Knockoff 2 - Fight or Flight by ElrodW

Well done, ElrodW. Though I have to admit I am surprised that something like this hadn't happened before, though there may simply not have been a large enough pool of fliers until now to make up teams.

Valentine wrote:

PS: Nice Casablanca reference.

I wondered if anyone would get that.

I'm still waiting for Oddball, Crapgame, and Barbara to show up.

I am surprised that the bookies don't use parimutuel odds. Using parimutuel odds (as they do at horse racing) guarantees that the house always wins.

Court wrote:

I am surprised that the bookies don't use parimutuel odds. Using parimutuel odds (as they do at horse racing) guarantees that the house always wins.

 

too many exemplars who'd catch on,

mhalpern wrote:

Court wrote:

I am surprised that the bookies don't use parimutuel odds. Using parimutuel odds (as they do at horse racing) guarantees that the house always wins.



 

too many exemplars who'd catch on,

No, any individual can still win. It is the set of all gamblers collectively that is guaranteed to lose. If the fact that the house will win overall stopped people from gambling, cassinos and lotteries would not be in business.

After reading this:

The long straight flight vanished into a desert canyon landscape, with the canyon walls striped with various shades of reds, yellows, and oranges, and Martina was reminded of the landscapes in Arizona. She had a brief hint of homesickness, missing those stunning vistas, before she refocused on following the canyon, with sharp turns to the left and right and no long straight stretches. Rounding one corner in a sharp left-hand turn, she had to suddenly dive to make the next obstacle, an arched rock formation.

and this:

she was above a highway that bored straight into a long tunnel through a mountain. Though it was straight, there was not a lot of margin for error in either her vertical or side-to-side variation in her flight path,

was anyone else worried that a bright light was going to appear ahead of her, accompanied by a "Beep, beep!"?

Court wrote:

I am surprised that the bookies don't use parimutuel odds. Using parimutuel odds (as they do at horse racing) guarantees that the house always wins.

Greed, and overconfidence. The various bookies think that they can compute the odds so that they will win more than they lose, instead of just taking a percentage of the total bets.

There's also the matter that this is an unofficial, unsanctioned, technically forbidden operation. Parimutuel odds are fine as long as the operation is aboveboard and auditable. If nobody else has access to the betting data, this is essentially giving the bookie carte blanche to manipulate the odds after the fact, just by saying anything to the winner up to "actually, everybody bet the same as you, so your winnings are... 80% of what you bet, that is, you lost 20%" Granted, that's an extreme case, but in an illegal betting system you want to know upfront how much a particular bet is going to pay.

Thanks, Sir Lee.  That makes sense.   I had not thought about that.