From Vegas Inc
Wagering on sports has come a long way since the days of the cigar-chomping, mob-backed neighborhood bookie who would take bets on games.
Today, the bettors are far more sophisticated, armed with computer-driven statistics and analytics used to beat the bookmakers in Nevada’s legal sports books as well as the offshore books that the Internet-savvy can find — betting markets that have an estimated $500 billion handle per year.
Several presentations at this week’s International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking offered research on trends gamblers are using to become more sophisticated in their betting.
Kevin Krieger of the University of West Florida offered a theory on how wagering against NFL teams that made the playoffs the previous year in Week 1 of the new season has been profitable for the last nine seasons with a 22.6 percent return for bettors. Krieger said he believes bettors have had an overreaction to previous impressions that sway them to bet on a posted favorite.
In an earlier session, four presenters explained their methods for forecasting the outcome of horse races and professional sports.
Niko Suhonen of the University of Eastern Finland, Ming-Chien Sung of the University of Southhampton and Noah Silverman of UCLA explained separate mathematical equations they’ve developed to predict outcomes in horse races. The presenters explained how they plugged in dozens of variables to their formulas to project winners.
