Ramblin' Gamblin' Man
Notes from the Sportsbook App
DISCLAIMER: This essay is in no way intended to promote or encourage gambling. I strongly advise anyone who develops an interest in the hobby (morbid or otherwise) to familiarize themselves with their state’s laws surrounding the subject. Play responsibly. Best of luck. Don’t yell at me.
Furthermore, this is not intended as any sort of intro to sports betting. I will not be stopping to define and explain gambling terminology. Definitions can be found in footnotes. Thank you for reading, hope you enjoy.
Maybe listen to this to set the mood.
I am a gambler, though if I’m honest that word feels too dramatic for what I actually do. I play exceedingly short money. My unit size1 fluctuates between about two dollars and fifty cents and five dollars at a time. If I bet a tenner, it’s a lot. I don’t have the insides to play twenty dollar units, slamming a hundred at a time down on plus-money2 point spreads3. Losing sixty or seventy dollars over a month, even if I’m playing with house money4, can depress me for weeks. I shudder to imagine what a hundred, two-hundred, three-hundred dollar negative swing in the course of a few hours would do to my mental health. I’ve seen what that kind of lifestyle does, even to guys who think they have it figured out. Especially to guys that think they have it figured out. The books love a guy with a “model.” A spreadsheet. A system. You do one little data analysis for your 300-level undergrad stats class and then you wake up five years later wild-eyed, holes freshly punched in your drywall, knee-deep in a soccer player’s Instagram DM’s, composing a new death threat.
That’s not me. I’m not some r/sportsbook Warren Buffett wannabee. I am a humble hobbyist and on good days the hobby brings me a degree of fulfillment and joy. A portion of the advertising really is true in that respect. There’s a unique modern thrill one can experience by watching a game, any game, and deciding to cook a lil bet slip. Lil team total5 action. Lil parlay6. The game within the game. Play the boosts7, the no-sweat bets8. A little fiver on a player prop9 lay with the bet insurance or the Internet Microcelebrity Boost of the Week at, what +320? +450? +600? Nothing too unreasonable. Maybe play the spread and a few live bets10 at a unit apiece? If they miss, no biggie. If they cash, hey buddy you just ate, drank, and all the rest of it on the book’s dime. In the nosebleeds or the bleachers or on your couch at home, legal weed gummy hitting your system just after the national anthem wraps up, canned vodka soda, hot dog, bag of chips, gambling from the comfort of your seat. Common was so right dude, we really are living in the future we always dreamed of.
But I digress. The point is that none of this is really about me. This isn’t a personal story of addiction. This is about a growing social consensus. The sportsbooks’ conspicuous greed, seemingly infinite advertising budgets, and sports media’s full-throated acceptance of gambling into every aspect of their programming has become a growing pain point for sports fans the world over. ESPN has both dedicated gambling programming and their own sportsbook (another conflict of interest for a network that never met one they didn’t like). Sports bars and stadiums increasingly boast physical sportsbooks adjacent to their facilities. Every pre-game gab-fest has some husky mediocrity trying to direct the viewing public to slap down a few dollars on their crappy parlay with twee little branding. I despise it, but I should be kinder. I am nothing if not mediocre as a gambler. I’ve basically broken even over about three years in the pits. Though on the other hand, most don’t even do that well.
Forgive me, my fellow gamblers, for this cowardly act of appeasement, but I’m beginning to think we should roll this back. All of it. We won’t. There’s too much money to be made. But I fear we risk poisoning the well. A sufficiently poisoned well leads to poisoned groundwater, and at that point we all have much bigger problems, bubba.
Escaping the Skinner Box
Looking around, with some perspective, I wonder if we may already be at that point. Sports gambling has approached epidemic proportions among my young-ish male demographic. This has led to social knock-on effects, none of which are positive.
I am not a prohibitionist when it comes to gambling. I’m not a prohibitionist about most things. When I suggest a rollback, I don’t mean that we should chase the books out of polite society, back to containment in Vegas and its similarly-chintzy cousins. I also don’t mean that we should legislate them out of existence. I mean we should consider the precedents here. We treat the cigarette companies like lepers and subject the alcoholic beverage companies to byzantine advertising regulations. Why are sportsbooks exempt? Gambling is still a vice, last I checked.
Frankly, I’d go even further. I’d be at peace if I weren’t allowed to do this on my phone anymore. There’s a sportsbook counter at the not-great sports bar situated about a fifteen minute walk from my apartment. I’d be fine going there in person to place bets. I’d grumble and complain, especially during college football season when my volume hits its peak. The walk would be good for me, though, and the extra effort I have to expend to feed my vice would make me more thoughtful about the whole thing. If I had to get my picks lined up in advance and go pay for them with real money at a physical location I would pay closer attention to the math on how much I was risking, surely. The money is more real when it’s not just internet fun bux.
Impulse betting is great for the books and terrible for the players, hence why their ads so often treat it as the norm. They love to talk about “hunches,” “gut feelings.” As the kind of person who hates playing live and sometimes just takes weeks at a time off playing simply because I forget about it, I’m pretty immune to this call to be ruled by my compulsions. But that’s not always the case. Let me draw an example; when I was twenty-two, employed as a barista, and free to dirtbag around otherwise, I got a dab pen for the first time. At first I was enamored, I could smoke weed inside and nobody could tell. But as I got deeper into the habit, it dawned on me how much the little metal rod scared me. It was simply too damn easy to sit around and hit the button all day, like a monkey pressing the button to electro-stimulate its dopamine receptors. I was building my own little Skinner Box. The ritual of grinding flower, opening a window, packing one’s pipe or bong, and lighting up provides more of a process to receive pleasure than the cold efficiency of the electric vaporizer. Even taking a gummy means doing the mental math to figure out how long it’ll take to kick in and how long you can expect to be at least a little loopy. The pen removes this. I was Towelie. Just had to get a lil high before doing literally anything. Addictive behaviors are a game of inches.
Now apply this same thought process to gambling. When the process is sufficiently automated, you end up gambling simply because you’re bored and need something to do. You’re at your office, staring at the ceiling, two hours till you go home. Somewhere in this world there’s a game of tennis about to be played. You don’t watch tennis, don’t care about tennis, but Big Money Brendan in your gambling Discord is calling in the ten-unit bomb on Frances Tiafoe. You don’t want to be left out of the fun so you lock it in. Maybe you bet a lot, maybe you bet a little. Maybe you win, maybe you don’t. The point is you’ve just risked actual, real world money for no good reason beyond FOMO. The books thrive on that sort of emotional play, Hunter Thompson warned us about this11. Consider how bad an idea that is from a purely academic standpoint. This isn’t a hobby or a side-hustle for the books. This isn’t an act of passion. It’s cold, analytical, profit-first. They have connections, statistics, insider information. If you’re playing purely based on a hunch or a recommendation you have none of that. Maybe Tiafoe rolled his ankle in training that morning and will retire after a set and a half, leaving you and Big Money Brendan foaming at the mouth. You couldn’t have known he was compromised, but I’ll bet you that the books did. This sort of micro-interaction plays out again and again over months and years as players slowly dig a deeper and deeper hole, donating to the books for the reward of fast dopamine to briefly outshine the shame of the accumulated losses, each time the deposit button is pressed a little negotiated surrender to the bastards setting the lines and feeding your bad habit.
Greed, Rage, Egoism: Tales from the Gamblers’ Forums
If you are a gambler, the odds are good that nothing I’ve said is news to you. The books are crooks. It’s a truism and a mantra among hobbyist and professional gamblers alike. They move the goalposts, they get the injury reports ahead of time and choose not to inform the public, they limit or outright ban profitable gamblers, they close certain plays as you’re attempting to bet them and reopen them at a more favorable figure for themselves. They cheat. The thrill lies in beating them despite this. A good weekend, a really good weekend doesn’t just fuel your own ego. It tastes like sweet revenge. You got ‘em back, after days, weeks spent donating you made ‘em bleed and the world is beautiful for a moment.
But regardless of how many times the lesson is taught, some people are incapable of learning. That’s where you get the real tragic cases. That’s what you were hoping for, on some level, when you started reading this, right? I’m behind the green door, I know what these freaks get up to in here. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe, and all that jazz. Lemme take you behind the veil for a brief moment here.
In sketching out my modest proposal for an analog sports-betting future I’m reminded of an anecdote that gives me some pause about the whole thing. I remember once I was downtown, at a bar, a good one at that. Having a few beers, watching some college ball, as you’re likely to find me on basically any autumn Saturday. Behind me were a few sportsbook kiosks. They’re basically lottery ticket machines. You feed in money and get your bet slip. I sat at the bar and watched an entire game, glancing behind myself again and again to see if the kid was still there at the kiosk. Sure enough, he was. Skinny kid. Dark skin, braids, all black gorpcore fit. I dunno if he was even old enough to be using the thing legally. He sat there feeding bill after bill into the kiosk, working the buttons, printing the slips. It occurred to me that this must have been some sort of organized deal. Maybe he was the bookie, maybe he was just working for the bookie. But I could imagine the kid and his partners going door to door, tenement to tenement, getting the kitty together and making plays on their neighbors’ behalf. Maybe they get a percentage, maybe it’s just a flat fee for putting the shoe leather down. He was there when I arrived and still there when I walked out. I can’t even guess how much money he was betting. Perhaps if we take the markets off our phones we’ll see a return to that neighborhood bookie so familiar from American mobster movies. Though now, instead of my weekly numbers lottery ticket putting a mink on some capo’s mistress, my weekly NHL gift boost play pays for a tee time at TPC Sawgrass for a DraftKings VP. What a scary thought.
Lemme tell you how I got started. When I first started playing I was terrible. I didn’t know anything. I needed a rabbi. So I went to Reddit (which is never the correct move). In the r/sportbook Pick of the Day thread I met the learned master. He was riding a ten-day heater in the early spring and plugging a free Discord. I jumped in. My man was masterful over those next few weeks. We cleaned up on March Madness. In retrospect I was watching a man’s life change in real time. Given how much of this hobby is the blind leading the blind, knowing something (or at least appearing to know something) can rapidly assemble an audience, and a paying one at that. He became known, and drew other self-styled professional handicappers into his orbit. But of course nothing gold can stay. Spring turned to summer and our collective profits disappeared along with my Rabbi’s luck. Baseball. Fucking baseball. If you are compelled to start gambling by this essay (Lord only knows why) then heed my advice and take the summers off. Baseball is impossible to make money on. It robbed my Man of his magic and it’s never quite come back. Sure he’s solid, good days and bad. But the increased profile hasn’t just changed his luck. It’s changed him. He’s bitter, angry. Hates dissent. I hopped in the chat one day to see I’d been saddled with the role of “Negative Nelly.” I still have no idea why. I don’t go there much anymore, but I haven’t left yet. Handicappers12 are flighty, fragile creatures. They often break up acrimoniously. But the true freaks leave much larger craters behind when they explode. They had to throw a high roller out of the chat because he kept sending death threats to the families of losing tennis players. Still his name is spoken of in reverent tones.
Here’s another piece of advice: if you’re selecting a sportsbook, do not pick BetMGM. They are trash. Bad boosts, stingy bonuses, ugly, broken app. It stole $45 from me and so I withdrew my balance and took my business to their competitors. I meant to bet $4.50 on Turkish soccer (yeah, yeah, get your jokes in, “bro is betting on the Turkish Superlig,” shaddap, it’s a good league, your Eurocentrism is showing) and then the app lagged and placed my bet on my behalf before I could move the decimal point. Support was worse than useless. I missed a $140 payout by one first-half goal and deleted my account. Not sorry. Pay your IT department a little more and Jamie Foxx a little less and you might still have me.
Like I said, some are immune to learning these lessons. I remember this one cat, a college student. He came into the Discord and immediately started betting hundreds of dollars at a time, mostly on hockey. I think he was trying to prove something but who knows. It seems to be a regrettably common affliction among that age group. I remember being told by a Freshman year dorm-mate with a Robinhood account; ”no one ever bought a yacht being responsible, bro.” Dude was about to drop like $500 into penny stocks on Robinhood. I wonder if they paid.
Anyway, this cat, the college boy, decidedly did not get paid. He got close. That may have been the worst thing that could have happened. I distinctly remember one night where he was I think three or four legs to the good into a parlay and being offered like $8,000 to cash out early. He stood to make maybe $13,000. The early cash out would have covered his losses and then some. We were begging him to just take the money and run. He let it ride and missed. Parlays almost always miss, especially when they can make real money. That was when the spiral really began. You never wanna chase losses, not in anything. That’s how you tilt13, which he did. Last I remember he was up at 4 AM, demanding someone give him a thousand dollar lock on Japanese basketball, abusing the chat admin for refusing to enable him. He was kicked, naturally. But I wonder if he quit or just moved on, I wonder if he ever told his family. I wonder how many times that interaction plays out all over America. “Sorry, Dad, I spent the textbook money and the rent money gambling on The Costco Guys Big Boom Parlay of the Week14. Can I have some more?”
It's stuff like that which makes me think I can’t ever be a parent.
A Little Light Conspiracy, As a Treat
Let me tell you this, if you are among the growing vocal contingent of the sports-viewing public that will openly assert that the sportsbooks and their largesse are bad for sports, bad for people, bad for society; you do not know how right you are. As a gambler I have perspective on this issue which you do not. I’m paying attention to the news on this in ways you may not be. You have better things to do. This is my better thing to do. Are you aware that DraftKings is launching a subscription service? Twenty big ones a month. What does that get you? A modest line of credit, perhaps? Some sort of newsletter with a few credentialed pro handicappers? Maybe better lines? Nope. None of that. You get unlimited parlay boost tokens. DraftKings hands these out like candy for free, anyway (maybe not anymore). The “Stepped-Up” boost is a signature handout of the platform. Basically it works like this: the more legs you add to a parlay bet, the bigger the boost. You need to hit every leg of a parlay to win, and therefore maximizing the value of your boost basically means playing a lottery ticket. This is without the fine print that comes on most boosts, keeping users from deploying them on lines above a certain threshold (usually like -200, so fairly likely to hit, but I’ve seen ones that won’t let you play unless you’re willing to play +100 or more, which is generally understood to mean slightly worse than coin flip odds). Think that’s insulting? Get this; even with the subscription, you are capped at twenty-five dollars on a given boosted bet.
If you subscribe to this your money is actually better off in the bookie’s pocket. You are worse than a rube. A man running a wallet inspector scam could render you destitute in minute. Shame on you and shame on DraftKings. They don’t even hide that this is meant to silo people with expensive habits into larger expenditures. They want you to pay them for the privilege of paying them more. The mob was not this shameless when they ran the books.
The big sportsbooks and the mob are alike in their desire to put their money to work. In the old days that meant loan sharking and the like. These days it means advertising. I see the ways these people spread money around. Where exactly do you think the operating budget for “The Zynternet” comes from? Why do you think all these guys like to gamble and direct their audiences to do the same? Because the books are paying them. They’re influencers. They are selling their ability to leverage influence and the books are buying.
In fact, I’ll go a step further and say that the books are likely leveraging their capital in ways they do not disclose. Gamblers, particularly on Mixed Martial Arts, love to cite the “Drake Curse.” That dude Aubrey loves throwing down six-figures on a UFC main event and he almost always seems to lose. His money is like several hundred thousand albatrosses around the neck of whatever poor sap he bet on. I’m not suggesting that there’s some conspiracy to fix the fights. That would be illegal and much easier to suss out. A scheme doesn’t need to be illegal to be profitable. Eagle-eyed viewers will notice Drake always seems to bet with Stake. He’s joined in this by other combat sports celebrities such as former UFC champ Israel Adesanya. How exactly do I know these guys are playing with their own money? What is stopping Stake from fronting famous people with large social media followings so that they can publicize the large wagers? A huge bet hits the sports media outlets, spreads the sportsbook’s brand around, and draws activity from other gamblers. It’s an easy way to drum up publicity for their operation and as far as I am aware it’s completely legal. Casinos front large sums of money and comp hotel rooms and meals to high rollers all the time. DraftKings has a VIP program which extends lines of credit to high-volume players (“whales,” if you will). Who’s to say they don’t do this in miniature with the streamers, columnists, and hype-merchants that comprise the gambling internet? It all comes back at the end of the day, right? No matter who wins, the book collects. They have the luxury of playing both sides. You can sting them,but never really hurt them, it’s all far too well-calibrated, well-tuned for that. These are hyper-optimized centers of profit, and profit is amoral. It doesn’t care who makes it or how. To paraphrase the great man Omar; “money has no owners, only spenders.”
Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, I have bets to place on the NFL playoffs. You folks have a nice day.
Unit Size - The standardized bet measurement used by gamblers to communicate their confidence in and exposure on a given play. Everyone has their own scale. Some like decimals (e.g. - bet 0.75u to win 1u). Some treat it like a 1 thru 5 star rating system.
Plus Money - A category of betting line that generally indicates a bet on an underdog or less likely outcome. For instance, a winning bet of $5 at +100 will double your money. You win $5 plus your original $5 wager. Winning on +200 will return $15, and so on.
Point Spread - A universal sports-betting category based on the expected difference in the final score. If a given team is expected to win by 3 points, they will be listed as -3. A bet on that line pays out if they win by 4 or more. If the margin of victory is exactly 3, then the bet “pushes.” The bettor recieves their wager back. This also cuts the other way, if the underdog team only loses by two and I bet on them at +3, the bet pays out. Generally speaking, in order to avoid paying money back for pushed bets, sportsbooks more often set lines with decimals. Usually you’ll see -2.5 or -6.5 instead of -3 or -7.
House Money - Money won from the sportsbook or casino.
Total - A bet based on the total aount of scoring expected in a given contents. Generally the best and most heavily promoted lines will be found on betting on the total to go above or below a certain figure. “Over/Under” is a common synonym for total bets.
Parlay - A bet formed by bundling several bets together. This leads to a higher potential payout. However, if any of the individual bets which comprise the parlay lose, the whole bet loses.
Boost -An improved line offered by a sportsbook on a given wager.
No Sweat - A type of boost which returns the bet to the player if it doesn’t win. Synonymous with “bet insurance.”
Prop - “Proposition.” A bet based on something other than the result of the game. Usually they’re tied to a given individual’s performance (hence “player prop”). Though you can bet on other outcomes beyond this. Who wins the opening basketball tip-off? If you’re watching a fight, will there be a knockout? Will the football team who currently has the ball punt, score a touchdown, turn the ball over, or kick a field goal? And so on.
Live Bet - A wager placed while the contest is in progress.
“I have warned many times about the guaranteed dangers of betting with your heart instead of your head”
Handicapper - A person who claims to know something about sports betting. Sometimes they sell picks. Sometimes they’re free.
You know what tilt is even if you’ve never gambled. Tilt is what happens when all you want to do is win, to achieve some set goal, and you just can’t seem to get there. You’re trying harder and harder and getting more and more agitated, and it just will not happen. All the while you’re performing worse and worse. That’s tilt.
Not a real thing yet but give it time.
its all making sense now