
Loser's Lunch - fourmii
https://longreads.com/2018/09/03/losers-lunch/
======
huebnerob
Great read, two things I found interesting:

1\. The whole mental gymnastics of tournaments’ attempts to depict courtsiding
as illegal, it feels reminiscent of many moral outrage arguments these days.
It’s not enough to say that a certain behavior is wrong, we now need to
broadly paint everyone who doesn’t follow our rules as bad people. I see this
everywhere nowadays and I don’t like it, nuance and mutual understanding is
the only way any adversarial situation ever achieves resolution.

2\. You’d think that it’d be very easy with today’s technologies to remain
undetected while transmitting these simple pieces of information. I'm curious
how these spotters actually find courtsiders, especially those with no history
in the industry.

~~~
kthejoker2
As they note in the article, there's only a small amount of known courtsiders,
they have their pictures, they're taught to look for them. One of the
courtsiders even says he just keeps his phone out, because it's his face that
gets him caught.

"iirimets said that since just his face is enough to get him kicked out, he
doesn’t make much of an effort to hide his cell phone anymore. For Pete, it’s
the same. And I can see how they’re both distinctive-looking enough to stick
out like sore thumbs—Rainer is tall with close-set eyes and thick eyebrows,
while Pete has big, glowing eyes that take up much of his squarish face. The
first catch instantly halves the viability of a courtsider’s career; the
hundredth means it’s almost pointless to continue."

~~~
huebnerob
Yes, I read the article. I'm wondering how they catch those _new_ to the game,
how that record gets started. If you're telling me that all they need to do is
rotate out the cast, sounds pretty simple, but I naturally doubt that it is
just that easy.

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zeveb
> A Wimbledon spokeswoman said in a statement that the All-England Lawn Tennis
> Club is “committed to achieving the ‘gold standard’ of measures to protect
> the integrity of The Championships,” including courtsiders.

Of course, courtsiders are simply transmitting factual information: they
aren't harming the integrity of the games at all.

The integrity of those involved in catching, apprehending, and banning
courtsiders for life, on the other hand, is certainly in question.

~~~
jrace
I wondered the same thing. You would think that betting on the match should
not be under the jurisdiction of the tennis club, rather the gambling
regulators.

I fail to see how someone electronically (or otherwise) relaying non-
confidential information about a tennis match would in any way harm the
integrity of the match.

------
dmurray
I don't understand why the tennis organisers care so much about cracking down
on this. Their incentives are mainly aligned with the courtsiders: they pay
for seats and facilitate gambling which encourages viewers. The data firms
like Sportradar are the only ones with a financial incentive to stamp them
out: their service is worth more if it's a monopoly. So they must be putting
the squeeze on the tennis federations and threatening to cancel contracts.

It's clear that the Sportradar service isn't competitive for real-time
gambling, but why don't they offer a service that is? Put a guy at each match
entering the scores (and any other information) faster than the chair umpire
and sell that data. If there's enough money to have multiple spotters and
courtsiders (up to 50) at the event, Sportradar should be able to capture
enough of that to employ one person to do data entry.

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kthejoker2
The most interesting thing to me is that it appears that most of these bets
are really just head-to-head between sparring courtsider: trying to control
the betting line through speed (and betting algorithms.) It's just a high-
stakes game of SlapJack.

"Often, courtsider-led betting syndicates will match up against each other,
putting both the fast fingers at the tournament and their respective
algorithms to a head-to-head test. It’s common for courtsiders to recognize
one another from across the court at a match. At bigger tournaments, they may
spot a dozen or more such familiar faces in the crowd. Brad Hutchins estimated
that there have been as many as 50 courtsiders working simultaneously inside
the main stadium at a Grand Slam; another thought the number could be nearly
twice as high."

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skummetmaelk
HFTT, High Frequency Tennis Trading.

------
jrockway
I'm looking forward to the day when people start using satellites to collect
data on sporting events. Satellites can't trespass, and they aren't subject to
TFRs. Too expensive right now, but won't be for long.

Of course, I guess the events can always be held indoors.

~~~
TeMPOraL
How expensive would it be to rent a hot air balloon and use a telephoto lens?

~~~
scrumper
In the USA, you'd almost certainly be in violation of a TFR (Temporary Flight
Restriction) which are usually established over stadiums during games. That is
a federal problem that'll get your pilot in a huge amount of trouble.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Did not know that, thanks.

Back to satellites, then.

~~~
lozaning
The Goodyear blimp looks to be getting some kind of allowance to fly over the
same areas. I wonder if that flight path has to receive approval from the
company that runs the sporting event, or if it's more of a government shall
grant situation.

~~~
scrumper
Quite likely the TFR is actually to protect the blimp! TFRs pop up for all
sorts of reasons - rocket launches, presidential motorcades, volcanoes,
sporting events... They're situational and specific rather than blanket
restrictions.

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davisdude
This is an interesting concept. I'm somewhat surprised the author didn't draw
a connection between the stock market and insider trading, which is more
analogous in my mind than card counting in black jack.

~~~
tropdrop
In cards, stocks and tennis, we can map the system thus:

1\. Decision about action is made (Firm decides on merger during board
meeting/Roddick decides to serve a topspin/Dealer decides to deal in
alternating order)

2\. Action occurs (Firm announces in press release/Roddick serves/Dealer
deals)

3\. An observer relays info about action (Stock trader instantly reports
shares beginning to soar/Courtsider pushes button for "it's a topspin" and
potentially "point scored"/Card-counter relays number of cards in dealer's
hand to player or himself)

Insider trading is when a person who was present at step 1 performs step 3
(relays information) ahead of step 2 (Action). The analog in tennis would be
if Roddick (insider to his own playing) told someone he would serve a topspin
prior to serving it, or worse, if Roddick told someone he would lose a match
on purpose.

Courtsiders, unlike a typical inside trader, have no special inside knowledge
about what kind of serves a player shall make, and they certainly cannot
influence a player's playing. Just like a stock trader, their only power is
transmitting the events that do occur at lightning speed. Rapidly counting the
number of cards in a hand after they've been dealt (action) is this, too.

As you can see, insider trading is the wrong analogy to make.

~~~
davisdude
I would disagree that it's the "wrong" analogy to make... maybe just
different.

To me, insider trading is analogous to court siding, in that, in both cases,
someone is seeking to use "private information" (information that isn't yet
publicly available) in order to make money. So I would order the system:

1\. Action occurs "privately" (firm decides on merger but hasn't announced it
publicly; court sider reports data that the ump hasn't recorded yet/doesn't
record; player notices how dealer plays the cards)

2\. Party with the private information makes bets based on this information in
an effort to beat the system

3\. The public finds out about the previously private information and responds
accordingly.

So, courtsiders don't have knowledge about what the player WILL do, but they
can tell people what the HAS done faster than they would get normally.

Though I can understand how card counting may be a better analogy for
courtsiding simply because of the fact that they're both legal gray areas, as
opposed to insider trading, which is explicitly illegal.

~~~
tropdrop
That's an interesting system.

The extent I could agree with it largely depends on how well this step -
"courtsider reports [private] data that ump hasn't recorded/doesn't record" \-
represents the real game.

I would think the courtsider and ump record scores at an almost equal pace
(and the advantage a courtsider might get from guessing a score ahead of the
ump by a few milliseconds is likely negated by wrong guesses). But the stuff
the umpire "doesn't record," like a player's injury, can be seen by every
attendant of that match.

If the injury (or some other event the ump doesn't record) is seen by most of
the stadium, isn't it more "public knowledge" than "private information"? If
so, then courtsiding isn't like insider trading. If the stadium full of people
counts as a "private" party, then it is.

