In

Gambling Wizards: Conversations with the World's Greatest Gamblers, published in 2003, the author Richard W. Munchkin says:

"Who makes the most money? Horse bettor first,followed by sports bettors. Than poker, golf hustler, and blackjack and backgammon players.


Do you guys think bettors, and in particular horse bettors, are still the richest AP?

And how did horse betting change this last 15 years: is horse racing still popular? And did the edges decrese, as they did in sport betting in general?

ONE MORE QUESTION

From the same book:

"Don't try to become a professional gambler unless you want to be a computer programmer" - Alan Woods, referring to horse and sport betting.

Do you think guys this statement is stil valid, or the spread of user friendly computer technology allows also people with a more passive approach to those "betting softwares" to get in the busines, even if they wouldn't know how to program?

You shouldn't bet sports if you are asking these questions.

I don't. Actually.. I did a few times when I went to see some soccer match with my friends, always betting on the team they root for, otherwise for me would have been boring.

I'm asking just because, maybe because I am a gambler myself, or maybe because I like understanding how nich economy changes.. or for whatever reason I'm just curious.

horse racing pools are way down since then combined with high track takeout and i doubt anyone makes a serious living betting horses living in the us. from my understanding most professional horse players reside and bet in asia (or have easy access to asian markets).

in 2003 it was a huge competitive advantage to know how to program a computer. it's still an advantage but nowhere near as much so. you don't even have to necessarily write code though. software like excel make it easy for non computer programmers to create reasonably powerful tools.

2003 is still relatively early in the internet age. the internet expanded the availability of niche advantage gambling discussions that only previously existed between a select group of people in vegas or hobbyist publications like the one you came across.

^^
Thanks a lot for the interesting comment

Agree with TomG. Technology advances and the slow churn and burn of the horse racing industry from 2003 would effectively eliminate horse racing as the most profitable.

The high % taken out of the exotic pools and the greed of the track owners have hurt this sport tremendously.

If you don't have a square public filling up the pools the pros don't have much to drain out of it.

Outside of the Triple Crown and Breeders Cup, what marketing or commercials do you see for horse racing? Virtually none.

I think this is probably still true, but certainly not in the US; the pools are tiny in the US and the action is not that soft either.

One advantage of horse racing is that it's much easier getting paid and dealing with the money afterward than in sports betting, since it's legal everywhere. I'm not really talking about the book paying; there are plenty that are 100% money good; I'm talking about finding a bank that will let you deposit seven or eight figures that you won from betting sports and not give you any problems.

ive messed around betting horses for fun , ive been wondering the same as op actually. are there even any well know professional horse handicappers? any reading material or sites to be aware of?

Are there still such a money in sports betting nowaday!?

What i didn't get, it's how the sport betting thing changed, if it did, in these last 15 years. Is it something that kept getting tougher and tougher like online poker? Or maybe it's never been that easy like pre UIGEA poker?

I mean, yes, the highest winner sport bettor vs poker player were definetely sports bettors (and I guess still are?) but what about the $60.000 per year kind of winners? Did it get so hard like in online poker?

And it's still a "math guys thing", like in the late 90s where if you knew what you were doing with computers and stats you'd be +EV in many differents sports, or maybe now it's required that you are actually an expert of sports and teams, so it requires more specialization, so AP bet only in 1 sport or 2?

Is there any link you guys could give me where I could get an idea?

I've been serching a lot in this forum and also outside, I've also been reading some of the Wells, but for someone like me that it's not involved most of the forum material it's like ununderstandable.

i suspect if you could take a general manager from a current pro sports team and put that person in charge of a team ~25 years ago then it wouldn't be long until his team was crushing. information has improved so much at all levels in the last few decades.

a somewhat disappointing realization for many newly aspiring professional sports bettors is that unless you can win soley at professional shops (i.e. books that don't kick out winners), sports betting eventually becomes a game where networking and continuous access to new betting outs becomes as important or more so than finding actual advantage bets.

Sweat the payout, not the game.

Imagine if there was a thread dedicated to horses and horse related issues and it was the 2nd most popular thread on 2+2 sports section...See your post now look just under it and welcome to the HORSE RACING THREAD.

Being a horse player always comes with the popularity and fame and the top cappers and players just roll off the tip of your tongue...Its like being Logan Paul at vidcon everyday so it can be rough if you do not like the attention

Very true in my experience. Finding +EV bets is like the 3rd or 4th thing on my list

For people who don't handicap and only chase steam or look for arbs I'm pretty sure this is the best time in a real long time.

Bookmaker, the greek, and pinnacle all use different providers for live betting and there's non stop arbs all day. e.g., I was just able to bet o3.5 +255 on bookmaker and u3.5 +290 on the greek in the yankees game

I thought this would be a fad but two years later of clicking buttons with 0 skill and nothing has changed

what was the limit at the greek? $4?

I think sports betting is better than ever. US major sports are mostly no joke, although beatable, but outside of that there is a ton of stuff out there that is just ridiculously soft and you'd be surprised how much you can bet on a lot of it.

Literally the hardest part is figuring out what the hell I'm going to do with all this bitcoin.

I understand you guys in this part of the forum need to keep things for yourselves, but just let me ask this:

with outside US you mean somethink like Soccer Champion League or something more unknown like, I don't know, Uganda's ping pong season? TY

don't worry, the US gov't probably will steal it all

Keep in mind that you can lose a lot too.

Stu Ungar arguably the greatest Pre poker boom player and best rummy player of all time lost all his money on horses.

Keep in mind that you can lose a lot too.

Stu Ungar arguably the greatest Pre poker boom player and best rummy player of all time lost all his money on horses.

Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, was a bad baseball player.

you can lose money betting

who knew

Too much of this all over this forum^^. At least members like Iowa and RSigley and especially Mihkel bring some of the best knowledge and more importantly wit when it comes to these type of post. Imitation is the sincerest of flattery i guess. Unfortunately, it ruins and provides nothing to this forum and people asking genuine questions they really need help on or trying to start discussions.

shut up