#46

Normally I get one or two tickets when the Euro millions is at £100 million or something crazy.

Plus occasionally a football acca at the weekend. I used to work in a bookies and the amount people bet put me off betting.

My parents spend far too much on the lottery. Shocked me when they told me how much, could literally pay for a decent holiday every year.

#47

yeah, because of the competitiveness of the market and that companies are basically competing to get people hooked, if people can stay completely detatched and just take the loss-leading offers as they come, it’s pretty common for people to make a tidy regular profit from bookies that you can’t do from a casino, but you have to be willing to put in a pretty decent amount of legwork

#48

What level of success in ‘professional gambling’ do you think is down to savant abilities?

A friend from school is now a top level poker player (genuine household name in poker circles) who’s cashed in over $10m. Back at school he was very very geeky and was known for being able to do instant complex maths calculations like, “what’s 1,248 squared?” he’d answer almost immediately. I’m not an expert but wouldn’t be surprised at all if he was somewhere on an aspergers/autism spectrum.

Do those abilities enable instant calculations of probabilities/plus the ability to track and record histories and player trends?

Thinking about betting, do those abilities enable solid ‘gut feelings’ or the ability to work out complex combinations of bets that guarantee returns?

Loads of people set up complex spreadsheets and systems to find value/arbitrage etc but are there some people who can just look at a set of odds and automatically/sub-consciously find value?

#49

Yeah, he never gambles large amounts on a single bet, and knows that some days he’ll be down, but cumulatively he knows that he’ll be up at the end of the week and just trusts his system and never panics.

#50

Occasionally have a pop on the lottery.

Used to put 50p on ridiculous accumulators every week, but haven’t done that for months as cba topping up my bet365 account.

Always put a quid each on a couple of scorecast bets whenever I go to the footie.

#51

The lottery is basically a community tax too, right? I mean they obviously spend too much on sport schemes for child brexiters but it seems like a lot better than pouring your dosh into ray winston’s floating cgi head

#52

Professional poker players who are good mathematicians are not doing any gut thinking at the table. They’re doing calculations, and they’ll have done a hell of a lot of calculating before they even got there as well.

I remember back when I was playing online poker in the midst of the big boom in the mid 2000s, sitting down and working out one fairly common scenario, and realising that if my opponents were clearly playing in a particular way (a common, but incorrect way) then I could make a play that would make me look like a complete idiot and yet would be long-term profitable. And it was.

#53

sadly, the only business expanding in my town is the fucking bookies.

#54

Online poker is definitely more suited to those who are able to juggle statistics and odds in their heads - especially a few years ago when the overnight tables would be full of drunk americans and it was apparently pretty easy to clean up. In person it’s slightly different though, where the ability to ‘read’ a player and intimidate others comes in to the game more.

I think the idea of romanticising savants and people on the autism spectrum is a very dangerous one though. High functioning and/or aspergers ‘sufferers’ who are able to do this are very rare, and it runs the risk of downplaying the effort that children and parents have to make.

#55

Who’s this then?

Poker is definitely a lot about the maths/probabilities at the top level these days. I don’t know how people become professional gamblers generally though. I have a friend who works at a bookies, and he says if people get successful they just cut them off. They only want the bad gamblers.

#56

What happened to sharp_yet_blunt?

He was a professional gambler, wasn’t he?

#57

You’ve got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run

3 Likes
#59

I only bother getting a ticket when the jackpot is > £25m. Anything less wouldn’t get you very far in London, might be able to scrape a duplex in Battersea but what if you wanted dogs or babies.

2 Likes
#60

Regarding your second point, I completely understand and respect that (from personal experience). I debated posting my post for exactly the concerns you raise, but my point was just wondering if there were people with potentially undiagnosed savant abilities who have found a way to capitalise on them by gambling/betting.

The epidemiology of savant abilities is hotly debated but many don’t think it’s ‘very rare’ - my brother is a manager for an autism service and says that he interacts with savants (to varying degrees) on a daily basis. His house is full of incredible art that savant service users have given to him as birthday/christmas gifts.

#61

A good distinction to make, which I’d overlooked, never having played poker in real life myself. In fact I’ve always marvelled at how people even manage to keep tabs on the pot in “live” games.

You’re quite right about the golden era though. Pretty nostalgic for the days when I used to sit down with $400 at three different sites at the same time and be $1K up on each within a couple of hours. Just a shame I then used to get pissed and lose it all again.

#62

well I think it’s a mixture of “gut feeling” and calculations. Like from a bayesian perspective, it’s adjusting your calculations on the basis of prior knowledge and beliefs.

Savants discuss about being able to ‘see the answer’ to a mathematical calculation - so maybe it’s not like going through a process of sums or calculations that you or I might do, but instead being able to instantly see or feel the correct approach which is on the basis of being able to instantly calculate the odds and probabilities on the tables and adjust based on good memory/experience etc.

I guess what it comes to is that there’s probably a grey area between savants and players who are very good at doing mental arithmetic on the fly. The second set of people can probably train and learn those abilities to a certain level.

#63

sounds like

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#64

You could travel in time, and buy my grandparent’s victorian terrace in Battersea for £500 in the 1960s instead (and make sure the council don’t knock it down a few years later to build flats).

#65

Yeah, my girlfriend did quite a big uni thing on savants and obviously it’s really hard to guage because ‘savant’ is quite a hard thing to define objectively, but most estimates are that around 10% of people with autism have some form of savant ability

#66

There’s nothing for the savants to “sav” that the mathematicians can’t pre-prepare for. The game comes down to a series of odds judgements, and with practice anyone can do it fast enough. I’ll grant you that being very very good at mental arithmetic will be a help though.