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I am Gabe, and this is my website.

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Why Do I Bet on Sports?

2024 December 11

As I get older, knowing my motivations for why I do something becomes increasingly important. With more responsibilities to care for, less energy to spend, and more advancements in the world around me, effective and efficient use of time is needed. Knowing my motivations serve as one helpful input in justifying the use of time. On this thought, I wonder, ‘What are my motivations for sports betting’?

To answer this question, I thought of motivations for why anyone would participate in sports betting. After some brainstorming, some reading [1], [2], [3], and some prompting of LLMs [4], [5], I drafted the following list of motivations:

    1. Be entertained
    2. Be part of a community
    3. Gain profit
    4. Make back losses
    5. Validate expertise
    6. Validate ego
    7. Satisfy an addiction

Reviewing the list and identifying my own motivations as objectively as possible, I believe my motivations are best summarized by points 3, 5 and 6.
    • On point 3, this may achieve an effective and efficient use of time. Effective because there may be positive expected value in financial gain. Efficient because the time I spend watching sports can also be time used to think about sports betting.
    • On point 5, this may achieve an effective use of time. Effective because there are learnings in statistics, data engineering and psychology that can be gained. Through these learnings, there are other domains in which the acquired skills may be applied. For example, consider the opportunity to better learn statistics. These learnings help develop a more quantitative analytical mind, and this can help improve decision making across different environments.
    • On point 6, this is neither an effective nor efficient use of time. With anything, it is important to be aware of the positive and negative aspects of a pursuit. In the participation of sports betting, there is inevitably some motivation to validate one’s ego as this is often a component of pursuing profits and demonstrating expertise.

Next, defining successful outcomes as a result of participation in sports betting is important. As of this writing and after considering my motivations, I drafted the following list of successful outcomes:
    1. Achieve profitability [6]
    2. Achieve profit CAGR of X% over N years [7]
    3. Develop specialized pattern recognition in a sport [8]
    4. Build a workflow to automate winning bet ideation [9]
After writing the list of successful outcomes, I feel nervous, excited and determined to achieve the outcomes above such that my participation in sports betting makes for an effective and efficient use of time.