Wait, Gambling Can Be Scandalous?

I’m sure some of you will be happy to block me for citing Nate Silver, but the man knows his gambling:

When betting the NBA, a difference of a single point — say, Vegas has the Miami Heat favored by 3 points, but you think they should be favored by 4 — is enough to turn a losing bet into a winning one, or vice versa. But the availability or lack thereof of a LeBron, a Steph, or a Jokic can shift the point spread by 6 points, 8 points, or even more. It is extremely valuable to have inside information about who’s actually playing — the sort of info that the alleged conspirators had.

Without that, your choices are between making a negative-EV bet, sitting the game out, or trying to read the tea leaves of where the insider money is flowing. The detailed notes I kept in 2022-23 show that I often did find something suspicious with betting lines for games mentioned in the indictment, though I didn’t always make the right bets. Sometimes I made the classic gambler’s mistake, being tempted by a line that looked too good to be true — and it was, because the insiders knew something that I and the rest of the public didn’t.

The second federal indictment involves poker, another subject I obviously know well. I actually have less to say here because the illegal underground games described in the indictment don’t overlap so much with my part of the poker world. But I can at least walk you through some of the distinctions between your friendly neighborhood home game and what the Feds alleged occurred in Manhattan, Las Vegas and other places. Hint: you probably shouldn’t be eager to play in poker games featuring a random athlete or two, and also people with nicknames like “Black Tony” and “Albanian Bruce”.

The rest is long but it’s pretty interesting, both in terms of why the NBA is particularly vulnerable to fraud and of how to know when you’re in a sketchy poker game and about to lose 45 boxes of ziti.

For my part, I dabbled in sports gambling back in the day and when it became legal in Kentucky I downloaded a couple of different apps. I made (what for me was) a ton of money betting on the Huskies against the Ducks in 2023, then pretty much just forgot about the apps. I worry some about addiction and it’s been nice to see that I have very little interest in sports gambling at this late date. Indeed, this whole scandal spurred me to withdraw my remaining cash and delete the apps; if I want to gamble I can bet the ponies!