[specialp]

And if you are consistently winning they will ban you! They can legally back off (reduce max bet to a tiny amount) or straight up ban people who bet smart.

These books also market what are the hardest to understand and worst bets to consumers. Think 4 way parlays. Like all 4 legs seem reasonable. They probably on their own each have a 70 pct probability. But that means a 24 pct of hitting. Of course they are all over props because people love to bet over. They are taking advantage of the fact that most people don't understand expected value or odds of multiple independent things happening

[protocolture]

I know a guy who sells odds to online betting platforms.

If they don't purchase his odds (effectively paying him not to play), he just plays them. Wins either way. I dont think he has ever been banned, but I think thats because they appreciate the option to purchase his service.

[gjgtcbkj]

Well you have a truth telling friend.

[stuckkeys]

I would like to become friends with your friend.

[Tangokat]

The big asian bookies don't ban you if you win, they use your sharp bets to improve their price accuracy. Not legal to bet on them if you're from the US though (land of the free??). The biggest betting syndicates use platforms like Punterplay to place bets (often via API) at multiple bookies (Pinnacle, Singbet, SBObet, Betfair, Matchbook, 3ET, VX etc) at the same time.

In a somewhat ironic turn of events the more regulation you have, the worse it is for the customer. Big regulatory burdens require the bookies to extract more from the users, making the offerings more predatory. This is also why the likes of Kalshi can provide a better product to customers at the moment - because they ignore all the regulation.

[jimz]

Casinos have a ton of leverage in some states. Here in Nevada MGM and Caesar's and Wynn, thanks to their expansion, are effectively treated as too big to fail and given huge amount of deference in how they operate by the gaming commission. But there are also incredibly problematic protectionist regulations that I and several other residents who didn't really know each other tried to get rid of through the admin law process, primarily allowing remote signups which would also allow out of state entities to set up shop without literally having a physical casino. Having to physically go to a casino and sign up in person was onerous and clearly pointless, and then impossible during the pandemic, and became a really silly charade. What was supposed to start as public meetings right before the pandemic got dragged out, meetings would get rescheduled at the last minute, and casinos made entirely spurious rationales like "there aren't enough local datacenters" (Google Cloud's Henderson datacenter is surely sufficient for in state traffic?), that they would want taxpayer money for potential loss of revenue (capitalism dude, what are you afraid of?) Meetings would get scheduled in Carson City and that's literally six hours away by car. Agenda items would suddenly be altered. It was a hot mess. We managed to get iGaming in theory legalized but they straight up never even pretended to start working on regulations for it, and now with the 90% loss deduction limit by the IRS on the OBBB books basically have 12.5% house edge on any line to start if it's properly priced. My model can beat 2.5% but 12.5% is insane. If the feds are going to ban pros constructively, well, I can't out lobby a casino. And the pro betting constituency isn't big enough to pander to, frankly. If there's action, it can't actually happen on shore. I realize that "people who can beat the books due to specialist knowledge and can bankroll drawdowns to the extent that returns long term profit" is also publicly not sympathetic and generally people either think we're touts (if it makes me money touting absolutely won't help me, in fact the fewer people I have to interact with the better) or something. Wagering by hand sucks, but no model is perfect, just some are more useful than others, and someone in accounting may be able to figure out that ban or bankrupt is not a sustainable strategy to run books. But with the feds involved to put that imprimatur of authority in writing, I guess I'm never getting my limits lifted. Good luck finding stable liquidity elsewhere.

[hippo22]

There are betting exchanges where the platform charges a commission but doesn’t care if you win or lose.

[Loocid]

Not as much as traditional bookmakers but they absolutely care. Betfair has a "premium charge" where if you earn over a certain amount in a year, you get charged a fee equal to a % of your gross profit.

Its the same as poker. An exchange wants a bunch of equally skilled players betting against each other. If everyone has zero edge, all the money stays on the exchange betting over and over and the money eventually all goes to the exchange in commissions.

Players with a strong edge dramatically reduce the time before the losing players run out of money, meaning less commissions for the exchange.

[bryanrasmussen]

How can it not care if you win? They still have to pay out correct? Do they then limit the maximum payout that can be expected?

I don't know as I don't bet but it seems counter-intuitive that just charging a commission would change the dynamic.

[kianN]

It’s even worse with parlays: the events are potentially negatively correlated. There may be a 70% chance that Giannis has 3 or more turnovers and a 70% chance the bucks win, but the odds of both happening are less than 49% because more turnovers directly reduces the likelihood of a Bucks win.

[throwawayq3423]

I won't bother asking how this is legal because it's clear there are no rules to any of this stuff right now. But it's absolutely insane that as a business you can just take your 20 most unprofitable customers and then just ban them.

[cortesoft]

In the US, a business can refuse service to anyone, generally, as long as it isn’t because the person belongs to a protected class (e.g. you can’t ban all black people or all Jewish people). You could refuse to do business with someone because you didn’t like the way they looked at you, or because you were grumpy the day they came in.

Famously, for example, James Dolan bans all sorts of people he doesn’t like from Madison Square Garden and any of the other venues he owns. He notoriously bans all lawyers who work for any firm that sues him (which happens a lot). He even uses facial recognition to catch them, and kicks them out without refunding their tickets. People have tried to sue him for this (many of them are lawyers, after all!) and so far no one has won against him for it, so he keeps doing it.

Here is an article about it: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/45949758/new-york-knicks...

[nradov]

Generally most businesses are allowed to refuse service to customers for any reason, or no reason at all (there are certain legal exceptions to that principle for protected classes). As a practical matter, banned online bettors often sneak back in with strawman accounts.

[rogerrogerr]

Companies outside of betting do this regularly. I know a guy who is banned from returning stuff at Best Buy.

[biztos]

There are absolutely companies that “stack rank” their customers and cut the bottom N%, or even just keep the top N, period.

I have always found this to be maddeningly counterintuitive, because surely at least some of these customers yield a net profit. But I have to admit that I’ve seen it done to very profitable effect.

[Terr_]

I think the problem isn't banning per-se, because I can "ban" companies as well.

The problem has something to do with the asymmetry of information or bargaining-power. Unlike card games, the house has quite an advantage in data-mining.

[phire]

I'm pretty sure they actually use their data-mining advantage to make their betting offers as attractive to regular users as possible, and therefore maximise profit.

It's so easy to just ban any user who gets "too lucky" (simply ban the top ~0.1% of your userbase every week) why waste resources on offering actually fair bets? And the requirement for "fair bets" probably interferes with the requirement for bets to be as attractive to "regular users" as possible.

[biztos]

How does the house not have a data-mining advantage in card games?

They would know whether you make bad choices on Tuesdays, how people of your nationality and consumer preferences react to seeing an Ace, they can deal the better card to the person they’d like to have win, or the opposite, they know what effect the equivalent of a hot waitress bringing you free drinks will be on you specifically as well as on people statistically similar to you and at what moment in time…

Do you just not play against the house when you play cards? And do you 100% trust the house to deal randomly? Does the house not care at all who wins at cards?

Sorry if these are stupid questions, I don’t gamble, but it seems like they have lots of actionable data if they want to use it. Even if they only use it to get you to play more (or less).

[epolanski]

I know few mathematicians that work in betting world and model data (both odds as well as user profiling).

It is not true that you get banned if you win too often, but it is true that you get banned, and flagged, if your winning patterns are suspicious.

It's essentially like in a casino. You can win more than once and big, good for you.

But if patterns emerge, you get banned.

E.g. Betting small sums on football and suddenly betting very big on a specific baseball game and winning. Do it few times and you're banned as it's obviously strange.

[Phemist]

In these cases one should apply the cybernetic principle. The purpose of the system is what it does.

The intention of the mathematician friends of yours may be to prevent money laundering and match fixing from being profitable (and thereby providing a public good). However, so many genuine sharp and/or plain lucky bettors are caught in these AML & Match Fixing cross-fires, it would be very naive to assume these are all just unfortunate false positives.

Sportsbooks are however legally hamstrung in what they can admit to of course. By doing so they would also admit to completely ignoring and even violating one of the core duties imposed on legal sportsbooks: the duty of care (in EU countries at least this is supposedly an important aspect of the legalisation).

By kicking someone off your platform, you definitely no longer have any way to nudge their behaviour into something less self-destructive. Some players might quit, but for those that do not: Illegal sportsbooks will try to take even more advantage of their players, and now you have also indirectly caused the financing of all kinds of other activities that AML regulation is specifically designed to prevent.

My hot take: your mathematician friends looking at suspicious betting patterns are a way for sportsbooks to greenwash and "legalize" their exploitative practices.

[ndiddy]

You're right that people don't get directly banned for winning too often, but they will get their maximum bets limited to something like $10 if they consistently place bets where they get a good deal on the odds (i.e. placing a bet at +100 when the odds closed at -200). This is one of the worst aspects of legalized sports betting IMO, and why I think it should be regulated. The companies running the sportsbooks are free to make errors on their odds without consequences because they're allowed to identify and ban anyone who takes advantage of the mispriced odds. This means they get to limit their customer bases solely to people who don't understand expected value, which turns the whole industry into a mechanism to take money from the stupid/uneducated. If you have an account at a sportsbook that's more than a few weeks old, and it's still in good standing, it's because the sportsbook knows you're a loser and that even if you win big a few times, you'll be profitable to them long-term.

[Balgair]

The hot new interview question for 2025-2035 will not be:

- How many golf ball fit in a school bus?

Or the like that dominated Google hiring for nearly a decade. No the hot new interview question will be:

- Do you have an account with any of the major sports bettors in good standing?

The Goofus answer to this is : Yes, I can bet whatever I like with them (they are an idiot that doesn't understand how money works. Hire appropriately)

The Gallant answer is: No, I don't do sports betting. (This shows they at least know to lie about it)

The Galaxy answer is: No, they banned me (only sharps get banned, meaning they are either very lucky or very good with probabilities and numbers)

There exists now the potential for a small service company that can help interviewees and the spouses of gambling addicts: We'll make you look like a sharp to the sports betting companies. You sign up for the service and a big-time sharp takes over your accounts (or directs you personally) and tells you what to bet and where. They then give you the money to bet, making you effectively a mule for them. It's win-win. Real sharps get a mule, you get to look like a sharp and you have the proof. This also works for the family of addicts (probably the larger market), as their affected loved-one gets banned/downgraded and all the money stops flowing out of their accounts.

[devilbunny]

> (This shows they at least know to lie about it)

Or they just don’t do it? I don’t enjoy gambling at all. I don’t do it in casinos, I don’t do it online, and I don’t even do it with friends where there’s no “house” to pay off. I think the worst night gambling I’ve ever experienced, I lost $20. I still remember it.

[piltdownman]

'Proper' gamblers use exchanges like Betfair rather than Sportsbooks, where the host takes a rake off the spread with individuals laying against you. The only major issue with this is not being able to do things like place betting accumulators.

FOI in EU means you can get the notes attached to your account - the insights can be staggering, down to friend and family connections with Jockeys or Racing Stables, Sports Personalities or High Net Worth individuals.

[sidewndr46]

Isn't mule or proxy betting incredibly illegal in the US? It would seem to violate every known money laundering law I can think of

[mrkramer]

>And if you are consistently winning they will ban you! They can legally back off (reduce max bet to a tiny amount) or straight up ban people who bet smart.

I'm not from US, I'm from EU but I'm still paranoid of that so I only sports bet at state owned lottery/betting company.

[piltdownman]

Gambling debts are unrecoverable by law in Ireland. Casinos are under no obligation whatsoever to pay out under any circumstances

If you happen to be too lucky while placing a bet or gambling, the person can simply say ‘no you’re not entitled to the money’. That is simply the law in Ireland”. https://www.thejournal.ie/court-gamblers-not-paid-d1-casino-...

The hilarious thing is that if a Betting Company allows you to beg on margin/credit, then they can't subsequently sue you for the money either https://www.algoodbody.com/insights-publications/high-court-...

[bluecalm]

State run bookies charge commission so high you will not win anyway unless you have insider info and then your risk is bigger with a state run bookies.

Big bookies won't have you so easily. Multiple small ones will but you will get your money back. They not paying is a very small risk even if they decide to not do business with you later.

[biztos]

How do you know they would not also ban you if you were exceptionally “good” at betting?

Is there some specific EU regulation guaranteeing the right to place bets even if the house is losing?

[fsckboy]

why not bet till you get banned, then switch to state owned?

[skizm]

I mean technically stock trading platforms can ban you if you trade too well. Usually happens with options, not buy and hold positions. Retail trading platforms need users that are statistically no different than random to sell their order flow to HFT firms.