zlacker

I also don't think people realize how much money, effort, time, very smart (and well-funded) individuals are working on making those odds. They have access to decades worth of data, all the stats, and are entirely un-emotional or clinical about the data they are trawling through. Even if they miss something or get it wrong, it's usually minute and you as the gambler barely make any money out of it. Short of some black-swan like event or insider knowledge, you as a single individual would not be able to come up with a system that on average does better than the book makers.

At least (very loosely) with the lottery it's kinda random and your odds are "set" or rather your payout is not proportionate to your chance of winning. It's a happy surprise kind of thing as long as you don't overdo it.

>>zo1+(OP)
It's not just the bookmakers either - there are syndicates, much like hedge funds, whose entire 9-5 job is trying to make money out of this stuff too, which forces the bookies into line and makes the prices on markets like Betfair fairly efficient.

Basically, as a guy on the street, you don't have a clue and you're up against MIT-tier brains trying to beat you.

It's interesting to me that more people don't realise this is intuitively obvious, though. No-one would look at the Olympics and think, oh yeah, I can run faster than Usain Bolt.

>>zo1+(OP)
You don't need to beat the bookies, you need to beat the odds. The bookies win either way. All they need to do is make sure bets on each side net out, minus their take.

If you have a reliable way to beat the odds (ie. Inefficient betting markets that get the odds of success wrong) you can theoretically make money - but its a similar scenario to daytrading, where you need to do extremely well because you have to overcome the negative drag from the booky take too.