All posts tagged: gamblers

Gamblers are betting millions of dollars on measles outbreaks

Gamblers are betting millions of dollars on measles outbreaks

Published by skeptic

New York State Department of Health Commissioner James McDonald talking in New York last year about measles outbreaks Jim Franco/Albany Times Union via Getty Images Gamblers are increasingly placing bets on the number of people infected with measles in the US. Since January alone, nearly $9 million dollars have been bet on future cases of the disease on prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket – and there is some evidence that the predictions are accurate enough to be useful for modelling its spread. Prediction markets involve buying and selling shares related to an outcome. Each market offers a question about future events and the option to bet “yes” or “no”, with the cost of a bet determined by the way others have bet. For example, if 86 per cent of wagers on a given future event are “yes” bets, the cost of a “yes” share is 86 cents. If that event does in fact occur, successful gamblers receive $1 for every share they have bought, with the unsuccessful gamblers – who lose their money – footing …

The Gamblers Behind One of Chess’s Weirdest Unsolved Cheating Mysteries Have Been Unmasked

The Gamblers Behind One of Chess’s Weirdest Unsolved Cheating Mysteries Have Been Unmasked

Published by skeptic

The modern era of cheating in chess began on a Thursday in July 1993, when a man with shoulder-length dreadlocks walked into the World Open tournament in Philadelphia and registered as John von Neumann. Both the hair and the name were phony. The real Von Neumann was a prominent mathematician and computer scientist who died in 1957. The fake Von Neumann had a suspicious buzzing bulge in his pocket, fought a grandmaster to a draw, then fled before anyone could work out who he was. A Boston Globe columnist called it “one of the strangest cheating episodes in chess history.” Chess.com recorded the “Von Neumann incident” as “the earliest known case of a potential computer cheater.” This was decades before chess pros started getting expelled from tournaments for using smartphones, and a lifetime before the recent buzzing anal beads scandal. (Google it, but not at work.) It was years ahead of Garry Kasparov’s defeat by IBM’s Deep Blue, in an era when humans still imagined themselves to be smarter than machines. The identity of the …

The first gamblers were Ice Age women on the Great Plains

The first gamblers were Ice Age women on the Great Plains

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Humans have gambled and gamed for millennia. However, new evidence suggests the odds are good that our relationship with…well, odds probably dates back much further than many experts believed. Based on evidence recently detailed in the journal American Antiquity, Ice Age hunter-gatherers living on the western Great Plains toyed with dice and other probability tools over 12,000 years ago. For those keeping score, that’s more than 6,000 years earlier than similar artifacts found among the Bronze Age societies of present-day Europe, Africa, and Asia. What’s more, the people who most often played these games of chance likely aren’t who you imagine. For decades, most archaeologists considered it a safe bet to assume humans first explored probability and randomness around 5,500 years ago. This theory primarily stems from the discovery of multisided dice and other similar objects at sites across the Middle East, India, Asia, and other locations in the so-called Old World, a.k.a. the world as Europeans understood it …

Revealed: the vast illegal casino network targeting UK gamblers | Gambling

Revealed: the vast illegal casino network targeting UK gamblers | Gambling

Published by Sam Flores

Immaculately groomed and beaming from ear to ear, Andres Markou looks every inch the golden boy of the gambling sector. The youthful boss of MyStake, a fast-growing digital casino, has been pictured shaking hands with the Brazilian football legend Ronaldinho over a lucrative branding partnership. Elsewhere, he can be seen collecting industry awards, or offering “visionary” insights to interviewers. There is only one hurdle blocking Markou’s ascent to the very top of his trade: he does not exist. The photos seem to be AI-generated fakes and Markou, it appears, is a decoy, deflecting attention from the true faces behind a sophisticated network of illegal online casinos. An apparently falsified image of the supposed MyStake chief executive, Andres Markou, with Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho, right. Illustration: AI-generated image/MyStake Operating outside the law and based in opaque jurisdictions such as the Caribbean island of Curaçao, they are free from the legal duty to protect addicts and stop money laundering. Unlicensed gambling websites have been linked to fraud, financial harm and even suicide. The Guardian and Investigate Europe, an …

Women remain minority among Spain online gamblers but participation rising rapidly

Women remain minority among Spain online gamblers but participation rising rapidly

Published by skeptic

Women still account for a relatively small portion of Spain’s online gambling market, yet their numbers are climbing quickly. New figures from Spain’s Directorate General for Gambling Regulation show that women represented 16.9% of online gamblers in 2024. Even with that imbalance, regulators say the pace of growth suggests a noticeable generational change in a sector that has long been dominated by men. Authorities recorded 1.99 million active online gamblers across licensed platforms last year. Among them were 335,627 women. While it remains a minority share, the government analysis notes that female participation has been trending upward for several years and accelerated sharply between 2023 and 2024. Women remain a small but fast growing share of online gamblers in Spain Age data from the report highlights how strongly younger adults are shaping the trend. Nearly 60% of female online gamblers in Spain are under 35, giving the group a distinctly younger profile than the broader gambling population. The fastest expansion is happening among the youngest players entering the market. The group of women grew by …

Kalshi Gamblers Furious After Company Refuses to Pay Out Million on Ayatollah Khamenei’s Death

Kalshi Gamblers Furious After Company Refuses to Pay Out $54 Million on Ayatollah Khamenei’s Death

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech When an Israeli-American business executive saw the green checkmarks glow next to his bets on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s ouster as supreme leader of Iran, he thought he had it made. His improbable $3,460 wager had suddenly ballooned into a payout of more than $63,000 after US and Israeli forces assassinated the Ayatollah in an aerial strike. There was just one problem: the bet never paid out. That scenario, as described by the Washington Post, came as the prediction market platform Kalshi has refused to pay out a staggering sum of $54 million to users who bet Khamenei would be “out” as supreme leader last weekend. The company’s rationale — decided after it had allowed the market on that particular wager to accrue millions of dollars — is that the Ayatollah’s death didn’t really count on his “ousting” as supreme leader, and that the platform doesn’t allow bets “directly tied to death.” “I was booking my trip to Courchevel,” …

Professional Gamblers Move Into Prediction Markets to Bleed You Dry

Professional Gamblers Move Into Prediction Markets to Bleed You Dry

Published by José Betancourt

Following the federal government’s wide-armed embrace of the tech, professional gamblers are flooding into prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket. It’s not hard to see why: in January alone, trading volume on Kalshi almost hit $10 billion, $8.5 billion of which was tied to sports, according to new reporting by Bloomberg. That same month, Kalshi saw three million new downloads. The waters, in other words, are teeming with prey — and the sharks are moving in. No longer content to ply their trade on the predatory betting apps of yore — the FanDuels, DraftKings and BetMGMs of the app world — professional gamblers have discovered a lucrative new playground in the wildly unregulated land of prediction markets. “It really feels like everything’s prediction markets, prediction markets, prediction markets,” Rufus Peabody, a professional gambler with 15 years of experience told Bloomberg. “Maybe not for the average recreational bettor, but certainly in the sharp community.” In gambling parlance, “sharps” are the pros: the full-time bettors who win more often than they lose. And for these gamblers, prediction …

Angry Gamblers Threaten Little Girl Over NFL Predictions

Angry Gamblers Threaten Little Girl Over NFL Predictions

Published by Jenni Sidey

Apparently, some sports gamblers actually have a beef with a toddler. That’s because they decided to actually bet money based on some fun gameday predictions she made with her dad. Reese Donatelli has gone viral for her adorable NFL predictions on her dad’s social media, and some people thought it would be a good idea to trust a 4-year-old’s intuition so much that they put money behind it. Needless to say, their bets didn’t pan out. For reasons that are beyond my comprehension, some people take sports very seriously. For some, watching sports is more than just a fun way to pass the time. Instead, it’s also a chance to make some extra money through gambling. Reese Donatelli’s family has received death threats because her NFL predictions haven’t been accurate. Anthony Donatelli is a Southern California-based radio DJ, but more people probably know him for the series “Trust the Toddler,” which he regularly shares on his Instagram. For the series, Donatelli films his 4-year-old daughter, Reese, making predictions on which NFL team is going to …

High electronic gaming machine risk and harm persist among Victorian gamblers

High electronic gaming machine risk and harm persist among Victorian gamblers

Published by skeptic

A new study that examines the attitudes and behaviors of electronic gaming machine (EGM) venue customers and staff in Victoria, Australia, reveals high rates of problem gambling risk. The study has been published by the Victoria State Government, and it has involved a venue-based survey of 352 EGM customers from 12 Victorian gaming venues, as well as an online survey of gaming room staff, which attracted 92 respondents from across the state. This is the third wave of the Electronic Gaming Machine Environment Study, with this having taken place between May and June 2024. Speaking on the findings, the state government has shared what the study has revealed: “Consistent with the first 2 waves, the current study identified high rates of problem gambling risk and harm among people who gamble in EGM venues; one in 6 respondents met the criteria for problem gambling as measured by the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), two-thirds were at some level of problem gambling risk, and half had experienced gambling-related harm in the past 12 months.” Victoria State Government …