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Comment by mafribe | Hacker News Reader

   The academic community on twitter is very active and the content is very good, so I go to twitter to keep up with the latest cogneuro trends.

My community (programming languages) is also active on twitter, but I decided completely to withdraw. There seems to be no benefit for me in hearing about the latest paper 5 minutes after it was put on arXiv. I felt that being active on Twitter gave me the illusion of understanding, but prevented me from deep understanding by infinite distraction.

I wonder if I'm the only one ...

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My community (horse racing) is also very active on Twitter. However, I find it highly beneficial to stay abreast of the latest news, and have a chuckle from time to time.

Yesterday a certain horse was confirmed for a certain race (Smad Place in the King George chase at Kempton on December 26th). I picked up the information on Twitter and was able to place a bet immediately at 14/1. The price on Smad Place in this race is now 10/1, 9/1 in places. It was quickly adjusted down by most bookmakers within 10 minutes of the announcement.

Twitter really is a valuable medium to me. I want to hear about things 5 seconds after they've been announced!

How does that work where you're located? At least here (Finland) it wouldn't matter what the odds are when you place the bet, since the payout is based on the odds at the moment the race starts (that is, if you bet 1 € when the odds are 14:1 and then the odds go down to 9:1 you win 9 €). Of course here the state has monopoly on gambling, so it might work very differently.

Generally (in the UK and Ireland), the reverse is true. If the odds go down after you place your bet, you get your initial odds, if the odds go up (to say 18/1) before the race, you will get 18/1. Most reputable bookies do that these days.

In the UK and Ireland (Australia too), there are a few different ways to place a bet.

If betting with a bookmaker you can take the current odds or the Starting Price (SP). If you take the current odds, you're locked in to that price, regardless of which way the price moves. If you're taking the current price, you need to be quite sure the SP is likely to be shorter. The SP, as the name implies, is basically the price of the horse when the race starts.

One can also place a bet on the Tote (totaliser), which is common in many parts of the world and often government owned/run. For example, Hong Kong, the jurisdiction with the biggest gambling turnover on horse racing, only legally allows bets on the Tote. This is a form of parimutuel betting. All bets go into a pool, the winning dividend is the amount available in the pool, divided by the total number of bets on the winner (less the operator's commission). Therefore, the price will fluctuate with the number of bets placed and the monetary volume.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parimutuel_betting

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