I think that a gambling website really doesn’t want the state gaming commission to be making decisions based on what’s ethical.
Except i assume he used the website in the usual way.
Honestly, i think it’s more like all the TVs cost $1000, except one is tagged $10, and being surprised to find it, he takes it to checkout, and scans it, and it comes up $10, so he pays for it and takes it home before the shop notices it was mispriced.
Putting a bet that is wholly dependent on another bet into an accumulator is messing with the checkout system.
Naw, it’s walking down the aisles looking for mispriced products. They mispriced a whole class of bets. That was dumb of them, but they made a mistake.
I think it curious that the gambling cite’s position maintains an expectation of a certain level of sophistication on behalf of gamblers. The bettor “should have known it was a mistake.” Or criticizing the bettor for “taking advantage of” a glitch in the system.
I am not a customer of online betting, but I would imagine at least a portion of their receipts anticipate a lack of sophistication - or errors - on behalf of their customers.
Also - I realize that spelling is largely descriptive, but my understanding is that in American English the more common spelling of gambler is bettor, to distinguish from the adjective better.
I’m not an American, I actually speak English.
Wasn’t meaning to correct anyone. I’m pretty confident bettEr is considered less common even in non-American English. But I’m currently reading Unabridged, by Stefan Fatsis. About dictionaries. Makes a pretty effective case that there is no such thing as saying something “is not a word” or an incorrect spelling. If a certain string of characters is used often enough to convey something, then that makes it a word.
If there’s an expectation that a gambler should know that this was an invalid bet, then there should be even more of an expectation that whoever programmed the website should know that.
My guess is that some idiot manager said “Hey, I just read about how you can combine two events by multiplying their probabilities. We should have that as an option on our site. Hey, you, web developer, set it up so that gamblers can combine any two bets on our site by multiplying the probabilities”. To the reply “Well, obviously not ANY two bets, because–” “No nerd-speak, just make it happen!”
The web developer, of course, will be the one who gets fired over this.
Any DraftKings users here? Just wondering if someone could try to put together a parlay with mutually exclusive outcomes, and if the app would prevent that.
I think it’s crystal clear, given the bets placed, that the gambler knew exactly what he was exploiting. DK’s “house rules” prohibit exploiting an obvious error. Clearly the gambler did so, deliberately and knowingly. Just as clear, the Commission assigned zero weight to the house rules.
In the business I was in, courts assigned the benefit of the doubt to the buyers when there was ambiguity in the applications or terms of agreement. The logic is that the issuer had the power of the pen and could have eliminated any ambiguity when they filed their docs with the state. The applicant had no such opportunity. Perhaps this is such a situation?
It’s also a law in Massachusetts that if an item has a tag showing one price, but scans at a higher price, the retailer must sell that unit at the lower price. Even if it scans at $1000 but is tagged at $10. They only have to sell 1 unit at that price though.
How is that “messing with the system”? It’s not like he tried to enter special characters into a field or cause a buffer overrun on a URL. He clicked buttons presented to him on the website. It’s up to the website to prevent him from doing so.
From the article they of course do usually prevent this - this was a very specific mistake for this specific bet.
Look, clearly he knew he found a glitch and took advantage of it - the fact he bet a total of $12k on 27 different bets makes that clear. I just disagree that he shouldn’t be allowed to do so, and I’m glad the MGC is making DraftKings pay up.
Of course not. Parlay bets go back decades. It would have been an option generally from Day 1.
In this case both sides are assholes. DK are scum and are getting wealthy making the world worse. The bettor 100% knew that he was exploiting an error. Anyone who regularly gambles or has studied gambling knows this. Is it ok to steal from scumbags?
I am a DraftKings user. I have been for about two years, and I am ahead a whopping $82.25.
I just tried to parlay two bets in Sunday’s Seahawks/Panthers game. I selected the ‘over 42.5 points’ at -110 odds, and I also selected the ‘under 42.5 points’ at -110 odds. Once both bets were in my bet slip, I received the message ‘Unfortunately, your bets cannot be parlayed’.
However, I could place each bet individually. Obviously, one would lose, and one would win. If I placed an equal amount on each bet (say $10.00), I would end up losing 81 cents. I would lose one bet and lose the ten bucks, but I would win the other bet and win $19.09.
Thanks! It’s nice to know they protect bettors from being that dumb, and from essentially the opposite of this case.
It’s not stealing, according to the MGC. Is it legal to take advantage of a corporation’s error, that they have every chance to prevent ahead of time? In MA, generally the answer is yes.
I don’t care what the MCG thinks. It’s for sure theft which is taking property without permission. I’m not a fan of assholes who exploit loopholes. I’m much less of a fan of online gambling sites. Honestly, DK should have just quietly paid him and fixed the glitch but there’s no way the gambler wasn’t being a dick.
Exactly. He found a product that was mispriced. He didn’t “mess with the scanner”. The seller made a pricing error, and he knew it was a pricing error, and he bought the mispriced product. But Massachusetts requires merchants to honor their advertised prices, which is why the Massachusetts gaming commission ruled unanimously in his favor.
Being a dick doesn’t mean he was stealing. I don’t see how he was taking property without permission. DK had every opportunity to make sure their system was correctly pricing and offering bets, if it doesn’t, that’s not the better’s fault. Call him a dick, call him an asshole, sure that’s your opinion. Calling him a thief is too far. BTW, I don’t particularly care about gambling in general, but I think legalized & sponsored sports gambling will ruin sports, which sucks, so I definitely have some schadenfreude for this outcome.
Me too. Still, I don’t think it’s a stretch to call it theft but this may just be a semantic issue
Exploiting loopholes is basically the premise behind much of regulated business and the US tax code! 
A Scrivener’s error is one thing (bank makes an error crediting you with $10,000, when your account holds $1,000.) But if I set up a system, writing all of the rules, it is largely incumbent upon me to close any loopholes. It isn’t as though on-line gambling is governed by the UCC’s Article 2 which expressly presumes acting in good faith.