Children Gambling Millions on eSports

[Logethica]

Rogue gaming sites let children gamble hundreds of millions:
SOURCE: independent.co.uk (ARTICLE DATE: 21st Aug 2016)

Thousands of children are betting millions of pounds on the outcomes of matches played by professional video gamers on unlicensed gambling websites...

The teenagers are using "skins" as a virtual currency, which can be won or bought in game and act as cosmetic upgrades to a player's character, such as camouflage for a gun or a new suit of armour.

More than £5 billion worth of "skins" were bet globally in 2015, The Times reports.

The virtual currency is then bet on the outcome of matches between gamers in "eSports" competitions in games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2 and League of Legends.

One website, CS:GOLounge, reportedly took more than £800 million in "skin" bets last year. Five per cent of traffic to the Costa Rica-based site came from the UK.

A third of its visitors were under 18, suggesting British children bet more than £12 million on the site in 2015...

[To read the full article please visit the link at the top of the page]​

 

[frogboy]

Just wrong on every level. All this online gambling is a bad thing to me.

 

[Wave]

Just wrong on every level. All this online gambling is a bad thing to me.

Agreed!

Best play it safe and stay away from gambling to eliminate the chances of losing since the chances are more than likely not going to end up in your favour. I don't know how gambling works exactly but it reminds me a lot of other practises like HFT (High Frequency Trading - this relies on using algorithms to detect the right times to trade, etc... And if done wrong, you'll lose money).

Best not do it at all and not have anything to worry about!

 

[ElectricSheep]

Agreed!

Best play it safe and stay away from gambling to eliminate the chances of losing since the chances are more than likely not going to end up in your favour. I don't know how gambling works exactly but it reminds me a lot of other practises like HFT (High Frequency Trading - this relies on using algorithms to detect the right times to trade, etc... And if done wrong, you'll lose money).

Best not do it at all and not have anything to worry about!

Basically it all boils down to random odds. The longer the odds, the better the payout but the higher risk of losing. Shorter odds are a better bet, but you don't get so much of a pay out.
For example, Leicester City FC were quoted at 5,000 - 1 at the beginning of the last football season, so they were rank outsiders, but they went and won the Premier League!! That means if you put 100 on them to win at the start of the season, you stood to collect 500,000! Long odds indeed!
At the other end of the scale, the more fancied clubs like Manchester City for example are quoted by a major bookmakers at 13/8 to win the league, so if you put 100 on that, you'd only get 262.50, meaning a profit of 162.50. It's a safer bet, but there's always that risk of losing!

 

[Wave]

Basically it all boils down to random odds. The longer the odds, the better the payout but the higher risk of losing. Shorter odds are a better bet, but you don't get so much of a pay out.
For example, Leicester City FC were quoted at 5,000 - 1 at the beginning of the last football season, so they were rank outsiders, but they went and won the Premier League!! That means if you put 100 on them to win at the start of the season, you stood to collect 500,000! Long odds indeed!
At the other end of the scale, the more fancied clubs like Manchester City for example are quoted by a major bookmakers at 13/8 to win the league, so if you put 100 on that, you'd only get 262.50, meaning a profit of 162.50. It's a safer bet, but there's always that risk of losing!

Yeah, if you know what you are doing then you can end up really lucky with some nice wins... But if you make a mistake or just become unlucky then it can be over, especially depending on how much you bet on... It's like sometimes "matched betting" can be in your favour as you can be guaranteed to win something (and minimal risk of losing a lot).

In a sense it refreshes my brain with things relating to share price (stocks) with High Frequency Trading, using algorithms/APIs to auto-decide when to trade and when not too... I used to know someone who did this and they took a huge risk and earned a lot of money with their rewards and due to this I think they left their job and never had to do it again due to the amount they got (I don't know how much but I know it was enough for them to be hired by a professional and rich trading company and being promoted as an expert instantly). But on the other hand, you can lose a lot... And I would know this first hand based on experiences on friends.

So similar in the sense that you can win a lot or lose a lot and it's all sort of like a luck risk?

 

[Bryan Lam]

They should get ID Verification before you're allowed to gamble on these games and such.

 

[jamescv7]

Gambling is already a risk for anyone, so expect the consequences it may be especially on transactions. Money is the root of evil.

 

[DardiM]

Gambling is bad, for children or adults.

But some children from some "last generations" are impressive / terrifying on how they use internet (for good or bad reason).

I know children / teenagers that win real money with online games during some "rest" time, by gathering some resources with bots , selling them in game to earn po, and selling this virtual money to earn "real money"

It can be bad or good, but at least they are not Gambling

I've seen one with new rangers :
- "how did you bought this shoes"
- "I sold a rare item from Counter-Strike"

 

[hjlbx]

Some jurisdictions want to\have put parents in jail for their kids' bad behavior -- including online bad behavior\criminality.

 

[ElectricSheep]

Some jurisdictions want to\have put parents in jail for their kids' bad behavior -- including online bad behavior\criminality.

Some countries like the UK, Australia and New Zealand have actually prosecuted people for online trolling and similar bad behaviour.

 

[DardiM]

Some jurisdictions want to\have put parents in jail for their kids' bad behavior -- including online bad behavior\criminality.

Yes, I think they should build more jails to put the parents inside (father and mother, gender equality), and find some people / institution to take care of these poor children

Or another solution : a diploma to get the right to have children and to give more chance to futur parents to well educate them

Some countries like the UK, Australia and New Zealand have actually prosecuted people for online trolling and similar bad behaviour.

Financial pursuit for the parent is a good idea, it could make them take more care of what their kids do, because it's their "job", normally.

-------------------------------------------
N.B: some ironic parts, or not

 

[DJ Panda]

Gambling in general can be a really bad idea. It can end up costing you so much Mooney and perhaps other things as well. Its sad that even if they put an age verification for 18+ I would expect kids to just fake their age.

 

[JHomes]

And here I thought there was a glimmer of hope for future generations.

Remember when you used to just load a floppy disk with the shareware Doom on it and play that? Those were the days.

 

[davidp]

Sounds like these kids need to stay away from Las Vegas.