If the issue of resource scarcity is similar, the wagers today are a bit bigger.
Wagers are growing that the RBA will slash yields towards 2.25% within a year.
This year, for the first time, wagers were taken on whether Mr Kobayashi could maintain his dominance.
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You probably also know about some of the offshoot wagers that are available.
In part, this is because that is where the market is: Europeans place some 40% of all online wagers.
Some racing fans plan out their wagers days in advance, poring over statistics and previous races to make an informed decision.
Over the long haul, even good players will lose a percentage of their wagers (usually less than 1%) to the casino.
Political pressure has already led credit-card firms and PayPal, an online payment system, to stop customers transferring cash for online wagers.
Similarly, when gamblers are on winning streaks, they keep betting or even increase their wagers to take advantage of their good luck.
Vegas bookmakers are prohibited by law from taking wagers on political races.
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What users can see are the names of other players who are signed on, along with the amount and type of their wagers.
They usually contain derivatives, that is, they are expensive wagers based on other vehicles such as stocks, bonds, mortgage securities, commodities or currencies.
Ed DeRosa is director of marketing for Brisnet.com, which is a subsidiary of Churchill Downs, Incorporated, the company that offers the future wagers.
With just under 1 hour before post time, bettors are racking up the wagers but not changing the odds on the Kentucky Derby much.
When the bond market stumbled, this bet (which the firm has since reversed) paid off handsomely, as did wagers on commodities and emerging-market currencies.
And while neither Wagers nor her lab partners have any direct connection with these companies, it is certain that the firms are watching them.
Naturally, launch dates tend to have the solidity of Jello, so don't be dropping your life savings on any wagers here with your shady friends.
Participants and their supporters can both make wagers of all sorts.
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The son of grain and pig farmers in Saskatchewan, Ayre, 50, set up his company in Costa Rica and handled billions of dollars in online wagers.
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At least 15 names were considered ahead of Bergoglio in 12 books accepting wagers on the papal election in Europe and online outside the United States.
The inflows more than offset the net cash that investors had yanked from the fund last year as Mr. Gross was stung by ill-timed wagers on Treasury bonds.
But those bets are starting to look like losing wagers.
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Managed-money funds held net-long positions, or wagers on rising prices, totaling 35, 159 contracts on the Comex as of Feb. 15, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed last week.
Netted also suggests double-checking your wagers against another prediction market, InTrade, where the action for Best Picture shows Hurt Locker and Avatar way way ahead of the pack.
Traders said part of the plunge in prices was a result of investors choosing to sell gold instead of putting up more money as collateral to keep their wagers open.
"We take seriously the instances where there is misrepresentation, fraud or the misuse of insurance policies as wagers on human life, and where appropriate, take action, " said Gina Collopy O'Connell, a senior executive.
Withrow noted that there was more money changing hands in side wagers than in actual donations, and that was when Maloney and Hodulich realized that the best fundraising potential was in performance-based wagers.
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TAB, New Zealand's official betting agency, which set up a large tent across the road from the competition, expanded the number and types of shearing-related bets to meet demand, taking wagers in different divisions.
The start-up has received funding from the aforementioned organizations with the intention of producing a platform that fuses sports and social casino to attract new social gamers through wagers, challenges, pools, trivia games and more.
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