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What's obvious about that? To me the obvious thing is that bookies have to honor the bets they sell and get to eat their delicious mistakes.

It's within their power to improve their automated system to not offer stupid bets.

>It's within their power to improve their automated system to not offer stupid bets

So then it's also within your power to never write bugs. Have you ever written any? How did that happen? It was within your power not to do so, right?

I've never written a bug in a system designed to earn me money and then denied responsibility for the consequences of the bug, no.

That is, my argument is about how you decide responsibility, not about technical excellence.

So now it only matters in finance? No one lost anything here. It's ridiculous to expect a payout due to an error like this. You wouldn't get one at a casino if e.g. a slot machine malfunctioned. What if the payout was $500M? Should they have to pay that as well?

link_108 2835 days ago

Actually you won't get a payout if the slot machine malfunctioned: https://vegasclick.com/games/slots/malfunctions

cannonedhamster 2834 days ago

The difference being that the slot machine owners are not the slot machine developers and it is not within their power to do anything to prevent the errors.

thanks, that was a typo

Sure, I'm entirely comfortable making life difficult for bookies.

And why is that? The rest of society has deemed it a ligitimate business. So you simply don't like gambling and that's why you want them to eat it? Not a very strong argument.

moate 2835 days ago

And if that bug cost his company say, $80,000 for some reason, there's plenty of instances where his company just has to eat that.

I've literally made tens of thousands of dollars in mistakes over my careers (try not to make the same one twice) and 9 out of 10 times the company would go "shit dude, don't ever let that happen again!"

And what if it were 1M? 500M? 1B? They just go out of business? Your logic doesn't scale well and seems overly harsh. They offered $500 and a pair of tickets. The guy lost nothing, I think that's fair.

iends 2835 days ago

You may be surprised to learn that software bugs put companies out of business. They also can kill people.

I'm certain I wouldn't considering I've spent my entire career in cancer diagnostics and finance.

This is a completely reversible mistake and no one was harmed in any way (feelings don't count). Let's not go off the rails and start making Therac-25 like comparisons. This isn't some abstract problem; the issue is well defined, so let's stay within the realm of reason.

If your company could create a ToS to get out of it, they would though.

There are reversible mistakes too.

cannonedhamster 2834 days ago

It is very typical for contracts between businesses to include monetary penalties for bugs that are service or uptime impacting, so yes many other companies are required to pay for their major bugs, why not a betting company?

EpicEng 2834 days ago

>that are service or uptime impacting

That's why. What's the impact here? The guy didn't lose anything; he got his hopes up and was disappointed, that's all. People here are acting like the degree of severity/impact doesn't matter, but of course it does.

dumbfounder 2835 days ago

What if there was another zero on there? How about 8 more zeroes? Still think they should need to honor the bet? They offered him $500 and tickets to a game, I think he is getting greedy.

JamesBarney 2835 days ago

What if the situation were reversed, and I bought a wager only due to the fat fingering of my calculator, or I mistook one team for another or just had a brain fart.

Wouldn't it then be reasonable for them to give a refund?

ambulancechaser 2835 days ago

A part to consider is whether the other party knew or should have known of a mistake.

It's not reasonable for FanDuel to assume a mistake there. However, if a customer purchased a bet on a game that had already happened it would be reasonable to assume a mistake had been made.

Mistakes happen and the law of contracts deals with them.

Marazan 2835 days ago

Yes, and bookies do as long refund clients' mistakes as long as the price hasn't moved that much and it is before the event.

JamesBarney 2835 days ago

Both which were not true of this interaction.

monkpit 2835 days ago

What if there were less zeroes? At what point can the company just decline to pay anything out at all because it’s up to their discretion whether a line was good or caused by a bug? Obviously in that case they would go out of business because people would be mad. But my point is that (in my opinion) it’s a very gray area legally.

dumbfounder 2835 days ago

It was less zeroes and they didn't pay and the guy has threatened to sue. Obviously it's a gray area, which is exactly why there are 2 sides to this argument. Their fine print will either stand up in court, or it won't. But you can't just assume they are going to pay out willingly every time they make a mistake. There is obviously a line where they have to say the risk in not paying out is worth the bad publicity and lawsuit potential. Then they learn from that mistake and move on. Then people use your business moving forward or they don't. That's why I like free markets, the checks and balances are already there to handle situations like this, we don't need legislation.

It might be within their power, but they are going to need to collect even more juice to get the system to that point.

That or they might need to close up shop.

Most people prefer the current system where they are able to make very dynamic sports bets, sometimes in real time, with the rare mistake.

It's easy enough to imagine a gatekeeper that doesn't let high ratio bets through, or puts them in front of a human, or whatever.

Test the hell out of that and you are a long way towards where you want to be.

It kind of smells like they had one, except it only panicked after the bet sold...

dragonwriter 2835 days ago

> It's pretty obvious what should happen here because, as humans, we understand and allow for the possibilities of mistakes.

If a better makes a mistake, they still lose their money.

The same should apply on the other side.

komali2 2835 days ago

They tried 500$ and 3 Giants tickets, which he declined in favor of getting a lawyer.

I think they should bite the bullet, pay it out, turn to their software engineers, and say "it's worth 82,000$ to this company to ensure that never happens again."

setr 2835 days ago

Its accidentally $82,000. If you allow such a bug to be honored, then potentially it could manage a near-infinite payout.

Such bugs becomes not a costly mistake but instead existentially threatening

And we certainly don’t have a software industry capable of supporting that environment

jazzyjackson 2835 days ago

Hedge funds seem to automate things in an environment where certain bugs are existentially threatening. They hire doctors of math and get their code correct. It's not impossible, just expensive.

Right. If you make system creation more expensive, the house needs to collect more juice.

I think most sports betting consumers here prefer the current, lower cost, more diverse system with a slightly higher error rate.

I'd reckon most people complaining here don't even bet on sports, but want to grandstand against bookies. I can understand that I guess.

thejenk 2835 days ago

I'm not going to comment on moral or legal responsibilities of bookies and gambling companies, because I am uneducated on both subjects, but I found your use of the term "collect more juice" really interesting. It seems odd to relate pulling revenue from fruit to pulling revenue from people's incorrect bets. Is that an industry term?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigorish

LocalH 2834 days ago

hart_russell 2835 days ago

This isn't a nonprofit charity. It's a bookie. They decided to offer automated betting systems, in the hopes of winning money from their customers. They should stand behind those same systems when they don't work in their favor.

jonknee 2835 days ago

If you can't afford the errors you should not be in the business (but they can easily afford this error).

TomMarius 2835 days ago

I don't think so. The legal system in Europe honors good faith.

jonknee 2835 days ago

Luckily for the better New Jersey is not in Europe.

TomMarius 2834 days ago

Oh yeah, it is - I just wanted to offer an alternative to your views, and added a real-world example.

krupan 2835 days ago

We do too have software that can be that reliable. A aviation and space flight are quick examples. Gambling houses probably don't want to pay the cost of that software, but it could be done.

It wouldn't just be bookies paying that cost. It would be forwarded to the customers placing bets. I'd prefer to keep the costs low, since nobody is going to die and things aren't going to blow up. The worst that will happen is someone thinking they scored a huge payout and not getting it.

girvo 2835 days ago

Sure, but in this case it’s not an infinite payout. And the courts will care about that more than an engineering hypothetical, i would wager.

fastball 2835 days ago

The software industry absolutely does have ways to prove a much higher level of code correctness than Paddy Power is demonstrating.

ddingus 2835 days ago

Best use humans then. Otherwise there is no trust.

You know they did not inform people of errors the other way.

jonknee 2835 days ago

The best part is they did use humans, this bet was placed in person.

> The bettor, who identified himself to News 12 New Jersey as Anthony Prince, placed the wager over the counter at the sportsbook at the Meadowlands Racetrack

wccrawford 2835 days ago

>Fan Duel should send him some tickets to a game, try to create a positive interaction for him, and let's move on.

They offered that and $500. He refused and got a lawyer.

DisruptiveDave 2835 days ago

> as humans, we understand and allow for the possibilities of mistakes.

Yes, but corporations aren't humans. If the mistake went the other way, it likely wouldn't matter. The human would have to deal with it. I say give him the $80k+ and learn to deal with your mistakes.

InitialLastName 2835 days ago

> Yes, but corporations aren't humans.

Mitt Romney gave your opponents their line: "Corporations are people, my friend"

supercanuck 2835 days ago

PaddyPower's revenue is 1.75 billion. Why wouldn't Bill Gates just eat the cost of the mistake.

This isn't a "human interaction". A corporation isn't a human and is governed by the "make as much money as possible" theory (Shareholder Primacy), so why would we treat them the same as if this is a human interaction?

foobaw 2835 days ago

Eat the cost? Why doesn't Bill Gates just donate a few million dollars to every charity? Based on his net worth, that's not a lot. I think it's about setting the precedent.

bdcravens 2835 days ago

I presume Mr. Prince's idea of a "positive interaction" is to get his $82k.

girvo 2835 days ago

Do we really have much sympathy for a gambling company? If you make an error, they expect you to pay. Why shouldn’t they? Oh no, their huge profits take a one time $80k hit. I hope he wins in court.

drstewart 2835 days ago

Exactly, we shouldn't apply the law equally, we should apply it to how morally tasteful we find the business and how much money the company makes.

ssambros 2835 days ago

And what does the law say in this case? Can they refuse to pay out if they themselves decide it was a mistake to take the bet in the first place?

minikites 2835 days ago

They did:

>FanDuel instead offered to pay him around $500 and give him tickets to three New York Giants games. Prince declined to take FanDuel's offer and told News 12 New Jersey that he planned to hire an attorney.