
Will Supreme Court open a ‘dam burst’ of legalized sports betting? - stablemap
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/will-supreme-court-open-a-dam-burst-of-legalized-sports-betting/2017/11/26/9f988aaa-cf9d-11e7-a1a3-0d1e45a6de3d_story.html
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hug
As an Australian, living in a society where betting is legal albeit fairly
regulated: I sincerely hope not.

The reason for that hope is that gambling and gambling advertising, with the
rise of online betting sites and smartphone apps, has started to become a
fairly genuine social issue. With advertisements like this one
([https://twitter.com/sportsbetcomau/status/863634984682233856](https://twitter.com/sportsbetcomau/status/863634984682233856))
[note: Ben Johnson recently was found to be on PEDs], or advertisements
blanketing one of the busiest train stations in the country, like the
following
([https://twitter.com/Doc_Samantha/status/786665869787078656](https://twitter.com/Doc_Samantha/status/786665869787078656)).
These companies are, anecdotally of course, targeting their advertisements to
the youngest possible market, in the worst possible way. The pushiness of
their advertisements are a 'joke' amongst my friends.

Widespread gambling is generally seen as harmful to a society. It would be
nice if the USA didn't voluntarily allow its citizens to be taken advantage of
for corporate profits, for once.

~~~
Kalium
Speaking as an American, the choice in our society isn't between "voluntarily
allow its citizens to be taken advantage of" and not that. It's between
allowing gambling to be run by organized crime and creating a system that
enables at least a modicum of accountability.

~~~
opportune
Disagree. This is probably true among your demographic but it's not true of
the biggest whales for casinos: really old people. My grandparents wouldn't
break the law to gamble but given the chance would blow hundreds of dollars on
slots in a single visit to a casino. And they would go as often as possible
because they liked the attention casinos gave them and they had nothing better
to do.

Sure maybe legal gambling will let young people move from sketchy books to
more legitimate operations, but they aren't really the ones that get abused by
legalized gambling.

Casinos will find a way to exploit old folks with this, I guarantee it. Old
people often have about as much going between their ears as ~11-13 year olds
but have a lot more disposable income.

~~~
sithadmin
I'm not sure if you've ever spent any time in an American casino, but the
sports book is not where you find 'really old people', except perhaps the
handful of older guys betting on horse races. And at the sports book area,
chances are that you aren't going to encounter the sort of obvious problem
gamblers that you see glued to the video poker and slots.

~~~
hug
We're definitely just trading anecdotes here, but I assume you've never spent
any time inside the local TAB in a rural Australian town; It's not exactly
filled to the brim with young professional up-and-comers.

My experience in Australia doesn't generalise perfectly to the US, of course.
I wonder how much it does at all. That lack of certainty doesn't stop me from
worrying what things would look like if it translates well across our
societies.

~~~
sithadmin
Sports gambling in the US is definitely quite different from what one
encounters in the Commonwealths, but it also isn't that the sports books are
filled with 'young professional up-and-comers'. It's a range of men, generally
between 25-65, that have an interest in sports that borders on unhealthy, but
take great pride in making 'smart' and generally conservative bets.

------
hoodoof
Yes it will happen.

Sadly what I have come to learn about our society is that almost all vested
interests get what they want eventually by just persisting in the long term to
keep bringing it back to the government through their lobbyists.

Gambling, privacy reduction, net neutrality, mining, fracking, selling
national interests overseas, property development... everything happens
eventually if those with the money just keep pushing firmly over time.

It's almost a prerequisite that these things are first resisted by the people
and defeated by people power a few times... the vested interests know that the
2nd and 3rd time around people will stop fighting for whatever that thing is.

------
delinka
> The decision “could have repercussions in areas that go well beyond sports
> betting: gun control, immigration, sanctuary cities...”

And this is why the SCotUS will _not_ make a landmark decision causing a "dam
burst." The Justices can certainly limit their decision in many ways, and
it'll be interesting reading the opinions that they produce. But I don't think
they've been interested in drastic changes for quite some time.

------
dchuk
(Preface: I'm not particularly interested in the ethical debates around
gambling with this comment, though I personally think it's something people
should be allowed to do.).

I've been slowly getting into Machine Learning for a while now, and have been
looking for projects to accelerate my focus. I also happen to like to gamble
(responsibly), so I've recently started researching how to apply Machine/Deep
Learning to Baseball betting, and possibly other sports.

It would be mostly a side project I would imagine, I have no dreams of
becoming wealthy from this, and since it mixes scraping (which I really like
to play with) with machine learning, it will probably be entertaining at
least. I'm very curious if I could actually get decent success with it though.

Anyone done this before? Or know of stories/books about this?

~~~
agilebyte
This discussion could be of interest:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15523186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15523186)

tldr: keep it fun; if you bet professionally, you'll run into hurdles from
bookies.

~~~
dchuk
Thanks!

------
paulie_a
This is completely offtopic: But can anyone provide a name to a TV
documentary/docudrama on "Point shaving" It was about some NCAA team and a guy
that looked like he later in the sopranos. I think it was made by Fox.

~~~
Gravis187
I think you are talking about Blue Chips with Nick Nolte?

~~~
paulie_a
I don't think it was that. It was more focused on the college student bookie.

~~~
mechhrt
I think this is the one, from ESPN's 30 for 30 series.

[http://www.espn.com/30for30/film?page=playingforthemob](http://www.espn.com/30for30/film?page=playingforthemob)

------
mmirate
Gambling/lotteries basically only harm people with innumeracy; ergo why should
it ever be prohibited?

~~~
jccalhoun
On one hand, I can see this. Having worked in a casino, my gut reaction is,
"If you are that dumb then you deserve to lose everything." But on the other
hand, there is the societal good of not having people throw away their money
and spend it on things like paying their rent/mortgage and healthcare and
education and not be a burden to society.

~~~
junkscience2017
Alcohol is factually poisonous to humans. Every day people die, become sick,
lose jobs, destroy families, etc etc all due to this poison. The facts
regarding alcohol are beyond question.

Will you destroy all of your personal stock of this poison for the benefit of
society and forsake it forevermore? If not, why not?

~~~
mmirate
Oh, it's no doubt a mind-destroyer; that alone makes it quite scary to me, no
need to contemplate its other effects.

And I'll gladly forsake it quietly, and let those with excess affinity for it,
use it to destroy themselves if they so desire. We didn't need such weak
people anyway.

~~~
cm2012
Society doesn't need such callous people as you.

~~~
mmirate
Oh? And how _else_ would society figure out that providing things to every
warm body that claims to need them, is wasteful?

(Oh, wait, we're still socialistic in exactly that manner. So I'd say we need
_many more_ people like me. But that will have to wait 'till genetic
engineering exits the drawing board...)

