3 ms·
In theory the same thing is true with horse race betting; you can just assassinate the horse. Or the jockey. Or if you want to be more subtle about it, just sli
by johnfn 3y ago
In theory the same thing is true with horse race betting; you can just assassinate the horse. Or the jockey. Or if you want to be more subtle about it, just slip something into the horse feed. But this doesn't really happen in practice.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kibwen 3y agoMatch fixing happens regularly, so regularly that we have the term "match fixing" with a Wikipedia article dedicated to it. The presumption that match fixing doesn't happen in practice is unfounded. Here, from two months ago: "Over 180 professional tennis players participated in a global match-fixing ring" https://www.npr.org/2023/09/10/1198675541/over-180-professional-tennis-players-participated-in-a-global-match-fixing-ring https://www.npr.org/2023/09/10/1198675541/over-180-professio...
- johnfn 3y agoOK, fair; a stronger argument is "it doesn't happen enough that we need to shut down horse racing". Or tennis betting, in your case.
- arcticbull 3y agoIt's a question of scale. A few horses aren't a big deal, and both sides (the horse racing, and the bet) are heavily constrained in scope. Both sides become far less constrained with prediction markets. Maybe if we were objective, horse betting should be shut down -- but we kinda don't care.
- WalterBright 3y agoMatch-fixing likely has just become part of the game and the odds.
- kibwen 3y agoWhich comes back around to the original comment: the existence of a predictions market influences the outcome of the event being predicted, and in the worst case this effect is so large that it completely invalidates the purpose of attempting to predict the outcome in the first place; the tail wags the dog.
- nitwit005 3y agoA quick Google search shows a number of accusations of poisoning horses: https://www.espn.com/moresports/news/2003/0709/1578661.html https://www.espn.com/moresports/news/2003/0709/1578661.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/21/dressage-poisoning-scandal-horseowner-alleges-stallion-targeted/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/21/dressage-poisoni... Plus apparently a huge amount of drugs given to their own horses trying to cheat.
- johnfn 3y agoOK, fair, but it doesn't happen near enough to the degree that we'd need to shut down horse race betting.
- paulpauper 3y agohorse racing is one of those things that 'tech people' generally does not keep tabs on