Op, in a way your question is kind of rhetorical question.

I'll try to answer this way:

If nobody knows how good you are how do you know that you are the best? Who decides that?

If the answer is you, yourself, your achievements, your accomplishments, then that's all it matters.

If it is you, yourself by foolishly thinking so, then nothing matters.

However, I read somewhere that all actors need to be applauded. If this is their motivation, it's nothing wrong with that. If they are good, their time will come, they are going to be applauded. If they are not, they are going to get booted.

So, to put in another way, the point of being good is first to do good and not to worry. Anything else is not totally irrelevant but it is not as important.

OK here is just one for you a obvious and easy one too; explain how would the shark keep their edge after everyone knows their bets (runners etc) and copies sharks method in selecting bets? btw moving lines with trick bets would be easily worked out by the smart runners.

It still seems to me that you don't really know what you're talking about. I have said nothing about people copying the shark's betting patterns. Think more like a sports book and less like a... well... whatever it is you're thinking like right now.

You're suggesting some type of betting line manipulation but as i explained that would work until they copied method of selecting bets.

Disbenefits of visible success -

Fans
Hangers-on
Attention of the press
Pressure of social media
Target of criminals / frivolous lawsuits, etc.
Expectations of less successful friends and family
Expectation of conformity / lifestyle / appearance, etc.
Inability to be anonymous.

Fame / notoriety is somewhat the poison chalice unless your income is dependant on being famous.

Yeah this one in particular is bigger than you think. Stuff happens all the time you simply don't hear about. There is simply no good reason for the world to know that you're making basketloads of easy money.

yeah but some of the big name sports bettors seem to pretty popular tough in the media tweeting constantly? A naive question but what is the difference between being a wealthy athlete or sports bettor or wealthy anything, isn't it the same?

The big names (aka famous) tweet a lot?!? You don't say.

That is called self-promotion. I'm going to guess they make most of their money as charlatans fleecing dumb people by selling their picks.

They don't sell tips not the ones I'm talking about, one is a previous poker player and now apparently one of the big sport bettors.

He must like tweeting, I guess

Admittedly Idk much about sports betting but if the sports book knows you're making a bet then they know it's likely one that will make you and other people money.

If that's the case then can't that change your access to make bets or the lines they offer in the future?

Achievements in certain areas necessarily comprise an element of accomplishment or performance relative to others (sports are an obvious example) but in many other areas this element of comparison with other people, (winning, being better/smarter than others) as a motivation can be completely absent. This element could theoretically remain absent even when one achieves a level of such competence in an area of expertise that this person could be the best there is without being aware of it or caring about their performance relative to others.

An imaginary sportsbettor could love sportsbetting and all the work that comes with it so much that his life goal is to be the best sportsbettor he can possibly be. His goal is to develop the best models he can and to find the best edges his 'opponent', the market, has to offer. He is completely immersed in this process and is regularly or even permanently in a state of flow when he is working.

Money itself may not even be a driving factor for this person but merely a manner of keeping score. No matter how much money he makes, his goal is to get even better at the game of beating the market. His motivation can derive wholly from his love for sportsbetting, his drive to find the best edges the market has to offer and the wonderful feeling he has when engaged in this activity.

I didn't quite understand this question English not being my first language. Sports bettors use different runners to place bets is that what you are asking?


Are you suggesting that only imaginary sports bettors would think like this?

Yes but I would argue that this is mostly the result of evolutionary hardwiring.
To take a different example, I think it's unlikely that the world's greatest meditator is concerned with his ability relative to his peers.

Please quote where I suggested some type of betting line manipulation.

Edit: I'll elaborate now instead of drawing this out over multiple posts.

Let's say you're a sports book, and you know that there's some guy out there who is betting and winning at orders of magnitude better than the other sports bettors that you know are winning.

You don't think there's a single thing that the sports book might do differently to make it harder for this guy to win? You don't think that someone will try to start making decisions to prevent paying out these consistent big wins? If a casino even *thinks* that someone is an advantage blackjack player, they will often stop them from playing. You don't think that being known carries with it a single -EV characteristic?

Yes i do hence why i said in the op the sports bettor uses Beards: Someone who places a wager for another person (aka "runner").so his bets are never connected back to him, and keeps changing runners so they don't work out his selection method and bets.

I misunderstood your second reply my bad, the word conceive, as i said English is not my first language

You're comparing the best meditator to a gambler don't you think they are different types of people?

Do you think the best chess player gets the same satisfaction playing a computer on his own at home with no audience repetitively; compared to playing another person who apparently has a huge fan base and some say might be even better then the him to only see himself again outplay the new contender?

You understood what I was saying. But right now all those runners know is that some rich guy wants to make a wager. Once they know it's the world's best bettor because the guy is famous it would the bettor would have to pay or pay more for the runner's silence. Plus people are notorious for being creatures of habit plus only having a limited number of people they trust especially with money so I doubt this supply of runner's is endless so the runners would eventually become a proxy for the bettor.

These would indeed be wildly different people. In your chess example, yes this person would likely get a greater satisfaction from the latter scenario. The fact that this is innate in almost all of us is for evolutionary reasons.

You don't think that bets that are hundreds of times larger than other bets won't raise any red flags at all if the sports books knew for certain that there's some guy out there tearing them up? You don't think that the casino tries at all to push back against the operation? Or the fact that the bettor needs to employ more and more people to place the bets doesn't cut into his profits?

So you're basically saying the best sports bettors aren't ego driven.

A sports bettor also bets on sports through a betting exchange where its one player laying a team while the other is backing the same team and tens of millions are traded on each game, not all the bets have to be through the house. Also a shark will heavily back one team with the house and lay it off with a exchange to move the line and do the same thing again with the other team; one two confuse everyone and to move the line to suit him so he can back both teams and trade on the game, so basically he does his trading business before they even kick off, while some games having one team run for him and not trading out on the game.

And all of this is just as easy to do as a well-known entity as opposed to being an anonymous nobody? There's not a single cent of extra "overhead cost" of trying to do all of this in a clandestine manner?

You seem to think I disagree with you but I don't. Yes it is EV for the best sports bettors to keep anonymous but what about the EV in your sports betting piers knowing your the best? I mean a sports bettors is human after all, and there is satisfaction in that too.

I think a better counter argument is that if people know you're the best you could sell yourself/knowledge for +EV with out the risk of the wager. In the end though you'd be a victim of the market for selling sports betting knowledge.