Why Professional Gamblers Act like Addicts
On account priming, misaligned incentives, and why casinos can't be trusted to self-regulate
“Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, and Bryce Harper all to hit home runs. $100 to win $5,100. Now you look like a fucking degenerate.”
It was early 2022, and for the first time in my short sports betting career I was having a problem: sportsbooks didn’t want to accept my bets. In the past week I’d been limited on three different accounts, with one refusing to accept any wagers over $50. Distraught, I reached out to a friend for advice. He introduced me to the concept of “priming,” where smart bettors place dumb bets in the hopes of getting profiled as a loser and making their accounts last longer. In other words, I would need to make myself look like a “fucking degenerate” if I wanted to keep making money.
The Paradox of Responsible Gambling
Since the Supreme Court decriminalized sports betting in 2018, sportsbooks have spent lots of time and money trying to convince everyone they don’t just want to bleed users dry. Companies like Draftkings and Fanduel insist that combating addiction is a top concern and point to various “responsible gambling” initiatives as proof they care about customers’ wellbeing.
Even if legal sportsbooks aren’t perfect, the argument goes, they do a better job protecting users than illegal operators, who aren’t subject to any regulations.
Of course, these efforts are at least a little paradoxical. Sportsbooks and casinos’ profits come from user losses, so any attempts to minimize those losses will go against their bottom line.
Yet after talking to over 100 professional bettors, I’ve come to believe that the real scandal isn’t just that these campaigns don’t work: it’s that sportsbooks target users who show signs of problem gambling, worsening the very problem they say they’re fighting.
Who’s an Addict?
A few months ago I wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal about why responsible gambling campaigns always fail. To prepare for it, I spoke with nearly a dozen experts on what constituted dangerous behavior among sports bettors.
Most of what they said wasn’t surprising. Chasing losses and doubling down is bad. Checking scores all hours of the day and betting on Russian table tennis is correlated with problem gambling. Making lots of deposits suggests a lack of self-control.
What was surprising was learning that professional bettors have adapted every single one of these behaviors to try and look like addicts. As Rufus Peabody, co-host of the Bet the Process podcast said on a recent episode, “In this current environment, in U.S. books, the best strategy for account longevity is to try to look like you’re a degenerate gambler, look like you’re a problem gambler… what becomes kind of dirty is trying to do those things and act like a problem gambler knowing that they’re going to cater to you.”
Such behavior takes various forms. One pro bettor I know set up a bot which logs in to his accounts every day between 2 and 4am, to make it seem like he can’t get through the night without checking his bets. Another withdraws money and then reverses those withdrawals so it looks like he can’t resist gambling.
Some efforts go even further, and attempt to game the responsible gaming tools. I recently met a pro bettor who swore that at a certain sportsbook, if you opted into and then out of deposit limits—which prevent you from depositing more than a certain amount over the course of a week or month—your betting limits would stay high for longer, because “they know sharp bettors don’t put themselves on those lists.”1
Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that when users opt into cool-off periods—which prevents them from logging into an account for as little as a day—they’re often greeted with a deposit match when they come back. In a February WSJ article, Katherine Sayre detailed how one woman was behind on her mortgage payment and asked her VIP host at Draftkings if they offered loans. Soon after, the host gave her $250 in free play “to get [her] back in action.”
The Regulatory Landscape
As sports betting expands, regulatory scrutiny of unfair and predatory sportsbook practices is expanding with it. Part of this growing scrutiny has been spurred by the creation of American Bettor’s Voice (ABV), an organization led by professional gambler Gadoon “Spanky” Kyrollas, which seeks to “give sports bettors a voice at the table.”
Optimal regulation is hard, and what hurts some will help others. For example, one of ABV’s main policy proposals is mandatory minimum limits, to ensure bettors have a fair shot and aren’t effectively kicked out just for being smart. While nice in theory, this could lead to sportsbooks decreasing the number of bets they offer, creating a worse experience for casual bettors and pushing some to illegal sportsbooks.
One seemingly uncontroversial policy is to mandate sportsbooks share with states why certain accounts get lower limits, and other accounts get higher limits. This information would allow policymakers to better understand how sportsbooks profile their customers, and whether their public claims about problem gambling align with their actions.
Looking Ahead
Tomorrow, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission is hosting another roundtable on limiting (I wrote about the first one a few months ago), and ABV’s CEO Richard Schuetz will be speaking. It’s unlikely any policies will be solidified, and it’s not clear what can or should be done to combat addiction or ensure a fair betting landscape.
What is clear is that as legalized gambling expands more people will experience gambling-related harms, and operators can’t be trusted to tackle the problem themselves. While the issue of limiting successful bettors is concerning, the exploitation of vulnerable gamblers is a more pressing problem. These issues are interconnected, both stemming from sportsbooks' profiling practices.
Professional bettors, with their insider knowledge of the industry, can provide valuable insights into the ways sportsbooks inadvertently—or intentionally—encourage dangerous behavior. The problem isn’t that some gamblers become addicts, just like how some drinkers end up alcoholics. The problem is that right now sportsbooks are effectively promoting addiction.
Imagine a liquor store that gives you discounts for drinking every day, drinking before noon, and going back to drinking after trying to quit—while refusing service to people who “only” want a bottle of wine or a six-pack—and you’ll have some idea of how the sports gambling business currently operates.
In the meantime pros will continue to adapt their strategies, sometimes mimicking addictive behaviors, because they know that's what the current system rewards. And every morning I’ll be checking the box scores, hoping Judge, Ohtani, and Harper all hit home runs.2
Note: I agree with everything written in this article, haven’t changed it, and won’t be changing it. However, if I were to write the same piece again, I would make clearer that I believe most sportsbooks and casinos do not intentionally target addicts. What they target is customer lifetime value (CLV), aka how much a person is expected to lose, which is highly correlated with addiction although not the same thing.
Maximizing profits as a gambling company while caring about responsible gambling is hard. To help, regulators (after consulting with all parties including pro bettors) should make clear rules about what should trigger a responsible gaming check and what operators should do when that check is triggered. This would make life easier for all parties. It would also be an easy way to fine operators who would then be even more incentivized to care about responsible gambling.
Also, of course the best way to get special perks from sportsbooks is just to lose money (place lots of bets with a negative expected return). But pro gamblers want those perks without actually giving the book a bunch of money, so they resort to whatever tactics might increase their chances. Logging in at 3am every day may or may not help you get into VIP programs; placing bad bets definitely will.
I would not recommend this strategy for those looking to extend the lifetime of their accounts. I would recommend using these tools if you believe you may be at risk of a gambling problem. For good advice on how to keep your betting accounts open longer check out @MrLiimited on Twitter, and for a more detailed look at how sportsbooks profile customers check out this article from the Smart Betting Club.
Any of these three to hit a home run is not necessarily a bad bet. But most one-way player props bets like “player X to hit a home run” are, particularly when parlayed with each other. They are also the kind of bets that sportsbooks promote and are popular among recreational bettors, so by placing them sharp bettors can disguise the fact they’re at the sportsbook to make money not just have fun.
I wonder if having a sports betting equivalent to "accredited investor" would be a way to put a ceiling in for X losses over Y time for most users. Basically have some default self-exclusion rules put into place for any new sports betting account unless the user can demonstrate some minimum income/net-worth requirements to reduce the risk that anyone is gambling away their life savings.
Obviously I don't think any book would ever support such a thing because it would 1) directly impact their bottom line and 2) introduce a lot more friction into the experience for whales, but this might be a binding way for regulators to try and minimize the maximum amount of harm the average bettor could experience.
Also, side note, as someone who had been hammering HR prop promos, it is really funny that you chose to use that as an example. I think there were several books (Betr and ParlayPlay come to mind) over the regular baseball season that are now seriously regretting boosting payouts Ohtani HRs.
This is super sad and concerning. :-/ Thank you for letting people know.