Great film. And one of the better songs. Of course, since there are usually 9 races, each of them could be backing a horse in a different race, but still.
There can be anywhere from 5 to 15 races on a day’s card. My local track usually has 5 to 8 races, but larger tracks, such as Woodbine, Churchill Downs, and Santa Anita, might have ten races on an average weekend day. Major stakes (e.g. the Kentucky Derby or King’s Plate) at such places will usually stretch the card out to 12 or 14 races, because there are often smaller stakes races on the same day, and they have to fit the claiming and allowance and maiden races in somehow.
But I agree that the guys in the movie could be singing about their “Best Bet” selections, not all of which might be in the same race. The selectors in the local newspaper would always have a “Best Bet” selection, and certainly, in the case of tracks with more than one selector and commentator, all their “Best Bets” would be published in the Racing Form. The selections weren’t necessarily in the same race, and they’d always typically have lousy morning line odds.
I can talk racing forever, but I’ll stop here, lest I begin a hijack.
Pro sports fixing isn’t really a concern. College sports fixing is. Okay, the proliferation of money with NIL and the soon-to-happen actual payment of players makes it less of a problem now than it used to be, but it’s still a concern.
I think the main problem is not legalized gambling per se - even California has horse racing tracks, card rooms, bingo, and tribal casinos - but the availability of online gambling, where it is almost impossible to validate that someone under 21 - under 18, for that matter - isn’t gambling under an assumed identity. The Missouri amendment will allow online sports betting.
Which, if it passes, will take money out of the coffers of Kansas. Kansas has had legalized sports betting for a couple of years, during which Missourians have been driving across the state line to place their bets, of which a small percentage goes to the state.
Kansans, of course, have been reciprocating by driving across the border to purchase cannabis in Missouri. (But please don’t tell the law enforcement folks in Kansas.)
If a state allows betting, does that mean only people in that state can bet? Or that betting companies can be located in that state? If you aren’t in a legal-betting state, is it legal for you to engage in online betting with one of the legal betting companies that are in a different state?
No, for example someone in California cannot bet on Fan Duel or DraftKings because online sports betting is illegal in that state.
Many of the ads say you have to be present in the state to use their betting app.
And this is exactly correct. You have to physically be in the state to use the app.
As long as you are located in one of the legal states, you can bet. It doesn’t matter where you actually live. See my above comment about Missourians driving across the state line to bet in Kansas. Certainly it happens elsewhere as well.
Besides online betting being legal in Kansas, there are at least four betting establishments with brick-and-mortar presences in Kansas casinos: FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, and Caesars. (These are the ones I know of; there may be others.)
Is it easy to fool with a proxy?
(don’t tell me how. I’ll never do it and it’s against board rules)
Don’t know, as I’ve never tried.
Now, using a remote control application on a PC, such as TeamViewer, can bypass the physical location requirement. Of course, the remote PC has to be located in a legal state. (Not that I’ve ever used this method, of course.)
- for every $1 spent on betting, households put $2 less into investment accounts.
- legalization increases the risk that a household goes bankrupt by 25 to 30 percent, and increases debt delinquency.
- legal sports betting leads to a roughly 9 percent increase in intimate-partner violence.
Those are the downsides specifically to the legalization of sports betting as they relied on the inconsistent rollout of legalization across states to prove causation.
The most important freedumb to many people is the freedumb to be irresponsible and ruin their own lives and those close to them.
This is 'Murrica! We cannot restrict freedumb.
Legal sports betting is far from a uniquely American thing.
I’d like to read this article, but it’s behind a paywall.
Of course not. But, it wasn’t broadly legal here before, and is now, and the article notes the specific negative impacts which have occurred from legalization.
The money quotes, from the article (I have an Atlantic subscription), which @Shalmanese summarized:
I came here to quote the same bits of the same article, but I see I’m a bit late.
People scream all the time that billionaires are screwing the little guy. But a lot of the same people would scream even louder if their gambling would be taken away. That’s why we can’t have nice things.
See post 92.
It feels like everything is a gamble these days, doesn’t it? That’s because, in many ways, it literally is. Sports betting, Wall Street speculation, crypto gambling, even loot boxes in video games—risk-taking has become a central part of American culture. When did we unknowingly turn the entire country into one giant casino?
Adam Conover (16 min)
Also, in a bit of new news since this thread was last active:
MLB umpre Pat Hoberg, who was seen as one of the best “balls and strikes” umpires in the game, was fired last week, for gambling. While there apparently was no clear evidence that Hoberg personally bet on games, between sharing wagering accounts with a known gambler, and deleting text messages, it’s not a good look at all.