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Profile of An Internet Bookie
prostoalex writes "The New York Times Magazine has a story about one of Internet's most lucrative businesses - online bookmaking. Writer William Berlind travels to San Jose, Costa Rica, where the offices of such online powerhouses as BetOnSports and SkyBook are located. Quite an interesting story about numerous Americans traveling to Costa Rica with the grand business plan of online gambling, US government trying to shut down the offshore gambling operations, and how the bookies operate."
Number one reason sports betting is nog going to be legalized in the US:
It will kill the state lotteries.
Why? Look at the vig on sports betting versus lotteries (the vig is the amount the bettor can expect to lose and is the difference between the money returned by a winning bet and the actual probability of winning). For a typical Vegas-style bet on football against the spread or on an over-under, here's basically the way it works:
The house will thus (if an equal amount of money is bet on both sides) make a $1 profit on every $22 bet (ie 4.5%).
Now, contrast this with a state lottery. In Massachusetts, 50% of the bet is the state tax on lotteries. An additional 10% of what's left is taken by the lottery as their share, for administrative expenses. Thus only 40% of the money bet on any given game will be returned to bettors in the form of winnings. These figures are not significantly different from state to state.
The end-result of this is that you only need to be right (or lucky) 53% of the time to make a profit betting on sports (when, picking totally randomly, you would be right 50% of the time), but you need to be right 2.5 times as often as random selections would be in order to reasonably expect to break even in a lottery.
One of the great appeals of sports betting is the better odds of making a profit doing it. Indeed, Oregon tried a few years ago to create a "sports lottery", which was sports betting but with payout rates similar to the lottery. No one bet with it.
I always thought it would be awesome to be a bookie
No, it wouldn't be. If you are running numbers or making book, you are dealing in organized crime, not that i have any particular objections to that. (note to self, check slashdot username lists for "don", "vinnie", and "* the *"). Think your town doesn't have mob connections? Ask around about putting some cash down on this weekend's games. Someone will know someone, and there's a very good chance that person has some connection to the organized crime operations in the nearest major city. Gambling has long been the bread and butter for organzied crime, paying out consistantly, and being somewhat safer than narcotics.
Now, what happens when you start making book in someone's territory? That friend of your friend's cousin may let slip to his regular bookie that he can get better odds from you. Then you'll have a couple of gentlemen come and explain to you a definition of "monopoly" in agressivly microsoftian terms, sans-lawyers.
Oh, and what about that poor buddy of yours that can never seem to come up with the cash when he looses a bet, but demands his money that minute when he wins? At what point will you be willing to beat holy fuck out of him for your money?
Now, if someone wants to deal in criminal activities, it's not my place to play morality cop (I do my betting in vegas, where my money goes to legitimate criminals). But there is no such thing as easy money.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Just because someone has $10,000 riding on a game offshore doesn't give him any less incentive to rig the game. Because the rigged games are still a problem, we still have to spend dollars to detect these crimes. Therefore, we'd be better off getting the tax dollars here in U.S. to offset that cost.
Five Dolla Moddy-Moddy?
2) Gambling causes social problems that have nothing to do with religion or morals. This makes it something that the government should have a hand in.
Don't get me wrong. I'm pro-gambling, but your arguments don't make sense in this case.
Thanks for offering, but I already have an unbeatable roulette betting system. You know how you are allowed to bet on colors in addition to numbers? Bet on one, at the minimum bet. If you lose, double your bet to make up your loss. Every time you lose, just keep doubling your bet. Once you win back your loss, return to making the minimum bet.
Yeah, it's a joke. But a serious-faced business major explained this to me. He actually asked to write some stuff down; I thought this meant he had a really complicated system. So I give him the paper, and he starts writing:
5
10
20
40
etc.
Of course the obvious problem with the system is that the probability of winning by betting on a main color is slightly less than 50%, because there are two main colors and then one or two thingies (don't know the technical term) with a third one. Also, while if you win you gain money slowly, if you lose, you lose it very quickly. I wrote a little program to use this method. It would stop once the doubling of the bet would take away more money than it had if it lost (otherwise it would really lose spectacularly). After many runs of this system, the result I expected became apparent. It made money with the same probability as a single bet. The amounts were widely different - but with no change in the likelihood, betting everything you had on one throw was just as legitimate a strategy. This was faster, too.
I never bothered trying to correct the guy. I was so flabbergasted when he showed me initially that I really could say nothing, especially since it was obvious he wouldn't understand me. I suppose the problem was he was having trouble imagining the probability of losing eight or nine times in a row, which, while unlikely, is not that unlikely. It happened every simulated time, of course, usually within a hundred throws, frequently in far fewer, once in the initial eight!
If you are interested in making easy money, I think running a casino to cater to people like this would be much easier than 'informed gambling', whatever the hell that is. Let them think they are gaining some sort of advantage when all they are doing is moving risk around.
I guess I'll have to come right out and say it...
First off, why should I work to support someone's grandmother, bastard children, unemployed mother, mexican immigrant, etc? I'm sorry, but that's not MY responsibility. I disagree with taxation to support anyone. Taxes should be to pay the expenses of running a government, not supporting a nation.
How exatcly would limiting section8 and handouts help america.
Very easy.. It would put money back in the pockets of the people that worked for it. These are the people who will invest it or spend it on traded goods. Did you know between 15-20% of your tax dollars go to entitlement programs?
Give that money back to the people it belongs to, they'll spend it on something besides alchohol, drugs, crap foods, and such. This would result in more production, jobs, and economic growth.
People wouldn't starve. They'd actually be motivated to be a family and help one another out.
Anyway, are you aware how section 8 works? Basically, you pay a discounted (or no) rent, and the government picks up what you didn't pay. This is often $400-800/mo per household. Guess what? Most of these are single, minority mothers. They started off single, had babies knowing they would get a free ride until the child turns 18.
Think I am exaggerating? I have a relative who's manager over a local apartment complex that began filing section 8's about 4 years ago. She has to deal with these people all the time. These single mothers keep having babies, even after they were already filed under the program. What sense does that make? They needed money from ME to pay for their first kid and now they keep having more! BTW, this is a middle income complex and there's about 315 section 8's. All female, all with no job, no education, and a bunch of kids. Most have boyfriends living with them, for free, on our dollar too.
Sure, we can keep those programs, but I'd suggest that we begin sterilizing anyone that applies.
I know there's sweet little old ladies out there that need our help. I just don't think the government should play a role and force others to help. A more localized, community or church organization would be a much better answer. If taxes were lower, people would contribute to these sort of things a bit more. Especially when there's nothing else to fall back on.
If adults acted more like adults, we wouldn't be in this situation. Invest in your future now, don't leech on society later.
You're right, of course---but if you want examples of (in most cases fairly minor) transgressions, there's a list of recent ones. Looking at that list makes me glad that things aren't nearly as bad as they could be. Still, having to try not to look odd sitting through a teacher-led prayer at a public high school graduation (personal experience, two years ago) is not pleasant. And niether is hearing the president talk about the "bridge between church and state".
In theory, handicap betting eliminates some of that. Not knowing much about either school (I don't really follow college football... NFL is more my style), I'd conservatively say that the line in Notre Dame/SD St. would be something like Notre Dame giving 21 points. With a line like that, a rational observer may be tempted to take the points and run.
Of course, books are generally unwilling, except in extreme cases, to spot one team multiple touchdowns. Even the Bengals last year were never more than 13.5 point underdogs (the only multi-touchdown line I can recall from last year in the NFL was Philly giving 19.5 to Houston, and betting on Houston was the smart thing; that was one of many "the Texans aren't as bad as the betting public thinks" plays that I made last year).