Leeson, Lester, Callahan and betting

Last night (to early this morning) I spent some time with Jan Lester, Gene Callahan, and Peter Leeson, the new Hayek Fellow at the London School of Economics. Before our congregation devolved into hoisting one another, and two at once (Lester hoisted both Gene and I on his shoulders), we had an interesting conversation about betting in Britain.

If you don't know, all sorts of betting is legal in England. You can bet on just about anything, including politics in obscure countries like, uhm, Canada, say. A website, betfair.com, is the most interesting case of this: It is basically just a shell, allowing for each of us to offer odds, take them, sell them, and so on. Not always does the market end up at 100%, and you can follow the ups and downs as often as you like.

Meanwhile, for your arbitraging benefit, you can take a look at oddschecker.com and use their calculator to find opportunities in differences between odds at various bookmakers and online betting markets.