The battle to stop clever people betting

[zoenolan]

https://archive.is/kyqxs

[m4ck_]

I would love to see the gambling industry beaten back into whatever holes they slithered out of. If you want to gamble it should be in some smokey back room at a liquor store. I'm surprised the christian right isn't making more of a fuss about gambling, but I guess they're getting greased to look the other way.

[Simulacra]

I don't look at gambling in a religious or moral perspective at all, but rather as a predatory business. It's like any other dopamine hit, the casinos manage joy and expectation, just enough, so that people keep coming back until they are hopelessly addicted, broke, or broken.

The problem with gambling is that the house never loses, and when they are losing, they can kick you out and call you a cheater. At the very least, there needs to be severe restrictions on what casinos can do to people who are winning, and rein them in so that they don't use their money, power, influence, and heavy-handed security, in ways that are grossly unfair to the consumer. The power is too much in the hands of the casino, and really needs to swing back towards the consumer, otherwise people get taken for a ride, literally and figuratively.

[blell]

Lately it feels like more and more people who are not religious invoke Christ to tell believers what they must do.

[RickJWagner]

Right side Christian here.

There are much bigger fish to fry at the moment. Gambling does wreck families, though.

[voidmain0001]

This podcast episode addresses sports betting and touches on why religious groups condone it.

[subjectsigma]

Just spent the holidays with my family who fit squarely within “the Christian right”. I would say they are mostly uninformed on the topic. They don’t understand why digital sports betting is worse than a casino.

[paleotrope]

I'm sure there are strong humanist arguments against gambling. Don't need a religious argument against it.

[watwut]

It is not gay, it is masculine, it does not hurt women, so christian right likes it. That it also hurts playing men does not bother christian right either, they will blame women and gay for that anyway.

[pfdietz]

Does Ozempic ameliorate gambling addiction, as it seems to do to alcohol and other drug addictions?

[Someone1234]

There is likely a correlation between reductions in other addictive behavior such as shopping/gambling addictions and GLP-1s. That being said:

- Some people have reported no benefit.

- The effect may be lower than counteracting chemically addictive behavior (e.g. eating, drinking, smoking, drugs).

I think we can speculate with what we know today that there is SOME effect, but more data/studies are needed to see how large effect really is. Particularly as the overall effect is lower, you need more data to separate it from noise/placebo.

[astura]

Yes, it decreases urges for a very wide range of compulsive behaviors, including (but not limited to) gambling, shopping, nail biting, and skin picking.

[knallfrosch]

Yes

[int32_64]

As the middle class continues to shrink in the West the gambling crisis will only get worse.

It has to be understood by older people that for many young people the only way to afford a lifestyle previously achievable in many cities with a basic job is to win the lottery.

[integralid]

Gambling addiction is a pretty certain way to become poor though.

[tsoukase]

There are two motives for gambling: one is to win but a bigger one is to harm yourself in a quasi suicidal mood. Gambling hides a state of depression.

[xcskier56]

Seems like a great opportunity to curtail betting. You want to leach money out of people, well you have to leave yourself open to let the pros do it to you.

[dgrr19]

Betting places like polymarket even the playfield. The gambling industry is rigged. Decentralized venues make it fair for everyone to bet

[e40]

This isn’t about an even playing field. It’s about spending too much money on gambling.

[OutOfHere]

There is a simple and honest way to deal with it. It is to inform the dumb users before they place a bet that the historically smart winners have stacked up against them. If done well, it should substantially help even the odds.

Anyhow, this is why a better should stick to platforms that are unbiased.

[istjohn]

Gambling disorder was the first behavioral addiction to be officially recognized alongside chemical dependencies; the DSM-5 reclassified gambling disorder from "impulse control disorder" to "substance-related and addictive disorders."

[recursivedoubts]

remember when gambling was mostly illegal?

[Havoc]

I'd venture that actually smart people don't go near this at all because they know telling yourself "I'm better than others and won't get addicted"...all to chase a couple bucks is the height of folly.

Polymarket has me intrigued though. Especially stuff like their geopolitics section...as a measure of how good one's read of the world is. Still gambling in disguise though

[chongli]

Since my friends gamble on sports and I enjoy sports a lot I’ve placed a few bets here and there. I don’t find it addictive at all. My sense of loss aversion must be just too high for it or something. Every time I lost a bet I wanted to uninstall the app it annoyed me so much. Once I lost the initial bankroll and bonus bets I uninstalled the app.

I think the folks who get addicted must have much lower loss aversion and higher thrill-seeking. People like me can’t become even regular recreational gamblers (betting small amounts without ruining their lives) because it’s too frustrating.

[bpt3]

Smart people who are "gambling" for anything other than fun only would participate when they have an edge.

There are many ways to obtain such an edge, and the casinos are highly motivated to prevent that from happening.

[woooooo]

Smart people can like sports, and there's a century long history of "sharps" who are better than most at sports gambling.

[ACCount37]

Polymarket's purpose was specifically to let the best of the best take the pot by predicting events with real world impact. So, ideally, it's "gambling" in the same way day trading is gambling.

Contrast that to normal "sports betting" - which aims to block skilled betters, and squeeze suckers for their cash.

[dangus]

I imagine there’s lots of money to be made on fools in polymarket, like “Will the US confirm that aliens exist in 2025?”

That topic had over a 10% “yes” chance in January. Betting no on that is better taking out a CD.

[begueradj]

> I'd venture that actually smart people don't go near this at all because they know telling yourself "I'm better than others and won't get addicted"

Being addicted is not an intelligence criterion because every human is addicted to something -good or bad.

That's actually a basic principle of how we function cognitively.

- https://psychiatryofscottsdale.com/psychiatrists-honest-take...

- https://psychiatryofscottsdale.com/were-all-addicted-to-some...

[barnabee]

I know people who profitably run algorithms on Betfair, etc.

Smart people will treat it like any other “trading” or “arbitrage” opportunity, given half a chance.

[timcobb]

I used to think this but then developed the impression that quite the opposite is true, that a great many clever people live their lives betting on this or that (equities, derivities, sports, polymarket, often they call it "risk management" or other such things) and, unfortunately, that abstaining from betting (as I still do) is, unfortunately for me, an unrealistic maladaptive cope. I think the adaptive thing to do is to learn how to bet, especially if you're not a person who becomes pathological.

[skippyboxedhero]

The analogue that people have of betting is, for some reason, drugs. Addiction is an inherent property of taking drugs. Gambling is not like this in any way. It is not inherently addictive, 99% of people who gamble have no issue with it.

It isn't to chase a couple of bucks either. Billy Walter has made hundreds of millions. A recent court case leaked that Tony Bloom's syndicate was making £200m in profit per year. This activity helps make these markets more efficient.

There is nothing wrong with gambling. Fast food kills tens of thousands a year in the US, hundreds of billions spent on healthcare and life expectancy is still terrible because of obesity. Should we ban fast food? Why? Many other people don't have a problme. The idea of personal responsibility will always be completely abhorrent to some part of the population.

[wkat4242]

It doesn't really sound fair if they are allowed to ban clever people. Isn't that the point of a game?

[ACCount37]

The point is to part gamblers with their money. Sport betting was never anything more than that.

[SCdF]

Yes, it is not fair. The entire gambling industry is unfair and exploitative.

[alex_duf]

Since when is betting supposed to be fair? The whole point is the middle man extracts money.

[skippyboxedhero]

No, it is a business, that business employs millions of people worldwide. There are some books where, for various reasons, that kind of business would destroy their ability to serve retail customers...which is the point: the ultimate point is entertainment, it isn't supposed to be a financial transaction, do people rage at the dead loss from eating food?

The market is moving towards a model that is more similar to financial markets with price discovery from informed participants. It enables higher volume, this business model is used by Asian books such as SBOBet...but the market is where it is now, and most places are also using beards to bet at soft books too, and those books will continue to try to protect their business as it is now.

Btw, one of the major issues that explain why books are soft is the use of marketing to fund growth. If that spending wasn't required, it would change the operating model completely to one where gambling companies took a spread. But the marketing spend is the main avenue of competition, not price.

[ekjhgkejhgk]

If you want to bet, you could do so in regulated markets like financial markets.

This isn't a smartass remark "stock market is gambling". I literally mean that the financial markets went through all this bullshit 100 years ago, and came up with rules to make them fairer. For example, you won't be blocked from the stock market just because you do really well.

[jbstack]

It's a bad analogy because the incentives are totally different. With sports betting (of the type in the article) you're betting against the bookmaker. If you win, they lose, and vice versa. Obviously it's better for them that you lose.

With financial markets you are betting against other users. The ones running the market take fees on each transaction, so they don't care whether you win or lose. Their incentive is just to keep you making transactions.

[mr_mitm]

Neo brokers offering highly leveraged index funds securities with very low trading fees and convenient mobile apps are absolutely indiscernible from gambling. Some people bet on the NASDAQ like other people bet on race horses. It might be even worse, because how can you stop people from trading securities?

[integralid]

Stock market is not gambling, but you can definitely gamble on the stock market. Considering it's a zero sum game (instead of negative sum, like in casino) and it's taxed favorably I have no idea why anyone still does sports betting.

[jaybrendansmith]

Gambling is legalized crime. We are living in the future the dystopian novels warned us about.

[deadbabe]

Why wouldn’t you ban clever people?

Isn’t the point to let all players have a fairly equal chance? Someone’s going to win the money regardless, so it’s not like you’re saving money.

If the same data savvy people are just going to win most of the time, why would people bother playing? Ultimately you would not have enough players and the industry collapses. I don’t understand why this makes the casinos the bad guys.

[pama]

Per the article, the intelligent bets are typically against the house (unpopular/early), not other people. The organizers wouldnt care if other people lost their money. Addicts would still bet somewhere.

[shlant]

> Isn’t the point to let all players have a fairly equal chance?

Do you genuinely think this is why clever players are banned?

> Someone’s going to win the money regardless, so it’s not like you’re saving money.

What? banning people who have a better edge vs. the house won't save money?