Gambling

S

sammybea

First of, not a representative of any gambling sites. And i won't mention any particular sites. But has anyone done online interactive gambling? The only reason why i ask, is that some of the online sites use a stock market format with bid and offers. If you do, are you making money at it? Do you feel like your background as a trader helps? I fooled around with it for fun.. and have lost money for the most part.
 
Originally posted by Pabst
What kind of games are you referring to?
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Oh.. sorry not to be clearer. I was referring to sports games. Lets say you thought the lakers were going to win (assuming the line was even odds.) During the game, the bid and offers would change after each shot. So if you bought one contract at 50 dollars, it may have gone up to a bid of 70 with an ask of 75. Eventually if you win the bet at the end of the game, the contract would be worth a 100 dollars... consequently, if you lose the bet, the contract would be worthless.

I think the idea is to "scalp" a contract or hold it if you think you can win the bet. The Gaming site makes money on the spread.. much like a market maker.

Obviously. the real money is in the volume of contracts you trade, much like the real futures market. But you can easily get wiped out if you don't know what you are doing.
 
There are sites that offer sports futures exactly as you described. I don't have the link on this computer but Tuesday I can get it. Another very interesting gambling link is an arbitrage site. Again, on Tuesday I can post it.
 
Here are some sites.

www.wsex.com (the one i have used)
www.sportsinteraction.com
www.wagerstreet.com

Again, regardless of the format, these are gambling sites.. and overall you will LOSE money. Just was wondering if anyone has used their trading skills to successfully make money through the buying and selling of sports bets. I am trying to figure out if an equity trader may feel like he has an edge.
 
In the UK we have a number of CFD (contract for difference) and spread betting organisations. These are firms that offer bets with a spread (bid/offer) for numerous indicies, stocks etc. They lay off bets by trading the underlying. They also run books on sports and weather etc. You can even get a price on how many red cards will be shown in a football (soccer) game.
There are 2 reasons for their popularity;

1. UK stocks incur stamp duty and this is a burdensome extra cost for trading. For those that want to trade US markets it saves the hassle of on overseas broker.
2. There is no tax on betting winnings, so if you get it right you are winning tax free money.

I don't use them simply because their spreads are more like the Grand Canyon than a lsight difference and also, I assume that this loophole will be closed v soon so there is the risk that retroactive gains will be taxed anyway for active traders of stock derivatives. I believe that the SEC does not approve these types of operations.

3-1 it rains in london today.

Mike:mad:
 
Actually, there was an excellent book written about three years ago( the title escapes me) about a handful of professional sports bettors(sic) who travelled to Las Vegas each winter to make their living betting on college basketball. One guy, who struck me in particular, was a guy from Rhode Island, who had gone to an Ivy League school (U of Penn) and had been making his living doing this for years. He studied statistics, knew when a spread was weak(strong) and usually bet a pretty good sized chunk and spread his bets across a number of events( games).

The particular winter that the author spent with this guy was a brutal one for him. He was getting clipped on a consistent basis by what he called "fluke" events. He also found that the game was changing tremendously and that the house(Vegas) was becoming more efficient.

At the same time, the author focussed alot on the betting houses and the risks that they had to deal with on a neverending basis. Namely making markets in alot of sporting events that they may not have a significant edge in. Taking in bets on long shots of "futures" bets...and all of the sidebets that they set up during big event games like teh SuperBowl or the Final Four. Outcomes which they could not effectively "game" in advance...

This book really had alot of parallels to the trading game, IMO. Some people might not agree, but it was very clear how the different classes of speculators worked in that industry (individual vs the house), in many ways very similar to how it acts in the markets, in particular the listed stock market...
 
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