Racing and sports betting: is it all chance?

For a game to be considered gambling, three conditions must be met: 1. the player must wager money or valuables, 2. the wager placed cannot be taken back 3. the outcome of the game is based on chance, i.e. it is impossible to predict. The main games of chance are lotteries, sports betting, dice games, card games, bingo and casino. It's sometimes hard to believe that sports betting is a matter of chance rather than expertise and knowledge. Professional bettors study a great deal of information and believe they can predict the outcome of a match or race.

People who bet a lot are well-informed, keeping abreast of sportsmen and women's performances and state of health, and taking various parameters into account. Armed with this knowledge, they believe themselves to be increasingly expert, and therefore increasingly overestimate their ability to predict the outcome of a sporting event. The illusion of control intensifies, increasing the bettor's risk of becoming an excessive or even pathological gambler.

Various scientific studies have shown, however, that the expert's money results are no different from those of lay bettors. Knowledge is not enough to obtain a monetary result. It simply reinforces theillusion of control. In the end, everyone loses money. This is inevitable, since the rate of return is necessarily less than 100%, since the organizers have to be paid... Experts and laymen alike lose money.