Rambo and the machine learning models helping Sportsbet up its games

A Netflix-style recommendation engine on steroids, a Google AdWords beater and a souped-up game simulator are among a number of machine learning models at work behind the scenes at online bookmaker Sportsbet, the company has revealed. "Our goal is to improve the customer experience at every customer interaction," said Tony Gruebner, the company's general manager, analytics, insights and modelling. Speaking at the Gartner Data and Analytics Summit in Sydney last week, Gruebner explained: "One of the best ways of doing that is to build great data products utilising the company's wealth of data – which is exponentially growing – and also machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities." Sportsbet helped make gambling mainstream in Australia, was bought out by Paddy Power in 2010 and quickly became the country's biggest corporate online bookmaker, a title it still holds. It makes around 1.7 billion price updates, offers punters 11 million markets and takes 240 million bets every year.