The article’s thesis:
The race is now wide open and the bookies and gamblers are just guessing — like everybody else.
Wow, what a terrible headline. Wtf man
I don’t care what celebrities have to say about politics, why the fuck would I listen to a mother fucking bookie!?
Well, they have money on the line.
Yeah, and if I had to guess, they’ve hedged their bets and they have money on both sides of the line.
Don’t know shit abt gambling but if you can do that and not lose money doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of gambling
It’s what bookies do.
They set the payouts and take bets from both sides so that the losers pay for the winners.
After a little work it’s just math and turning away bets / adjusting payouts when you’re already too heavy on that side.
And your profit comes from putting your finger on the scale.
doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of gambling
In that it makes it not a gamble anymore yes, but if you get your math correct there’s a way you can at least break even no matter what, especially if it’s not a true gamble and there’s fundamentals behind your bet to study.
Of course If you’re doing this much work it’s no longer fun, so it’s definitely not appealing to those who like gambling purely for the thrill.
Do they?
Or are they just Republicans who are losing money on purpose to make it appear that the odds favor Trump?
We’re talking about Tech-bros and Cryptocoin-bros here. (Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, DJT SPAC bullshittery, etc. etc.). These are people who are 100% willing to (spend other people’s money) to pump up fake metrics.
These are literally the same people who are willing to lose money on meme-stocks for the lulz. They don’t actually care about making money.
I’m not sure that being perceived as the “favorite” is something that either party wants at this point. Being the favorite comes with a bunch of negatives.
My point is that “betting markets” are bullshit.
You assume that everyone in the “betting market” is actually trying to make money. When in fact, a large number of people are doing it for the lulz, and a minor number of people (ex: campaigns) are actively trying to spend money to manipulate public opinion.
If I make a bet with you, person to person, then it might just be putting my money where my mouth is. If I think Harris will win, then I offer you $20 if Trump wins, and if Harris wins then you give me $30. (That’s exactly 3:2 odds there, which is what 40% odds of winning should work out to.)
The people making the odds–the bookmakers–are absolutely in it for the money. They need to set the odds so that the overall amounts bet on each campaign nearly balance each other out, with the excess amount going to the bookie as profit. If the bookies don’t set the odds correctly, then they risk taking enormous losses. Even if the people are betting for teh lulz, the bookies are deadly serious because they’re going to have to payout millions of dollars in bets. Campaigns might spend money to manipulate the betting markets, but given the size of the markets, that’s probably a fairly small change either way, and most book makers that take bets on elections are also going to be following polls closely.
Keep in mind that the last, best odds for Trump to beat Clinton, going into election night in 2016, were 29%.
If I make a bet with you, person to person, then it might just be putting my money where my mouth is. I think Harris wins, and offer you $20 if she does, and if Trump wins then you give me $30. (That’s exactly 3:2 odds there, which is what 40% odds of winning should work out to.)
And I can make bets to about $5000ish for the lulz. And I HAVE made lulzy bets using call options for shits and giggles just to mess with coworkers and their opinions on the stock market.
Because I have enough wealth that even $5000 doesn’t affect me, win or lose. I’m not even that rich, I just know how much is in my lulz spending allocation per month.
An actual millionaire or billionaire will be able to do the same lulz bet at the 50-Million range.
Small amounts of money is no object to me, where small is ~single digit thousands for me. Richer people within my family bought a house all in cash the other day, because fuck it it’s within our capabilities and we don’t sweat small amounts of money.
At my lifestyle (and for everyone richer than me), money is primarily conspicuous spending to show how rich we are to each other. Basic needs are already handled so it’s all lulz money here on out.
Your assumption that $30 would be even an ounce of my thought is hugely mistaken. That’s just fucking nothing, it’s well below the threshold that I bother thinking of anymore.
Instead, I know that people like you actually care about money. I can manipulate you because my care for money is so much less than you and seed the odds in the favor. Ex: I can pretend I’m sure of something, throw $5000 bet into some call options or put options to pretend I’m serious (when really I don’t care), because I know that $5000 is serious money to someone like you.
It’s not a polite thing to do, I don’t like it when other rich people manipulate poorer people like this. But it’s something within my capabilities.
…The point is so far over your head that I’m going to assume that you’re willfully ignoring it.
You might–might–be able to manipulate the odds with a single bookie. But most bookies also cap bets from any single person or source, because, hey, it turns out that they actually know what they’re doing, since you don’t stay in business long as a bookie if you don’t. Could you pay people to make sock puppet accounts? Sure. But the number of sock puppet accounts you would need to do that–and the number of bank accounts–mean that it would be noisy to do. (You could give 10,000 people each $500 to wager, but I don’t think that all 10k would actually place the bet, and I still don’t think that would be enough to move markets significantly.)
I think you underestimate the amount of money that’s involved here. The sports betting market in the US is worth about $13B, and I would guess–not bet–that the political market is likely around $1B or so, although it’s going to be peaking in November, rather than spread out over the year.
Ex: I can pretend I’m sure of something, throw $5000 bet into some call options or put options to pretend I’m serious (when really I don’t care)
I can, and have, bet on things where someone is, or acts like they are, sure of themselves, and I know for a fact that they’re full of shit. I’ve won every single one of those bets, because gambling is a tax on people that can’t do math.
why the fuck would I listen to a mother fucking bookie!?
It depends. If they’re just spouting off numbers for the sake of spouting off numbers, then their opinion is no more or less important than any other random citizen.
But if they’re actually backing up those numbers with money, then they’ve got at least some data to back them up unless they really, really hate money.
I’m not saying I’d take their word as gospel, but if they’re willing to put money on the line, I’m going to at least consider their opinion something worth looking into.
So… if I bet on Harris, I can earn some money and win too?
Nearly! Wow.
