* Bum hunting is the media’s preferred tactic of fighting the culture war too: Westboro Baptist, that Starbucks cup controversy guy, Dylann Roof, etc.
That’s one of the funner angles on Trump. He walks, talks and acts like a bum, which draws the media to him like piranhas every time he wades into the pool, but he beats them every time. But they are so convinced that he’s a bum that they keep on coming after him. He’s the perfect hustler.
* I do math for casino games professionally. I prefer beating the casino to bumhunting, you don’t have to feel guilty about that and there are a lot of games that can be beaten if you do the scouting for opportunities and the practice. Card counting blackjack is the best known form of advantage play and the only one you don’t have to scout for, but it’s a terrible grind. There are many opportunities but I earn much better money as a math consultant than I would as an advantage player.
The difference between advantage play and cheating is a fine line — counting cards is OK but using a computer for it is illegal, catching a peek at a sloppy dealer’s down card is OK but stationing a confederate behind the dealer out of the ordinary play area to signal you is cheating, observing irregularities and asymmetries in playing cards that have not been handled skilfully is OK but marking or crimping the cards is illegal, finding a biased roulette wheel is OK but sneaking your bet after the cutoff is cheating, figuring out that progressive jackpots have made a slot machine temporarily positive is OK but kicking the power strip or tilting the machine so no one else can play it while you go to bed is cheating, etc.
I have no emotional connection to gambling, and I won’t play a game where the odds are against me. The problem with poker is you don’t know how good your opponents are, and the odds are never mathematically in your favor, but it is certainly the best way to make a living as a gambler. I have always said that by far the most important skill for a poker player, much more valuable than a memory or math skills or strategic theory or money management or keeping a poker face, is simply finding people to play with who aren’t as good as you.
Online poker can be done securely in theory, but there have been too many examples of cheating and theft by insiders. In the fantasy sports games, there is extreme ignorance about how much of a game of skill it is. In poker, it’s harder to dismiss continual losses as bad luck, so if bumhunting works there, it should work even better at fantasy sports. Anyone who would condemn it just because better players win and worse players lose has no understanding whatsoever of what gambling is. (On the other hand, cheating and theft by insiders should be treated very harshly.)
* I read the book The Sting was based on, David Maurer’s The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man. One of his interesting observations is that con artists themselves are generally easy to con, as was depicted in The Sting when the Redford character quickly loses his money to a rigged roulette wheel. Maurer said that few con artists were able to hold onto their winnings for long.
* “Almost all the great popular sports of the world come from Britain. But what Britain has not been able to export is the amateur ethos of the game. Most foreigners, and now many Britons, want to win at any cost within the rules; and they keep to the rules only because a game without rules is war.”
– John Fowles, The Aristos, 9:68
* I think it is no surprise that traditional western Christian culture frowned on, if not prohibited things like usury and gambling. There was an understanding that there needed to be limits on the bright being able to take advantage of the dim, lest it undercut the society, and gambling and usury or clearly great methods to take money from the weak minded. It is really no different than the belief that men should not take advantage of women, children or the elderly because they are weaker. This was recognized as behaving in a civilized manner.
