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WTF?
Obama to admit Moon landing was faked?
Bookie Paddy Power has conceded it seriously underestimated Leicester City's chances of winning the Premier League, rating that laughable prospect when the season kicked off as less likely than Obama admitting the Moon landing was faked. Back in August, the odds against Claudio Ranieri's team pulling off a historic triumph …
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Monday 18th April 2016 20:51 GMT Bob Vistakin
The bet on aliens landing
Can't find the reference so this might be an urban myth ;-)
The story was someone placed a bet on the US gov officially recognising aliens from space landing on US soil before the end of the last century, and it was paid out. When the Russian cosmonauts teamed up in orbit with the space shuttle or whatever, they flew back down with the Americans and when they landed turned out they had no passports, so the official term for them was indeed "aliens". It's all in the wording, folks.
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Monday 18th April 2016 13:19 GMT Charlie Clark
Indeed, bookmaking is an excellent example of applied statistics: the bookies nearly always win. The odds reflect the potential cost to the bookie. So the odds, at the start of the season, of Leicester winning the league were longer than some of the bets purely because nobody had placed a bet. Long odds are also designed to attract speculative bets which can in turn bring in more business.
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Monday 18th April 2016 21:48 GMT Pompous Git
Re: Overround (underround bookmakers fee)
the bookies nearly always win.
Horse shit! Tasmanian punter/mathematician David Walsh is a billionaire courtesy of the bookies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Walsh_(art_collector)
He rented his first computer off my ex business partner (an Exidy Sorcerer purchased from the Electronic Dick) and he makes world class beer.
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Monday 18th April 2016 23:24 GMT bep
Re: Overround (underround bookmakers fee)
Yeah, the bookies get it wrong more often than is commonly supposed. I would have thought that Leicester would have quite a lot of irrational season ticket holders who would have cheerfully had a ten quid punt (or more) at those odds.
The only football match I ever bet on was an England - Australia friendly. When I looked at the odds and the potential score spreads it didn't make much sense to me, given that football is a low scoring game and essentially a two-horse race. Then I looked at the odds for different goal scorers and realised that they had players listed who weren't even in the respective squads! I decided to have a punt, easily covered the various probable scores and...profit! I didn't get addicted though, since it was obvious the bookies just hadn't done their homework on this particular occasion.
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Tuesday 19th April 2016 09:54 GMT nijam
Re: Overround (underround bookmakers fee)
> ... David Walsh is a billionaire courtesy of the bookies.
That doesn't mean the bookies didn't win, only that other punters lost. As pointed out earlier in the thread, this kind of "loss" for the bookies simply becomes a marketing cost, with the publicity helping to draw in more punters.
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Tuesday 19th April 2016 15:06 GMT Pompous Git
Re: Overround (underround bookmakers fee)
That doesn't mean the bookies didn't win
The original statement was that the bookies always win and that statement remains untrue. Two further examples:
I used to work for a bloke called David Pam in the 1970s. His lifelong ambition was to be a bookie because he thought bookies always win. He finally achieved his ambition and obtained a license to make book at Randwick. It took only two or three race meetings for him to lose a very substantial amount of money. The other bookies were laying off their bets against Dave.
Also in the early 1970s, my brother (a gifted mathematician and racing enthusiast) realised that the bookies were miscalculating the odds on the quinella and it was possible to consistently win against the bookies. He was unable to raise sufficient cash to put his knowledge into practice and as an impoverished university student too poor to fund his idea himself. Later the same year a syndicate took Melbourne's bookmakers to the cleaners for several weeks before they realised their error.
I keep meaning to ask David Walsh if it was his syndicate that did that, but we tend to discuss more interesting things when we meet like long-chain polysaccharides in Boags beer.
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Wednesday 20th April 2016 16:25 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Overround (underround bookmakers fee)
The original statement was that the bookies always win and that statement remains untrue.
No, it doesn't. The games the bookies are playing are collections of many bets. Bookies can lose individual bets and still win the game.
A chess player who has never lost a game can be said to "always win", even if opponents take the occasional piece.
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Tuesday 19th April 2016 00:06 GMT AdamWill
yep
Yep. In fact it's a very good case for the bookies indeed, because likely lots of people will have bet on one of the teams that people actually thought had a chance in hell of winning, and the bookies get to keep *all* that money. They have to pay out eye catching individual sums to the loonies who bet on Leicester, but since there are probably, like, three people who bet any remotely significant amount on that, they still wind up quids in.
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Monday 18th April 2016 13:29 GMT Ugotta B. Kiddingme
similar thing over here a few years ago
Until fairly recently, one of the most hapless teams in the NFL (American football) was the New Orleans Saints. The two most unlikely things in the universe were hell freezing over and the Saints winning the Superbowl. Late in the evening of Sunday February 7th, 2010, there were an awfully large number of people (myself included) who had to suddenly cease saying "[extremely unlikely event] will happen when the Saints win the Superbowl." I even heard rumor that the local newspaper briefly toyed with the headline for Monday's edition. Instead of "SAINTS WIN!" they briefly considered "HELL FREEZES OVER!"
Even better were the large number of outrageous bets that suddenly became payable. "I'll do [ridiculous/dangerous/stupid thing] when the Saints win the Superbowl."
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Monday 18th April 2016 14:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: similar thing over here a few years ago
Actually its a fairly god bet that eventually a bad team in whatever sport will suddenly do well. Either because of sheer chance - ball in the right place at the right time, opposition have a number of ill players etc, or because the bad team have just hired some new kid for peanuts who in 5 years time will be the next Beckham (or equivalent in sport of your choice) who then proceeds to kick the stuffing out of the opposition single handed.
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Monday 18th April 2016 19:20 GMT Ugotta B. Kiddingme
Re: Not similar at all
"The Saints were 25-1 to win the Super Bowl at the start of that season, not even the longest odds in the NFL as there were a few teams at 100-1."
That may be, however the 43 long and often humiliating years we fans suffered through prior to our moment of glory cannot be downplayed or overlooked. There are only nine NFL teams older than the Saints who've never won a Superbowl. And of those nine, only two (Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions) have never at least MADE IT to the Superbowl *. New Orleans Saints were good enough (and lucky enough) to win it on their first try. Many of the other 43 seasons were SO bad that fans often went to the games with paper bags over their heads.
* IIRC, the Minnesota Vikings hold the dubious record of "most Superbowl appearances without a victory" at 4.
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Tuesday 19th April 2016 01:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Not similar at all
The number of years without a Superbowl win has absolutely nothing to do with how likely a win is in a given year. The Cubs are favored to win the World Series this year, despite not having won for the past 107 seasons. I think most sports fans would consider the "hell freezing over" moment to be the Cubs winning the World Series much more than the Saints winning a Super Bowl.
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Tuesday 19th April 2016 13:16 GMT Philip Lewis
Re: Not similar at all
"The Cubs are favored to win the World Series this year"
You made that up, right?
I was a Chicago resident during the legendary Superbowl XX season - a stonkingly good season marred only by a poor Monday Night Football appearance. Ditka, Payton, Perry, McMahon, Gault and the list goes on.
Go Foxes!!!!!!!
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Tuesday 19th April 2016 18:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Not similar at all
As a former Chicago resident you might think that statement was in jest, however the Cubbies entered the season 4-1 favorites to win it all. I'm a fan, and I'm optimistic about this season, but I think 4-1 is crazy. I guess there are going to be an awful lot of people jumping on the bandwagon and claiming to be lifelong Cubs fans if they are on top of the world come Halloween!
http://espn.go.com/chalk/story/_/id/14825326/the-chicago-cubs-enter-spring-training-favorites-win-world-series
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Wednesday 20th April 2016 16:32 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Not similar at all
Compared to what we Newcastle United fans have endured
Eh? I thought everyone in IT supported West Ham.
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Tuesday 19th April 2016 08:12 GMT Queasy Rider
Re: Maple LeafsLaughs
That is even more embarrassing than the Maple Loafs. Groan.
On a similar note, about their football team, the Argonauts. A friend was in Florida many years ago, and he would hears the occasional bleached Canadian on the beach let loose with "Argoooos." He said it sounded like a lament.
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Monday 18th April 2016 17:21 GMT Jack 12
Re: similar thing over here a few years ago
In any given game, yes. Over the course of 38 matches played across 8 months, you are looking at an awful lot of those things coming together to allow a bad team to win the whole champtionships. Even if you subscribe to the "it can happen therefore it will sooner or later", it's not really a "fairly good bet" that a bad team will win a title.
The team that wins it will always be the team who consistently performed the best over the course of the season. Whether Leicester are truly the best team or whether they have benefited from inexplicably poor performances from Chelsea and Manchester City is up for debate. They look set to win it with a points total that would not have won it most years, so arguably this whole season is a statistical anomaly allowing a "below par" team to sneak to victory. However, the fact that they look set to win (and even if they don't, the fact that they are still leading in mid-April) means that they are probably a lot better than anybody realised.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
