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Not myself, but I know someone who was making a living from sports betting a few years back. It's not that different from "gambling" in the stock market. The sa

Not myself, but I know someone who was making a living from sports betting a few years back. It's not that different from "gambling" in the stock market. The same principles apply. You need some kind of egde, which often is 1. Data or 2. Market Access, less often the statistical model. Better data beats better models, and modeling is commoditized these days. Also, you need a pretty decent bankroll so that you can handle the volatility. It's an interesting space, but don't expect to be profitable without investing 1-2 years of your time into building good models, infrastructure and data access. This already assumes you have that kind of freedom/capital and are able to stick with it through tough times. Also, edges can be fleeting, so it's a constant race against time and other players to find new opportunities. A bit similar to online poker. It was possible to be highly profitable with online poker 5-10 years ago, but over the last few years it has become very hard to impossible to beat the odds, so a lot of poker people have moved on to gambling on other things, sports betting included.

kratom_sandwich 6y ago
> It's not that different from "gambling" in the stock market. Would you say that there's a difference in the number of skilled / unskilled market participants in the stock market and in the betting markets? E.g. majority of market participants in the stock market are skilled institutional investors vs. majority of market participants in the betting market are casual bettors?
- gas9S9zw3P9c 6y ago
  I think stock market is a vague term. It depends on what "market" you're trading in. If you're trading highly liquid stocks with large market caps you'll be in against large hedge funds employing hundreds of people. If you're trading less liquid stocks, small caps, complex derivatives, or other smaller markets, you may have less competition and it'll be easier to find an edge. I'd say the same is true for betting. Your competition will vary depending on the market size and liquidity. Small unknown markets are typically not worth going after for large teams of highly-paid individuals. For example, you probably won't find as much competition betting on eSports events than betting on horses [0] (in jurisdictions where it's legal). So yeah, I think you're right that the professional competition in betting is probably a lot less than in the stock market. Finding a market with the right characteristics is IMO the most important thing. If you're an individual, you ideally want to find small unknown and relatively illiquid markets where you can make enough money for yourself, but where it's not worth for large players to get into. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambler-who-cracked-the-horse-racing-code https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambl...

kratom_sandwich 6y ago

> It's not that different from "gambling" in the stock market. Would you say that there's a difference in the number of skilled / unskilled market participants in the stock market and in the betting markets? E.g. majority of market participants in the stock market are skilled institutional investors vs. majority of market participants in the betting market are casual bettors?

gas9S9zw3P9c 6y ago
I think stock market is a vague term. It depends on what "market" you're trading in. If you're trading highly liquid stocks with large market caps you'll be in against large hedge funds employing hundreds of people. If you're trading less liquid stocks, small caps, complex derivatives, or other smaller markets, you may have less competition and it'll be easier to find an edge. I'd say the same is true for betting. Your competition will vary depending on the market size and liquidity. Small unknown markets are typically not worth going after for large teams of highly-paid individuals. For example, you probably won't find as much competition betting on eSports events than betting on horses [0] (in jurisdictions where it's legal). So yeah, I think you're right that the professional competition in betting is probably a lot less than in the stock market. Finding a market with the right characteristics is IMO the most important thing. If you're an individual, you ideally want to find small unknown and relatively illiquid markets where you can make enough money for yourself, but where it's not worth for large players to get into. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambler-who-cracked-the-horse-racing-code https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambl...