rouletteguru

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. And if you’ve been following the odds on betting sites, you’d know he was the underdog to win. To many, Hillary Clinton appeared to be a sure winner. But here’s some interesting facts that you may not know about the election.

Carlos Slim, who is Mexico’s wealthiest man, lost approximately $5 billion after Donald Trump was elected. This was not on a bet, but rather the deflation of the Mexican peso. Was it the fact that Donald Trump wants Mexico to pay for the wall? Perhaps, but either way, Donald is not too popular with the Mexican population. So the peso took a sharp dive, wiping off 9% of Mr Slim’s fortune. That’s quite a chunk of change considering is one of the world’s wealthiest billionaires. But certainly not crying for him. What can you buy with $10 billion, that you can’t buy with $9 billion? He’s still stinking rich.

Although it is illegal to bet on elections in the US, many wages on the election outcome were made in other jurisdictions. With a few exceptions, all initial polls projected that Hillary would win. Towards the end of the campaign, the most accurate poll for the past few years had projected that Donald Trump would win. While this slightly changed the odds on betting sites, Hillary remained the favourite to win.

The majority of wagers, according to betting giant William Hill, were initially placed on Donald Trump to be the winner. But this appears to be because he was a long shot with good payouts for a win. The majority of money was placed on Clinton, who had seemingly higher odds of winning, but a lower payout.

The largest reported win for a bet on Trump paid approximately £1.2 million, coming from a bet of around £350,000 for Trump to win. Another gambler won approximately £500,000 from a £200,000 bet.

As with any form of gambling, there is a significant difference between the odds of winning, and the actual payouts. The majority of casino gamblers don’t see the distinction. In the case of course racing for example, a horse may have a payout of 5 to 1 if it wins. But calculating the actual odds of winning is very different. The odds of winning are regarding the actual chance that the horse will win. If there are 10 horses in the race, and a simplistic view may be that any horse has a one in 10 chance of winning. But this is not the case because clearly some horses are faster than others. It is the same case as any casino game such as roulette, where the odds of winning are somewhat different to the payouts. The example I often use is the European wheel has 37 numbers, but the payout is 35 to 1. So basically you are paid a less than fair amount, which is known as the house edge.

In the case of elections, if you considered unbiased information from the media, you may have understood that the odds of Trump winning, compared to the actual payouts, presented a good value bet. And to succeed as a professional gambler, you need to recognise a good bet when you see one. The punters who place these large wages may not have cared who won or lost the election. They would have merely identified and backed the best value bet.