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Comment by bionsystem | Hacker News Reader

> it's such a problem getting people to continue accepting your bets if you are any good.

Why don't they just use those people to adjust their odds faster for everybody else ? Or do they limit the size you can bet rather than just banning you ?

> I also found out that the more you bet, the more percentage commission you pay to exchanges like Betfair, which is quite contraintuitive - commission goes up with volume, not down.

I guess they try to cream the most addicted people, seems quite intuitive to me.

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> Why don't they just use those people to adjust their odds faster for everybody else ?

The logic of bookies is simple: Don't do business with people who win more than they lose.

It doesn't matter how the customer is getting an edge. A brilliant algorithm? A complex arbitrage system? Deep insight from years studying the sport? Cheating? Time travel? The bookies don't care.

The only thing that matters is, if you win more than you lose you've got some sort of edge. And if you've got any sort of edge, it's more profitable not to do business with you.

Same for casinos. That's why they kick you out if you win too much or too often. They don't need to prove you did anything wrong like cheating. If you aren't making them money you're out.

> Why don't they just use those people to adjust their odds faster for everybody else ?

Volumes are not huge like in finance, you will lose more on the bet that you will make back in your marginally improved odds.

> I guess they try to cream the most addicted people, seems quite intuitive to me.

The professionals, not the addicted. The addicted expire quickly and they typically don't use exchanges anyway.

>Why don't they just use those people to adjust their odds faster for everybody else ? Or do they limit the size you can bet rather than just banning you ?

Some of them ban outright and some restrict your stake. When I worked for a bookmaker we had an account that had made several hundred thousand £s from us and was limited to betting relatively small amounts. He would always bet as soon as our odds would open and then we'd adjust them.

Top sports books do that already. Lesser sports books don't have enough liquidity to react in real-time. In fact a simple winning strategy is to check what odds Pinnacle gives and see if any bookie offers better odds (arbitrage betting). It will only work for 2-3 bets before you're rate-limited though.

Yeah this is the entire business model of oddsjam. They basically offer a service that compares all book odds to pinnacle and call it "plus EV betting".

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