4 ms·

In the late 90s, I knew a guy who ran a free "pick the winner" football web site. He said he did it because of the phrase, "the masses are the asses", which mea

In the late 90s, I knew a guy who ran a free "pick the winner" football web site. He said he did it because of the phrase, "the masses are the asses", which means that the general public as a whole bets incorrectly and loses a majority of the time. This may be a bit of a simplification of what he actually did, but it was my understanding that he would see the trends in how his users were betting for the week, then looked at at past performance and used that info to make bets himself. He started making quite a bit of money doing just that. So generally, if you have data on how people are expecting games to go and have knowledge about the different betting and/or gaming sites, you have an advantage over the other players.

phillc73 11y ago
I'm not sure this still holds true with the advent of betting exchanges. The market is now pretty efficient. Sure, there's still value to be exploited if you're good enough. However, in general the wisdom of the crowd is quite close to the true odds, at least at the short end of the market. Efficiency in Exchange Betting Markets http://faculty.london.edu/mottaviani/exchange-betting.pdf http://faculty.london.edu/mottaviani/exchange-betting.pdf "In terms of the Sobel and Raines model, a lower conventional bias in the exchanges relative to traditional betting markets is consistent with a higher proportion of ‘serious’ bettors on the exchanges than with bookmakers" Efficient Market Hypothesis http://www.betfairprotrader.co.uk/2010/12/efficient-market-hypothesis_3.html http://www.betfairprotrader.co.uk/2010/12/efficient-market-h... "If you were to take all horses starting a race at 2.76 then you would find their win rate was pretty close to 36%" Market Efficiency: An Analysis of the Internet Betting Exchange Market http://studenttheses.cbs.dk/bitstream/handle/10417/2888/frederik_groenbek_haahr.pdf?sequence=1 http://studenttheses.cbs.dk/bitstream/handle/10417/2888/fred...

phillc73 11y ago

I'm not sure this still holds true with the advent of betting exchanges. The market is now pretty efficient. Sure, there's still value to be exploited if you're good enough. However, in general the wisdom of the crowd is quite close to the true odds, at least at the short end of the market. Efficiency in Exchange Betting Markets http://faculty.london.edu/mottaviani/exchange-betting.pdf http://faculty.london.edu/mottaviani/exchange-betting.pdf "In terms of the Sobel and Raines model, a lower conventional bias in the exchanges relative to traditional betting markets is consistent with a higher proportion of ‘serious’ bettors on the exchanges than with bookmakers" Efficient Market Hypothesis http://www.betfairprotrader.co.uk/2010/12/efficient-market-hypothesis_3.html http://www.betfairprotrader.co.uk/2010/12/efficient-market-h... "If you were to take all horses starting a race at 2.76 then you would find their win rate was pretty close to 36%" Market Efficiency: An Analysis of the Internet Betting Exchange Market http://studenttheses.cbs.dk/bitstream/handle/10417/2888/frederik_groenbek_haahr.pdf?sequence=1 http://studenttheses.cbs.dk/bitstream/handle/10417/2888/fred...