Could be in any context. I do it a little on UFC fights but that’s a relatively low amount and I can afford I to lose any time I do. It seems like it’s becoming a really wide spread problem though, at least in the US. At the same time I don’t see why it should be illegal. Granted I also don’t think any drug should be illegal.
Since I have a basic understanding of how odds work, I don’t do it because it is throwing my money away.
Gambling with any company is going to be negative expected value. However, I feel the same way gambling with individuals where the expected value is zero.
Not necessarily with sports betting though: Then you have a legitimate possibility of being more well informed than the bookies. A casino is mathematically rigged such that you will lose over time, that doesn’t apply to games of skill (sports).
I don’t gamble myself, but I seem to remember reading that the average person actually makes a net win in football betting (that is, more than 50% of gamblers are winning). Apparently, the betting companies make it up because you have a relatively small fraction of people that are losing big, and losing consistently.
That’s a common misconception. Sports gambling is exactly like casino games. Odds are skewed in exactly the same fashion in the house’s favor, the payout is lower than the win probability. In the long run, the house always wins.
Also, as the industry relies heavily nowadays on trading where any event can alter the odds in real time, I guess the only way to cheat the system would be akin to insider trading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_of_bookmaking
I think you’re misunderstanding my point. You’re completely right that the house sets the odds it it’s own favour in order to make money, I’m not arguing against that.
My point is that setting odds in casino games like roulette is trivial, and there are no confounding elements that can suddenly make your odds wrong. In sports betting, setting the odds is highly non-trivial and pretty much impossible to do exactly. The better can look at the odds and consider whether they think the house has under-valued a certain game, which is possible, and bet on that. If the better is more well informed than the house, it’s actually possible that they make a net win. That’s completely different from a casino game, where the odds will never be in your favour.
I would argue that sports betting is a fair game, in the sense that the house sets odds, and you can consider whether those odds are in your favour or the house’s favour. Obviously, they will try to always set them in their own favour, but (also obviously) they can make mistakes that are exploitable to a well informed better.
Unless I’ve got some insider information on specific athletes or I’ve done enough statistical analysis to gain a statistical analysis to gain an advantage over the house, I don’t see myself getting positive expected value.
Also, it is in the interest of sports books for a rumor like that to propagate.
Oh, definitely. I’m not sure about this at all, please don’t take it as fact.
I completely agree with you. My point is just that with sports betting the playing field is actually fair, in the sense that anything can happen and that the bookies and the betters are considering the odds based on the same publicly available information. That differs significantly from games where the house is mathematically guaranteed to win in the long term, while the gamblers are guaranteed to lose.
Except that the payout for those bets are generally done so that the house takes a cut of the overall action. The vig is baked into the payout for sport outcomes; betting on all the outcomes equally isn’t going to probabilistically give you the payout equal to what you’d buy in.
Exactly. That’s why I’m differentiating between games of skill (i.e. sports) and purely statistical “casino games”. It’s possible to beat the house in sports betting, but only if you are genuinely better than the house at considering the odds. Of course, the house will always try to set the odds in their own favour, but it’s impossible for them to know the exact odds. Thus, a well informed player can, in principle, identify the games where the house has under-valued an outcome and exploit those.
This basically boils down to the fact that in a casino game, the probability of every possible outcome is known exactly, so the house can trivially set a payout that benefits them. In sports, it’s impossible to know the exact probability of a given outcome, so the house can make mistakes.