Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
On the contrary, Weinstein's problem was too much erection. Especially if there was an attractive potted plant in the vicinity.
If it's your first time in a casino, you indeed happen to have a lot of 'luck'. I live near a few Indian reservations and have applied for a number of IT jobs in them. You would never want to play after you see what they have in modern times, nobody is going to break your arm anymore for winning, the odds will shift in their favor until you start losing. The small datacenter in the casino is not just for video recording.
You walk in first time and you always get a "promotion", once a certain promotion has been fulfilled based on your demographic, the casino will expect a 'return' on it's promotion. This all gets calculated out based on the information you give them, location analysis, food and drink consumption etc.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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.
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
I would give you my mod points if I had any.
Blah Blah Blah.
That plant was asking for it!