This paper describes the rationale for, and design of, an agent-based simulation model of a contemporary online sports-betting exchange: such exchanges, closely related to the exchange mechanisms at the heart of major financial markets, have revolutionized the gambling industry in the past 20 years, but gathering sufficiently large quantities of rich and temporally high-resolution (sub-second interval) data from real exchanges — i.e., the sort of data that is needed in large quantities for leading-edge machine learning techniques such as Deep Learning — is often very expensive, and sometimes simply impossible; this creates a need for a plausibly realistic synthetic data generator (SDG), which is what the simulation described here is intended to provide. The simulator, named the Bristol Betting Exchange (BBE), is intended to become a common platform, a data-source and experimental test-bed, for any/all researchers studying the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques to issues arising in betting exchanges; and, as far as I have been able to determine, BBE is the first of its kind: a free open-source agent-based simulation model consisting not only of a sports-betting exchange, but also a minimal simulation model of racetrack sporting events (e.g., horse-races or car-races) about which bets may be made, and a population of simulated bettors who each form their own private evaluation of odds and place bets on the exchange before and — crucially — during the race itself (i.e., so-called "in-play'' betting) and whose betting opinions change second-by-second as each race event unfolds. BBE is offered as a proof-of-concept simulator system that enables the generation of large high-resolution data-sets for automated discovery or improvement of profitable strategies for betting on sporting events via the application of AI/ML and advanced data analytics techniques. This paper offers an extensive survey of relevant literature and explains the motivation and design of BBE, and presents brief illustrative results. In a companion paper, I and my co-authors describe three independent implementations of BBE that each serve different audiences, for which the source-code is being released on GitHub, and show comparative results.

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Gambling in Greek Antiquity

BBE: Simulating the Microstructural Dynamics of an In-Play Betting Exchange via Agent-Based Modelling

This article shows a generalization of Galileo's ‘passe-dix’ game. The game was born following one of Galileo's [G. Galileo, Sopra le Scoperte dei Dadi (Galileo, Opere, Firenze, Barbera, Vol. 8). Translated by E.H. Thorne, 1898, pp. 591–594] explanations on a paradox that occurred in the experiment of tossing three fair ‘six-sided’ dice.

Generalizing Galileo's Passe-Dix Game.

Prologue: Aliis exterendum

I describe the rationale for, and design of, an agent-based simulation model of a contemporary online sports-betting exchange: such exchanges, closely related to the exchange mechanisms at the heart of major financial markets, have revolutionized the gambling industry in the past 20 years, but gathering sufficiently large quantities of rich and temporally high-resolution data from real exchanges - i.e., the sort of data that is needed in large quantities for Deep Learning - is often very expensive, and sometimes simply impossible; this creates a need for a plausibly realistic synthetic data generator, which is what this simulation now provides. The simulator, named the "Bristol Betting Exchange" (BBE), is intended as a common platform, a data-source and experimental test-bed, for researchers studying the application of AI and machine learning (ML) techniques to issues arising in betting exchanges; and, as far as I have been able to determine, BBE is the first of its kind: a free open-source agent-based simulation model consisting not only of a sports-betting exchange, but also a minimal simulation model of racetrack sporting events (e.g., horse-races or car-races) about which bets may be made, and a population of simulated bettors who each form their own private evaluation of odds and place bets on the exchange before and - crucially - during the race itself (i.e., so-called "in-play" betting) and whose betting opinions change second-by-second as each race event unfolds. BBE is offered as a proof-of-concept system that enables the generation of large high-resolution data-sets for automated discovery or improvement of profitable strategies for betting on sporting events via the application of AI/ML and advanced data analytics techniques. This paper offers an extensive survey of relevant literature and explains the motivation and design of BBE, and presents brief illustrative results.

BBE: Simulating the Microstructural Dynamics of an In-Play Betting Exchange via Agent-Based Modelling.

Scholars often overlook leisure gambling perspectives and focus on more health-related mechanisms, such as compulsive gambling behaviours. Consequently, understanding gambling as leisure is under-explored, especially in an economic sociological context. We begin to address this gap by identifying whether (1) leisure gambling is stratified across gambling activities and society, (2) social capital and (3) diverse networks are essential in leisure gambling consumption. Using 12,991 respondents to the 2007–2008 Taking Part Survey, we apply latent class analysis to identify different typologies of leisure gamblers, modelling the influence of socio-cultural characteristics and network resources and diversity. We identify five leisure gambling typologies, with social capital and network diversity playing an important role in their formation. Generally, leisure gambling consumption depends on more social capital and diverse networks. 

Gambling in Greek Antiquity

Citations

BBE: Simulating the Microstructural Dynamics of an In-Play Betting Exchange via Agent-Based Modelling

Generalizing Galileo's Passe-Dix Game.

Prologue: Aliis exterendum

BBE: Simulating the Microstructural Dynamics of an In-Play Betting Exchange via Agent-Based Modelling.

Gambling lifestyles: The importance of social capital and diverse networks