This is a collection of semi-coherent, random thoughts I have on “gambling”.

The inevitable gambling state⌗

  • My brokerage wants me to gamble on sporting events
  • When I watch sporting events I’m bombarded with ads to gamble at {insert sportsbook}
  • My credit card wants me to gamble
  • McDonald’s wants me to play Monopoly and hope for a lottery like payoff if I buy their food
  • Go hang out at a gas station for a while and see how many people go in and buy scratch offs
  • Prediction markets want me to gamble
  • There’s someone out there looking to take the other side of my bets in the stock market
  • Crypto… do I even need to?
  • I’m getting ads on Venmo to join DraftKings and buy lottery tickets

There are so many people in the business of flipping a coin, heads they win 52 cents tails you win 48 cents. They’ll disguise this bet as a really fun thing, and they’re going to socially engineer you to make this bet as many times as possible. Because the MORE they can scale this bet the more money they win, they want you to put this bet on every second of every hour of every day to speed up the rate of wealth transfer.

The business model of a casino continues to march into consumer products.

  • Sign up to get emails and we’ll let you spin a wheel for a prize (some of which are great)
  • Buy our food and you could win a fucking car
  • You should pick who’s going to win the next presidential election!
  • You should buy this stock, it’s going to 10x in the next 3 months

To be fair, with enough hype and social lubrication people are willing to buy anything.

Random aside on NFTs
Side note, why the fuck would anyone rugpull NFTs? Like if you get a bunch of people to buy your NFTs isn’t the scam already complete? Just give them their stupid internet pictures, collect your money and allow them to trade on the marketplace. The valuation is now utterly useless to you, you’ve already perpetuated your scam? The hard part is already done, you’ve already convinced people that something useless is valuable and that you can generate the useless thing…

These people know that in aggregate they WILL make money off these promotions. Just like sportsbooks have all the little tools to keep you coming back, making it habit… the same tools surround us everywhere.

Is it possible to go a day without being bombarded by gambling?

The problem⌗

Here’s the hard part… gambling is fun and, at the tail, people make money.

  • If you can refrain from all the garbage on Sportbooks you can take advantage of all the free money they offer
  • It’s clear that sharp bettors can make money from sportsbooks or, at least, perform arbitrage across books
  • Similarly, sharp people trading equities, commodities, etc… can make money over time (a lot of money) a.k.a Rentec
  • You can get really good at poker and… make money.
  • You can go to Kalshi with insider information, trade on it, and make a ton of $ while making markets more efficient

But now that you’ve gotten a taste you realize what you’ve become… you are now the one making 52 cents every time the coin flips.

THe problem? You exist on a PLATFORM. Just because you want to flip the coin… doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to anymore.

  • You will get banned/limited by Casinos/Sportsbooks
  • Is insider trading welcomed or lambasted in prediciton markets?
  • People don’t have to play poker with you or take the other side of your bets (I massive part of poker is playing at tables where you have an edge)
  • You may also fully exploit your advantage and not be able to continue to make money from it (Renaissance Technologies' flagship Medallion fund does not accept outside money)

So you win 52 cents on borrowed time, or you continue to exploit people who don’t understand what kind of bets they are putting on.

I guess taking advantage of misinformed people/organizations is part of operating in a free market. In order to properly allocate capital there must be some winners and losers and in the long run we (hope to) lift wealth, life expectancy, and improve our existence.

If you’re a non-gambler you’re also kind of tied to the gambling ship. As much as you want to say, “Oh I’m VT and forget, I max out my retirement accounts, I never even look at my portfolio, etc…” Yet, if the a bubble pops your downturn will be large and hard to stomach just as those who are leveraged out of their minds in risky assets. You could make an argument that something like VT would be less destroyed than a concentrated bet in an devastated asset class and you’d be 100% correct (I hope), but you’re still on the same ship… you will feel the pain.

Personal thoughts⌗

I like gambling. I know enough to understand when I’m making a terribly negative expected value decision and essentially just handing cash over to somebody… and I avoid that at all costs.

You can derive the sense of winning, the sense that I “knew” something that somebody else didn’t and while mindlessly, clicking, odds and offerings and spinning wheels certainly provides dopamine. There’s another level of dopamine from being right.