For legal reasons, all BahnBet users, their devices, and their emotional baggage are hereby classified as legal residents of Schleswig-Holstein, the only German state where gambling is fully permitted.
This is non-negotiable. By creating an account, you have moved to Schleswig-Holstein. Your new postal code is 24103. You now speak rudimentary Danish."
> In January 2026, Germany's federal court ruled that purchasing a Deutsche Bahn ticket constitutes a form of gambling (Glücksspiel), citing that “the probability of arriving on time is statistically comparable to a coin flip.”
> Rather than contest the ruling, DBSM embraced it. If riding our trains is gambling, then passengers deserve the right to hedge.
> BahnBet is our answer: a platform where you can bet against your own train, turning delays into suffering, and suffering into profit. Every minute of punctuality you lose, you can win back in deliciously valuable caßh.
for the people who wouldn't have inadvertently clicked on the website: it's not real money, it's a campaign to nudge the German provider to care about their infamous delays
I wonder how hard it would be to get a court ruling or new law that DB is required to bet on every arrival, and make their bets public in easily-digestible formats like .csv
I'd really like to see that happen for the S-trains, as well--DB loves nothing more than continuing to project an on-time arrival on the station board, as the time of departure comes and goes and other trains arrive and depart.
It's incredible that about 80% of people in this thread seem to be commenting without having looked at the website.
In defense of Deutsche Bahn, countries with comparable infrastructure but more reliable transport have put in about twice as much money per capita for the last 30 years at least.
Also, it went through a pseudo-privatisation back then, which hasn't helped (just private enough to focus on quarterly profits by letting bridges decay so that they have to be rebuilt or repaired in a few years, just public enough that they have to serve a lot of non-lucrative areas by law).
I have to admit I'm rather biased as I work there, but I would say most employees do the best they can with the hand they're dealt. It's just that politicians dealt them a really bad hand. And if Germany were to properly invest in infrastructure from now on, there's so much stuff that has to be repaired that reliability would go down even more in the next decade or so (seriously, this is not something you could fix in a year or two, even with hundreds of billions).
> In defense of Deutsche Bahn, countries with comparable infrastructure but more reliable transport have put in about twice as much money per capita for the last 30 years at least.
Why is that "in defense?"
When you let your infrastructure rot away since the 90s of the last century for something as complex as a train network by brutally underinvesting.
Then you seriously fucked up. There's nothing to defend here.
I think the defense is that it's the fault of the politicians (CDU/CSU, actually), as they are the ones allocating funds towards train infrastructure. The Deutsche Bahn is state-owned in all but name (which was one of the major fuckups of the last red-green government).
Yes everyone does their best but in typical german fashion nobody does the right thing because it would mean to break some rules or habit. Its a general problem but it shows hard at DB.
As someone who is in a group who regularly trashes DB at will, no one blames the line employees, but definitely blame people in upper levels of management
Privitisation is a huge curse, and a tremendous scam perpetuated by capitalist financiers. Where has it ever produced better results? No private entity can provide a service at cost like the government can.
I am pretty sure that they know about the delays. A nice thing about the Deutsche Bahn is that they exist. It's not the case in every country in the world.
Sure, they can improve, but it seems possible. The French SNCF has improved a lot in the last decade, for instance.
This is true. DB trains get me from one point to another point, and in my experience, are usually not more than a few hours delayed end-to-end.
Remember that if your train is delayed more than a certain amount (30 minutes?) you have the legal right to ignore the routing on your ticket and take any train you want, that leads towards the destination on your ticket. Consider it an adventure. The app can suggest alternative routes in real-time, and you can also ask at the info desk at any station that has one.
The problem is the infrastructure.
There is already the Generalsanierung under way, it will take a decade and secure the status quo.
A lot of delays are due to rail corridors being at capacity, but overboarding bureaucracy makes any improvement there a generational project.
Hamburg - Hanover has been discussed for decades with strong opposition from NIMBY groups with no solution in sight.
But even if there is no opposition things take ages.
E.g. for restoring the 2nd track and electrification between Cottbus and Görlitz the plan is now to finish the project by 2041.
This is absolutely insane for 100km of track that were removed as WW2 reparations.
And looking at previous projects it's unlikely to finish in time.
The new S-Bahn track in Berlin between the main station and Gesundbrunnen was supposed to open in 2017. It got delayed over and over and is now finally scheduled to open by the end of this month - just a delay of 9 years.
And that's with an interim station because the real station at Hauptbahnhof wasn't finished in time - and no intermediate stop, that's now also in the planning phase and will mean the line will have to be interrupted again in the near future
For Deutsche Bahn, freelance contracting jobs in their IT famously always require 2+ years experience in train infrastructure companies as a hard requirement. Not joking, this is a common pattern in their job ads. Look at this ad, where they are looking for a Go/React/RabbitMQ expert: https://www.freelancermap.de/projekt/senior-fullstack-entwic...
Why is that an issue? It's a freelance gig, so you are free to ask for whatever requirements you want.
But I remember being interviewed for a cybersecurity job at Siemens's Trains division and the german guys there started grilling me on some obscure cybersecurity standards used by the rail industry, even though that was never in my pentest resume and it's something that can be learned on the job.
Germans really hate hiring people who don't 100% fit a job description no matter how impossible it is. No wonder their economy is stagnant.
When I was young (70s-80s), we were all amazed by Deutsche Bahn's punctuality and quality of service (second only to the Chemins de fer fédéraux suisses). Now, French and Italian trains are a lot more reliable, which is rather strange.
The Swiss Federal Railways asked German trains to wait at the border and has even ban many German trains to enter Switzerland over excessive delays to prevent their train schedule from being affected.
The site is hilarious by the way. I hope it will have an effect on DB, even though I doubt it.
The proliferation of online gambling is IMO one of the bigger under-reported trends in modern society, and has a real potential for massive externalities throughout society.
I'm aware, but the existence of this site both reminded me of the existence of this problem, and IMO likely will inspire polymarket or some other crypto gambling site to offer the 'real' version of this.
it was always going to happen. there was even an episode of The Office where they started betting on meaningless outcomes for a little sense of purpose.
It's all sliding slope when the only way an average citizen can reap the economic growth of their own country is stock market and saving only makes them poorer.
Yeah, you would have to focus on buying things you actually need. Be able to save for and look forward towards a stable future.
Don't get a new pocket computer every year because the software is not updated anymore. Use fewer subscription services? Maybe do away with the disposable vapes with lithium ion batteries in them.
Yes, but simple inflation isn't the problem. In a stable economy, we spend money as we received it, and take on loans for large purchases. In fact the economy was that way before. Now, things are too unsteady for that.
> In a stable economy, we spend money as we received it, and take on loans for large purchases. In fact the economy was that way before.
You used to be able to save for most large purchases without going into debt. Even cars.
But no, these days cars tend to be so goddamn expensive while at the same time being so low-margin products for the dealerships that even if you theoretically can pay in cash, the salespeople do their best to force you into some sort of debt because the kickback from that is the only way they make money. And practically, rents suck up so much of your income you can't save anyway.
Having a gambling addict in your life can be just as destructive if not more destructive as having a drug addict in your life.
This is something that most people don't currently understand because most people don't really have much experience with gambling addicts and the sort of horrible things they will do to satisfy their cravings, but as the amount of gamblers in society grows explosively, we're all going to be feeling the effects of being surrounded by these people.
Say you have to pick a flight and you take the train to the airport. You can bet your train will be delayed, so if it ever happens at least you'll get a payout.
I'd love to see a Japanese version of this. "Bet which of one of JR Chūō Line, JR Saikyō Line, and Tokyo Metro Tōzai Line will NOT get a delay certificate printed today".
Look at you, complaining about your famously on schedule Japanese trains! ;)
Over here in France a train is considered on time if it has up to a 15mn delay. We can ask for a very partial refund only if it has at least 30mn of delay, and we get a voucher to book another train that will also be late.
Yeah, unfortunely it isn't that hard to win a bit, the situation has become relatively bad with delays on average of 30m, and even need to switch trains, better have a few alternative routes at hand, as plan on how to continue the trip when a connection is lost.
German trains are absolute chaos. Tickets are sent via PDF for trains running 3 hours late. I was in Frankfurt last year getting to Cologne and back a few times.
Coming from someone who has to commute via South Western railway into London everyday.
German trains have very much to complain about, but honestly, their customer facing IT is pretty good. I've not had to deal with PDF tickets nor printed tickets in years.
The website and app work well, in my experience. It's all pretty sleek and modern, too. It's the one area they do a good job in, to be honest.
Absolutely, it's probably the most consumer-friendly and reliable part of all of the Bahn services. Personnel is usually pretty great too, and that despite them having to suffer the most from all the inept decisions made in the upper ranks.
The DB App is great. It lets you buy tickets, informs you of delays and possible alternatives especially if you miss your connection, you can file a request for a refund, you can reserve a seat, you can use the comfort check-in and check yourself in, so you wouldn't have to show your ticket. You can even request a refund up to two hours after you purchased your ticket, without any fees.
No PDFs or print-outs or forms are needed.
Yes, you still get a PDF ticket sent to your email, but you aren't required to use it.
What is the issue with receiving tickets as PDF? It is the most flexible yet digital option. PDFs work regardless of the medium. You can show it in the phone or you can always add them to DB Navigator App anyways or if you would like to be old school, just print them.
> Tickets are sent via PDF for trains running 3 hours late
I agree that the delays are unacceptable, but the official app is great w/ digital tickets + seat registration, you don't need the PDF at all (it's even optional during checkout, so if you don't like them you can just uncheck the box lol)
I was considering trains for a Berlin-Frankfurt trip, and after looking at the performance of the preferred train, I'm not sure I want to still go that way: 25% cancellations :/
Since downdetector has been bought, we can make a new site, where people can bet on what sites will be down. The whole market can be automated fairly easily to check whether a given website is responding.
This should divert a substantial proportion of the world's DDoS capacity.
You surely haven't read the whole of it. There's more!
> Sinderella
She has to leave the ball by midnight — but her last train was cancelled. Now she roams the platform in glass slippers, waiting for a replacement bus.
I have loved my journeys through Germany in recent years; locals are more than willing to speak English to you and are happy to direct you around.
This does hit home though: I did miss an international flight due to the S-Bahn out of Munich. Eventually they were like "this train is so delayed, we're going to make everyone get off and catch the next one". ::shrugs::
...and the Munich airport is just painful in general (the flight status boards shorten the flight numbers with ellipsis for instance).
For context, David Kriesel gave the infamous talk called “BahnMining” at 36C3 highlighting this. IIUC it’s only available in German: https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk
You have obviously not read the jurisdiction notice:
> Jurisdiction notice
> For legal reasons, all BahnBet users, their devices, and their emotional baggage are hereby classified as legal residents of Schleswig-Holstein, the only German state where gambling is fully permitted.
> This is non-negotiable. By creating an account, you have moved to Schleswig-Holstein. Your new postal code is 24103. You now speak rudimentary Danish.
That was far crazier than I expected going into it... To the point I've seen Hollywood movies with far more believable plots that people would find unrealistic.
Every single thing one does in life is a gamble that carries a probability of success.
Getting a degree. Investing in a business. Investing in a relationship. Having kids. Smoking. Booking a flight cheaper but with no possibility of cancellation. Moving town. Not moving town.
I could go on forever.
Everything is a gamble. Some forms of gambling are more socially acceptable than others.
The difference, in everyhthing, is emotional control and knowing how much you stand to lose if it goes wrong.
We'll have won politics the day people understand that individual responsibility doesn't work at scale, and that, on average, people just respond to incentives.
The difference is that "good gambling" has a positive expectation value. Getting a degree confers knowledge that you think enables you to do new and valuable things that exceed the cost of the degree. Booking without cancellation saves money on average if you are more certain of your travel plans than the airline. Smoking makes you feel good, I'm told. I wouldn't do that.
The complexity of operations is astounding and the organisational challenges (e.g. railway deregulation push) make it even harder.
"Jurisdiction notice
For legal reasons, all BahnBet users, their devices, and their emotional baggage are hereby classified as legal residents of Schleswig-Holstein, the only German state where gambling is fully permitted.
This is non-negotiable. By creating an account, you have moved to Schleswig-Holstein. Your new postal code is 24103. You now speak rudimentary Danish."
Så, norsk da. :)
> Rather than contest the ruling, DBSM embraced it. If riding our trains is gambling, then passengers deserve the right to hedge.
> BahnBet is our answer: a platform where you can bet against your own train, turning delays into suffering, and suffering into profit. Every minute of punctuality you lose, you can win back in deliciously valuable caßh.
It also speaks to the world that we live in these days - I'm having a hard time separating satire from reality.
I'd really like to see that happen for the S-trains, as well--DB loves nothing more than continuing to project an on-time arrival on the station board, as the time of departure comes and goes and other trains arrive and depart.
In defense of Deutsche Bahn, countries with comparable infrastructure but more reliable transport have put in about twice as much money per capita for the last 30 years at least.
Also, it went through a pseudo-privatisation back then, which hasn't helped (just private enough to focus on quarterly profits by letting bridges decay so that they have to be rebuilt or repaired in a few years, just public enough that they have to serve a lot of non-lucrative areas by law).
I have to admit I'm rather biased as I work there, but I would say most employees do the best they can with the hand they're dealt. It's just that politicians dealt them a really bad hand. And if Germany were to properly invest in infrastructure from now on, there's so much stuff that has to be repaired that reliability would go down even more in the next decade or so (seriously, this is not something you could fix in a year or two, even with hundreds of billions).
Why is that "in defense?"
When you let your infrastructure rot away since the 90s of the last century for something as complex as a train network by brutally underinvesting.
Then you seriously fucked up. There's nothing to defend here.
OMG. Employers to never work for:
- the Bund - the Oeffentlichen - Deutsche Bahn - Unions, especially ver.di - established / legacy parties
It’s almost as if people are tired of having betting shoved down their throats.
Sure, they can improve, but it seems possible. The French SNCF has improved a lot in the last decade, for instance.
Remember that if your train is delayed more than a certain amount (30 minutes?) you have the legal right to ignore the routing on your ticket and take any train you want, that leads towards the destination on your ticket. Consider it an adventure. The app can suggest alternative routes in real-time, and you can also ask at the info desk at any station that has one.
A lot of delays are due to rail corridors being at capacity, but overboarding bureaucracy makes any improvement there a generational project.
Hamburg - Hanover has been discussed for decades with strong opposition from NIMBY groups with no solution in sight.
But even if there is no opposition things take ages. E.g. for restoring the 2nd track and electrification between Cottbus and Görlitz the plan is now to finish the project by 2041.
This is absolutely insane for 100km of track that were removed as WW2 reparations.
And looking at previous projects it's unlikely to finish in time.
The new S-Bahn track in Berlin between the main station and Gesundbrunnen was supposed to open in 2017. It got delayed over and over and is now finally scheduled to open by the end of this month - just a delay of 9 years.
And that's with an interim station because the real station at Hauptbahnhof wasn't finished in time - and no intermediate stop, that's now also in the planning phase and will mean the line will have to be interrupted again in the near future
But I remember being interviewed for a cybersecurity job at Siemens's Trains division and the german guys there started grilling me on some obscure cybersecurity standards used by the rail industry, even though that was never in my pentest resume and it's something that can be learned on the job.
Germans really hate hiring people who don't 100% fit a job description no matter how impossible it is. No wonder their economy is stagnant.
Driving slower can make things more predictable and reduce wear, making breakdowns less likely. Trains being on time is all about consistency.
The Swiss Federal Railways asked German trains to wait at the border and has even ban many German trains to enter Switzerland over excessive delays to prevent their train schedule from being affected.
The site is hilarious by the way. I hope it will have an effect on DB, even though I doubt it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/01/america-polym...
Though, I probably shouldn't have even talked about the reporting, and instead just said "this is something we're under-worried about as a society".
Why ever do anything at all with your money, ever, otherwise? Except for basic needs.
You used to be able to save for most large purchases without going into debt. Even cars.
But no, these days cars tend to be so goddamn expensive while at the same time being so low-margin products for the dealerships that even if you theoretically can pay in cash, the salespeople do their best to force you into some sort of debt because the kickback from that is the only way they make money. And practically, rents suck up so much of your income you can't save anyway.
This is something that most people don't currently understand because most people don't really have much experience with gambling addicts and the sort of horrible things they will do to satisfy their cravings, but as the amount of gamblers in society grows explosively, we're all going to be feeling the effects of being surrounded by these people.
An insurance of sorts, so to speak.
Over here in France a train is considered on time if it has up to a 15mn delay. We can ask for a very partial refund only if it has at least 30mn of delay, and we get a voucher to book another train that will also be late.
Coming from someone who has to commute via South Western railway into London everyday.
Sad state of affairs for Germany.
The website and app work well, in my experience. It's all pretty sleek and modern, too. It's the one area they do a good job in, to be honest.
No PDFs or print-outs or forms are needed.
Yes, you still get a PDF ticket sent to your email, but you aren't required to use it.
Could be a force of habit for UK but that's mostly how we do tickets. Printing is usually still an option.
I agree that the delays are unacceptable, but the official app is great w/ digital tickets + seat registration, you don't need the PDF at all (it's even optional during checkout, so if you don't like them you can just uncheck the box lol)
The ticket office did have impressive throughput and lines building up.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260303171349/https://bahn.bet/
Since downdetector has been bought, we can make a new site, where people can bet on what sites will be down. The whole market can be automated fairly easily to check whether a given website is responding.
This should divert a substantial proportion of the world's DDoS capacity.
Bet on which companies will be hacked next! Divert some hacker capacity…
Sick burn hahaha
> Sinderella She has to leave the ball by midnight — but her last train was cancelled. Now she roams the platform in glass slippers, waiting for a replacement bus.
This does hit home though: I did miss an international flight due to the S-Bahn out of Munich. Eventually they were like "this train is so delayed, we're going to make everyone get off and catch the next one". ::shrugs::
...and the Munich airport is just painful in general (the flight status boards shorten the flight numbers with ellipsis for instance).
(Asking since polymarket is forbidden in DE)
> Jurisdiction notice
> For legal reasons, all BahnBet users, their devices, and their emotional baggage are hereby classified as legal residents of Schleswig-Holstein, the only German state where gambling is fully permitted.
> This is non-negotiable. By creating an account, you have moved to Schleswig-Holstein. Your new postal code is 24103. You now speak rudimentary Danish.
> We are not accepting appeals at this time.
Whoever downvoted this wants you to ignore centuries of history and law. Those who ignore the lessons of the past learn wisdom in blood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffin_ship_(insurance)#:~:tex... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Insurance_Act_1745#:~:t...
Getting a degree. Investing in a business. Investing in a relationship. Having kids. Smoking. Booking a flight cheaper but with no possibility of cancellation. Moving town. Not moving town.
I could go on forever.
Everything is a gamble. Some forms of gambling are more socially acceptable than others.
The difference, in everyhthing, is emotional control and knowing how much you stand to lose if it goes wrong.