ABD Launches Campaign Against Speed Awareness Courses

[CS Garth]

deeps said:

Disastrous said:

Set us straight then! I've been dying to hear this!

It's very simple, but as I said and as you can see first hand here, most people will never get it.

Whether a bet wins or loses is totally irrelevant to success. When I try to explain this in terms of sporting events, nobody gets it, so I'll put it another way...

Just a quick simple example:

Betting £10 on each toss at odds of 2.0 predict the outcome of a toss of a coin 100 times.

Long term you will break even, whether you predict heads or tails is irrelevant, as is the actual result of each spin. It doesn't matter whether each spin wins or loses, a bet is judged at the point of placement not by the result.

The only way to ensure a profit is to back at odds that are greater than the true chance of the occurrence.

Same scenario, now betting £10 on each toss at odds of 2.1, as before the result of each spin is irrelevant, but long term you will make 5% profit on turnover. The bets can be judged as good value at the point of placement, the results were irrelevant.

Incidentally, all bookmakers such as Willhill etc will offer punters around 1.95 for heads and 1.95 for tails, hence with their built in value edge they don't care what the result is, just getting the punters through the door is enough to secure a profit.

Now all you have to do is find a way of accurately pricing events and getting bets matched with a built in value edge. You will make a percentage of turnover regardless of the results of events.

Most punters are not price sensitive, they believe they can predict the outcome of events, hence why so very few gamblers succeed.

'Kin hell. You're announcing the above like it is some kind of new and amazing "thing" that will blow people's minds. It is perhaps instead the most hackneyed and basic get rich scheme that people made money selling in the 1980s via ads in the daily mail to thickos who want to get rich. The "value edge" - tremendous, it is obviously hanging around like a bad fart unless you picked up a book up at a boot sale. I can't even be bothered to critique your imprecise articulation of this mathematically rudimentary steamer. Being serious for a moment, I appreciate this may seem amazing to you but it isn't. So going round telling people they won't understand something like this doesn't make you look very worldly.

I'll give you a top tip: Google a little more about arbitrage and prepare to have your world rocked. I'll then let you in on a little secret. Quite a few other people know about the secret. They are called banks.

Final tip: when you state your legal case is being prepared, do you actually have a specialist motoring lawyer working in this or is it some bloke called Dave using the Internet? I hope it is the former because they will pretty quickly tell you you are on a hiding to nothing. If the latter then you will all look foolish

I'm sorry to be blunt and you are obviously well intentioned but you are not building a case based on fact, having reread the initial post the press release is just total foil hatted, swivel eyed loon, daily mail reading junk. And coming on here and insulting the intelligence of those who could, whisper it, be your very equal or possibly even more knowledgable Is foolish

Good luck on the betting - and don't bet more than you can afford to lose please

[deeps]

Just as I said, people don't get it

[deeps]

xRIEx said:

5%? You can get that as an interest rate on bank account accounts, never mind proper investments. You can probably get 5-10% on S&S ISAs (average performance was 7.4% in 2015 tax year) and you don't have to place 150 bets per week in order to get it
- step 1: deposit money
- step 2: wait

Sorry to keep saying it, but you really don't get it even after the most simple of explanations.

I haven't looked back but I believe I would have said 150 bets per day, so around 1000 bets per week for around £100 each, averaging 2% profit on turnover, 5% was merely a figure used to demonstrate the profit in the coin scenario and is extremely difficult to achieve long term.

Can you see your anology pays peanuts in comparison?

My example pays 2k tax free profit per week using a bank of 20k.

Your example pays less than 1.5k per year using the same 20k investment.

Still laughing?

[deeps]

brman said:

and he still hasn't said where that 5% comes from, ie who he gets to take all those bets where the odds are stacked in his favour.......

Being as the level of insults are fairly high, I don't think I'll bother saying, but again it is very simple.

[deeps]

Disastrous said:

Or what happens if they all lose, if I'm not missing something?

Yes you are missing something

Short term variance can be expected and is normal. Long term, even my granny could break even simply by taking bets at the true price. Punters lose because they use a bookmaker who is offering them poor prices. Punters are not price sensitive, they only care about making predictions which is impossible.

[deeps]

CS Garth said:

'Kin hell. You're announcing the above like it is some kind of new and amazing "thing" that will blow people's minds. It is perhaps instead the most hackneyed and basic get rich scheme that people made money selling in the 1980s via ads in the daily mail to thickos who want to get rich. The "value edge" - tremendous, it is obviously hanging around like a bad fart unless you picked up a book up at a boot sale. I can't even be bothered to critique your imprecise articulation of this mathematically rudimentary steamer. Being serious for a moment, I appreciate this may seem amazing to you but it isn't. So going round telling people they won't understand something like this doesn't make you look very worldly.

I'll give you a top tip: Google a little more about arbitrage and prepare to have your world rocked. I'll then let you in on a little secret. Quite a few other people know about the secret. They are called banks.

Final tip: when you state your legal case is being prepared, do you actually have a specialist motoring lawyer working in this or is it some bloke called Dave using the Internet? I hope it is the former because they will pretty quickly tell you you are on a hiding to nothing. If the latter then you will all look foolish

I'm sorry to be blunt and you are obviously well intentioned but you are not building a case based on fact, having reread the initial post the press release is just total foil hatted, swivel eyed loon, daily mail reading junk. And coming on here and insulting the intelligence of those who could, whisper it, be your very equal or possibly even more knowledgable Is foolish

Good luck on the betting - and don't bet more than you can afford to lose please

Funny how I seem to have you so wound up, it was not my intention, I have thrown far less insults and sarcasm than I have received.

Arbitrage betting is old hat, you announce it like I wouldn't have heard of it?

In reply to your final dig, I think you underestimate me, I've been doing this full time for many years and make a nice living.

[deeps]

Probably best if we let the thread die now, if anyone wants to discuss gambling please start another thread in the finance section.

[mph1977]

deeps said:

Probably best if we let the thread die now, if anyone wants to discuss gambling please start another thread in the finance section.

and waste all the comedy gold you are generating with your delusions ?

[xRIEx]

deeps said:

Just as I said, people don't get it

So, no one gets it, no matter how many times you explain it? Just the same as no one gets it when you explain why SACs are illegal?


Have you ever considered that you might be really, really st at explaining?

[With these feet]

Im with Deeps on this, why are people happy to subsidise more cameras in the trade off of not getting prosecuted for speeding? We all like to give it a bit of a hoof now and again, but in fairness being preached to by someone in a classroom doesnt sound like anything other than what, as a driver, you should be aware of already.

Add to that, how many simply take the points and ignore the course?

My wife did one a few years ago, said there was quite a bit on CO2 emissions . Sorry, but thats not IMO got anything to do with being caught speeding.

[Disastrous]

deeps said:

Disastrous said:

Or what happens if they all lose, if I'm not missing something?

Yes you are missing something

Short term variance can be expected and is normal. Long term, even my granny could break even simply by taking bets at the true price. Punters lose because they use a bookmaker who is offering them poor prices. Punters are not price sensitive, they only care about making predictions which is impossible.

I don't understand how you can make money simply by making bets at good odds unless you win. Can you explain that?

It seems obvious to me that if you only lose, which is perfectly possible, then you can never make money. You can't make money just from the act of betting alone, can you?

[nickfrog]

Disastrous, you don't get it.
Gambling belongs to the Finance section anyway, apparently. Says it all really.

[brman]

Disastrous said:

I don't understand how you can make money simply by making bets at good odds unless you win. Can you explain that?

It seems obvious to me that if you only lose, which is perfectly possible, then you can never make money. You can't make money just from the act of betting alone, can you?

This bit I do understand (I think...)
Lets say you are the booky and I am betting on a coin toss. Each time I bet £1 on it being a heads.
You know the odds of me winning are 50% so you (being a generous booky) play it fair and give me those odds (1:1). So if I win I get my £1 back plus £1 from you. If I lose, you get to keep my £1.
After 100 bets the odds are I lost 50 times and won 50 times. So I will have broken even.
So it doesn't matter if I lose 50 times, because (statistically) will also win 50 times and break even. So, as stated the outcome of each individual bit is irrelevant, it is the probability of winning over a number of bets that is important.

The thing is, for this to turn a profit you would need to offer me better than even odds. lets say you offer me 1.05:1. That way, of the 50 bets I lose I am still down £50 but for the 50 bets I win I am up £52.50 giving a profit of £2.50 over the 100 bets.

The trouble is, bookies aren't stupid, if they know the true odds are 1:1 they are more likely to offer you 1:1.05 so they take the profit, not you. In fact this is how a bookie has to operates, if the odds were not in his favour then he would not have much of a business......
So this is the bit that he is not explaining; where can he get someone to take a bet where the odds are both in his favour but also predictable. (or at least can be predicted to be in his favour)
The most obvious answer being to become a bookmaker yourself but if that is the secret of his success I am a little disappointed.....

[Disastrous]

brman said:

Disastrous said:

I don't understand how you can make money simply by making bets at good odds unless you win. Can you explain that?

It seems obvious to me that if you only lose, which is perfectly possible, then you can never make money. You can't make money just from the act of betting alone, can you?

This bit I do understand (I think...)
Lets say you are the booky and I am betting on a coin toss. Each time I bet £1 on it being a heads.
You know the odds of me winning are 50% so you (being a generous booky) play it fair and give me those odds (1:1). So if I win I get my £1 back plus £1 from you. If I lose, you get to keep my £1.
After 100 bets the odds are I lost 50 times and won 50 times. So I will have broken even.
So it doesn't matter if I lose 50 times, because (statistically) will also win 50 times and break even. So, as stated the outcome of each individual bit is irrelevant, it is the probability of winning over a number of bets that is important.

I'm not sure that's quite right. I agree that over an infinite number of flips, you will get heads as often as tails, but there's no reason why you couldn't have a run of say 100 heads in a row, given that's a 50/50 each time. I'm not a mathematician but I've a feeling I've read that the maths behind this is pretty sound somewhere...I wouldn't bet my life on it though!

My point being that nobody has either an infinite amount to stake nor an infinite number of coins to flip so sooner or later, a bad run would ruin you, and that's just trying to break even.

brman said:

The thing is, for this to turn a profit you would need to offer me better than even odds. lets say you offer me 1.05:1. That way, of the 50 bets I lose I am still down £50 but for the 50 bets I win I am up £52.50 giving a profit of £2.50 over the 100 bets.

The trouble is, bookies aren't stupid, if they know the true odds are 1:1 they are more likely to offer you 1:1.05 so they take the profit, not you. In fact this is how a bookie has to operates, if the odds were not in his favour then he would not have much of a business......
So this is the bit that he is not explaining; where can he get someone to take a bet where the odds are both in his favour but also predictable. (or at least can be predicted to be in his favour)
The most obvious answer being to become a bookmaker yourself but if that is the secret of his success I am a little disappointed.....

Haha, yes, that is true. I can understand that bookies will have a spread of odds, with the unlikely results generating the best odds for the punter, but betting on outside chances will see you lose more often than win. And as you point out, there is no way to link probabilities when you spread over many sports/events so I just can't see how strategically betting based on the odds can generate a return without winning.

I'm genuinely not trying to rip into deeps here - just fascinated.

[xRIEx]

brman said:

Disastrous said:

I don't understand how you can make money simply by making bets at good odds unless you win. Can you explain that?

It seems obvious to me that if you only lose, which is perfectly possible, then you can never make money. You can't make money just from the act of betting alone, can you?

This bit I do understand (I think...)
Lets say you are the booky and I am betting on a coin toss. Each time I bet £1 on it being a heads.
You know the odds of me winning are 50% so you (being a generous booky) play it fair and give me those odds (1:1). So if I win I get my £1 back plus £1 from you. If I lose, you get to keep my £1.
After 100 bets the odds are I lost 50 times and won 50 times. So I will have broken even.
So it doesn't matter if I lose 50 times, because (statistically) will also win 50 times and break even. So, as stated the outcome of each individual bit is irrelevant, it is the probability of winning over a number of bets that is important.

The thing is, for this to turn a profit you would need to offer me better than even odds. lets say you offer me 1.05:1. That way, of the 50 bets I lose I am still down £50 but for the 50 bets I win I am up £52.50 giving a profit of £2.50 over the 100 bets.

The trouble is, bookies aren't stupid, if they know the true odds are 1:1 they are more likely to offer you 1:1.05 so they take the profit, not you. In fact this is how a bookie has to operates, if the odds were not in his favour then he would not have much of a business......
So this is the bit that he is not explaining; where can he get someone to take a bet where the odds are both in his favour but also predictable. (or at least can be predicted to be in his favour)
The most obvious answer being to become a bookmaker yourself but if that is the secret of his success I am a little disappointed.....

Exactly - deeps' system relies on being better than the bookie at "accurately pricing events" - you effectively need to be a reverse bookie.

[schmalex]

deeps said:

Please help fight against this expanding multi-million pound booming industry.

With more and more speed limits being reduced, ever more camera vans are appearing to catch drivers travelling at a safe average speed, solely to extract £100. Please don't take it lying down

I disagree. I think the courses are a good thing. They do raise awareness and I have learned a few things from the one I went on a few years ago. Also, whilst you may be driving at a safe average speed, your speed at any given point within that overall average may be massively unsafe and, if that's the point at which you were gunned, then great

[xRIEx]

With these feet said:

Im with Deeps on this, why are people happy to subsidise more cameras in the trade off of not getting prosecuted for speeding?

It's been asked many times in this thread but not answered: why does income from SACs subsidise/incentivise the addition of more cameras, but income from FPNs (which we know are lower cost to the legal system) doesn't?

With these feet said:

We all like to give it a bit of a hoof now and again, but in fairness being preached to by someone in a classroom doesnt sound like anything other than what, as a driver, you should be aware of already.

Yes, all drivers should know it already. The fact is (evidenced by some amusing clips on the st driving caught on dashcam thread) that a large number of drivers don't know what the fk they're doing. Just because something should be doesn't mean it is. This is where driver awareness courses benefit everyone, even the good drivers: it gives some potentially st drivers some education and a chance to think about their driving and hopefully prevent them from crashing into the good drivers.

As was stated on the course I attended, when you get your driving licence and you sign the declaration bit, you're declaring that you're going to keep up to date with the Highway Code and drive in accordance with that and all relevant laws. None of us there (about 20 or so) had read the HC since passing the test.

[With these feet]

xRIEx said:

Yes, all drivers should know it already. The fact is (evidenced by some amusing clips on the st driving caught on dashcam thread) that a large number of drivers don't know what the fk they're doing. Just because something should be doesn't mean it is. This is where driver awareness courses benefit everyone, even the good drivers: it gives some potentially st drivers some education and a chance to think about their driving and hopefully prevent them from crashing into the good drivers.

As was stated on the course I attended, when you get your driving licence and you sign the declaration bit, you're declaring that you're going to keep up to date with the Highway Code and drive in accordance with that and all relevant laws. None of us there (about 20 or so) had read the HC since passing the test.

Quite true, but then also the fact that there are many crap drivers that dont speed and therefore the chances of ending up on some sort of improvement course is rather slim - and probably pointless due to many driving because of need to rather than enjoyment.

[TooMany2cvs]

brman said:

Disastrous said:

I don't understand how you can make money simply by making bets at good odds unless you win. Can you explain that?

It seems obvious to me that if you only lose, which is perfectly possible, then you can never make money. You can't make money just from the act of betting alone, can you?

This bit I do understand (I think...)

After 100 bets the odds are I lost 50 times and won 50 times. So I will have broken even.
So it doesn't matter if I lose 50 times, because (statistically) will also win 50 times and break even. So, as stated the outcome of each individual bit is irrelevant, it is the probability of winning over a number of bets that is important.

Except that if you DO lose 51 or more times out of 100, which is really quite likely, you are down.
Equally, if you win 51 or more times out of 100, which is equally as likely as losing, you are up.

So the actual winning IS important. The overall winning is very important, but each individual result makes up a part of that overall result - so each individual result IS important.

[brman]

Disastrous said:

brman said:

Disastrous said:

I don't understand how you can make money simply by making bets at good odds unless you win. Can you explain that?

It seems obvious to me that if you only lose, which is perfectly possible, then you can never make money. You can't make money just from the act of betting alone, can you?

This bit I do understand (I think...)
Lets say you are the booky and I am betting on a coin toss. Each time I bet £1 on it being a heads.
You know the odds of me winning are 50% so you (being a generous booky) play it fair and give me those odds (1:1). So if I win I get my £1 back plus £1 from you. If I lose, you get to keep my £1.
After 100 bets the odds are I lost 50 times and won 50 times. So I will have broken even.
So it doesn't matter if I lose 50 times, because (statistically) will also win 50 times and break even. So, as stated the outcome of each individual bit is irrelevant, it is the probability of winning over a number of bets that is important.

I'm not sure that's quite right. I agree that over an infinite number of flips, you will get heads as often as tails, but there's no reason why you couldn't have a run of say 100 heads in a row, given that's a 50/50 each time. I'm not a mathematician but I've a feeling I've read that the maths behind this is pretty sound somewhere...I wouldn't bet my life on it though!

My point being that nobody has either an infinite amount to stake nor an infinite number of coins to flip so sooner or later, a bad run would ruin you, and that's just trying to break even.

Theoretically you are right, it is possible the bets could always go against you - after all it is chance and you can have bad luck. It is still a gamble but, if you do it enough, you would be very unlucky for it not to work overall. But yes, you need to do it a lot. Betting 5 times on coin toss would likely see very variable results. 1000 coin tosses and the results are very likely to be very close to 50:50.