Ban Gambling

[Tyrannical]

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away, know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table,
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done

[mistermack]

Of course some of the games involve skill. But you won't win on a gaming machine.
I wouldn't turn down a game of cards with my mates. I don't mind losing, to a friend who was equally willing to lose to me.

Playing against a casino, or a machine in the bookies, is entirely different. They NEVER lose.
And if they did, they would stop it immediately.

Like in blackjack, casinos constantly monitor the game. If they spot you counting, they insist that you leave. And they pass your details around to all the other casinos, so you don't even get in. They use face recognition software to check if you're a known counter. You don't just have to learn to count cards, you have to constantly be one step ahead of their security measures.

I would just ban the commercial gambling industry. Who would it hurt? Only a bunch of assholes.

[Tyrannical]

You can make money off of bookies by betting against the unpopular. Some people bet based on what they wish would happen and not the most likely outcome.

[mistermack]

You can make money off of bookies by betting against the unpopular. Some people bet based on what they wish would happen and not the most likely outcome.

I never meet these people who make money off bookies.
I must live in the wrong circles. The only people that I have known, who claimed to be ahead of the bookies, were always trying to borrow money off me.

Years ago, I did find a way of doing what you said. It was when the returns on the Tote system in the UK were just based on betting. I worked out a system of betting on Tote place bets, on favourites of 2 to 1 odds, or shorter. They very rarely failed to be placed, and the odds were surprisingly good, because people assumed that they just weren't going to be worth the bet.

I followed the system for three weeks, without putting money on it, and it consistently produced a profit, day after day. The fourth week, I started betting one pound a race ( this was 1974 ) and ended the week a tenner up. Doesn't sound a lot, but that was over about fifty races, and I could have started with a hundred, and ended with a thousand, so anyway it proved the principle.
On the Friday, the bookie refused my bet of Tote place. I change it to win, and it won, but I thought that it was odd.

The next week, I did the same, betting one pound a time, but I could tell there was something wrong.
The odds were significantly worse, and at the end of the week, I only just broke even.
( remember, by this time, I'd shown steady profit over four weeks ).

I was mystified, and then, I saw a headline in the back page of the daily mirror.
It said that the racing world was in uproar, the Tote had drastically changed the way odds were calculated, and the punters were complaining of drastically worse odds. The system never showed a profit again.

My guess is that other people had noticed the same thing that I did, and they had reacted to it.
It's highly unlikely that they would just have reacted to my little scheme, or that I was the only one that worked it out.

So, no, I don't think you can make money betting on the less popular bets. Maybe you could once, but now I'm pretty sure that they have that covered.

[pErvinalia]

A mate and I sometimes used to bet on the dogs with fields of 8 (the minimum size to allow trifecta bets). We'd box the whole field for a trifecta (or box for 2nd and 3rd if there was a clear standout). Dogs are fucking stupid races. Pretty much anything can (and does) win. So as long as you are betting on the TAB (which is the computerised odds calculated based on betting popularity) you could win some good money. It would probably never win on the tote, although the dogs are so notorious and so crooked that it might just work.

[mistermack]

The thing is with betting that, if you found a system that paid, the bookies would detect it within days.
You would have to be making big bets of unusual patterns, and now they have software to identify that, and there is no way to disguise it, if you want to make it worthwhile.

If you compare the houses of bookmakers, to the houses of the punters, it would become obvious who was winning.
If a bookie goes under, you can bet your life he's been ripped off, or is ripping someone off.

[MrJonno]

Isn't most internet gambling illegal in the US, something I would like to see in the UK.

Banning all gambling isn't practical but I have no problem banning slot machines in the UK where you can lose £150 per minute in betting shops right next to 'pay day loans' with 10000 % APR that only loan money to utterly desperate people who the banks would never touch

[pErvinalia]

The thing is with betting that, if you found a system that paid, the bookies would detect it within days.
You would have to be making big bets of unusual patterns, and now they have software to identify that, and there is no way to disguise it, if you want to make it worthwhile.

Not in the case of the TAB, as the TAB always wins because they have computerised calculated odds (you don't get a set price, your odds are only set after the last bet is placed before the race). You just take advantage of the fact that outsiders often win with dogs, as they are really unpredictable (and corrupt) races. So you are taking money off the betters who bet for the favourites. Not from the TAB (who are the "bookies" in this instance).

[pErvinalia]

Isn't most internet gambling illegal in the US, something I would like to see in the UK.

Banning all gambling isn't practical but I have no problem banning slot machines in the UK where you can lose £150 per minute in betting shops right next to 'pay day loans' with 10000 % APR that only loan money to utterly desperate people who the banks would never touch

I find it bizarre that internet gambling in the US is illegal. Isn't it supposed to be the home of teh freedomz?

[mistermack]

Isn't most internet gambling illegal in the US, something I would like to see in the UK.

Banning all gambling isn't practical but I have no problem banning slot machines in the UK where you can lose £150 per minute in betting shops right next to 'pay day loans' with 10000 % APR that only loan money to utterly desperate people who the banks would never touch

Agreed to all that.
No, you couldn't ban all gambling. But I would ban what you can ban, and that would be most of it.
I would ban gambling as a business, and make it illegal for banks and credit cards to make payments to gambling organisations, here, or abroad.

[mistermack]

The thing is with betting that, if you found a system that paid, the bookies would detect it within days.
You would have to be making big bets of unusual patterns, and now they have software to identify that, and there is no way to disguise it, if you want to make it worthwhile.

Not in the case of the TAB, as the TAB always wins because they have computerised calculated odds (you don't get a set price, your odds are only set after the last bet is placed before the race). You just take advantage of the fact that outsiders often win with dogs, as they are really unpredictable (and corrupt) races. So you are taking money off the betters who bet for the favourites. Not from the TAB (who are the "bookies" in this instance).

That sounds just like the TOTE place bets that I was making. (on horse racing) Tote odds on winners weren't particularly good, but place odds were actually good, as the punters were shunning them.
But like I said, they stomped on that, forty years ago here. I can't imagine it still paying in some other guise. It might be less of a loser, I guess.
I was still breaking even with it, even after they changed the system of calculating the odds.
But only just. It wasn't worth the effort involved.

And I've checked at random times since, to see if the principle would return, but the odds are worse now than they ever were.

[JimC]

Getting back to the substantive issues, "banning" activities that humans do voluntarily (even if there is harm and exploitation involved) almost always brings up a can of worms...

The Hobbesian Leviathan will be more effective by regulating human activities in a carefully measured way which tracks the general sentiment of the population, rather than outright bans such as Prohibition which are often circumvented and ignored, thus bringing the power of Leviathan into question, and weakening its effectiveness.

[mistermack]

I agree that banning something isn't as easy in practice as I proposed.

As there is no prospect of me getting into power, I can say stuff like that.
If I were to suddenly gain power, I'd have to look very carefully at the practicalities before doing it.

But I think it SHOULD be banned. I thought that I'd get the ''big brother'' response, but I agree that there are practical issues.

The main one, for me, would be that British gamblers would go abroad to gamble, in their desperation to be parted with their money, and so the rest of us would lose out, the tax and profits would get spent in Arizona, or Monte Carlo.

So if banning gambling was to be impractical, I would increase the tax on it, progressively, as a special case. Make it harder and harder for bookies and casinos to make money, by imposing more and more tax. In the end, commercial gambling could be deliberately suffocated by the tax take.
And in the process, there might be a bit more money for the health service.

As far as the ''big brother'' argument goes, and the assertion that people ''freely choose'' to gamble, I'm not sure that that's true. Addicts don't get a free choice. The addiction takes away their freedom.
And like I said, if people are silly enough to give away their money, by playing odds that mean they can't win, then they NEED protection from themselves, just like children.
They have proved that they can't make rational decisions.