Posts Tagged ‘gambling’
“The excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might win times the probability of winning it.”*…
This afternoon’s Super Bowl is yet to be played, but it is already destined for the record books…
The American Gaming Association expects 50.4 million Americans to wager legally on the game (up over 61% from last year), for a total of $16 Billion at stake (more than twice last year’s betting). To put this into context, in 2022, U.S. legal gambling totaled about $55 billion.
It will also be the first Championship game with an on-site sports book (though attendees don’t need to leave their seats to wager; Arizona is one of the 33 states [plus D.C.] in which they can make bets in licensed betting shops on the way to the game… or, of course, they can just use their phones to bet online).
Sports betting is exploding in the U.S. About 20% of U.S. adults said that they had placed sports bets in 2022. Some of those bets were through legal channels. But The AGA estimates that American also wagered almost $64 billion in 2021 with illegal sports books– part of the $511 Billion bet on those books, iGaming websites, and “skill games.”
These figures exclude the purchase of state lottery tickets, which has grown to over $100 billion. The average American spent $46 on lottery tickets in the U.S. in 2022; but the amounts varied wildly from state-to-state– in Massachusetts, residents spent an average of $805.30.
See also: “How Sports Betting Upended the Economies of Native American Tribes.”
* Blaise Pascal, whose correspondence with Pierre de Fermat on gambling laid the foundation for the modern theory of probability
###
As we wonder about wagering, we might send insightful birthday greetings to Charles Darwin; he was born on this date in 1809. A naturalist, geologist, and biologist, he is widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science.
In a 1858 joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin published a more complete version of his theory of evolution, with compelling evidence. in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species.
Darwin’s scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life– for which he has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.
“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people”*…
Still, people do an awful lot of betting. Legal sports betting currently runs at almost $77 Billion per year in the U.S. and is growing by double digits; last year, 40 percent of people aged 18 to 44 gambled online (sports and casino wagering combined), nearly double the 21 percent of those aged 45 to 54. Illegal gambling (for understandable reasons, harder to gauge) is estimated at (at least) $1.7 Trillion globally, and also on the rise (in part because it’s such a handy way to launder money).
As football season gets underway, Jeopardy! champ (and gambler) James Holzhauer considers the ways in which a sports wagerer is like a stock market investor…
The sports betting marketplace has many parallels to the world of finance: both are essentially populated with speculators trying to make money by outsmarting everyone else. Some sportsbook conglomerates have even been run by people with experience on Wall Street. But how do the two compare side by side? Let’s look at some key similarities and differences between the two modes of investing…
Diversification, insider trading, derivatives, inflation concerns: “How sports betting and the stock market compare,” from @James_Holzhauer in @TheAthletic.
(Image above: source)
* W.C. Fields
###
As we punt, we might recall that it was on this date in 1930 that Al “Scarface” Capone enlisted former rivals into partnership to form a giant co-operative organization to control the beer/spirits, vice, and gambling “industries” in Chicago. The Syndicate, as it was known, was headed by Capone and run by a cabinet, with each member controlling different areas of the business: alcohol sales, alcohol running, gambling, vice, and war on those outside the Syndicate.
The following year, Capone was charged with tax evasion; in 1932 he was convicted and sentenced to the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta; in 1934 he was transferred to Alcatraz.
“The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice so pleasurable that I assume it must be evil”*…
Gambling has existed since antiquity, but in the past 30 years it’s grown at a spectacular rate, turbocharged by the internet and globalisation. Problem gambling has grown accordingly, and become particularly prevalent in the teenage population. Even more troublingly, a study in 2013 reported that slightly over 90 per cent of problem gamblers don’t seek professional help. Gambling addiction is part of a suite of damaging and unhealthy behaviours that people do despite warnings, such as smoking, drinking or compulsive video gaming. It draws on a multitude of cognitive, social and psychobiological factors.
Psychological and medical studies have found that some people are more likely to develop a gambling disorder than others, depending on their social condition, age, education and experiences such as trauma, domestic violence and drug abuse. Problem gambling also involves complex brain chemistry, as gambling stimulates the release of multiple neurotransmitters including serotonin and dopamine, which in turn create feelings of pleasure and the attendant urge to maintain them. Serotonin is known as the happiness hormone, and typically follows a sense of release from stress or fear. Dopamine is associated with intense pleasure, released when we’re engaged in activities that deserve a reward, and precisely when that reward occurs – seeing the ball landing on the number we’ve bet on, or hearing the sound of the slot machine showing a winning payline.
For the most part, gambling addiction is viewed as a medical and psychological problem, though this hasn’t resulted in widely effective prevention and treatment programmes. That might be because the research has often focused on the origins and prevalence of addiction, and less on the cognitive premises and mechanisms that actually take place in the brain. It’s a controversial area, but this arguable lack of clinical effectiveness doesn’t appear to be specific to gambling; it applies to other addictions as well, and might even extend to some superstitions and irrational beliefs.
Can a proper presentation of the mathematical facts help gambling addiction? While most casino moguls simply trust the mathematics – the probability theory and applied statistics behind the games – gamblers exhibit a strange array of positions relative to the role of maths. While no study has offered an exhaustive taxonomy, what we know for sure is that some simply don’t care about it; others care about it, trust it, and try to use it in their favour by developing ‘winning strategies’; while others care about it and interpret it in making their gambling predictions.
Certain problem gambling programmes frame the distortions associated with gambling as an effect of a poor mathematical knowledge. Some clinicians argue that reducing gambling to mere mathematical models and bare numbers – without sparkling instances of success and the ‘adventurous’ atmosphere of a casino – can lead to a loss of interest in the games, a strategy known as ‘reduction’ or ‘deconstruction’. The warning messages involve statements along the lines of: ‘Be aware! There is a big problem with those irrational beliefs. Don’t think like that!’ But whether this kind of messaging really works is an open question. Beginning a couple of decades ago, several studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that teaching basic statistics and applied probability theory to problem gamblers would change their behaviour. Overall, these studies have yielded contradictory, non-conclusive results, and some found that mathematical education yielded no change in behaviour. So what’s missing?…
Catalin Barboianu, a gaming mathematician, philosopher of science, and problem-gambling researcher, asks if philosophers and mathematicians struggle with probability, can gamblers really hope to grasp their losing game? “Mathematics for Gamblers.”
For a deeper dive, see Alec Wilkinson’s fascinating New Yorker piece, “What Would Jesus Bet? A math whiz hones the optimal poker strategy.”
For cultural context (and an appreciation of the broader importance of the issue), see “How Gambling Mathematics Took Over The World.”
And for historical context, see (one of your correspondent’s all-time favorite books) Peter Bernstein’s Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk.
[image above: source]
* Heywood Hale Broun
###
As we roll the dice, we might spare a thought for Srinivasa Ramanujan; he died on this date in 1920. A largely self-taught mathematician from Madras, he initially developed his own mathematical research in isolation: according to Hans Eysenck: “He tried to interest the leading professional mathematicians in his work, but failed for the most part. What he had to show them was too novel, too unfamiliar, and additionally presented in unusual ways; they could not be bothered.” Seeking mathematicians who could better understand his work, in 1913 he began a postal partnership with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy at the University of Cambridge, England. Recognizing Ramanujan’s work as extraordinary, Hardy arranged for him to travel to Cambridge. In his notes, Hardy commented that Ramanujan had produced groundbreaking new theorems, including some that “defeated me completely; I had never seen anything in the least like them before.”
Ramanujan made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable. During his short life, he independently compiled nearly 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations). Many were completely novel; his original and highly unconventional results, such as the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae, and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired a vast amount of further research. Nearly all his claims have now been proven correct.
See also: “Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater,” and enjoy the 2015 film on Ramanujan, “The Man Who Knew Infinity.”
“There is a sociology of horses, as well as a psychology”*…

Clubhouse Mezzanine
On a cool and sunny Wednesday afternoon in December 2013, I pulled into a massive parking lot in Inglewood, California. My plan was to photograph Hollywood Park Racetrack before it closed forever. At the time, I was a portrait photographer and had spent many years capturing the subtleties of facial expressions, watching carefully how happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and surprise unfold in the muscles of the face. The work of portraiture is exhilarating but also profoundly exhausting, and I was interested in shifting my attention to buildings, particularly buildings that had been lived in and well worn. I liked the idea of working with less, and also working alone, and I was curious, too. What does a building reveal? How is a building like a face?
Growing up in Los Angeles I had spent many evenings right next door to Hollywood Park. I watched Lakers games, basketball at the summer Olympics, and countless rock concerts at The Forum. Although the neighboring track was enormous — 300 acres, a capacity of 80,000 guests — I had never paid any attention until now…
Photographer Michele Asselin spent the next several days intensively documenting Hollywood Park…
It was almost impossible to stop taking photos, but finally, on December 22, 2013, at 11:00 p.m., my hand was forced. The crowd filed out for the last time as the loudspeakers played “At Last” and “Happy Trails.” Some people were crying, some were singing, some were nonchalant. Those trying to filch a little piece of history — a sign or a doorknob — were stopped by a security guard. When the last person exited the grounds, the gates were locked. The horses were loaded into trailers in the coming weeks and moved across town or to Oklahoma, New Jersey, or Kentucky. The auctioneers sifted through what was left, and then, in 2014, Hollywood Park was razed.
After 15 days of circling the grounds, hauling my equipment from place to place, I was 12 pounds thinner and had hardly seen my kids. I had taken 25,000 photos. It would be a year before I finished sorting through them. I wondered what I had fixed in time. The end of something? Evidence of its existence? The traces of time? I tried to keep in mind what an arborist had once told me — that it’s okay to cut down a struggling tree as long as another is planted in its place. I hope that the same is true of buildings…

Jay Cohen. Bugler.
From Asselin’s introduction to her new book, Clubhouse Turn- The Twilight of Hollywood Park Race Track. For the full intro and more of her photos: “Say Goodbye to Hollywood Park: Photographing the Twilight of a Racetrack” and her website.
* Jane Smiley (Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and horse owner/breeder)
###
As we place our bets, we might recall that it was on this date in 1931 that the state legislature in Nevada legalized casino gambling in the state. In fact, gambling had been legal in Nevada until 1909 (by which time it was the only state with legal gambling), when an earlier instantiation of the legislature outlawed it.
(Coincidentally, it was on this date in 1942 that Alfred G. Vanderbilt and number of horse racing luminaries established the Thoroughbred Racing Associations of North America.)
You must be logged in to post a comment.