Why do I keep seeing people putting stock in “betting markets”? … Somehow professional gamblers became respected replacements for polls some and I do not get it
It’s real easy to make polls go whichever way you like if you try and it may be in someones best interest to make sure only the ‘correct’ polls are widely known. We’re spoiled in that we’ve been able to expect the organizations involved to be trustworthy and not do that, but I think a lot of us feel that that’s been less and less true.
For the betting markets, their success relies almost solely on them predicting odds correctly and consistently. Our respect here is for the people who dedicate their lives to making sure the gamblers lose. Could obviously still be manipulated, but in this case doing so is at least contrary to the purpose of the organization instead of in the previous case potentially actually supporting it…
Not going to lie though, is a weird shift, I get it.
I never said that polls were accurate. And I get the reasoning, sort of. I just don’t understand why anyone would think that this actually adds any legitimacy or accuracy:
Our respect here is for the people who dedicate their lives to making sure the gamblers lose.
If it were so good of an indicator, then why wouldn’t anyone betting on sports check what the “market” says, bet and win big all the time? Most people lose these bets, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to bet on things to begin with.
I feel like you’re confusing the people who make the bets with the people who make the odds, those are interconnected obviously and react to each other, but it’s two separate parties.
I think the justification is that people will be more honest/rational when betting their own money.
It’s probably less irrational than stock markets, since there’s a very clear time horizon people are betting on, and data like polls can be pretty good. But since they’re looking at essentially the same data as pundits, it’s unsurprising they tend to do about as well.
Why do I keep seeing people putting stock in “betting markets”? … Somehow professional gamblers became respected replacements for polls some and I do not get it
It’s real easy to make polls go whichever way you like if you try and it may be in someones best interest to make sure only the ‘correct’ polls are widely known. We’re spoiled in that we’ve been able to expect the organizations involved to be trustworthy and not do that, but I think a lot of us feel that that’s been less and less true.
For the betting markets, their success relies almost solely on them predicting odds correctly and consistently. Our respect here is for the people who dedicate their lives to making sure the gamblers lose. Could obviously still be manipulated, but in this case doing so is at least contrary to the purpose of the organization instead of in the previous case potentially actually supporting it…
Not going to lie though, is a weird shift, I get it.
I never said that polls were accurate. And I get the reasoning, sort of. I just don’t understand why anyone would think that this actually adds any legitimacy or accuracy:
If it were so good of an indicator, then why wouldn’t anyone betting on sports check what the “market” says, bet and win big all the time? Most people lose these bets, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to bet on things to begin with.
I feel like you’re confusing the people who make the bets with the people who make the odds, those are interconnected obviously and react to each other, but it’s two separate parties.
I think the justification is that people will be more honest/rational when betting their own money.
It’s probably less irrational than stock markets, since there’s a very clear time horizon people are betting on, and data like polls can be pretty good. But since they’re looking at essentially the same data as pundits, it’s unsurprising they tend to do about as well.