivalent of Baltimore suing Budweiser because alcoholics drink their beer. It misunderstands at a very fundamental level how society should operate and tells you everything about US society where companies are expected to have a social role (and btw, what is most odd about this is that MD has a state gambling regulator, Baltimore is complaining about things that government already has the power to fix...I suspect the issue is that this revenue source is not being distributed their way, govt officials need to eat too).
gruez · 12h ago
>There's and ongoing lawsuit alleging sports betting platforms sent promotions targeted to users on the exclusion list to encourage a relapse in their gambling addiction.
Your linked article doesn't say anything about that claim?
EnPissant · 12h ago
If you knew for a fact that gambling was a significant net negative to society (ie, even when you take into account illicit gambling etc), would you support its ban?
sokoloff · 12h ago
I believe that alcohol and tobacco are significant net negatives to society.
Yet, I do not support a ban on alcohol and I suspect that an outright ban on tobacco would be worse than simply having high taxes on it.
Sports betting is probably closest to alcohol in this regard: lots of people get moderate enjoyment from it from time to time and some people have their lives significantly harmed or even ended, meaning the overall net is negative, even though many people experience a small positive.
I wouldn’t ban sports betting for the same reason I wouldn’t take away your glass of red wine with dinner.
coolestguy · 12h ago
There are a lot of things that are a net negative to society but since we're not slaves, we're allowed to do things that can be fun but -ev if we choose to
EnPissant · 12h ago
Are you opposed to any or all of the following things?
- Seat belt laws
- Prescription requirements for drugs (whether that be Oxytocin
or blood pressure medication)
- Building codes
- Minimum wage
sokoloff · 10h ago
I wear my seatbelt and insist my family does the same, but am opposed to seat belt laws.
I’m in favor of building codes for commercial and public buildings but not for detached private residences (or not at the current level anyway).
I’m opposed to minimum wage laws.
For oxytocin, I think people derive pleasure and overall significantly benefit from it and naturally encourage people to seek it out, despite it having a positive feedback loop in its mode of action.
Used under a doctor’s care and oversight, for patients where a prescription is indicated, benefits are well in excess of side effects. Maintaining the requirement for a prescription is fine.
Medicines for blood pressure management are likewise overwhelmingly beneficial, and so I want them to also be highly available to anyone for whom they’re indicated, though I think having a doctor in the loop to monitor is appropriate and needing a prescription is therefore fine.
skippyboxedhero · 12h ago
That is like saying if you knew heroin was good then would you support giving it to children?
Asking this question is a sign that you aren't interested in the answer.
Der_Einzige · 13h ago
My favorite kind of "brainrot" content is "gamer rage" videos where you watch people destroy their setups (or attack mannequin dummies like Pchooly) after getting wrecked on a video game.
BossManJack and his reactions are still worse - because he's built a whole twitch/discord empire around it with his "juicers". When he was in rehab he'd spend the 1 hr with his phone he was allowed per day streaming and losing money online.
delichon · 13h ago
It facilitates the flow of capital from less to more intelligent, disciplined and foresighted allocators.
1024core · 13h ago
One spring I wanted to checkout the parks near Vegas: Valley of Fire, Hoover Dam, etc. But I stayed in Vegas because the cheapest hotels were there.
Every evening, after a day of hiking, I would walk into a casino, sit down at the gambling machine, insert a $20 bill, and hit "drink service". A few minutes later a free beer emerged, and I promptly hit "cash out", collected my $20 and walked away (after a stop at the free popcorn machine too).
I think I may have come away with more than 80% of their clientele.
codr7 · 12h ago
After just having tech lead a team for a month at one of the bigger providers of online casinos and sports betting; because I simply couldn't find anything else at that point in time and I had already struggled for quite some time without an income; I can only agree with most in this thread.
I wouldn't mind if we made the whole thing illegal, it's like a giant leech on society.
And I've never before in my career come across a company so stacked with narcissist assholes on the management side.
Is it possible to be a profitable bettor long term? By long term I mean thousands of bets?
For example, guy like Picks office on Twitter is profitable, but I don't know if that's a large enough sample size.
kelnos · 6h ago
I would expect so. Some types of sports betting, like parlays, are mostly (entirely?) games of chance, so you avoid those. But the published odds of a team winning a match are subject to the research done and models made by the person setting the odds. If you have a better model, or somehow have access to better information, you could certainly end up with a profit in the long term.
curtisblaine · 2h ago
If winning bettors with working models sre getting cut off, they should sell predictions to "losers". Even give them out for free. If sports books are not playing fair, just ruin their businesses.
bdangubic · 13h ago
they cut me off I sign up my Pops, they cut him off I sign up my wife, they cut her off I sign up my Sis… by the time I out of family members I’m sipping Piña Coladas in the Carribean :)
jaoane · 13h ago
I remember seeing here posted years ago an article written by someone who worked at a casino as a croupier or something similar, talking about how you will lose your money there no matter what... Anybody knows what I'm talking about? I tried looking for it and I came back empty-handed.
elpocko · 13h ago
Isn't this common knowledge? The statistical odds are always in favor of the casino, otherwise there would be no casinos. You can only win short-term, if you're lucky; long-term, the bank always wins.
dismalaf · 13h ago
This is why I never gambled against the house...
If you play poker against other players, the house will never cut you off (they take their rake and are happy). And as long as you give some action and are social, the whales keep playing you too (they're rich enough).
chasing · 13h ago
I mean, no shit? Casinos aren't in it for fair play and sportsmanship.
In a healthy economy “Tails I win, heads you lose” businesses should not be allowed to succeed.
If we're pretending it's entertainment, then it shouldn't matter that winners get shut down... because it's just supposed to be fun. If we're not pretending it's entertainment, then we need to deal with the fact that it's a huge negative payoff vice we shouldn't be allowing to happen easily (make it legal and rare).
The idea that we're trying to create "fairness" in a business that basically wouldn't exist if the operators don't have a guarantee of success is ridiculous. We can either require sports betting agencies to have betting lines that require their bets be balanced or we can basically ban them from becoming a large industry.
Paying for entertainment is a normal activity. People do it every day. But gambling feels different: you can pay a nearly unlimited amount for it. There are usually limits in other forms of entertainment. I can only see so many movies in a theater in a day. I can only go to so many concerts. The number of board games I can buy is limited by the storage space in my house.
I'm sure there are exceptions in some types of entertainment I haven't thought of, though.
No, they'll just hike premiums or refuse to insure you.
Earlier this year, sportsbooks lost a lot due to punter-friendly outcomes (a series of favourites winning), and they didn't cut people off. Doing this is extremely bad for business because: people won't come back, and you aren't giving customers the opportunity to lose that money back to you.
So what you are seeing when people are limited is not this but arbing line moves between bookmakers, people bearding for someone else, etc.
One of the articles mentions stuff relating to player behaviour - for example, if you bet on Australian Rules Football, you bet every game for multiple weeks then it doesn't matter if you win or lose, there is going to be a limit - there is a grey area, but the majority of people being limited don't fall into this category. They are just people doing stupid stuff (I have done this, I used to arb line moves 20 years ago in the UK, I have been banned everywhere, it is stupid and I should have been banned).
This is what market makers doing 24/7 on public stock markets. This is what creates "efficient markets".
When Betfair first came on to the scenes the traditional online (and offline) bookmakers were like fish in a barrel for arb bets.
I still remember when the first major bookmaker (pretty sure it was BetVictor) started tracking Betfair markets automatically. Now they all do it.
I have done sports betting like three times, when I realized the odds were bonkers, and retrieving the money after winning was an extreme hazzle that took weeks with photocopies of passports and gas bills and what not. Paying the bets took a minute.
I mean, online betting is a shady business. Physical casinos at least have some sort of brick wall to bang your head against.
Blame the AML/KYC/income tax regulatory regime. Placing a bet doesn't require KYC any more than spending $10k at a club doesn't require KYC. However once the casino needs to disburse money Uncle Sam suddenly wants his cut and to make sure it doesn't go to Bad People.
[1] A heuristic to minimize your losses, because favorites are underbet, if you have minimal information
that has nothing to do with sports betting. it's the same with trading stocks/forex/..., it's KYC/AML
That's every gambling place/app, should they all be made illegal? Not that I'm disagreeing...
I don’t think Polymarket does this, but I also think it would be OK if the casino takes a cut of the prize pool, as long as it ensures that winners never receive less than they bet. For example, the casino may receive $losers/n (they pick n, $losers = total bets of losers), and winners receive $bet($losers(n - 1)/n + $winners)/$winners, $winners = total bets of winners, $bet = their bet).
Then it’s “tails = I win you lose, heads = we both win someone else loses, except nobody wins if everyone gets heads but that’s extremely unlikely (especially with more than 2 options)”.
I think it’s immoral to allow their bad decisions to raise costs for those of us who do not care who wins the Big Game.
There's a vague parallel with the homelessness problem in my city: I would rather my tax dollars go toward giving people stable housing for free (along with job placement, drug addiction treatment, etc.), because any other use of that money (clearing out tent encampments, jailing addicts, etc.) doesn't actually fix the problem, and ultimately costs more in the long run. (And meanwhile, the city is dirty and I feel less safe walking around in it.)
Sure, giving someone housing for free isn't "fair" to all the people who work hard to pay their rent or mortgage, but sometimes fairness doesn't give us (all of us, not just the people involved) the best outcomes. And it may not be "fair" to limit what businesses are allowed to "sell" to consenting adults, but I am willing to accept that some businesses will not be as profitable if it means society is healthier.
When, as has been pointed out in this thread, people are instead being deceived and told the playing field is level, yeah, no we should not allow that.
This kind of argument is not particularly interesting; the entire point of a discussion board is for everyone to post and discuss their opinions, which will naturally differ sometimes. Asking what amounts to, "why are you allowed to have that opinion?" is pretty pointless.
Let's demonstrate that by just jumping to the end of this reasoning -- severely mentally retarded adults -- can they consent to sex? Why or why not?
We can endlessly debate morality, ethics and all that regarding lots of things, but in my humble opinion gambling could be reduced to:
"Would people still engage in those games of chance if there was no monetary aspect to it?"
And then how many of those people who would still engage with them are "notorious" gamblers on whom those games had a clear negative impact (in most people's eyes).
And who ensures everything is happening above board and there is no fixing? Don't worry, self regulation works.
One of the greatest incentives to stop match fixing comes from having regulated operators who will report unusual betting behaviour. For example, the massive problems with match-fixing in low-ranked tennis has been tackled by bookmakers.
There is an issue with advertising but that is unrelated to the match-fixing one. The latter is one of the absolute oldest lobbying lines the Republicans used when they were getting all their money from Adelson (it was accompanied with some mad intellectual gymnastics about how sports betting at casinos was also magically unaffected by this, same with underage gambling).
The Online Sports Gambling Experiment Has Failed
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42110194
Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Mistake
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41659458
Should Sports Betting Be Banned?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665630
The sharp books more or less operated the way you're describing. They would try to set the line as close to the true odds as possible. They knew who the sharp bettors were, and they may have limited their bets to some degree, but they would take them and adjust the lines accordingly. You have to be a very good bookmaker for this strategy to work, because every line that's a little bit off is going to get pounced on for the max bet.
The square books' strategy was to keep the sharp bettors out by limiting their bets severely or kicking them out entirely. This also lets them set the lines in a way that makes them more money, because there are a number of biases recreational bettors tend to be subject to. In particular, they tend to overbet on favorites, and they tend to underappreciate the home team advantage. There's also an effect where people will tend to bet on their favorite team, and so teams from large markets get more bets than teams from small markets. By moving the line a few percent one way, they can make significantly more money on average.
The problem in the US is that it is a highly competitive market so you have to acquire your customer base every weekend, and these customers don't actually care so much about prices. So having weaker prices is a more effective way to deliver the product. In addition, US gamblers like parlays, parlays are more profitable, have lower volume per bet, and (so far) the economics of the Asian book don't work for this market (i.e. get syndicates to bet your lines early).
But if some whale comes in and wants to drop a large bet, I suppose the house doesn't want to sit around and wait for the same amount of action on the other side before they take the bet or the game starts. And now they're exposed if the whale wins.
No comments yet
BetFair calls it the Expert Fee :))
If you make more than $100k profit, you pay 40% extra Expert Tax on it :)
https://support.betfair.com/app/answers/detail/expert-fee-fa...
Online sports betting is a mug’s game.
I made a few hundred dollars and have quit for a couple of years now once I learnt that they can kick you out for doing too well.
Putting money on a game you don’t care about can make it exciting.
Getting a bunch of people watching a game together with money on it is a way to drum up a crowd of enthusiastic temporary fans for any game, which might lead to a fun high energy atmosphere.
The problem is that the crowd will likely have divided rooting interests and things could get… confrontational
But too often the ability to turn everything into a math problem lets you easily abstract away the reality of what you’re doing
I wonder if there is any merit in building an app that helps gambling addicts by letting them play the same games that they would play on their phones, with a few caveats:
1 - It's all virtual money, just like a demo account on a stock trading service where you can test it out without real money being involved. You don't use real money, and the app is free to download and play. The goal isn't to make money from the app, it's to help treat gambling addiction.
2 - Where the games would tempt you to place another bet and say "better luck next time?" or "so close" and tempt the player to make another bet, this game would do something different:
- When a player loses on their go, it would say "if you'd staked real money, that would have cost you £2 etc". - It would also remind you of the total balance, and say "if you'd played for real, then you would be down £200 tonight, but because you played this game instead, you've saved yourself £200." - When a player wins on their go, it would say "congratulations on winning, that was your first win in the previous 6 go's".
The idea is to change the cognitive behaviour of the player so that a) they get to play a game that they enjoy playing and find addictive to play, but crucially b) they don't lose any money, and because they are shown the reality of what gambling is like from an accounting perspective, their cognitive association with gambling is changed.
It's better to play a fun game for free then to play a game that drains you of all your money.
How is that idea. Good, bad?
(Compare vs gatcha, which doesn't allow you to cash out. Predictably there's also gatcha simulators if you just want to roll for things meaninglessly)
Free-to-play/play money site paradisepoker.net however somehow found the money to advertise extensively. It was a real mystery…
If anything news is like a mirror image of gambling. People vastly overestimate how likely they will hit a jackpot the same way they vastly overestimate how likely they will die in a plane crash.
I guess I'm surprised anyone is surprised that casinos do this and always have. There has never been anything "fair" about a casino's relationship with players. Your only role in the relationship is to, on average over the long run, lose money. Their role is to take your money. A "sharp" player is anyone who consistently plays in a way that, on average over the long run, makes money, breaks even or minimizes your losses below the expected rate of return in the casino's financial model.
Any player who is not a sharp, is a 'valued customer' (aka 'playing like a consistently predictable loser'). Casinos have always been adept at spotting any players who behave in ways more like a sharp than a valued customer.
Either complete a probation period to show proficiency or demonstrate sufficient net worth
NFL broadcasts lean so heavily into betting odds, parlays, prop bets, everything… it’s so obnoxious hearing about X player hitting the over, only to go to a commercial offering some free money if you place a certain sized bet.
I really hope (but am not holding my breath given how much money is involved at this point) they ban sports betting advertising in the future.
It was a mistake, and we should accept that.
We went wayyyyy too permissive with sports betting by allowing it online. It should be something that you can do at a casino, but on your phone, at home, alone? That's just begging for serious harm to the addicted.
Did fantasy sports have a causal role as a gateway that slowly normalized gambling, or were they just reflecting that there has always been a latent thirst for gambling and fantasy sports were the only socially acceptable way to scratch that itch?
* not talking about “daily fantasy” stuff which was just blatant gambling pretending to be fantasy sports to exploit a loophole
Football betting had "the pools", betting by post across a number of fixtures. Most famous was run by a retailer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littlewoods
See also https://www.onlinebetting.org.uk/betting-guides/football/his...
When gambling was legalized in my area in 1990s it brought at least some working-class jobs and tax dollars. Now, those tax dollars were funded by people with an addiction, but they at least went somewhere local. And you can still go gambling occasionally and get a good meal and some drinks and maybe see a show. Worst comes to worst, at least in my state, you can sign an affidavit banning yourself from the casino floor.
Online gambling is just a Skinner box designed to take money out of severely addicted people's pockets. That's it. You can speed run racking up losses because the games are shorter and can be done faster. The sites operate out of jurisdictions that have loose regulations on the games. For all you know they could be making it not only unlikely, but impossible, to win.
Watch a few YouTube docs on a streamer named BossManJack if you want to see just how consuming it can get.
Both have very little societal value, other than alcohol's traditional role as a lubricant of social interaction, and there's no reason to actively promote them.
FWIW I love alcohol. I don't gamble because I don't enjoy it, but I have nothing against gambling.
The same people that I have seen rage against other people gambling will also argue in favour of legalising drugs which are more addictive and can cause psychosis.
In addition, making it illegal does not stop actual addicts gambling. You can go offshore and get completely unregulated services, that comply with no regulators on harm prevention. The US was the largest sports betting market in the world when it was illegal in every state bar Nevada.
Also, online providers maintain lists of self-excluded people with state regulators (to be clear, the state holds the list, people put themselves on the list and are banned everywhere). Casinos are significantly less regulated in this area because, due to the nature of the product, is not possible to put in limitations to the product (for example, reality checks, loss limits, giving you access to data on your usage).
All regulated sites have third-party verification of their games by specialist testers and state regulators. Every change to every line of code that touches a regulated service is reported. It is not possible for operators to lose at casino games because of the scale, and you think they are willing to destroy it all to get your $10 faster?
The issue with online gambling is: some people cannot resist telling what other people (usually people poorer than them) what to do, and some people have not thought the alternatives through.
If a family father gets addicted to some drugs it's bad, but somewhat limited in impact, if it comes to gambling, those people ruin their families, very quickly.
Saying a drug addiction has a "somewhat limited" impact is delusional. Particularly as addiction is an inherent property of taking drugs, that is not the case for gambling.
If my father or mother got high or drunk every evening I did not. Terrible, pitiful, psychological nightmare, sure.
But I was not intoxicated.
On the other hand, I've seen the impacts of ludomania. When parents go broke or accumulate unpayable debts that's something you cannot recover with rehab and that will have insane implications for the whole family for decades.
I hope you understand now what I mean.
One of my best friends SO suffers of ludomania, a court has ordered his salary to be paid to her, and she gives him an 80€s monthly allowance. They got lucky, another family I know got completely ruined in the course of few weeks.
By the way, I'm polish/Italian, and we don't have hordes of homeless people, I don't think I've ever seen a single homeless person in my life in Poland.
That’s something that should be banned.
Debts should die as part of settling the decedent’s estate. (The US got this right, and I thought most of the world did as well.)
I don't see a way for this discussion to find a middle ground.
Ludomania is classified as a mental disorder and a very real illness.
I've seen it's effects along the effects of other addictions and my two cents is that it can be more devastating to people surrounding the addict than others.
Misery is misery regardless of the disorder, addiction or illness, we don't need to have a competition between it.
But it is very important to underline that gambling is not only increasingly legal but increasingly deregulated too.
There's and ongoing lawsuit alleging sports betting platforms sent promotions targeted to users on the exclusion list to encourage a relapse in their gambling addiction.
https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/44520842/baltim...
What the lawsuit alleges is that at-risk users with promotions. This is undoubtedly true because people who have gambling addictions use gambling products and there is no way to identify someone with a gambling addiction prior to them using the product (contrary to what the article says, there is no way for companies to identify these users either, there are multiple third-party vendors in the industry who claim to have developed ML models to identify at-risk behaviour...none of them work).
The lawsuit does not identify whether these users opted-out of promotions (every regulated provider has this option...if you don't want these promos, just turn them off). And does not identify what aspect of existing regulation is insufficient (as I just explained, if you are a gambling addict, you have the option of being unable to open an account at any regulated provider).
In other words, this is the equivalent of Baltimore suing Budweiser because alcoholics drink their beer. It misunderstands at a very fundamental level how society should operate and tells you everything about US society where companies are expected to have a social role (and btw, what is most odd about this is that MD has a state gambling regulator, Baltimore is complaining about things that government already has the power to fix...I suspect the issue is that this revenue source is not being distributed their way, govt officials need to eat too).
>https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/44520842/baltim...
Your linked article doesn't say anything about that claim?
Yet, I do not support a ban on alcohol and I suspect that an outright ban on tobacco would be worse than simply having high taxes on it.
Sports betting is probably closest to alcohol in this regard: lots of people get moderate enjoyment from it from time to time and some people have their lives significantly harmed or even ended, meaning the overall net is negative, even though many people experience a small positive.
I wouldn’t ban sports betting for the same reason I wouldn’t take away your glass of red wine with dinner.
- Seat belt laws
- Prescription requirements for drugs (whether that be Oxytocin or blood pressure medication)
- Building codes
- Minimum wage
I’m in favor of building codes for commercial and public buildings but not for detached private residences (or not at the current level anyway).
I’m opposed to minimum wage laws.
For oxytocin, I think people derive pleasure and overall significantly benefit from it and naturally encourage people to seek it out, despite it having a positive feedback loop in its mode of action.
Used under a doctor’s care and oversight, for patients where a prescription is indicated, benefits are well in excess of side effects. Maintaining the requirement for a prescription is fine.
Medicines for blood pressure management are likewise overwhelmingly beneficial, and so I want them to also be highly available to anyone for whom they’re indicated, though I think having a doctor in the loop to monitor is appropriate and needing a prescription is therefore fine.
Asking this question is a sign that you aren't interested in the answer.
BossManJack and his reactions are still worse - because he's built a whole twitch/discord empire around it with his "juicers". When he was in rehab he'd spend the 1 hr with his phone he was allowed per day streaming and losing money online.
Every evening, after a day of hiking, I would walk into a casino, sit down at the gambling machine, insert a $20 bill, and hit "drink service". A few minutes later a free beer emerged, and I promptly hit "cash out", collected my $20 and walked away (after a stop at the free popcorn machine too).
I think I may have come away with more than 80% of their clientele.
I wouldn't mind if we made the whole thing illegal, it's like a giant leech on society.
And I've never before in my career come across a company so stacked with narcissist assholes on the management side.
https://github.com/codr7/yolo
For example, guy like Picks office on Twitter is profitable, but I don't know if that's a large enough sample size.
If you play poker against other players, the house will never cut you off (they take their rake and are happy). And as long as you give some action and are social, the whales keep playing you too (they're rich enough).