Forum: Author Hangout

I recall the story in question. It was vegas.
MC's Dad's a loser, parents are swingers into drugs, the doover son makes millions on the bet placed by grandfather. Puts money into a trust so his dad can't get to it. MC gets mother off of drugs, and parents end in divorce. The time frame of 72 doesn't sound right, but it does fit the history.

No professional bookmaker would ever take a bet of $10 and give odds of several hundred $1000s to 1. The downside is too great for no upside.

Actually, the downside for the bookmaker is if everyone bets for the winner.

Outside of sports betting and point spreads, that's what odds are for, to attract enough people to bet on the expected loser.

You aren't really betting against the bookmaker, but against the other bettors. The bookmaker makes his money by skimming a little off the top. He manipulates the odds he offers so that no matter who wins, more money was lost by the bettors in aggregate than was won.

If enough people were betting the other way, a bookmaker might give you those kinds of long odds. In the event that your bet did pay out, there would be more than enough people who lost money betting on the other teams to off set the cost of the payout to you.

The problem is to get those kinds of odds, you need a seriously unexpected upset and you just aren't going to get that every season.

In a do-over situation with 40 years of future knowledge, there isn't likely to be more than 1 or 2 upsets (even across all sports) that could get you odds that long.

ETA: Remember, the house always wins. If the bookmaker sets the odds (or point spread) correctly, the bookmaker comes out ahead no matter who wins the game.

There are two catastrophic situations for a bookmaker. Everyone bets on one side and that side wins. The bookmaker sets the odds/point spread wrong and too many people bet on the long odds and the upset happens.

One person betting long odds is not going to hurt the bookmaker's bottom line unless the initial bet is large.

I understand how book making works but there is no way he could get a market for the other side of that bet. The odds on the other side wouldn't pay enough to entice anyone to bet it. You might be able to structure it so betting could be the Dolphins win X-number of games so the entire pool would be sufficient to cover the original bet, but seems like a lot of effort on one bet.
No long shot in history ever came close to these odds, right now the longest odds on the Superbowl are 250/1.

but there is no way he could get a market for the other side of that bet

Yeah, you aren't going to talk a bookmaker into long odds out of the blue, but that doesn't mean long odds won't be available.

The reason long odds get offered is because there are already too many bettors on the other side of that bet.

See my edit above.

I decided to check if anyone is offering odds on this type of bet.

Right now on Draft kings the odds that the Bills will go undefeated (17 games) are +3500, (35/1). That any team will win 17, are +1400, or to win 20, +4000.

A long way from 70000/1.

Since the odds of picking 5 out of 59 numbers (the card goes from 1-59) are something more than 5MM/1, any decent size pool is a sure winner for the bookmaker.

That's not true in the example given where it's a single bet at grossly inflated odds.

By all means let us strive for accuracy, because time-travel may be invented any time now...

Even if we attain perfect accuracy, there is nowhere to time-travel to. The past no longer exists and the future has not yet happened.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

The future will be here in 3, 2, 1... (pause) Damn, now it's in the past.

The past no longer exists and the future has not yet happened.

Yesterday, the day that never was, because yesterday, yesterday was today.

Tomorrow, that day that never will be, because tomorrow, tomorrow will be today.

Today is the only day that exists.

It is also in "Echo". Reluctant_Sir: Stories.

Which is why I posted a link to echo earlier in the thread. But as noted, the bet in echo was baseball, not football so it wasn't the same.

Thanks to all who responded to my query.

The experts on the SOL forum seem to have thrown cold water on the plot idea of betting $10 and getting high enough odds that winning would return millions.

Depending on the timeline, it's possible, but not likely.
I've read several scenarios where it happens in decreasing order of probability.
I keep waiting for the newer doover involving bitcoin. One scenario I'm playing with is the early stages of BTC, when it took several BTC to buy a couple of pizzas.

On 22 May 2010, a young US engineer and crypto enthusiast, Laszlo Hanyecz, paid a fellow user a staggering 10,000 BTC for 2 Papa John pizzas

.
Imagine 10k BTC at last May's price of 28k per BTC plus.