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Gambling & Journalism

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Lugnuts, Nov 5, 2019.

Page 3 of 7
  1. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    I've made no secret of my love for VSIN, I think it's light-years smarter sports talk than the ESPNs of the world who after a big game talk about X player's legacy, was X play the biggest/craziest of all time, blah blah, while VSIN talks about it from the money perspective. Several other shows do now too. To me, that is far more interesting.

    Like you said, it's picking up on the little things. For example, strongly looking at the unders in neutral-court college basketball games, because players aren't familiar with the sightlines and all. Guess which way both Champions Classic games landed last night. Obviously following the nuggets doesn't always work, but it makes you think you can win. Which is what the entire enterprise is built on.
     
    playthrough, Nov 6, 2019
    #25
  2. justgladtobehere

    justgladtobehere Well-Known Member

    I have found sports medias relation to gambling a little bit weird. Growing up in a location without legalized gambling and before the internet, a local paper had a Friday piece with a guy picking NFL games, keeping a running total on all his bets for the year. A very involved and open acknowledgement of the readers using bookies. The paper also had writers picking NFL games against the spread, but writers picked college games straight up. A remember a few years later, a sports talk station had a segment in which a guy made his pick of the day. It started out with the guy mentioning money, but later he stopped mentioning money. I forget whether he even stopped picking against the spread or mentioning odds. The sports stations also had touts on which were obviously sponsored bits, but did not mention it.

    The confused relation between the sports media and gambling has been screwed up for decades. Nothing fundamentally changed with the Supreme Court case. Yes, fewer people are doing it illegally, but all the other problems with it remain.
     
    justgladtobehere, Nov 6, 2019
    #26
    maumann and Lugnuts like this.
  3. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    All that being said, I still think it is incredible difficult to make a living betting sports. It requires excellent picks, yes, but also even more discipline. If you're playing $1000 a game (WAY more than the $20-$30 that I prefer), you have to go 1-0 or 2-0 in a weekend and just shut it down.
     
    exmediahack, Nov 6, 2019
    #27
  4. justgladtobehere

    justgladtobehere Well-Known Member

    I love reading stories about people making a fortune gambling, like the MIT blackjack crews or the group that made a shit ton betting on horse racing in Asia. Somebody once mentioned to me that a guy made money betting the unders on NBA half time scores because the sportsbooks set the total O/U and simply divided it by two to get a half time number. I cannot find a record of this. From what I recall the guy is somewhat famous in gambling.
     
    justgladtobehere, Nov 6, 2019
    #28
    Lugnuts likes this.
  5. Captain_Kirk

    Captain_Kirk Well-Known Member

    Fascinating read--thanks for posting.

    Love the part about Jim Marshall's wrong way run causing the Vikings not to cover.
     
    Captain_Kirk, Nov 6, 2019
    #29
  6. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Sports betting is interesting to me, because conceivably if you can (big if) find small inefficiencies in the market (i.e. point spreads that systematically don't correctly price the difference between teams), you could give yourself an edge. If I could do it in a systematic way, and then have the discipline to bet every matchup that meets the right criteria, depending on the size of the edge my methodology gives me. ... well, there would at least be a path to being profitable. It's unlike most games of chance, where there is no possible edge you can give yourself.

    I actually make my living this way (it really is quite similar), except in a different kind of market. For that reason, I have looked very closely at sports betting. Where it fails for what I do:

    1) The vig sportsbooks charge is a lot to overcome. Having to win 52.4 percent of the time on a standard 10 percent vig, doesn't sound like a lot to people. But it is actually a pretty big "transaction cost." It eats up a lot of any potential edge I might be able to give myself (real edges, at least ones I employ, are very small, usually). There are other markets I have access to where the costs of the transactions don't take it that far away from a 50/50 proposition (without any edge).
    2) The edge I actually have with what I do is extremely small. Which is why I was saying in an earlier post that working systematically, rather than in a discretionary way, is almost a necessity. It would also require way more money than I have to actually profit the way I need to. ... which is where leverage enters the equation. I need leverage that doesn't cost anything (i.e. -- not paying a loanshark, or really any rate of margin interest if possible, which would take away any edge I otherwise have and put me on the wrong side of 50/50). I also need that leverage to be high enough to allow me to risk small amounts for a lot of gain (0utsized losses are the other side of that equation). And there are derivatives markets that meet that criteria. As long as I really have an edge, even if it is small, leverage allows me to profit disproportionately to the amount of capital I have.

    Near as I was ever able to figure out that isn't possible with sports gambling. I would need a way more money than I can employ in order to exploit a small edge, assuming I even had one.

    For that reason, the leverage is really the most important aspect of how I do make my living in something kind of similar. Nothing to do with sports betting, but the leverage introduces a whole other set of considerations, because it is treacherous. It's why more than 95 percent of people fail in highly leveraged markets; lose everything. There is something about human nature that makes people inevitably overleverage themselves, no matter how disciplined they can stay for a time. It eventually catches up with nearly everyone.
     
    The Big Ragu, Nov 6, 2019
    #30
  7. Liut

    Liut Well-Known Member

    I never thought I would see the day when an NFL team's radio play-by-play announcer was a self-professed professional gambler.
     
    Liut, Nov 6, 2019
    #31
  8. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    One of my all-time favorites from the magazine.

    And what a perfect time capsule that issue is.
     
    Azrael, Nov 6, 2019
    #32
  9. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    Toughest thing about making a living sports betting is being able to accept and afford losing 40-45 percent of the time. There is no magic to sports betting, it's all probablity and spreading the risk.
     
    DanOregon, Nov 6, 2019
    #33
  10. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    And some of the best bets, like season win totals if you do your homework, require you to park your money for six months. Most recreational gamblers aren't going to do that, they need capital for next weekend.
     
    playthrough, Nov 6, 2019
    #34
  11. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    Having done it on a small scale (my biggest investment for a weekend has been about $100) for a year now, I have learned a couple of important things about managing my bets.

    1) The more you bet, the more you have to win. If you bet on two games for $20 each, you can more or less break even by winning one of them (you'd get $38.20 back). If you add a third or fourth game, now you need to win two of them. And so on. It sounds simplistic, but it can sap your bankroll pretty quickly if you're betting $60 a week and only getting back $40 at best.

    2) I like to isolate single bets from parlays. No sense taking the whole ship down on one bad beat.

    3) Treading water is the goal most weeks. When I started last year, my goal was to win enough to generate a modest gambling fund of $200-$300 that was self-sustaining and able to provide a cushion during a slump. In other words, when I cash a win ticket from Week 1, that funds my bets for Week 2 with hopefully a little added to the reserve fund. To do that, you need to have some discipline and a budget (mine is usually $40-$60) and be OK with merely breaking even for the week. If you can tread water and then have a profitable week every third week or so, you should be OK in the long term.

    I started with a $60 investment, which I paid myself back some time ago, and bet regularly through football and basketball season last year and this year without buying in again (although the early part of this football season brought me dangerously close to it). I currently have $200 in the gambling fund. I'm not getting rich or even getting much extra spending money, but I figure I'm doing something right to at least be able to fund it as a hobby.
     
    Batman, Nov 6, 2019
    #35
  12. justgladtobehere

    justgladtobehere Well-Known Member

    What is the internet coming to when a discussion of gambling on the NFL doesn't prompt a Simpsons reference?

     
    justgladtobehere, Nov 6, 2019
    #36
    garrow, Deskgrunt50 and Batman like this.
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