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Data Science Meets Sports Gambling: How Researchers Beat the Bookies (newscientist.com)
"A trio of data scientists developed a betting strategy to beat bookmakers at football games," writes austro. [The game Americans call soccer.] New Scientist reports:
The team studied 10 years' worth of data on nearly half a million football matches and the associated odds offered by 32 bookmakers between January 2005 and June 2015. When they applied their strategy in a simulation, they made a return of 3.5 per cent. Making bets randomly resulted in a loss of 3.32 per cent. Then the team decided to try betting for real. They developed an online tool that would apply their odds-averaging formula to upcoming football matches. When a favorable opportunity arose, a member of the team would email Kaunitz and his wife, one of whom then placed a bet.
They kept this up for five months, placing $50 bets around 30 times a week. And they were winning. After five months the team had made a profit of $957.50 -- a return of 8.5 per cent. But their streak was cut short. Following a series of several small wins, the trio were surprised to find that their accounts had been limited, restricting how much they could bet to as little as $1.25. The gambling industry has long restricted players who appear to show an edge over the house, says Mark Griffiths at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
The paper "illustrates how the sports gambling industry compensates market inefficiencies with discriminatory practices against successful clients," adds austro, noting that the researchers posted a paper explaining their methodology on arxiv last week. "They also made the dataset and source code available on github. And best of all, they made an online publicly available dashboard that shows a live list of bet recommendations on football matches based on their strategy here or here for anyone to try."
They kept this up for five months, placing $50 bets around 30 times a week. And they were winning. After five months the team had made a profit of $957.50 -- a return of 8.5 per cent. But their streak was cut short. Following a series of several small wins, the trio were surprised to find that their accounts had been limited, restricting how much they could bet to as little as $1.25. The gambling industry has long restricted players who appear to show an edge over the house, says Mark Griffiths at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
The paper "illustrates how the sports gambling industry compensates market inefficiencies with discriminatory practices against successful clients," adds austro, noting that the researchers posted a paper explaining their methodology on arxiv last week. "They also made the dataset and source code available on github. And best of all, they made an online publicly available dashboard that shows a live list of bet recommendations on football matches based on their strategy here or here for anyone to try."
Yet another reason not to gamble: the house cheats. Always. Win consistently against the house anywhere, and you will be asked to leave. Win too much off a slot machine, and it was "out of order".
The betting houses and casinos exist to take people's money. One should not forget this.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Concerned citizens must apply elementary school playground standards.
One should not be shown the exit when you play better using public and fair rules.
It's worse than I'll go home with the ball; it's I will bully you to leave the Playground because you don't lose.
What do you expect from an industry that lives off gambling?
That they play fair, and thus are likely not to be the only consistent winner amongst the thousands of gamblers they call "customers"?
So the bookies are taking some responsibility for keeping the market 'fair'. If they identify a player who has some unexplained statistical advantage, they move to protect their broader customer base. The bookies have no way of knowing whether these bets are being placed by highly skilled bettors, AI, or bag men for the mob, spreading bets around on fixed games.
Have gnu, will travel.
Q: Is this a game of chance?
A: Not the way I play it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've met two people in different cities, both had systems to beat different sports, 1st guy made money off of horses and managed to fly under the radar, the other guy beat them on football (soccer), but he was a bit too good and got banned everywhere.
I managed to take the online casinos for a couple of hundred via their introductory offer... but my 'system' was weak, might just have been luck. And I discovered how addictive online gambling can be and stayed away ever since, I recognised some dangerous emotions.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
"If you could beat the ponies, they wouldn't be running them."
How about we just block these barbarian filth from out internet?
Realistically what else do you expect them to do?
They are a business intending to make money. As far as I know they don't have a bottomless pit of money so can't afford to just pay out and pay out and regulation which forced them to is simply likely to mean no bookmakers. Their sole tool is to attempt to balance the market between the winners and losers (whilst taking their cut) - this means controlling the people involved in some way, the only two ways I can think of are discriminating against those who are winning too much, or adjusting their odds to balance things off - the latter mechanism likely makes the deal unattractive to everyone (and may make them unattractive compared to foreign less regulated bookies), so certainly cuts their profitability possibly even to the point of not having a business.
Real betting exchanges seems to be the way to go, but it may well mean many can't place bets since no one is willing to lay them at the rates wanted to be worthwhile.
Government regulations that allow it? How a bout lack of government regulation to prohibit it.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The house always tips the odds in their favor. But in general that is also true of any business. Barriers, marketing, a good job at selling, exploiting emotions, an addictive product, etc. are all used to ensure there is no level playing field. Any business that wants a level playing field is insane, the want an advantageous position and captured markets.
The only way to actually have anything resembling a Free Market is through careful regulation and government intervention.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
From TFA:
Online bookmakers have very tight profit margins, so some offer generous odds for very short periods of time on certain matches to lure automated or expert betting systems out into the open, says economist David Forrest at the University of Liverpool, UK. “They will try to trap the robots,” he says. “Anyone who responds has their account closed.”
Some of the researchers’ accounts may have fallen foul of this system. In some cases they found they could not bet at all after signing up with certain bookies. If so, then this suggests their technique really was finding the best odds out there. But the house still always wins in the end.
By that idiotic definition, not having insurance is gambling (betting nothing bad will happen)
It's as if people forget that someone has to pay for all those people walking around in fancy suits and pay for the massive electrical bill a casino must generate.
I tend to rant.
I expect that an industry offering a product called "gambling" offers a product that resembles gambling, which this does not. This is heads I win, tails you lose. The only uncertainty is the position of the minute hand on the wall clock marking your (rare) upticks in an otherwise constantly downward march.
You're in prison. Everyday, you get to pick a number from 1 to 3. If you guess right, you get fed a nice meal. If you guess wrong, you don't get fed, and you get a punch in the head.
Does this resemble gambling?
I've said this before, but the truth about the modern gambling industry is that it functions as a form of psychology money laundering in the war between the responsible and irresponsible mental systems.
Suppose a gambler found a house where the house take only covered keeping the lights on (a necessary overhead). He'll show up and lose a $100/week for many weeks, before his "lucky" night where he pots a $2500 windfall (which he immediately spends on a round of drinks for all his friends, some blow, and then a pair of Swedish bombshells, which he's already too bombed to fully enjoy).
The alternate plan is to invest $100/week into his retirement savings account. Guess which plan he'll choose? And he'll call it breaking even, more or less. Without the casino, he deposits $100/week in his debauchery fund, which he then blows sky high every six months.
Few debauchers can tolerate having a slow-and-steady fund so named (in an ever-fragile piggy bank), and so they willingly pay a giant house fee for a socially acceptable cover story, and for never having access to equity they can call their own, or available on a schedule anyone prone to busting their balls can predict in advance.
There is arguably a difference between a 'fair' game with lousy odds and straight up fraud:
Casinos obviously don't tend to bother with games that lack a house edge(either games played against the house that have a less than 100% return rate or games between players with a house rake); but if the device operates precisely as the payout schedule says it will it isn't a fraudulent losing proposition.
In the glorious world of online gambling, the combination of technical opacity and operators generally working out of assorted regulatory loopholes means that you may or may not even be able to see the payment schedule; much less have any assurance that the system is operating in accordance with it. If the game is against other players; you have no way to know how many of them are collaborating with one another, or with the house, or are house bots throwing around imaginary money to keep the stakes up.
The fact that irrational actors make the best customers tends to mean that gambling establishments do everything they can to give you the wrong impression about their product, even when legally required to not technically be lying, and that can be a real problem; but it's a bigger problem still when outright lying is also an option.
It is true that bookies do not gamble more than other businessmen. If they are competent they set the odd so that there is close-to-even exposure on both sides, so that it does not matter who wins in the long run, their pay-out is the same and they make their safely money on the vigorish. Averaging over time allows adjustment of imperfections in the odds setting. Its all about making the most money possible in a predictable way.
But book making is not an instantaneous frictionless process. Bookies make mistakes, which will cost them. They will pay-out too much and thus not make what they expect on the vig. They will make it up in time, but a loss is a loss.
These researchers developed not a technique to predict who would win, but bookies with mispriced odds, which allows you to get in on the unexpected large payouts, thus costing the bookie more when this happens. They don't like this, and will stop it if they can detect it - as the paper shows.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Perhaps they could adapt?
I mean, these researchers have proven one thing: That the bookmaker algorithms are close to, but not entirely perfect. The bookmakers need to update their algorithms, put out odds that once again leave them winning the long run, and still allowing the gamblers to have a lucky score now and then.
Closing down accounts, banning people etc. ... Isn't that the exact same thing as the RIAA screaming and yelling and suing grandmothers instead of getting with the times and creating an online music service?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
I would give you my mod points if I had any.
Blah Blah Blah.
I have frequently seen things like driving without insurance called a 'gamble'.
If everyone starts using the list of live recommendations, does this mean that the gambling industry won't want to let anyone 'gamble'? Sounds like a win for me :D
Requiem for the American Dream
The question is how much is too much. Most people who think for a minute or two will understand the concept of the vig. It's also understood that the possibility that you might occasionally beat the vig is part of the attraction. The house sees that as part of the cost of doing business. They don't win on every customer every time.
The question is really how far is too far to go in making sure they do win. Even in a game of chance, some people will beat the vig more often than others. How far is too far to go in beating the vig? In casino games, it's fairly well defined where the line is. There are a few bright lines in sports betting, such as not threatening or paying off players, but there's not really anything about using computers and superior analysis.
At least they didn't send a couple of "goons" out to break their legs. Look on the bright side of gambling for a change!
Now the gambling industry is going to thank the professor for helping them improve their odds setting strategy. The code is public domain, the house will use this, instead of guess work. In the end the house margin will improve from 3.3% to may be 6%
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Isn't that the exact same thing as the RIAA screaming and yelling and suing grandmothers instead of getting with the times and creating an online music service?
No not even close. It would be more like the RIAA deciding not to sell to those doing the "pirating" to prevent those people copying in future - which doesn't seem that unreasonable to me. Not a perfect analogy still but closer.
As to adapting I think I covered that. Sure they can change the odds etc. accepting the outcome is not that they'll ban a few, but effectively ban everybody by offering really poor odds or simply not be willing to take the bet from anyone. This isn't really in their commercial interest.
I would give you my mod points if I had any.
I'd ask him what the fuck "vigorish" means first, but each to their own.
I would give you my mod points if I had any.
I'd ask him what the fuck "vigorish" means first, but each to their own.
It is a term familiar to me as a UK reader from American crime books, though I've mostly seen it used to mean interest on a (dodgy) loan, but it can also mean the boookie's/house cut in gambling.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it