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by gerard 3186 days ago
> NB: Even in skill-based games, the odds still always (and I mean always) favor the house.

In BlackJack, card counting can reveal plays where the odds favor the gambler. In sports betting, which can be though of as a market with high commissions, skilled players consistently make decisions with positive expectation.
1 comments
chasely 3186 days ago
True, but it's very hard to "get away" with card counting at a casin, after Ed Thorp popularized it. Taleb knows this too; he wrote the foreword for Dr. Thorp's memoir.

Also true in sports betting, but you aren't gaining an edge on the house so much as the other bettors. Assuming the house is intelligent they will make the market well enough to cover their risk.

My favorite example of them failing to do this is when Leicester City were Premier League champions two seasons ago [1].

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/02/leicester-city-wi...

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gerard 3186 days ago
A good point, in that the house is not necessarily in a nett negative-ER position due to the skilled gambler. In totalizator markets the house will always make x% of the pool. In fixed-price markets the house could face a negative position overall but that is mitigated by bet limits and a quick banhammer. For gambler who is +ER though, the house must be negative in respect to that single transaction.

It's a misconception that the house always makes money with respect to an individual customer, given enough time. I don't accuse you of this, I just mean generally. Let's take fixed markets. Overrounds of up to 25% are common, and if you back a prospect blindly you'll find that your -ER approaches that. But you're free to chose prospects and stakes in the same way Warren Buffet chooses stocks. With sufficient information and a high enough filter as Teleb calls it, you are free to pick off the bargains.

The information available to market participants is reflected in the price of prospects. Any one gambler may posess information others don't. It won't be perfect information, and most times the overround will absorb the difference, leaving the gambler with no option but to place a negative-ER bet or no bet at all. But when when the match is over and the waveform collapses and the fans have gone home and all prices are irrevocably shown to have been "wrong" to some degree, you can see that it's really an information game, not one based on luck, and from that it's unfair to say all players are eventually doomed.

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