London Mayoral Election 2024

[Spymaster]

I also don’t understand how 4.0 is the same as 3/1. Wouldn’t it be 3.0?

You get 4.0 quid back if you bet a quid (£3 plus the £1 you bet)

 

[shifting gears]

????

don’t really know how else to explain it

 

[littlebabyjesus]

????

The 1 is your original stake.

 

[Orang Utan]

As I said, glad I’m not a betting man.
Odds are totally made up anyway.

 

[Spymaster]

As I said, glad I’m not a betting man.
Odds are totally made up anyway.

I think kabbes might have something to say about that!

 

[littlebabyjesus]

As I said, glad I’m not a betting man.
Odds are totally made up anyway.

only 83.5% of them.

 

[skyscraper101]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has never understood this shit.

I'd understand it better if it just said "£1 wins you £x"

Never been in a bookies, ever.

 

[Spymaster]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has never understood this shit.

I'm glad that I've finally been able to post something about maths and not fuck it up.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has never understood this shit.

I'd understand it better if it just said "£1 wins you £x"

Never been in a bookies, ever.

tbf that's basically what decimal odds do, with your original stake added on.

 

[Orang Utan]

I think kabbes might have something to say about that!

I’d be interested but I probably wouldn’t understand any of it!
But it cannot be in in the interests of a bookie to fairly assess the probability of an event occurring. Nor would it be within anyone’s capability to do so.

 

[shifting gears]

I think understanding odds has more use than just gambling, for example betting exchanges are very handy for keeping an eye on political ebbs and flows. There’s also no overround so you can often get a decent sense of the likelihood of something happening

Sorry to say these odds put Trump as favourite for next election at a 46% chance

 

[Spymaster]

But it cannot be in in the interests of a bookie to fairly assess the probability of an event occurring.

I think what they do is mathematically assess the probability of an outcome, and then put a price on it according to their risk appetite, how much they want to attract punters, and loads of other shit.

That's why you'll often get different odds from different bookies for the same event.

 

[Orang Utan]

pfft, one of those candidates is not even running.
Betting types seem like a superstitious and irrational lot to me, employing a lot of pseudoscience to justify their barely educated guesses about explicitly unpredictable outcomes.

 

[Orang Utan]

I think what they do is mathematically assess the probability of an outcome, and then put a price on it according to their risk appetite, how much they want to attract punters, and loads of other shit.

That's why you'll often get different odds from different bookies for the same event.

Bookies are also gambling innit

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I think what they do is mathematically assess the probability of an outcome, and then put a price on it according to their risk appetite, how much they want to attract punters, and loads of other shit.

That's why you'll often get different odds from different bookies for the same event.

Mostly they are just balancing the bets that have been placed. If more money is bet on A than B, then A becomes odds-on, B odds-against. If they do it right, the bookies win either way.

 

[Silas Loom]

I think what they do is assess the probability of an outcome, and then put a price on it according to their risk appetite, how much they want to attract punters, and loads of other shit.

That's why you'll often get different odds from different bookies for the same event.

Also, they want to have a balanced book, so the amount already staked on alternative outcomes affects their pricing. You can’t ever use bookie odds as a proxy for likelihood. You sort of can with Betfair, which works more like a crowdsourcing model for predictions.

Edit - beaten by LBJ by a second.

 

[Spymaster]

Bookies are also gambling innit

Far less so than the punters though. The bookies work it so that if they lose money on one bet they'll make it back on another.

Edit> as those two just said above.

 

[planetgeli]

I think what they do is mathematically assess the probability of an outcome, and then put a price on it according to their risk appetite, how much they want to attract punters, and loads of other shit.

That's why you'll often get different odds from different bookies for the same event.

It's worked on percentages and most books are around 20% over round (or a lot more) which means the bookie is working on a theoretical at least 20%+ profit margin, regardless of the winner. It is a license to print money.

It's also maths Spy so I'll stop there.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It's worked on percentages and most books are around 20% over round (or a lot more) which means the bookie is working on a theoretical at least 20%+ profit margin, regardless of the winner. It is a license to print money.

It's also maths Spy so I'll stop there.

Yeah, that makes sense. On cricinfo, their 'next batter out' live odds are often both 5/6, which equals roughly a 20% profit margin. Where it's just a two-horse race, the bookie's margin is instantly obvious.

 

[PR1Berske]

Whatever the odds, the House always wins.

 

[Serge Forward]

That’s not clearer! At all!

It's an abomination!!!!!!111!!

 

[Silas Loom]

It's worked on percentages and most books are around 20% over round (or a lot more) which means the bookie is working on a theoretical at least 20%+ profit margin, regardless of the winner. It is a license to print money.

It's also maths Spy so I'll stop there.

To be fair to people who deserve no fairness, that’s not the profit margin, because even the online bookies have some fixed costs, and the high street ones have substantial overhead.

 

[kabbes]

Odds are a useful mathematical trick to use for logistic regression. A probability can only run from 0 to 1. However, p/(1-p), which is the odds, can run from 0 to infinity. Take the log of it, and the result goes from negative infinity to positive infinity, and a typical exponential S-curve turns linear to boot. And that means that you can run regression on it.

 

[Tulster218]

Odds are a useful mathematical trick to use for logistic regression. A probability can only run from 0 to 1. However, p/(1-p), which is the odds, can run from 0 to infinity. Take the log of it, and the result goes from negative infinity to positive infinity, and a typical exponential S-curve turns linear to boot. And that means that you can run regression on it.

Have you voted yet Kabbes?

 

[kabbes]

Have you voted yet Kabbes?

No

 

[TopCat]

Betting odds don’t indicate probability though. They just indicate what a bookie is willing to pay out.

The odds reflect the money bet on each horse. Short odds mean a lot of money bet on that horse.

 

[Lord Camomile]

Odds are a useful mathematical trick to use for logistic regression. A probability can only run from 0 to 1. However, p/(1-p), which is the odds, can run from 0 to infinity. Take the log of it, and the result goes from negative infinity to positive infinity, and a typical exponential S-curve turns linear to boot. And that means that you can run regression on it.

Damn, beat me by 15 mins.

 

[brogdale]

Interesting, if unsurprising, spatial representation of the vermin's voter suppression:

 

[Skim]

The only time I ever stepped in a bookies was to do a political bet on who would become the next Labour leader. I put ten quid on Ed Miliband and made seventy quid. I bought a handbag with the proceeds. It’s what Ed would have wanted.

 

[Orang Utan]

The only time I ever stepped in a bookies was to do a political bet on who would become the next Labour leader. I put ten quid on Ed Miliband and made seventy quid. I bought a handbag with the proceeds. It’s what Ed would have wanted.

For me, if would have funded a series of increasingly hard-to-eat bacon sandwiches