6 ms·

If a casino or sportsbook allow unlimited losers, they shouldn’t be able to cut off winners. Conversely, if they cut off winners, they should be required to rei

If a casino or sportsbook allow unlimited losers, they shouldn’t be able to cut off winners. Conversely, if they cut off winners, they should be required to reimburse loses above a statutory limit. In a healthy economy “Tails I win, heads you lose” businesses should not be allowed to succeed.

rightbyte 1y ago
Ye well there is room for improvements. I have done sports betting like three times, when I realized the odds were bonkers, and retrieving the money after winning was an extreme hazzle that took weeks with photocopies of passports and gas bills and what not. Paying the bets took a minute. I mean, online betting is a shady business. Physical casinos at least have some sort of brick wall to bang your head against.
- dist-epoch 1y ago
  > retrieving the money after winning was an extreme hazzle that took weeks that has nothing to do with sports betting. it's the same with trading stocks/forex/..., it's KYC/AML
  - paxys 1y ago
    Yup I have used these apps, and it takes 10 seconds to deposit and withdraw money. They have every incentive to make it as seamless as possible, otherwise they aren't going to get repeat customers.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  Was watching the Kentucky Derby at a party, thought it might be a hoot to bet the favorite to show [1] on my phone but I didn’t quite do it. I would have won but it could have been a hassle to get paid. [1] A heuristic to minimize your losses, because favorites are underbet, if you have minimal information
- gruez 1y ago
  >and retrieving the money after winning was an extreme hazzle that took weeks with photocopies of passports and gas bills and what not. Paying the bets took a minute. Blame the AML/KYC/income tax regulatory regime. Placing a bet doesn't require KYC any more than spending $10k at a club doesn't require KYC. However once the casino needs to disburse money Uncle Sam suddenly wants his cut and to make sure it doesn't go to Bad People.
  - rightbyte 1y ago
    It is not really KYC though since we didn't meet or even talk or chat?
    - gruez 1y ago
      KYC means collecting documents/ID on your customers, not going on a date to "know" them.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    Right, but elephant in the room: gambling is shady and addictive business. If we let gambling go on under the table, it will probably become worse, not better. Ideally we probably should have higher barriers to gambling on both sides, kind of like we do cigarettes.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
david422 1y ago
I don't disagree - but also realize that the other option is not to play.
- mlinhares 1y ago
  That doesn't work for vices in general, there has to be an externally imposed limit.
- gaze 1y ago
  This is such an old moral argument. Do you think society should protect people from the nearly unlimited downside inherent to having bugs in human behavior exploited or do you think that doing this is wrong and that it's in fact immoral to stop people from being punished by their own bad decisions, because that's what they deserve.
  - personjerry 1y ago
    To play devil's advocate, why do you get to decide what's a "bug in human behavior"? If they're happy about it... ?
    - aquariusDue 1y ago
      Is water addicting? /s We can endlessly debate morality, ethics and all that regarding lots of things, but in my humble opinion gambling could be reduced to: "Would people still engage in those games of chance if there was no monetary aspect to it?" And then how many of those people who would still engage with them are "notorious" gamblers on whom those games had a clear negative impact (in most people's eyes).
      - Kinrany 1y ago
        This is easy to legislate at least: casinos must use play money that no one is allowed to exchange back for real money.
    - Teever 1y ago
1970-01-01 1y ago
We're just doing it wrong with all-cash betting. We need to change the game to include goods. Don't like your shirt? Go bet it at the casino. If you lose, the casino takes it and goes to sell it at auction. If you win, you get some cash to go buy and own a new shirt.
- parpfish 1y ago
  If you bet your shirt, you should only be allowed to win other shirts. Or maybe a matching pair of pants.
  - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
    I feel like you've just invented extremely unwieldy chips.
    - Kinrany 1y ago
      That's not a problem, we'll just replace shirts with special wooden tokens of the same color
jplrssn 1y ago
Insurance companies are supposed to operate in this way, but some are happy to take your money as long as they believe they can profit and only start enforcing policy violations etc once you've become a net liability.
- gruez 1y ago
  >and only start enforcing policy violations etc once you've become a net liability. No, they'll just hike premiums or refuse to insure you.
- const_cast 1y ago
  Yes, but at least we know this is bad and set things up like the affordable care act to try to get rid of this behavior.
skippyboxedhero 1y ago
That isn't what is happening. Earlier this year, sportsbooks lost a lot due to punter-friendly outcomes (a series of favourites winning), and they didn't cut people off. Doing this is extremely bad for business because: people won't come back, and you aren't giving customers the opportunity to lose that money back to you. So what you are seeing when people are limited is not this but arbing line moves between bookmakers, people bearding for someone else, etc. One of the articles mentions stuff relating to player behaviour - for example, if you bet on Australian Rules Football, you bet every game for multiple weeks then it doesn't matter if you win or lose, there is going to be a limit - there is a grey area, but the majority of people being limited don't fall into this category. They are just people doing stupid stuff (I have done this, I used to arb line moves 20 years ago in the UK, I have been banned everywhere, it is stupid and I should have been banned).
- nly 1y ago
  Yeah, I got gubbed everywhere in the UK as well. When Betfair first came on to the scenes the traditional online (and offline) bookmakers were like fish in a barrel for arb bets. I still remember when the first major bookmaker (pretty sure it was BetVictor) started tracking Betfair markets automatically. Now they all do it.
  - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
    Bookies in the UK never set prices, apart from parlays (which are admittedly a growing part of the market). Even in the early 2000s, it was Asian books that set lines and tech just made it easier for them to access. Margins have gone from 20% to 2% (or lower) because bookies can confidently set lines a few days before the event. Also, their tech even today is still dogshit. It looks like they are tracking Betfair prices but most bookies use third parties for pricing, OpenBet for example, and so it is usually the third party tracking. There is still inherent latency so the main tool has been delays and limiting certain customers. This is why ppl who say they should just take any bet are idiots, it isn't a stock exchange (and most of these third parties also have massive latency in their stack too, naming no names...the stuff I have heard about how they run things is incredible).
scoofy 1y ago
Gambling should not be trivially easy to participate in. That's the real problem. If we're pretending it's entertainment, then it shouldn't matter that winners get shut down... because it's just supposed to be fun. If we're not pretending it's entertainment, then we need to deal with the fact that it's a huge negative payoff vice we shouldn't be allowing to happen easily (make it legal and rare). The idea that we're trying to create "fairness" in a business that basically wouldn't exist if the operators don't have a guarantee of success is ridiculous. We can either require sports betting agencies to have betting lines that require their bets be balanced or we can basically ban them from becoming a large industry.
- kelnos 1y ago
  I personally think of gambling as entertainment, but that's a luxury of mine, as I don't have a gambling problem. On the (infrequent) occasions I gamble, I pre-set a limit and never spend/lose more than that. If it's gone, I'm done. Every now and then I lose that money so quickly that it's not fun, but that happens so rarely that I generally feel like I've enjoyed myself and have paid an appropriate amount for that enjoyment. Paying for entertainment is a normal activity. People do it every day. But gambling feels different: you can pay a nearly unlimited amount for it. There are usually limits in other forms of entertainment. I can only see so many movies in a theater in a day. I can only go to so many concerts. The number of board games I can buy is limited by the storage space in my house. I'm sure there are exceptions in some types of entertainment I haven't thought of, though.
  - incangold 1y ago
    Another example of “entertainment” with scope for unconstrained spending: digital goods in the less scrupulous kinds of video games
    - danillonunes 1y ago
      Which coincidentally often contains gambling mechanics such as loot boxes.
thrance 1y ago
> In a healthy economy “Tails I win, heads you lose” businesses should not be allowed to succeed. That's every gambling place/app, should they all be made illegal? Not that I'm disagreeing...
- armchairhacker 1y ago
  Polymarket seems OK (or at least unethical for a different reason): the prize pool is entirely from the gamblers’ money, and evenly distributed to the winners. I don’t think Polymarket does this, but I also think it would be OK if the casino takes a cut of the prize pool, as long as it ensures that winners never receive less than they bet. For example, the casino may receive $losers/n (they pick n, $losers = total bets of losers), and winners receive $bet($losers(n - 1)/n + $winners)/$winners, $winners = total bets of winners, $bet = their bet). Then it’s “tails = I win you lose, heads = we both win someone else loses, except nobody wins if everyone gets heads but that’s extremely unlikely (especially with more than 2 options)”.
- uxp100 1y ago
  That’s not really casinos in the same way as apps. Casinos find the other side of the bet for you and take a cut. They make money in transaction costs. They profit either way, but don’t cut you off for winning (at the sportsbook, other games may be different). Apps sometimes are taking the other side of the bet themselves, and thus will cut you off for winning.
  - thrance 1y ago
    Yes, however casinos don't need to expell winners*, as the games are already rigged in the house's favor. Slot machines are set to give back 80% of the money invested, the dealer has a small advantage in black jack, etc. * If you start applying the martingale to roulette, you will quickly be pointed to the exit.
    - saghm 1y ago
      > the dealer has a small advantage in black jack Yeah, but if you try to "count cards" (i.e. actually utilize probability to play effectively) they'll throw you out. The parent comment is right that this is basically how all gambling against a business works. I'd totally be in favor of them all being illegal, but I also doubt that it would be feasible due to most people not sharing this view; it would probably go down about as well as prohibition (which ironically is also something I'm one of the few who would be relatively unaffected by given that I don't drink).

rightbyte 1y ago

Ye well there is room for improvements. I have done sports betting like three times, when I realized the odds were bonkers, and retrieving the money after winning was an extreme hazzle that took weeks with photocopies of passports and gas bills and what not. Paying the bets took a minute. I mean, online betting is a shady business. Physical casinos at least have some sort of brick wall to bang your head against.

dist-epoch 1y ago
> retrieving the money after winning was an extreme hazzle that took weeks that has nothing to do with sports betting. it's the same with trading stocks/forex/..., it's KYC/AML
- paxys 1y ago
  Yup I have used these apps, and it takes 10 seconds to deposit and withdraw money. They have every incentive to make it as seamless as possible, otherwise they aren't going to get repeat customers.
PaulHoule 1y ago
Was watching the Kentucky Derby at a party, thought it might be a hoot to bet the favorite to show [1] on my phone but I didn’t quite do it. I would have won but it could have been a hassle to get paid. [1] A heuristic to minimize your losses, because favorites are underbet, if you have minimal information
gruez 1y ago
>and retrieving the money after winning was an extreme hazzle that took weeks with photocopies of passports and gas bills and what not. Paying the bets took a minute. Blame the AML/KYC/income tax regulatory regime. Placing a bet doesn't require KYC any more than spending $10k at a club doesn't require KYC. However once the casino needs to disburse money Uncle Sam suddenly wants his cut and to make sure it doesn't go to Bad People.
- rightbyte 1y ago
  It is not really KYC though since we didn't meet or even talk or chat?
  - gruez 1y ago
    KYC means collecting documents/ID on your customers, not going on a date to "know" them.
- const_cast 1y ago
  Right, but elephant in the room: gambling is shady and addictive business. If we let gambling go on under the table, it will probably become worse, not better. Ideally we probably should have higher barriers to gambling on both sides, kind of like we do cigarettes.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

david422 1y ago

I don't disagree - but also realize that the other option is not to play.

mlinhares 1y ago
That doesn't work for vices in general, there has to be an externally imposed limit.
gaze 1y ago
This is such an old moral argument. Do you think society should protect people from the nearly unlimited downside inherent to having bugs in human behavior exploited or do you think that doing this is wrong and that it's in fact immoral to stop people from being punished by their own bad decisions, because that's what they deserve.
- personjerry 1y ago
  To play devil's advocate, why do you get to decide what's a "bug in human behavior"? If they're happy about it... ?
  - aquariusDue 1y ago
    Is water addicting? /s We can endlessly debate morality, ethics and all that regarding lots of things, but in my humble opinion gambling could be reduced to: "Would people still engage in those games of chance if there was no monetary aspect to it?" And then how many of those people who would still engage with them are "notorious" gamblers on whom those games had a clear negative impact (in most people's eyes).
    - Kinrany 1y ago
      This is easy to legislate at least: casinos must use play money that no one is allowed to exchange back for real money.
  - Teever 1y ago

1970-01-01 1y ago

We're just doing it wrong with all-cash betting. We need to change the game to include goods. Don't like your shirt? Go bet it at the casino. If you lose, the casino takes it and goes to sell it at auction. If you win, you get some cash to go buy and own a new shirt.

parpfish 1y ago
If you bet your shirt, you should only be allowed to win other shirts. Or maybe a matching pair of pants.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
  I feel like you've just invented extremely unwieldy chips.
  - Kinrany 1y ago
    That's not a problem, we'll just replace shirts with special wooden tokens of the same color

jplrssn 1y ago

Insurance companies are supposed to operate in this way, but some are happy to take your money as long as they believe they can profit and only start enforcing policy violations etc once you've become a net liability.

gruez 1y ago
>and only start enforcing policy violations etc once you've become a net liability. No, they'll just hike premiums or refuse to insure you.
const_cast 1y ago
Yes, but at least we know this is bad and set things up like the affordable care act to try to get rid of this behavior.

skippyboxedhero 1y ago

That isn't what is happening. Earlier this year, sportsbooks lost a lot due to punter-friendly outcomes (a series of favourites winning), and they didn't cut people off. Doing this is extremely bad for business because: people won't come back, and you aren't giving customers the opportunity to lose that money back to you. So what you are seeing when people are limited is not this but arbing line moves between bookmakers, people bearding for someone else, etc. One of the articles mentions stuff relating to player behaviour - for example, if you bet on Australian Rules Football, you bet every game for multiple weeks then it doesn't matter if you win or lose, there is going to be a limit - there is a grey area, but the majority of people being limited don't fall into this category. They are just people doing stupid stuff (I have done this, I used to arb line moves 20 years ago in the UK, I have been banned everywhere, it is stupid and I should have been banned).

nly 1y ago
Yeah, I got gubbed everywhere in the UK as well. When Betfair first came on to the scenes the traditional online (and offline) bookmakers were like fish in a barrel for arb bets. I still remember when the first major bookmaker (pretty sure it was BetVictor) started tracking Betfair markets automatically. Now they all do it.
- skippyboxedhero 1y ago
  Bookies in the UK never set prices, apart from parlays (which are admittedly a growing part of the market). Even in the early 2000s, it was Asian books that set lines and tech just made it easier for them to access. Margins have gone from 20% to 2% (or lower) because bookies can confidently set lines a few days before the event. Also, their tech even today is still dogshit. It looks like they are tracking Betfair prices but most bookies use third parties for pricing, OpenBet for example, and so it is usually the third party tracking. There is still inherent latency so the main tool has been delays and limiting certain customers. This is why ppl who say they should just take any bet are idiots, it isn't a stock exchange (and most of these third parties also have massive latency in their stack too, naming no names...the stuff I have heard about how they run things is incredible).

scoofy 1y ago

Gambling should not be trivially easy to participate in. That's the real problem. If we're pretending it's entertainment, then it shouldn't matter that winners get shut down... because it's just supposed to be fun. If we're not pretending it's entertainment, then we need to deal with the fact that it's a huge negative payoff vice we shouldn't be allowing to happen easily (make it legal and rare). The idea that we're trying to create "fairness" in a business that basically wouldn't exist if the operators don't have a guarantee of success is ridiculous. We can either require sports betting agencies to have betting lines that require their bets be balanced or we can basically ban them from becoming a large industry.

kelnos 1y ago
I personally think of gambling as entertainment, but that's a luxury of mine, as I don't have a gambling problem. On the (infrequent) occasions I gamble, I pre-set a limit and never spend/lose more than that. If it's gone, I'm done. Every now and then I lose that money so quickly that it's not fun, but that happens so rarely that I generally feel like I've enjoyed myself and have paid an appropriate amount for that enjoyment. Paying for entertainment is a normal activity. People do it every day. But gambling feels different: you can pay a nearly unlimited amount for it. There are usually limits in other forms of entertainment. I can only see so many movies in a theater in a day. I can only go to so many concerts. The number of board games I can buy is limited by the storage space in my house. I'm sure there are exceptions in some types of entertainment I haven't thought of, though.
- incangold 1y ago
  Another example of “entertainment” with scope for unconstrained spending: digital goods in the less scrupulous kinds of video games
  - danillonunes 1y ago
    Which coincidentally often contains gambling mechanics such as loot boxes.

thrance 1y ago

> In a healthy economy “Tails I win, heads you lose” businesses should not be allowed to succeed. That's every gambling place/app, should they all be made illegal? Not that I'm disagreeing...

armchairhacker 1y ago
Polymarket seems OK (or at least unethical for a different reason): the prize pool is entirely from the gamblers’ money, and evenly distributed to the winners. I don’t think Polymarket does this, but I also think it would be OK if the casino takes a cut of the prize pool, as long as it ensures that winners never receive less than they bet. For example, the casino may receive $losers/n (they pick n, $losers = total bets of losers), and winners receive $bet($losers(n - 1)/n + $winners)/$winners, $winners = total bets of winners, $bet = their bet). Then it’s “tails = I win you lose, heads = we both win someone else loses, except nobody wins if everyone gets heads but that’s extremely unlikely (especially with more than 2 options)”.
uxp100 1y ago
That’s not really casinos in the same way as apps. Casinos find the other side of the bet for you and take a cut. They make money in transaction costs. They profit either way, but don’t cut you off for winning (at the sportsbook, other games may be different). Apps sometimes are taking the other side of the bet themselves, and thus will cut you off for winning.
- thrance 1y ago
  Yes, however casinos don't need to expell winners*, as the games are already rigged in the house's favor. Slot machines are set to give back 80% of the money invested, the dealer has a small advantage in black jack, etc. * If you start applying the martingale to roulette, you will quickly be pointed to the exit.
  - saghm 1y ago
    > the dealer has a small advantage in black jack Yeah, but if you try to "count cards" (i.e. actually utilize probability to play effectively) they'll throw you out. The parent comment is right that this is basically how all gambling against a business works. I'd totally be in favor of them all being illegal, but I also doubt that it would be feasible due to most people not sharing this view; it would probably go down about as well as prohibition (which ironically is also something I'm one of the few who would be relatively unaffected by given that I don't drink).