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Betting Odds - 2020 U.S. President

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  • #16
    Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
    Actually the final tally of the votes matches the polls, unfortunately we have an electoral college that determines the winner not the voters.
    And every national candidate knows that and gears their campaigns toward that.
    The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

    Comment


    • #17
      Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
      And every national candidate knows that and gears their campaigns toward that.
      An unfortunate strategy that defeats a popularly elected president.
      Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
      Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
      But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

      go with the flow the river knows . . .

      Frank

      I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
        An unfortunate strategy that defeats a popularly elected president.
        Unfortunate for those who would want a president elected on the basis of popularity in heavily populated areas, to the neglect of the rest of the country.
        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

        Comment


        • #19
          Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
          Unfortunate for those who would want a president elected on the basis of popularity in heavily populated areas, to the neglect of the rest of the country.
          In this case the less populated parts of the country dominate instead of the popular vote
          Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
          Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
          But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

          go with the flow the river knows . . .

          Frank

          I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

          Comment


          • #20
            Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
            In this case the less populated parts of the country dominate instead of the popular vote
            Everybody knows the rules, Shuny. Until they change, "thems are the rules", and it's a waste of time to complain "hey, we had more hits than the other team, but they still won because they had more runs!"
            The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

            Comment


            • #21
              I've lost enough money trying to bet on political outcomes that I'll admit that I don't really understand how these betting sites work.

              FWIW PredictIt is paying 25x your bet on Hillary Clinton winning. Obviously she has far less than a 4% chance of winning even if Biden, Sanders, and Cuomo all drop out.

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by DivineOb View Post
                I've lost enough money trying to bet on political outcomes that I'll admit that I don't really understand how these betting sites work.

                FWIW PredictIt is paying 25x your bet on Hillary Clinton winning. Obviously she has far less than a 4% chance of winning even if Biden, Sanders, and Cuomo all drop out.
                I don't bet. At all.
                The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                Comment


                • #23
                  Originally posted by DivineOb View Post
                  I've lost enough money trying to bet on political outcomes that I'll admit that I don't really understand how these betting sites work.

                  FWIW PredictIt is paying 25x your bet on Hillary Clinton winning. Obviously she has far less than a 4% chance of winning even if Biden, Sanders, and Cuomo all drop out.
                  As I understand it, betting works essentially like this.

                  What the person taking bets wants to do is to make it so they can come out ahead no matter who wins. Now suppose there's a clear favorite, and everyone bets on it. That's catastrophic for the person taking the bets if that clear favorite wins, as it means they lost all of their money they took in and have to give multiples of that money back to everyone.

                  So how do you get people to bet on other options? By offering longer odds. If a long shot bet is only offering 3 to 1 odds, people may not be interested. But if it's suddenly something like 100 to 1? That will make people more interested in betting on that, because as unlikely as it is, it means they'll get 100 times their money back if the thing they bet on wins rather than 3 times. So if people aren't betting on an option, the person offering the bets will make the odds longer to try to incentivize them.

                  Contrariwise, if lots of people are betting on something, the person taking the bets will make it be easier odds. Let's take that above example; they move it down to 100 to 1, and suddenly everyone starts betting on that. Then they'll change it to something like 25 to 1, to make people want to bet on the other options. The goal of the person taking the bets is to get all of the bets "spread around" so they come out ahead no matter who wins.

                  So that's what's happening. The numbers are based on what people are betting. When more people bet on something, the odds for it become more unfavorable to them (e.g. changing from 3-to-1 to 2-to-1). When not many people bet on something, the odds for it become more favorable (e.g. changing from 3-to-1 to 10-to-1).

                  So the odds, simply put, are set by how many people are betting on something/someone. Fewer people betting on something means longer odds (e.g. 25-to-1), and more people betting means shorter odds (e.g. 2-to-1). Getting 25 your bet back if Hillary Clinton wins (25-to-1) doesn't mean that it's a 1 in 25 chance of her winning, it means that the person who takes the bets (or more accurately, the automated computer system that presumably dynamically sets them based on how people are betting) selected 25-to-1 as the number that is currently best for achieving the goal of getting people to bet on Hillary Clinton, but not getting too many people to bet on her.

                  Did that make sense?
                  Last edited by Terraceth; 05-12-2020, 12:31 AM.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Originally posted by Terraceth View Post
                    As I understand it, betting works essentially like this.

                    What the person taking bets wants to do is to make it so they can come out ahead no matter who wins. Now suppose there's a clear favorite, and everyone bets on it. That's catastrophic for the person taking the bets if that clear favorite wins, as it means they lost all of their money they took in and have to give multiples of that money back to everyone.

                    So how do you get people to bet on other options? By offering longer odds. If a long shot bet is only offering 3 to 1 odds, people may not be interested. But if it's suddenly something like 100 to 1? That will make people more interested in betting on that, because as unlikely as it is, it means they'll get 100 times their money back if the thing they bet on wins rather than 3 times. So if people aren't betting on an option, the person offering the bets will make the odds longer to try to incentivize them.

                    Contrariwise, if lots of people are betting on something, the person taking the bets will make it be easier odds. Let's take that above example; they move it down to 100 to 1, and suddenly everyone starts betting on that. Then they'll change it to something like 25 to 1, to make people want to bet on the other options. The goal of the person taking the bets is to get all of the bets "spread around" so they come out ahead no matter who wins.

                    So that's what's happening. The numbers are based on what people are betting. When more people bet on something, the odds for it become more unfavorable to them (e.g. changing from 3-to-1 to 2-to-1). When not many people bet on something, the odds for it become more favorable (e.g. changing from 3-to-1 to 10-to-1).

                    So the odds, simply put, are set by how many people are betting on something/someone. Fewer people betting on something means longer odds (e.g. 25-to-1), and more people betting means shorter odds (e.g. 2-to-1). Getting 25 your bet back if Hillary Clinton wins (25-to-1) doesn't mean that it's a 1 in 25 chance of her winning, it means that the person who takes the bets (or more accurately, the automated computer system that presumably dynamically sets them based on how people are betting) selected 25-to-1 as the number that is currently best for achieving the goal of getting people to bet on Hillary Clinton, but not getting too many people to bet on her.

                    Did that make sense?
                    My general understanding is that all the bets make up a prize pool from which the bet taker takes a fixed percentage and the odds are a percentage of the pool. E.g. if total pool is $2000 and $1500 of it is for Player 1 then Player 1 is paying $1.33 and if $500 is on Player 2 then Player 2 is paying $4.00. So when Nadel or Federer play their first round match they usually paid $1.01 since that’s where all the money was.

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