The Gambling Match Summary

Signs and symptoms of a gambling problem include: getting a thrill from taking gambling risks, taking increasingly bigger gambling risks over time, a preoccupation with gambling, reliving past gambling experiences (through imagination or telling stories), using gambling as a way to escape problems or negative feelings, feeling guilt or remorse. Match.com members form a diverse, global community of singles who share common goals - to meet other singles, find dates, form romantic relationships and meet life partners. Young and old alike, gay and straight, from everywhere around the world, singles come to Match.com to flirt, meet, date, have fun, fall in love and to form meaningful.

What is the issue?

Sport consists of a contest between individuals or teams who agree to compete by the same rules. The uncertainty of the outcome is an essential part of sport’s attraction, separating it from arts and other entertainment.
If the result is pre-determined (or at least one of aspect of the contest), the integrity of sport is lost and with it a large part of its meaning and appeal for fans.
Match-fixing is therefore a major threat to sport. There are two different motives for match-fixing, both with ancient origins. Firstly, sport may be fixed for sporting reasons: bribes may be paid or other inducements offered to encourage one individual or team to lose a particular contest. Secondly, people may try to make money through gambling on a contest in which they know the outcome before it takes place because they have fixed the result.
Many people believe that the advent of online gambling has increased the risk of match-fixing for financial gain. It is possible to bet from one country on a minor league in a far off land. The huge scale of the global gambling industry (legal and illegal) is attractive to organised crime and the range of the types of bets available potentially increases the value of inside information. Globalisation also plays a role – criminals seeking to fix matches can connect and meet with athletes, coaches and officials from all over the world.

Definitions

The Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions (2014) defines the manipulation of sports competitions as:
“An intentional arrangement, act or omission aimed at an improper alteration of the result or the course of a sports competition in order to remove all or part of the unpredictable nature of the aforementioned sports competition with a view to obtaining an undue advantage for oneself or for others.”
The definition therefore encompasses efforts to alter the course of an event (so-called “spot fixing”) as well as the overall result. Both match-fixing for sporting reasons and for financial gain are included.
The status of match manipulation in law is a complex issue and varies by country.

The Gambling Match Summary Sample

What is the response?

While match-fixing scandals date back to the earliest days of sport, the current focus on tackling the threat of match-fixing dates back to the years soon after 2000 with high-profile cases in sports including football, cricket and tennis.
The IOC now has its own strategy in place for the prevention of manipulation of competitions, based on three pillars:
a) regulations and legislation
b) awareness raising and capacity building
c) intelligence and investigations.
A number of sports at international and national level have set up their own integrity teams. Perhaps the most widely known one is the Tennis Integrity Unit (2008), established as a joint initiative between the International Tennis Federation, the ATP, the WTA and the Grand Slam Board. The Tennis Integrity Unit operates independently, receiving most of its alerts from regulatory commissions and betting companies. It has powers to investigate and to impose sanctions.

In 2017, the Athletics Integrity Unit was set up. Like the Tennis Integrity Unit, it also operates independently from the international federation with delegated authority.

The threat of match manipulation has also been recognised by governments and international institutions.

An example of a response at national level is the Sports Betting Group, established in the UK by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The Group brings together representatives from across sport to provide leadership and to share good practice to address the risks from sports betting corruption. It has published a Code of Practice for governing bodies.
The Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions (2014) contains detailed measures to be implemented by member states both within Europe and potentially beyond. The Convention deals with prevention, detection, and sanctioning of match manipulation in relation to sports competitions. It aims to enhance the exchange of information as well as collaboration among national and international authorities concerned, sports organisations, and other relevant actors such as bookmakers. While the Convention was adopted in 2014, the process of ratification is taking some time.
In 2015, the IOC adopted the Olympic Movement Code on the Prevention of the Manipulation of Competitions. The purpose of the Code is to define and harmonise match manipulation standards, disciplinary procedures and sanctions, across National Olympic Committees, International Federations, their members, and other IOC recognised organisations. The Code is compliant with the Council of Europe Convention.
A small industry has developed to provide services to sports bodies to help them reduce the risk of match manipulation. For example, organisations such as Sportradar and Genius Sports provide monitoring, prevention and education services to sports rights-holders and public authorities.
There has also been recognition that the format of sporting competitions should be adjusted to ensure that they do not unintentionally incentivise match manipulation. As an example, the risk of round-robin formats in some sports competitions is now well understood, where an individual or team may prefer to lose or draw the final game to secure a specific match-up in the next round.

I Trust Sport view

Match-fixing corruption in sport related to gambling is a fundamental, worldwide threat to the future of professional sport. While the issue of match-fixing is acknowledged throughout the sports movement and new education programmes and other measures have sprung up, there is still much work to be done.
I Trust Sport believes that these are some of the current priorities for tackling match manipulation:

The Gambling Match Summary

1. More international co-operation and information sharing is needed between governments, law enforcement, sports bodies and the gambling industry
2. The Council of Europe Convention has already had a positive impact but formal ratification and implementation would accelerate progress in several priority areas
3. General good governance is an important component of fight against match-fixing, whether motivated by gambling or sporting objectives. For example, if players are paid on time it reduces the vulnerability of athletes to approaches by potential fixers. Similarly, sports competitions can be structured in such a way that they do not incentivise losing or under-performing.
4. Monitoring is now in place in most major leagues and sports to check for suspicious betting patterns, particularly in high risk sports such as football, cricket and tennis. It should continue and evolve as the technology and understanding of the risks develop.
5. The legal status of the corruption of sports results varies considerably by market, making prosecutions difficult, especially across borders. The ultimate goal should be harmonising legislation.
6. The gambling industry will need to pay a significant share of the costs of tacking match-fixing. There is an argument for reallocating a portion of the taxes which betting companies already pay, at least in some markets.

Please note that this is a summary of a complex topic and is not intended to be fully comprehensive. Feel free to contact us with any comments on the material above.
See also I Trust Sport’s resources page.
Updated December 2018.

• » History

The history of humanity is inextricably linked with the history of gambling, as it seems that no matter how far back in time you go there are signs that where groups of people gathered together gambling was sure to have been taking place. Now we are not going to attempt to track every single twist and turn in the evolution of gambling in this article, but what we are going to do is to pick out some of the most important dates to act as milestones on the road to today’s gambling experience.

The Gambling Match Summary Questions

The Earliest Evidence of Gambling

While it is almost certain that some forms of betting have been taking place since the dawn of human history, the earliest concrete evidence comes from Ancient China where tiles were unearthed which appeared to have been used for a rudimentary game of chance. The Chinese ‘Book of Songs’ makes reference to “the drawing of wood” which suggests that the tiles may have formed part of a lottery type game. We have evidence in the form of keno slips which were used in about 200bc as some sort of lottery to fund state works – possibly including construction of the Great Wall of China. Lotteries continued to be used for civic purposes throughout history – Harvard and Yale were both established using lottery funds – and continue to do so until the present day.

Dicing with the Law on the Streets of Ancient Rome

The Greek poet Sophocles claimed that dice were invented by a mythological hero during the siege of Troy, and while this may have somewhat dubious basis in fact, his writings around 500bc were the first mention of dice in Greek history. We know that dice existed far earlier than this, since a pair had been uncovered from an Egyptian tomb from 3000bc, but what is certain is that the Ancient Greeks and Romans loved to gamble on all manner of things, seemingly at any given opportunity. In fact all forms of gambling – including dice games – were forbidden within the ancient city of Rome and a penalty imposed on those caught which was worth four times the stake being bet. As a result of this, ingenious Roman citizens invented the first gambling chips, so if they were nabbed by the guards they could claim to be playing only for chips and not for real money. (Note that this ruse will not work if attempted at a Vegas casino).

Playing your Cards Right in China

Most scholars agree that the first playing cards appeared in China in the 9th century, although the exact rules of the games they were used for have been lost to history. Some suggest that the cards were both the game and the stake, like trading card games played by children today, while other sources believe the first packs of cards to have been paper forms of Chinese domino. Certainly the cards used at this time bore very little relation to the standard 52 card decks we know today.

Baccarat in Italy and France

The earliest game still played in casinos today is the two player card game of Baccarat, a version of which was first mentioned as long ago as the 1400s when it migrated from Italy to France. Despite its early genesis, it took hundreds of years and various evolutions to arrive at the game we know today. Although different incarnations of the game have come and gone, the standard version played in casinos all over the world came from Cuba via Britain to the US, with a few alterations to the rules along the way. Although baccarat is effectively more of a spectator sport than a game, it is a feature of just about every casino due to its popularity with high rolling gamblers.

Blackjack through the Ages

Some suggest that the earliest forms of blackjack came from a Spanish game called ventiuna (21) as this game appeared in a book written by the author of Don Quixote in 1601. Or was it the game of trente-un (31) from 1570? Or even quinze (15) from France decades earlier? As with all of these origin stories, the inventors of games of chance were rarely noted in the historical annals. The French game of vingt-et-un in the seventeenth century is certainly a direct forefather of the modern game, and this is the game that arrived in the US along with early settlers from France. The name ‘blackjack’ was an American innovation, and linked to special promotions in Nevada casinos in the 1930s. To attract extra customers, 10 to 1 odds were paid out if the player won with a black Jack of Clubs or Spades together with an Ace of Spades. The special odds didn’t last long, but the name is still with us today.

First Casinos in Italy

The Gambling Match Summary Definition

The earliest gambling houses which could reasonably be compared to casinos started to appear in the early 17th century in Italy. For example, in 1638, the Ridotto was established in Venice to provide a controlled gambling environment amidst the chaos of the annual carnival season. Casinos started to spring up all over continental Europe during the 19th century, while at the same time in the US much more informal gambling houses were in vogue. In fact steam boats taking prosperous farmers and traders up and down the Mississippi provided the venue for a lot of informal gambling stateside. Now when we think of casinos we tend to picture the Las Vegas Strip, which grew out of the ashes of the Depression in America.

The Little Wheel in Paris

Roulette as we know it today originated in the gaming houses of Paris, where players would have been familiar with the wheel we now refer to (ironically enough) as the American Roulette wheel. It took another 50 years until the ‘European’ version came along with just one green zero, and generations of roulette players can be grateful for that. During the course of the 19th century roulette grew in popularity, and when the famous Monte Carlo casino adopted the single zero form of the game this spread throughout Europe and most of the world, although the Americans stuck to the original double zero wheels.

Poker: Bust to Boom

It’s hard to pin down the precise origin of poker – as with a lot of the games mentioned here, poker seems to have grown organically over decades and possibly centuries from various different card games. Some have poker’s antecedents coming from seventeenth century Persia, while others say that the game we know today was inspired by a French game called Poque. What we do know for sure is that an English actor by the name of Joseph Crowell reported that a recognizable form of the game was being played in New Orleans in 1829, so that is as good a date as any for the birth of poker. The growth of the game’s popularity was fairly sluggish up until world poker tournaments started being played in Vegas in the 1970s. However poker really exploded with the advent of online poker and televised events allowing spectators to see the players’ hands. When amateur player Chris Moneymaker qualified for and won the 2003 world poker championship after qualifying through online play, it allowed everyone to picture themselves as online poker millionaires.

One Armed Bandits Appear in New York

The first gambling machine which resembled the slots we know today was one developed by Messrs Sittman and Pitt in New York, which used the 52 cards on drum reels to make a sort of poker game. Around the same time the Liberty Bell machine was invented by a Charles Fey in San Francisco. This machine proved much more practical in the sense that winnings could be precisely regulated, and marked the beginning of the real slot game revolution. The fact that some new video slot games still feature bell symbols dates back to this early invention. While early machines spewed out cigars and gum instead of money, the money dispensing versions soon became a staple in bars and casinos around the globe, and when the first video slot was invented in 1976 this paved the way for the online video slots which were to follow.

Gambling in the US: Two Sides of the Same Coin

The United States has always had an up and down relationship with gambling, dating back to when the very first European settlers arrived. Whereas Puritan bands of settlers banned gambling outright in their new settlements, those emigrating from England had a more lenient view of gambling and were more than happy to tolerate it. This dichotomous relationship has continued until now, and in 1910 public pressure led to a nationwide prohibition on gambling. Just like the alcohol prohibition of the same era, this proved somewhat difficult to enforce and gambling continued on in an only slightly discreet manner. The Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression that this spawned in the early 1930s led to gambling being legalized again, as for many this was the only prospect of alleviating the grinding poverty which they suffered through. Although gambling is legal in a number of States today –most famously in Las Vegas, Nevada - online gambling is still something of a grey area in the United States. Right now, many international internet casinos are unable to accept American clients, although the signs are that this will change in the near future.

The New Frontier for Gambling

Microgaming is one of the largest casino and slot game developers in the world today, and they are also considered to be pioneers of online gambling. The leap into the world of virtual casinos was taken all the way back in 1994, which in internet terms is kind of like 2300bc! Online gaming was worth over a billion dollars within 5 years, and today is a multibillion dollar industry with over a thousand online casinos and growing. The first live dealer casinos appeared in 2003 courtesy of Playtech, bringing us closer to a hybrid between brick and mortar casinos and the virtual world.

Gambling Has Gone Mobile

Since New Jersey legalized online gambling in 2011, there has been a boom in the interest people have in it. America has seen a move towards legalizing it state by state, as well as experiencing the rapid rise in mobile gambling. Across the globe, internet users are gradually veering away from their desktops and towards their handheld devices. This is true of online gamblers too, wanting to be able to enjoy their favorite games whilst on the go. The top gambling sites out there have recognized a market and have stepped up to deliver. With a wave of impressive mobile focused online gambling destinations taking the world by storm, it's safe to say that desktops are being left far behind in favour of more mobile alternatives.

…The Future

What Comes Next?

It is just about as difficult to predict the future for gambling as it is to uncover some of the origins of the gambling games we know so well today. Much of the focus at the moment is on the mobile gaming market, with online casinos scrambling to make more content compatible with the latest hand held devices. Virtual reality technology is just taking its first steps as a commercial proposition, and you can be sure that there will be gambling applications down the road. How would you like to sit around a virtual poker table with a bunch of your friends from all over the world, share a few laughs, try to tell if you can spot a tell-tale facial tick; and all this from the comfort of your home? VR Headsets can make it happen – maybe not today, but certainly just a few years down the track if technology continues to advance in bounds and leaps.

And after that? Well who knows, but when it comes to gambling all things are possible.

References

• Dice: Game Pieces (Britannica.com)
• Baccarat (card game) (Wikipedia.org)
• Twenty-One (card game) (Wikipedia.org)
• How Casinos Work (HowStuffWorks.com)
• Where Did Poker Originate? (History.com)
• History Of Poker (Wopc.co.uk)
• Chris Moneymaker (Wikipedia.org)
• Historical Interlude (VideoGameHistorian.com)
• Charles Fey and San Francieco's Liberty Bell Slot Machine (California Historical Quarterly)
• Microgaming: About Us (Microgaming.co.uk)
• New Jersey Now Allows Gambling via Internet (NYTimes.com)