Um... That's not how betting works
There are three missions on the game's Vice desk, and two of them are ruined, as mentioned before, by the newspaper-related cut-scenes that spoil all of their key plot details. The third mission, while more satisfying than the other two, is fundamentally undercut at the writing stage based on a problem at the scripting stage: The writer/director doesn't seem to understand how gambling works, at all.
This segment, "The Set-Up", is based around the same premise as the Bruce Willis segment from the film Pulp Fiction—a man agrees to throw a fight, then bets on himself, wins the fight, and tries to escape with the money. Complications ensue when his moll tries to run out with the money, and his corrupt manager tries to murder him. Further complications come from the fact that seemingly everyone in town knew about this fix, and bet on the other guy—including one of the cops now trying to track him down!
Nothing wrong with that plot, right? Well, not in theory, but the way it's written, the story makes no logical sense. Why? Because the boxer being asked to throw the fight was not heavily favored to win it.
For educational purposes, allow me to present a brief clip from my favourite movie—
*video removed due to copyright issue*
That's the key element to learn from this clip—you only ever pay the favorite to throw a fight, because that's the only way to get a decent return. If I were to bet thirty dollars on the favorite in John Polito's example and he wins, I'd only walk away with forty (my thirty back, plus the ten I won in the bet). While the underdog pays out 3-1, the favorite is 1-3, the "short money" of the clip. So if I bet on the 3-1 underdog, and that guy wins, I'm in for one hell of a payday—120 dollars.
Multiply that a few times, and suddenly the appeal of fixing a fight becomes obvious.
So what's wrong with L.A. Noire's version of this classic tale? The man being paid to throw the fight isn't the favourite. He's the underdog. The boxer is referred to as a bum, a never-was, the kind of guy who other boxers get a fight with just to polish up their records a little. Here are the odds on him the day of the fight:
That averages out to about 20:1. Which is just crazy, as boxing odds go, but let's move on—why would anyone pay this man to lose the fight? The gambling community is already as sure as they can possibly be that he's going to lose it. They're essentially begging people to bet on him by offering odds like that. Really, he's basically the ideal candidate for the kind of upset victory that a guy looking to fix a fight would want.
Why am I focusing so much on this error? Well, not just because it's egregious, and the kind of thing you'd think the writer/director ought to know if he's going to be writing about the seedy underbelly of American crime, but rather because it makes all the people fussing over the fight look patently ridiculous. Why do they care so much about this fight if they stand to make essentially no money off of it?
Roy Earle, Cole's corrupt partner spends the entire mission bitching about all the money that the fleeing boxer has cost him—and while it's true that Roy lost the fifty dollars that he bet, how much did he stand to win if the fight had gone as planned?
That's right—Roy Earle is getting all kinds of upset over two dollars and fifty cents.
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