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I'm pretty Laissez-Faire about things, but a recent interaction with gambling is making me reconsider: My friend got a lot of free credits from the major sport
by slap_shot 5y ago
I'm pretty Laissez-Faire about things, but a recent interaction with gambling is making me reconsider:
My friend got a lot of free credits from the major sports books and wrote some code that he felt could generate a profit. We all threw in a little bit of money and let the program do what it does. Within a month we started doing 1k a day in profit on 3k wagered. Right as we approached 30k in profit, every major book limited our maximum wagers to pennies on the dollar, effectively making the system worthless.
So this product exists when the customer loses money, but ceases to exist when the customer makes money. It's sort of an odd product in that regard.
- from 5y agoNot available to Americans (at least the ones unwilling to use BTC and a VPN), but Pinnacle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Sports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Sports) is happy to take sharp bettors. If you're just arbing major US books then yeah you will get banned quickly.
- financetechbro 5y agoOdd or have they adopted the same practices that casinos have in order to ensure that the house always wins
- slap_shot 5y agocasino and sports books are the same thing and are the unusual product I am describing
- thebean11 5y agoWow, that's pretty amazing. Have you considered giving it a shot in-person in Vegas, assuming it's not super high frequency? Could potentially make a lot of cash before they ban you.
- slap_shot 5y agowe've started spreading the bets across lots of different accounts. the issue is we don't know which leg of the bet is going to be the one that profits, so you run the risk of one account winning too frequently and getting flagged. If we did that same thing in person we would need a lot of random ass poeple. But it's definitely something we've considered.
- gjs278 5y ago
- slig 5y agoDoes your program looks at past results and infers who's going to win somehow?
- gostsamo 5y agomost likely this is betting arbitrage. check the odds on different bookmakers and try to find an opportunity where you can bet on both sides and win regardless.
- majani 5y agoYup, especially in games like basketball where no draws are allowed
- slig 5y agoThat makes a lot of sense, thanks!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- vkou 5y agoShouldn't the bid-ask spread eat all of that profit, and more?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gostsamo 5y agoNo, you don't do it on random. Let's say you are looking at basketball game X vs. Y. Bookmaker A is giving odds X win 2.5 and Y win 1.33 Bookmaker B is giving odds X win 1.55 and Y win 2.10 What you do is bet on X in A and on Y in B. Let's say that you invest $2000 ($1000 in each bookie). If X wins, you loose $1000 on Y, but you win $2500 from X. Total profit = $500. If Y wins, you loose $1000 on X, but you win $2100 on Y with net profit of $100.
- vgeek 5y agohttps://www.theringer.com/2019/6/5/18644504/sports-betting-bettors-sharps-kicked-out-spanky-william-hill-new-jersey https://www.theringer.com/2019/6/5/18644504/sports-betting-b... This is a long read, but is really insightful on how the industry really works. If you're a consistently winning bettor, you're going to get blocked pretty quickly when you're betting against the house. Why would a casino want to play a game where they don't have odds in their favor when they can just ban the sharps and feast on the casuals? With parimutuel wagering (horse racing, exchanges like BetFair-- there aren't major exchanges in the US, not enough margin for gambling lobby to go for yet) where you're wagering against other players, you won't get banned, since you're not consistently taking money from the house.
- chrismcb 5y agoSports betting isn't exactly being against the house. In sports betting the house takes bets on both sides and then charges a percentage. Oh wait, you seem to understand this. The op was talking about making sports bets but being against the house.
- ktc1 5y agoI worked as a trader for a UK based bookmaker and in reality it wasn't like that. You were betting against the house and it was very rare for us to make money on any outcome.
- babypuncher 5y agoI think that should be illegal. If we are going to allow casinos to operate at all, then we shouldn't allow them to discriminate against potential customers on the basis that said customers are better at the game. If that means their business model is no longer viable, then that is their problem.
- analog31 5y agoA casino is entirely a creature of government. It's regulated into existence, like a bank. Why would any government entitle an entity to exist, that allows you to siphon an unlimited amount of money out of their locality?
- erfgh 5y ago1k on 3k wagered sounds pretty suspicious. Also, the regularity you imply makes it even more suspicious. How did this program work?
- RC_ITR 5y agoNot OP, but if I had to guess, the coder just looked for the most favorable 'prop bets' that books use to get the casuals in the door and took advantage of those favorable odds. Not really any other way to do it without fixing games.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- majani 5y agoThey were probably taking advantage of the rush of companies into the US market. It's a common market penetration tactic to offer odds that are wildly favorable to the punters for the first few months.
- RedAlakazam 5y agoDid you guys achieve this by creating a model for all kinds of different sports or did you hunt the arbitrage from different betting providers?
- nikcub 5y agoIf anybody is further interested in this, a recent YouTube video by Spencer Cornelia went behind the scenes of a similar operation that is still running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N05vGcw_tI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N05vGcw_tI They are betting the spread between different books and most of their operation involves keeping accounts live and with placement capacity
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoArbitrage of the spread is definitely a pro bettor's goto. You don't need to care about or analyze the game at all. Groups of them often would try to manipulate the spreads with individual bets and then go big on the arbitrage. I remember an article where some guy thought he was getting an inside view of a pro sports bettor. I remember he sent him on a bunch of casinos to bet specific games. He didn't realize the bettor was using his budget for the story and him as a gofer to setup the arbitrage. All the celebrity sports bettors on sports TV can't be trusted. They'll either give "mainstream" views, or are trying to manipulate the spreads in their favor. You really think they have critical insight into Southwest Regional Tech State vs University of Appalachian A&M&T women's basketball?
- hooande 5y agoThese numbers aren't believable. There's no way to consistently make $1k on every $3k wagered. Possibly for weeks, or even a couple of months. But there is no method of betting on professional sports that can do that over any significant time period. If you got to the point of betting $30k a day, you were definitely going to get limited by the sports books. They also can and will arbitrarily limit the amount of money that you can withdraw. Sports books are really only designed to deal in that much money with a limited set of people who exhibit very clear patterns.
- slap_shot 5y agolol
- sidewndr46 5y agoIsn't this how every major betting operation works? I'm not counting lotteries because although you could argue that you are "betting" on some numbers anyone with a 6th grade education that there is no difference in expected outcomes if you choose different numbers. Why would bookmakers ever take bets from someone they don't expect to make money from?
- crubier 5y agoThere is actually a difference in expected outcomes at lottery if you choose different numbers. Commonly played number will be shared among all winners, so your share will be less than with rare numbers.
- thret 5y agoThe less used numbers still have a negative expected value, but you are correct in that numbers 1-12 and 13-31 do have lower payouts because people commonly bet on dates like birthdays.
- sidewndr46 5y agoThe problem with this is it presupposes you have some actual chance of winning. You don't, no one splits $0.
- HWR_14 5y ago> Why would bookmakers ever take bets from someone they don't expect to make money from? Well, bookmakers like to minimize their risk. So, suppose Person X is going to bet on team A, but most people have already bet on team B. The bookmaker thinks team A is far more likely to win, but he still takes the bet. Then he goes from being a gambler to having a balanced book and making a known profit regardless of who wins.
- sidewndr46 5y agoBut if my goal is to minimize risk and I consistently see a single person making winning bets, why would I take that bet? It's just bad business.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoYeah. People are supposed to lose. They get cut off if they're too succesful. Even worse is the addictive nature of it. Making money like this is like a dose of dopamine straight in the reward center of the brain. There are people who literally lose everything gambling. Even on the stock market people will make a good call on futures, get high on it and lose everything.
- lapetitejort 5y agoLosing can also release dopamine [0]. [0]: https://theconversation.com/designed-to-deceive-how-gambling-distorts-reality-and-hooks-your-brain-91052 https://theconversation.com/designed-to-deceive-how-gambling...
- thret 5y agoYep. Professional gamblers are always looking to buy new accounts. They get burnt every few months and have to move to new ones.
- nhoughto 5y agoYep, few friends gone through the same thing. Seems like a coder-finding-betting rite of passage, 'oh right i can automate this process and earn whilst I sleep!' Nope, bookies only want to keep profitable customers, or provide some other upside to them. In the context of bookies they have limited other ways to make money but sometimes their are weird edges that pop-up, like legislated restrictions. In Australia those running the licensed tote (totaliser) market pools on horse racing can't make the market themselves, they can't legally seed a pool, and since a tote win is a portion of the pool total customers are less inclined to bet on a low value pool, so the markets allow a few high value bettors to seed the pool for them (with generous rakebacks) which they make a net loss on, but has overall positive effect on their business.
- jamesfinlayson 5y agoDo the people that run the tote make a loss? I thought they kept 10%-15% of the pool regardless.
- nhoughto 5y agoNah they generally make a loss on just the pool seeding bets (made by the nominated lucky few) and make it up from the rest. Generally the seeding bets end up as a small percentage of the overall pool.
- lmilcin 5y agoDon't be so naive to even suggest that these businesses would allow you to earn money on them. These only exist to earn money for their owner. That's it. Just like any other establishment, you will be thrown out if you find a way to earn money on them rather than loose your own. Any casino that notices you are earning money regularly will do the same.
- jbc1 5y agoWhat do you mean by "free credit", "3k wagered" and "limited to pennies on the dollar"? Did they stop you from betting completely? Introduce a really low dollar limit per bet? Gub your accounts?
- csin 5y agoFree credit: Most sportsbooks give you signup bonus/free money. The caveat is that you have to make enough bets to unlock the free money. Hence drawing customers to bet more. 3k wagered: They were betting 3 thousand dollars everyday. Limited to pennies on the dollar: Most likely a hyperbole. Most sportsbooks will eventually limit your betsizes to say $40 maximum bet on said event.
- FanaHOVA 5y agoBeards/runners have been a thing in sports gambling for like decades. Laying bets is harder than actually picking the sides when you get to the top of the market. You should follow Spanky on Twitter and listen to his podcast.
- vmception 5y agoOh! You might like the Web3 ecosystem! In the Web3 ecosystem (in this context that means Ethereum and Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible, popularized by a library called web3.js), people fork the current state of the blockchain to localhost, this allows you to test your transaction with many iterations to see if it can push the chain/contract to a subsequent valid state, if successful your code switches back to the main network (mainnet) and deploys the transaction This is perfect for bets because you get to know in advance if the inefficiency you discovered will go through. Many contracts to interact with are black boxes that could have code to limit amounts, so you get to see a few split seconds in advance and can rapidly rule out that opportunity towards another one. Brownie is a good library for this.
- brandonmenc 5y agoI can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but I'll call you when my bookie puts his contract on the the blockchain.
- vmception 5y agonot sarcasm, eventually nuanced web3 related posts will be the frequent front page articles, instead of hot takes about the parts not fulfilling their purpose and pretending its an irreconcilable issue with the concept for sports betting and prediction markets, the main limitation is the size of the bets possible, which is pretty boring after 5 figures so even if your bookie was pointing their oracle (api results) to a blockchain to dictate payout conditions of a contract, its still about the size of the pool based on other participants, which would probably be limited, at least initially
- brandonmenc 5y agoHow do you write a smart contract that knows the outcome of a game? Presumably this means reading the results from somewhere. What happens if the wrong outcome is published and then corrected later? > which is pretty boring after 5 figures Why? What is the limitation? Also, is that five figures of participants, wagers, or payout? Does that five figure limitation ever change? A five figure limitation on payout dollars is too limiting today for sports betting. Definitely after a decade or two of inflation.
- rdtwo 5y agoI don’t get it you guys are smart enough to do this but not smart enough to bypass a simple ban? If your system is that good it should be simple to recruit proxy betters in mass to use their accounts to beat the system. Like there are whole discord communities of resellers that do that and sell their tools for really good money
- jamesfinlayson 5y agoWith lots of money on the line you're probably not going to trust strangers with this, and the corporate bookmakers aggressively search for "duplicate" accounts (might vary in different jurisdictions but in Australia at least you need to provide full name, date of birth, address and government issued ID to play and withdraw - you can't fake that and you'll run out of trusted family members before too long).
- rdtwo 5y agoRight you have to give intermediates a cut and yes they require social security numbers so hard to clone accounts but in age of discord proxy betters are readily available
- Manuel_D 5y agoIt's hard to bypass a ban when you have to supply your banking information. Not to mention, going through intermediaries of proxy betters likely starts to venture into the realm of things that can land you in court.
- slap_shot 5y agoWe've already started placing the bets across a dozen or so accounts to bypass this. That wasn't the point of the story.