Odds are set so equal amounts of money are put on either side of the wager. However, the show likes to put high odds against The Player to make him seem like more of an underdog. In addition, the Pit Boss seems to pick crimes with extremely high initial odds against, which seems to contradict the premise. Odds over 100:1 wouldn't seem to interest the ultra-wealthy any more than betting on the Harlem Globetrotters to win. However, it's a justified case of Rule of Drama; the crimes the Pit Boss selects he chooses for entertainment value; a kidnapping by an extremely competent terrorist group, an armed robbery by an old friend of Alex's who has gone insane, one of the ten best snipers in the world. A lot of the odds aren't based on if Alex will merely fail in preventing the crime, but the likelihood that the target will kill him. Again, Rule of Drama applies; The Gamblers are some very bored sociopaths with way too much money who want to scratch the same itch as middle-class people who blow the month's rent on horses or scratch tickets, and the odds on those are every bit as stupid.
The implication from the Word of God history that James Bond-type characters (or the actual James Bond) were actually Players. This is the kind of horrifying as it indicates this is the world where rich sociopaths like those in SPECTRE are the ones who don't play the Game.
On a meta level, the types of backgrounds and people the Players are drawn from are a commentary/reflection of different time period's ideas of what is a badass and what was popular. First it was mobsters, then ex-soldiers, then '60s spies. Mr. Johnson's time as the Player (1990-1998) fits in when criminals and people with ties to criminals were the Action Hero. Victoria in the 2000s fits with the rise of the Action Girl. And Alex? Ex FBI spec ops, fitting into both Elites Are More Glamorous and the modern mainstream action hero character mold.
In the first decades of the Game, it accidentally triggered World War One, and the House was established to keep future bets from escalating to that level again. Fast-forward to World War Two, and it seems that was a bust - unless the Gamblers were betting on the outcome of every aspect of that too, and the House kept it from being even worse than it was.
Considering how much support it took - bribes, passports, travel expenses, high-threat conspirators - the House saw Nine-Eleven coming. And the Player of 2001 either failed to stop it or wasn't given a mission to do so.
The Gamblers are said to cause global turmoil out of boredom. This includes starting wars and killing presidents. Considering that the Gamblers have been taking advantage of communications since at least the invention of the telegraph (1837), this means that there's a chance that the Gamblers had a hand in the deaths of Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901) during the period the Gamblers were allowed to operate unfettered. Then there's the even longer list of assassination attempts on US presidents, leading one to wonder just how much of a hand the Gamblers and the House had in causing or preventing these events.
The guy who came up with the system is supposedly Thomas Edison. This is even more far-fetched than a crime-prediction system; Edison was a "businessman", not an inventor - he hired inventors and patented their inventions under his name. It's a bit like giving Edward Teller sole credit for the hydrogen bomb.
Makes sense, though. It could be that Edison claimed credit for inventing the first iteration of Ada and pocketed the lion's share of the cash involved after having people like Nikola Tesla do the actual work.
, leading one to wonder just how much of a hand the Gamblers and the House had in causing or preventing these events.