Good Spot for a Blog

It’s been about ten weeks since I’ve written – but I have valid excuses! 

The first month of absence was due to being laptopless. The most boring kind of topless. Life with a Chromebook was already challenging, but when the screen went on the blink, it had to go back. John Lewis put up a fight, but ultimately refunded me. That was April gone.

I rushed out to buy a proper Windows laptop, and that led to my second month of inactivity – I bought Balatro. Every time I opened my new machine to start a blog, I was waylaid by a “quick game” of this clever little poker startover (see previous comments). Goodbye May.

It’s as good as everyone said, and has probably sucked 50 hours of my life away up to this point, but it’s not super-dooper original. It’s one-player-power-up-draw-poker with collectibles. We had all those puzzle pieces twenty years ago. 

Fair play though, it took an enthusiastic amateur to throw it together, and now that guy is rich. I’m happy that there was a financial reward for poker innovation, and that it went to a complete unknown with no connections to gambling.

I digress. The third, and possibly best, reason for my silence, is that I’m on another European roadtrip. It’s very hard to find motivation to write when you’re stag-doing in Munich, sunning yourself in Majorca and pedaling about the Alps. Hello June!

Nonetheless, after three weeks of utter bliss, I find myself with a bit of spare time, an extraordinary view (see pic) and a laundry list of filthy gambling undergarments to air out.

Plus it’ll be nice to stop LinkedIn’s weekly reminder that nobody has seen my posts. How are you supposed to engage my unique talents if you’ve forgotten that I exist?

So to business. Let’s start with the ridiculous. 

On April 7, a lottery ticket in Oregon won a jackpot of $1.33B. That’s a bonkers amount of money for a single winner. What makes it more nut-boggling still, is that it’s only the eighth biggest win in the USA (FYI the record is $2.04bn). 

What a massive waste of potential enjoynment. That winner would have been almost exactly as happy with a $330M win, and then a whole other THOUSAND PLAYERS could have enjoyed a million each.

I’m sure the main winner was top-tier-chuffed with that amount, but the $1M runner-ups won’t have been so far behind emotionally. Let’s say they were next-tier-peed-a-bit-delirious. That means it could have created between 500 and 999 times more direct happiness.   

I know the big jackpot amounts are a successful marketing ploy, and I’m guilty of being lured in myself, but let’s find a better way to spread the glee. 

On the subject of joy-sprinkling, since I last wrote, Blackpool South’s crooked MP Scott Benton was forced out, and the Tories lost the subsequent by-election. They’ll have to fight it again soon and it’s highly likely to be a repeat defeat. 

Gambling isn’t really an issue for anyone in the upcoming General Election, so there isn’t much political commentary that I can offer. It’s not even a very interesting betting market with Labour looking like dead certs. You won’t get close to a 10% return betting on them to win.

However, in a small victory, the majority of politicians that have taken hospitality bribes from the gambling industry are Conservatives, so there is a good chance for more delicious blue bloodshed. 

Nowadays, I don’t usually have a strong opinion against left or right, but I’m strongly pro-competence, and that makes it an easy choice this time around. Starmer seems capable, and the incumbents are demonstrably not. I’ll be voting tactically to get rid of them.

While I’m following up on stuff, just a quick told-you-so on my Premier League tip. It didn’t take a genius to say Man City were going to win it, but it took some gambling savvy to highlight they were extremely good value at the ~1.8 pre-season odds.

If you took my advice and lumped your average first house deposit (£34K+) or wedding fund (£20K+) on that outcome, you’re now at least ten grand richer. Do remember to send me a postcard from your upgraded honeymoon destination.

To be clear, as you won’t have clicked the link to see what I actually said, I did not recommend playing for those kinds of stakes. Punting massive life sums goes against my responsible gambling thing somewhat. For the record, my average bet size is less than a fiver.

In sadder, and criminally overlooked news, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman passed away at the end of March. My use of the definite article there was no mistake, to me Kahneman really was THE psychologist. His body of work is essential reading for anyone in gambling.

That said, if I had been aware of his output while I was still in gambling (CRM/promotions in particular), then I’d just have done more damage. That’s saying something considering my hands are bloodier than a Lady Macbeth cameo in a Saw movie.

In short, Kahneman invented the field of behavioural economics (alongside the much-longer deceased Amos Tversky) and received the Nobel prize for economics for his contribution. How people behave when money is involved is critical to understanding gambling. 

I won’t suggest you go and read their academic articles, because despite their brilliance, they’re still in the abysmal dry format of scientific journals. But at the very least read Thinking, Fast and Slow, which distils the best bits into a readable book.

If that recommendation isn’t juicy enough for you, bear in mind that he ended up marrying Tversky’s widow. So he was kind of a freak. 

Finally, it wouldn’t be a spring blog smorgasbord recap if I didn’t have a rant about the Grand National. Not the race itself, that was excellent and mercifully free of horse-slaughter. No, once again, it’s the DAMN BOOKIES that deserve my ire (that’s the block caps hat trick, I’ll stop shouting now).

My girlfriend is a once a year gambler, and wanted to place a bet, so I thought we’d have a look at the sign-up offers for the big race. I was surprised to see there was pretty much no special effort being made to attract new customers.

Just about all the big names are offering contrived “bet £10, get £40 in free bets” offers that “reward” you with promotional wagers on their highest margin and most addictive products (bet builders and slots respectively). Manipulative cross-selling right out of the gate.

That sucks, but it isn’t the worst bit. I wasn’t getting any decent promotions either! Almost no gambling companies were making an effort for the Grand National. In a hyper-competitive market place, that is almost inexplicable. 

It’s like florists going dark in the week of Valentines day, or supermarkets neglecting to stock chocolate eggs for three months prior to Easter. Something is suspiciously afoot. 

Did all the big sportsbooks decide to have a profit-boosting truce? We know they’re in constant communication for both good reasons (coordinated blocking of disordered gamblers) and bad (the machinations of lobbying body the BGC).

Perhaps they decided not to waste £10M each in promotional costs by scrapping over a saturated market, and just pocket the cash instead. How depressingly plausible.

It’s a very smart play if true (which my gut says it is), but horribly uncompetitive. As gambling consumers, the only leverage we have in this rigged game, is to take our business elsewhere. If everyone has stopped trying, then we’re all losers.