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Gambling is an adversarial relationship. Insurance is co-operative.

When I insure my house against fire neither I nor the insurance agent want my house to burn down.

When I gamble on Man Utd to win 2-0 with Pogba to score the bookie doesn't want that to happen and I do.

Anything that is co-operative is insurance, anything that is adversarial is gambling.



Just as a side note; A bookmaker isn't actually your adversary in the way you mean it here.

A bookmaker (as defined) in a normal? environment shouldn't care for a particular result in a gamble. All they care for is the profit they make from squeezing the odds on both ends of a gamble. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_of_bookmaking


I went for a relatively specialised market in the scorecast for my example as the bookmaker won't have a balanced booked as there are just too many options to cover.


It's cooperative before an event happens, then adversarial while deciding whether an event is covered by the policy. Nobody wants a house to blow down in a hurricane, but they don't necessarily agree on the value of the property or how much of the damage was caused in which ways (wind, water, acts of God, etc.).




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