newAccount2025 7 hours ago

No doubt. Sports betting too. I’m a curmudgeon but we should completely unwind to the pre-lottery days when organized gambling was simply not legal.

▲

mikestorrent 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't want to be an absolute killjoy about it; but IMO sports betting should be cash between you and a buddy watching the game down the pub. Anything past that - where a bookie gets involved, where the sums get bigger than a hundred bucks, that's when we really ought to stop, because it's just not a necessary action for anyone other than an addicted gambler. We're preying upon such personalities at scale. Entire people are working entire careers supporting such a thing - what a waste of human capital.

Similarly, I love the idea of the casino aesthetic, but the entire setup is designed to fleece you and to exploit the addicted. It was better when you had to go to Vegas to experience such a thing, but now casinos are everywhere, diluting the entire thing and making it sad instead of glamorous. Maybe it always was....

▲

tpxl 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Eh, betting houses have a vested interest in matches not being fixed, which actually fixes a huge problem in sports, so they have a use in that.

I used to work in odds prediction and the issue is all the shady shit surrounding betting, not actual betting itself. We very contractually forbidden from betting on any of our customers, but managers would go around encouraging to bet. This is obviously a huge problem when you know how the algorithms work, and more importantly, where all the errors are. I'd see odds on matches where you couldn't lose on a weekly basis (think 2 outcomes, average payout of >2x), open bets for things in the past (score 1:0, bets for first point still open, etc.).

The biggest issue though, was betting houses straight up banning winners. The more you won, the less you could bet, eventually leading to a ban. This is straight up illegal, but nobody cares. On the flip side, the more you lost, the more you could bet, you'd get better rewards (if you won, which you didn't) and the cheaper it would be.

You can't ban gambling, because you'll just get illegal gambling (much like prohibition/drugs). Proper regulation and enforcement is the solution here (much like drugs).

Edit: All this being said, I don't bet, nor do I endorse gambling with real money. I agree betting should mostly be between you and your buddy, but unfortunately the reality doesn't support that.

	▲	inigyou 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Without betting houses existing, why would you fix a match?

▲

fragmede 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Be a killjoy. Gambling's the devil and should be highly regulated so you can't gamble more than 1/3rd your last year's income.

▲

mikestorrent 4 hours ago | parent [-]

That's a pretty generous ceiling!

	▲	dmurray 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Depends if it's total amount wagered or total amount lost. If amount wagered, at typical takes for bookies/casinos/lotteries that would mean people would lose in expectation 0.1% to 5% of their income. Seems like a reasonable compromise that people could indulge in gambling for entertainment but very few people would be caused financial problems. With some weird second-order effects, but no regulation is perfect.

▲

readthenotes1 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Organized gambling wasn't legal most places, but that didn't mean there wasn't a booming trade.