r/interestingasfuck • u/lonewolff321 • 12h ago

An online poker bot farm where dozens of synced laptops collude at the same table against real players

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

21k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

•

u/Jomotaku 10h ago

How does this work with sports betting? If u're right on the winning team or whatever don't u just win regardless?

•

u/Moses-the-Ryder 10h ago

The bot farms actually grow the humans from birth and rigorously train them to become professional athletes, get drafted, etc. Then they wait to see what bet you placed and do the opposite

•

u/0110-0-10-00-000 10h ago

It doesn't happen, and it's not possible for it to happen. The ways that bots make money are things like arbitrage (finding bets on different platforms with different odds so that they can bet on every possible outcome and make a profit) or spread betting (buying a succeed/fail bet at different prices on the same market as the odds fluctuate).

They're statistically profitable strategies, and so in a sense they take money out of the winnings pot for everyone else, but as a gambler the way you actually experience that is by the odds being more accurate and not fluctuating as much (i.e. it's only bad for you if you're a gambler who's good at picking underpriced bets).

•

u/SeaMenCaptain 10h ago

Yeah sports betting is probably the "fairest" form of gambling. It's obviously not completely "fair" as there always can be outside influences we are unaware of, but the only real variability are the odds/lines... but you are agreeing to those when you place the bet.

•

u/TheBeckofKevin 8h ago

If you use those odds/lines in order to arbitrage different betting websites in order to tilt the bets in your favor, you will be banned despite those being the terms (lines/odds) the site set themselves. Its only "fair" when the people running the game are the ones making money. If you take actions that result in you steadily winning money over time, you will certainly be banned.

But i will agree, its certainly the fairest in the sense that the companies who run the sports betting sites are most fairly winning money, you just have to ignore the unfairness of them refusing to be fair when it results in their loss.

•

u/SeaMenCaptain 7h ago

Totally agree

•

u/fogleaf 10h ago

That's where the parlay bets come in.

Betting the Brewers will beat the Rays in game one of the world series might be worth .5 or something. So say you bet $100, you would get paid $150. But a parlay bet would be like "if the brewers win by 3 runs you get paid $450." or even further "If the brewers win by 3 runs and Yelich gets a homerun you get $1000." or even further "If the brewers win by 3 runs and Yelich gets a homerun and the last pitch of the game is a swinging strikeout you get $10000."

So say you make that last bet and the brewers win by 3, yelich gets a home run, and the last pitch is a looking strike. You get $0 back on your $100 bet.

•

u/enadiz_reccos 10h ago

How is that 'rigged', though?

•

u/fogleaf 9h ago

How it gets rigged I'm not 100% certain. Maybe something like "if there's a streaker during the game or not." And then someone will go to the game and streak, to win their own bet.

Or on a bet if a player will be sat out for the game, and people with insider knowledge would be able to bet huge amounts against the people just taking a gamble.

•

u/Wolf_Taco 9h ago

How it gets rigged I'm not 100% certain.

I think you misunderstood the thread you are in. The original claim was bots were manipulating sports betting.

•

u/fogleaf 9h ago

Fair. I was answering how I thought sports betting could be rigged. But no idea if/how a mass of bots could affect a bet's chance of paying out.

•

u/skolray 9h ago

But a parlay bet would be like "if the brewers win by 3 runs you get paid $450."

Your example here isn’t accurate, this is just betting on the line.

Betting Brewers to win is the “money line”

Betting to win by x amount set by the book is betting the “line”, books offer alternate lines you can pick at different an odds.

A parlay is what you described in your second example, and most looks allow you to combine across anything. You can do dumb shit like “Brewers win, packers -7 and Steph Curry with >2 steals”.

Parlays are suckers bets

•

u/fogleaf 9h ago

Thank you for clarifying. I have only ever read about parlays on reddit and never actually bet on sports.

•

u/skolray 9h ago

Good for you.

Before legalization I’d use an off shore site to throw literal dollars (like 2) on random games for fun. After it became ubiquitous, it became less fun since it was all that was discussed everywhere.

•

u/Jomotaku 10h ago

Why would anyone take that bet tho? I never did sports gambling so this sounds kinda funny to me

•

u/buttercup612 10h ago

More risk = more potential winnings

•

u/Jomotaku 10h ago

Hmm I guess that's true but it's hard to understand the mindset

•

u/Uhmerikan 10h ago

All they see is the possible winnings

•

u/fogleaf 9h ago

I haven't ever done it so I was just making up numbers. If that same bet was available for just $1 and could win you $100 you could place like 10 different bets on a series of different results.

I was mostly pointing out why it's no longer as simple as "winning team wins so you win"

How it gets rigged I'm not 100% certain. Maybe something like "if there's a streaker during the game or not." And then someone will go to the game and streak, to win their own bet.

Or if a player will be sat out for the game, and people with insider knowledge would be able to bet huge amounts against the people just taking a gamble.

•

u/0110-0-10-00-000 6h ago

Most gamblers don't have good statistical literacy, and a lot of parlay bets will be 4 or 5 different things which on their own seem somewhat likely. So gamblers see either a normal bet which pays like 2:1 in which case they have to put down $500 to make a $1000 return or they only put down $50 on a parlay with a $1000 return even though the odds are way worse than 20:1.

The other side of it is that most gamblers are "chasing losses". If they're $1000 down already, they don't think "what's a good bet?" they think "what bet do I need to win to get my $1000 back". The further down they are, the more risk they take (and then even if they win, pretty often they double down on that and lose it all anyway).

•

u/Chuubu 9h ago edited 8h ago

When people say rigging, they often don't even know what they mean themselves. The game is unfair, but it's not hidden information.

With betting, it's not rigging in the sense that the outcomes are predetermined. It's "rigged" in the sense that the odds are not fair for the players. What most casual gamblers don't understand is that when you are betting on something, it's not whether you think something will or will not happen, it's whether the payout accurately considers the likelihood of something happening.

You can see this easily in something like Roulette. Betting on red or black pays out 1:1. This implies its 50-50 odds. But because of the green, red or black are actually only 47% likely to hit. So as the player, you are actually underpaid for the risk you are taking on. This means over the long term, the house will come out ahead because they get better odds on the deal than you do.

This same process happens with sports betting. Let's say you are betting on a team that has an 80% chance to win. The house will offer you a payout that implies the team has an 85% chance to win so you are actually being underpaid for the risk you took on. And they will be moving the odds based on how much money people are putting on each side to make sure they don't lose money regardless of what ends up happening. The astute gambler is looking for mispriced bets - not who they think will win or lose. If the underdog is being priced as if they only had a 10% chance of winning, but you know they actually have a 20% chance of winning, you would take this bet, even though the team is still likely to lose. That's because over the long term this is a winning strategy that will make money.

Another commenter mentioned parlays being a form of rigging. Again this isn't really "rigging", it's just gamblers not understanding odds very well. They might think betting on 3 80% likely events in a parlay to be easy money as its just a bet on 3 very likely events to happen. However, they are not recognizing that there's only a 51% of all 3 things happening and they are being paid for that risk as if it was 60% likely to happen. They are also overlooking the fact that they are effectively rolling all their winnings from each bet into the next one so they are betting a lot more money than they think they are.

This whole thing actually doesn't quite apply to predictions markets like Kalshi because they do not set the odds like a casino would and they are not betting against the players. They are taking a fee on each transaction, so more like a stock market broker.

•

u/boogermike 10h ago

If you are betting money you will eventually lose. It is not a way to make money and you will always end up losing money. Sports betting too, it is all rigged.

•

u/Jomotaku 10h ago

That didn't answer the question tho. Like if u are right on winning teams u simply wouldn't lose money so how is it rigged? Like the house will win regardless by just taking a fee and statistically ure not winning every game but that's still not rigging that's just how the game works no? Except if u win consistently u will get banned or restricted which is in fact unfair.

•

u/Dzugavili 10h ago

The goal of bookmaking is a balanced book: for the expected outcome, you have half the bets on either side, and you collect a small premium while paying winners from losers. In order to make this balance occur, you alter the payout rates or the spread: the favoured team pays out less, to make the opposite bet more attractive; or they need to win by a number of points.

If you bet on win-loss outcome alone, you'll often get a lower payout, if odds are offered at all; and there will be upsets.

•

u/NobodyImportant13 10h ago

Right, but that's not rigged as in the video where bots are literally colluding together against you. It's only rigged in that the spread is basically always going to cause you to lose money over the long term.

•

u/Dzugavili 10h ago

In this respect, I do grant sports betting a greater degree of 'skill' than other forms of gambling, on both sides of the table: there's greater room for knowledge to factor in for the punter's favour, and it requires more organization from the house than a simple card game.

But there have been some rather prominent examples of concepts like point-shaving, so it's not without its faults.