
Won and done? Sportsbooks banning the smart money - mudil
http://www.espn.com/chalk/story/_/id/24425026/gambling-bookmakers-growing-us-legal-betting-market-allowed-ban-bettors
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splonk
This has pretty much always been standard, and barring some sort of change in
regulation, very likely always will be. As a bettor, your recourse is likely
cutting down your bets/farming smaller bets out to your employees, finding a
bookie with some gamble/opinion to them, or finding bets with less edge but
more volume.

The basic idea with bookmaking without risk is that you want your books
balanced - since you get a percentage of the total amount wagered, if your
bets on both sides are approximately equal, you can't lose. The risk the
"sharps" represent is that they may come in with a large bet on a small market
which won't have enough volume to take the other side. Historically it's
always been possible to get an edge on these small markets - the canonical
example I've always heard is lower division college basketball in the US. The
problem is that these lines are so thinly bet than even low 4-figure bets are
out of the ordinary, and you need to make an awful lot of them at a single
digit percentage advantage to make any real money. Maybe you can come in one
day to bet $1000 on Middlebury to beat Lebanon Valley, but good luck coming
the next day with a sudden interest in laying down similar amounts of money on
Whitman vs. Claremont/Mudd/Scripps. Basically, in general the beatable lines
are in areas that nobody really cares about. If you want to come in every week
and bet $10k on every NFL point spread, you'll have no problem getting action.

> "I had bet $8,400 to win $4,000 on a tennis match and $2,000 on a [first-
> five-innings] total on baseball..."

I'm not sure about the baseball bet, but depending on the level of the tennis
match, this seems almost guaranteed to raise red flags. Tennis has a somewhat
sordid history of suspected fixed matches in lower level competition, and
short of major events like Grand Slam late round matches, I'd guess that this
kind of action is wildly anomalous.

~~~
repsilat
> _This has pretty much always been standard_

As someone who has worked in the industry, I agree with one caveat:

> _The basic idea with bookmaking without risk is that you want your books
> balanced_

This is not the business model of every bookie. In the UK the standard retail
bookies will set wide spreads and aggressively ban accounts that appear savvy
(or appear to be automated.)

The big betting venue in Europe (at least back when I knew things) is an
exchange, though. They take no outcome risk and make money either way, though
typically more if the underdog wins.

In Asia some of the top bookies have yet another business model: they are
really just institutional gamblers whose business is to know the outcome
statistics better than anyone else. They employ shitloads of data scientists
and they will take large bets from smart punters. They run gambling websites
because it's better to gamble "on their own terms". When they want to bet
against another large gambling shop, they move the odds so the spreads overlap
the right way and wait for arbitrageurs to match-make.

~~~
ars
> and aggressively ban accounts that appear savvy (or appear to be automated.)

Isn't this literally saying "We cheat, if you bet with us you are guaranteed
to lose money?"

Why would anyone bet with a firm like that? By the very fact that they took
your bet you know that your bet was a losing one.

It's something I've never understood - how they can publicly say that, and yet
still have customers.

~~~
Buge
I wouldn't consider it cheating. It's refusing to play against good players.

It doesn't sound like they'll cancel a bet that you make because it's good. It
sounds like they'll see you make a good bet, then ban you any future bets,
while still fulfilling that good bet.

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wodenokoto
Several years ago, I went to a data science Meetup where one of the speakers
was working for a company which entire goal was to beat the bookies at soccer.
They had people watching games, recording every detail, and a host of machine
learning and statistical experts on payroll to make predictions.

No shit the bookies don't wanna take their bets.

~~~
panarky
_> No shit the bookies don't wanna take their bets._

Why doesn't the bookmaker watch how these guys bet then adjust the odds
accordingly?

As long as the books are balanced, they'll make money.

And if the data science guys have better probabilities, then the new odds
should make more money for the bookies on the other side.

~~~
atheriel
This is _exactly_ what happens at the sportsbooks that take sharp customers.

~~~
ethbro
And moreover, if you attract the smart money... and see statistically relevant
better patterns... why not lay down your own bets at competitors?

As the book who accepts smart money and has non-anonymous customers, you have
a more accurate idea of the actual odds than anyone else.

~~~
tpm
> why not lay down your own bets at competitors?

It's not worth it. Even if they don't ban you outright, the stakes/winnings
are very limited for that kind of thing to make sense. And then there are odds
data services like Betradar which provide every subscribing bookmaker with
enough near-live data to instantly improve their prices so as to make any
arbitrage very hard. (source: worked at several bookmakers)

~~~
ethbro
Gotcha. I figured it was too obvious of an idea for people to not already have
optimized it.

Interesting about bookmakers being subscribed to a common line feed. I didn't
know that, but it makes sense in a borderless-money, networked world.

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umanwizard
> "The hilariousness of it," Donoughue added, "is that they restricted one of
> my member's accounts, and he's a Lord."

Maybe there's something about British class relations that I'm missing (I'm
not British) -- can anyone explain why it's particularly hilarious or even
unexpected that they would have restricted a "Lord"'s account, as opposed to
anyone else's?

(Tangential question: does "Lord" here mean a member of the House of Lords? Or
anyone with an aristocratic title? Or something else?)

~~~
DoreenMichele
I'm not British, but I would take it to mean "They placed limitations on some
rich guy's account." when those limitations are ostensibly intended for
deadbeats.

~~~
valuearb
Not deadbeats, sharps, an entirely different thing.

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MorrisofOrange
They should just do gambling like predictit. Sell contracts for a Buck a piece
and only return .90 (or some other fraction). If big analyst come in and buys
one way or another the casino doesn't care.

~~~
TylerE
That's more or less how a sportsbook operates. However if the action doesn't
balance out, the book has considerable exposure if the team with more bets on
it wins.

~~~
gruez
>However if the action doesn't balance out, the book has considerable exposure
if the team with more bets on it wins.

isn't that only an issue if the counterparty to each bet is the sportsbook?
why can't a sportsbook operate like an exchange, with a bid/ask orderbook and
take a % off each trade?

~~~
kasey_junk
There are book exchanges.

Historically that was leaving money on the table though as squares outnumber
sharps.

~~~
repsilat
It's not either-or, really. If you run an exchange you can bet on it (maybe
depending on jurisdiction.) Then you get the commission or the winnings. IIRC
matchbook.com do that though I may have been misinformed.

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arisAlexis
I had several arbitrage bots betting in several bookmakers. There is nothing
illegal with that. Most of them either banned me or limited my account to $1
to seem more legit.

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RossTennis
I've actually been building a tennis model to beat the bookies for around a
year or so and am now beating them by ~6% overall. About to launch a public
site in next few weeks. In the mean time, if you'd like to follow picks for
free for the US Open just drop me a line and I'll add you to my group.

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j88439h84
404 or something

