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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Blackjack_Team
https://www.betstrat.com/betstrat-articles/the-phil-ivey-edg...
Interestingly, if the player doesn't maintain a proper betting strategy, he will have a considerable risk of ruin even in a player advantaged game. In a game with a 10% player edge, 28% of players managed to go bust[1]. Given the large number of rounds of betting for blackjack, without a good betting strategy, even players that count their way to a 2-3% edge are probably still going to make the casino money.
The downtown Casinos are much more uptight about advantage play, but I think that's because a lot of the pit bosses are old school and they just hate the idea of a player supposedly putting one over on them.
[1] https://neilhacker.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/kelly-criteri...
I've heard it said that the casinos encourage bad card counters, because someone who has a "system" that doesn't really work for them is going to lose even _more_ money playing. It's only when you start really winning that they care. The fact that you were obvious about it just made it easier for them to identify you once you won anything significant.
Counting theory is really simple stuff. Everyone does it subconsciously. Almost everyone can learn the concept of sampling without substitution. Banning such basic math seems ridiculous, but highlights that the average player is not there to win. Gambling institutions are sad places.
BUT if we are going to allow them, should we allow them to only let people play when they lose?
The decision to let them exist is as arbitrary as the decision to allow them to only play when they when.
Baseball is a game of skill. So assume the Yankees could ban every skilled player who beat them. They make bank beating little-league rookies. It makes sense to keep the competition at that skill level.
Obviously we're referring to games like Blackjack here, not roulette, which are not purely random.
How do you square that with giving people autonomy? You can do what you want with your money, but you can't play if you don't feel like you are gonna win... there is an inherent contradiction there.
The Libertarian Free Market answer is that both parties need to be fully informed. Casinos would be required to post maximum win rates and otherwise fully detail their "we throw out anyone that wins" policy up-front, in a clear and easily understood format. If the casino writes a bad, exploitable policy, they go bankrupt being exploited and this encourages future casinos to do better.
> and otherwise fully detail their "we throw out anyone that wins" policy up-front
They can just ask the gambler to leave the premises - I cannot imagine some 'libertarian free market' solution which would force casinos to allow anyone to enter the premises and gamble (provided it's not clear discrimination). Being able to count cards isn't some sort of protected class, right?
That's the AVERAGE win rate.
The maximum win rate is "if you make more than $10,000 in profit, we'll throw you out", and I've never heard of that being made explicit.
The point is that if you're going to throw out people who win more than a certain amount, you're not actually offering a fair game. There are secret rules that you haven't been told, and they very clearly bias your overall odds. You certainly shouldn't be able to advertise "you could win big!" if your policies make that impossible.
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There's clearly precent in other industries, too: If a grocery store advertises a sale on milk, they have certain obligations to offer a rain check if they run out. "According to the Fair Business Practices Act, it is unfair or deceptive if a store advertises goods without intending to sell them or to provide reasonable amounts of the advertised products without providing notice that supplies are limited."
Casinos are advertising the chance to "win big" but have no intention of ever actually paying out.
They are not fine with playing a game that does not advantage them.
I thought that they were suggesting it's ~ the average winrate given optimal play.
And Atlantic City casinos can’t legally kick out card counters
Casinos aren't common carriers. The rules should be fair, disclosed in advance and not ad hoc. But why one would force a casino to e.g. take the other side of a billionaire's bet is beyond me.
Gambling establishments have existed in some of the places with the weakest governments around. They are not regulated into existence, and are often regulated out of existence.
It's true large casinos are often a consequence of both regulating them out of existence in neighboring areas and creating a high regulatory bar to opening one in the area in question, which minimizes competition. But that's not regulating casinos into existence, it's upregulating size by downregulating number.
In Australia bookmakers are obliged by law to stand a minimum bet size, based on the event and location (country vs metro horse racing for example). [1]
[1] https://www.championbets.com.au/bookmakers/minimum-bet-limit...
The bookmaker will want all prices offered on the event to be in excess of 100%. The over round is where the bookmaker makes their profit. As an example, in a horse race, the percentage probabilities of all odds offered might add up to a total of 115%. That 15% is the bookmaker's margin.
Now, of course, the bookmaker doesn't necessarily profit in every race, but they should be trying to balance their book before the off, to insure that whatever the result they profit. They can do this by laying off liabilities with another bookmaker, shortening the odds on some runners, or just closing the book.
As a bettor, one should be trying to not just find the winner of races, but also prices which are wrong. If you assess the true odds of an event happening (let's say a horse winning) are better than the prices offered by the bookmaker, then it should be profitable to bet those prices in the long term. For example, if you think a horse has a 25% chance of winning the race, but the bookmaker is offering a price of 6/1 (7.0 or roughly 14%), then you have the odds in your favour and should make decent margin over time.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
[0]: https://theconversation.com/designed-to-deceive-how-gambling...
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.
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
> 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.
And yes the low side of the market is one of the reasons why people start trading in capital markets, other ways to make money with bets are too limiting even if you find an edge. There are usually a couple places around the world with higher amounts possible.
The problem I have with this scenario re: sports betting is that it decouples the trust of scoring games and paying out bets - which is not a "feature" for bettors.
If I'm using a reputable, "centralized" sports book, they have a reputation at stake. They have more of an incentive to accurately score games than a third party oracle. If they pay out in error, they are likely legally required to eat the loss and pay the true winners.
None of that is enhanced by web3 if sports betting is legal and regulated.
Caring about that reality is below my line
But with bribery you can skip the mempool these days
Not really any other way to do it without fixing games.
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.
This is why the popular sportsbooks still allow big bets for reputation's sake.
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.
Unless it's from other players, like in poker.
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.
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.
Did they stop you from betting completely? Introduce a really low dollar limit per bet? Gub your accounts?
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.
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.