Things are getting tense between the cat and I: a 'resolutions' and gambling update
Wait, in my last post, and first of this year, did I really
claim that I was going to post 52 times this year? Seriously? What the hell was
I thinking?
I referenced the financial writer and investing guru
Jason Zweig in my last post, and this is what he said at the start of his
article on resolutions:
‘Don’t resolve to do something so easy it doesn’t
require a resolution, nor something so
hard no resolution could make it achievable. Resolutions are for raising
the bar, not for laying the bar on the ground and hopping over it or for
putting the bar too high for anyone to reach.
Make all your
resolutions in public. The fear of social pressure, whether it materializes
or not, will help you keep your word, since you are pledging not just to
yourself but to others…’ (emphasis mine)
[Gulp.]
Talk about pressure: I’m already being asked about this!
Way, way back in my undergraduate days, I took a
history course on the Holocaust, and I had exactly one assignment, which would
determine 100% of my mark for the course: a 50,000 word essay. That was it. It
was assigned at the start of the semester, but when did I finally get down to
writing it? Like every great procrastinating university student, probably
around 48 hours before it was due. I’m sure I had done all my research (my
memory’s a bit fuzzy on this one) and just had the writing itself to do, which
was still no mean feat. Those were my pre-coffee days (I hardly drank coffee at
university) and so my stimulant of choice over that 48-hour period was Mountain
Dew. I stayed up 48 hours straight and must have guzzled about 20 litres of
that crap, which I thought may have rendered me sterile.
Fast forward a few years, to when I was doing my
Master’s at Edinburgh. For my class on Sub-Saharan African Politics, we had to
write a 1000 word essay each week, around 8-9 essays in total over the term.
Which of these tasks was more challenging? Without
question, the 1000-worders. Keeping up a regular writing habit, and worst of
all, being concise, was unbearably hard. I think it goes without saying that
brevity isn’t exactly one of my strengths, and although I’ve been telling
myself for years and years that I need to reduce my crapping on and keep to a
strict word limit, and to write more regularly, it never comes to pass. I’d
make a downright lousy journalist.
Let’s see if I can stick to some sort of word count.
And some type of regularity.
And now, due to overwhelming popular demand, an update
on my cat/wife gambling competition. Fiasco would be a better word for it.
To remind you, these were the end-of-regular-season
final standings:
Me: 49-53
Cat: 50-52
Olya: 59-43
And now, after 8 playoff games – with just 3 to go –
the latest:
Me: 55-55
Cat: 54-56
Olya: 63-47
So, despite a mini-winning streak where I made up 2
games on Olya, it’s all over, yet again, and to my shame and utter
mortification, I have lost to my wife, who knows almost nothing about football.
In 5 years of this competition, I have won once, the cat has won once, and Olya
has now won 3 times.
Or…has she?
The Layman’s
Guide to [American] football gambling, in brief
You’ll have to bear with me because this may be
slightly complicated, and probably of very little interest to the vast majority
of my readers. It may get a bit heavy with terminology and lingo but let me
explain how this stuff works (if you’re a big-time gambler, stop reading now,
because I’m going to simplify this as much as I can). There are numerous, often
endless options when it comes to games. You can choose games straight-up,
against the spread, with the money line…you can do parlays, teasers, over-unders…we
aim to keep it as simple as possible – there was no way I was getting Olya
involved in this if it got too over-complicated. After I started explaining the
principles of two- and three-team teasers, I saw her eyes glazing over and she
almost passed out. But we couldn’t keep it too simple and just choose winners
(straight-up), because, in world football terms, that would be like choosing
the likes of Brazil or Spain over Latvia or El Salvador. That’s too easy. Games
are handicapped with a point spread, like this for the two games this weekend:
Jaguars (+7.5) v Patriots
Vikings (-3) v Eagles
In the first game, the Jaguars are getting 7.5 points,
while the Patriots are giving 7.5 points. Or in other words, the Patriots are
favoured to win by 7.5 points. Therefore, if the final score is Patriots 31,
Jaguars 20, the Patriots would cover the spread, because they won by more than
7.5. If they win 31-24, they wouldn’t cover the spread because the victory is
only by 7. Got that?
In the second game, it’s the same principle, but with
the spread being 3, there is also the possibility of a ‘push’. The Vikings,
favoured by 3, could win 17-14, which means neither they nor the Eagles
actually cover the spread, and it’s instead a draw or a tie. No one wins, no
one loses.
The spreads often move throughout the week, depending
on which team more people are betting on, or if there is any news, and the
spread is ‘adjusted’ by Las Vegas. The Patriots were favoured by 9 until today,
and it has moved down by 1.5 points.
If you go back to our final records, there are only
wins and losses, and no pushes. This is unheard of over a season of betting –
there are always going to be pushes. But pushes, in a ‘friendly’ competition
like ours, meant that our records looked funny and were hard to compare, and it
was confusing to Olya and the cat. So for the 4th season (last
year), we opted to eliminate the ‘push’ option, and just say that if you picked
a team to cover a spread of 3, and they won by 3, it would go down as a win.
Similarly, if you picked the other team, you’d also get a win. So, if I picked
Vikings and Olya picked Eagles, and the final was 17-14, we’d both get a win.
This is where big-time gamblers are cringing and calling us a bunch of cheating
frauds.
Let me take you back to last year, the year we ditched
the pushes and went for the easier, more understandable option:
Olya: 50-38
Me: 49-39
But if we go back to the push option, the way real
gambling is meant to be, the
standings look like this:
Olya: 44-38-6
Me: 45-39-4
I win! I win! I’m revising last year’s standings and
giving me the win! Yes, I’m sad and desperate and grasping at straws here, but
damn in, I don’t want my gambling credibility going down the drain.
There. Now I feel better.
Bonus: a
miracle-finish, and an epic, glorious point-spread gambling moment
Last week, in Saints v Vikings, the Vikings were
favoured by 5 points. The situation was this: 10 seconds left, Saints leading
24-23, and the Vikings needing a miracle to win the game. All they needed to do
– and this was far, far from easy – was move the ball some 25-30 yards to move
closer to attempt a game-winning field goal (3 points), and they had no
timeouts, meaning they had to catch the ball close to the sidelines, and
quickly get out of bounds, which is how you stop the clock near the end of a
game. Were they to somehow do that, they would have won 26-24. Either way, for
all intents and purposes, the game was over from a gambling standpoint. For
anyone who chose the Vikings by 5, they would have needed a miraculous
touchdown (6 points, making it 29-24), plus the extra point (1 point) which is
attempted after a touchdown, making it 30-24. But come on…the chances of that
happening, a touchdown, when all they needed was a field goal, were slim to
none. And then…
If that player, after catching the ball, had been
tackled or gone down in the field of play, the game is over. Time runs out.
After that unbelievable finale, it was pandemonium on
the field, with players, media, fans streaming on in celebration. But by the
rules – and rules are rules – the extra point had to be attempted. It would
make no difference to the final result…but it would to gamblers. At this point,
the margin of victory was 5, but that extra point, which has over a 99.5%
success rate, still needed to be taken. Talk about an anti-climax, except for
gamblers: the referees had to clear everyone off the field, drag the poor
dejected Saints out of the locker room for this last, meaningless extra point.
People who had big money on the game were shitting themselves at this point. In
the end, they didn’t bother kicking the extra point, but they still had to snap
the ball and then just kneel down, foregoing the opportunity to attempt it
(technically, you don’t have to actually attempt it, but you do have to snap the
ball).
Whether you’ve managed to follow all that or not and
make it this far, take my word for it: gambling can be a nerve-wracking
experience. And that was one of the most ridiculous, exciting finishes to a
game ever. If you are a Saints fan, it’s painful.
A book interlude
I’m reading The
Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee, at the moment, and I read
this a couple days ago:
‘In 1940, an experiment on the simplest of organisms –
a microscopic, capsule-shaped, gut-dwelling bacterium named Escherichia Coli – provided the first
crucial clue to this question. E. Coli
can survive by feeding on two very different types of sugars – glucose and
lactose. Grown on either sugar alone, the bacterium begins to divide rapidly,
doubling in number every twenty minutes or so. The curve of growth can be
plotted as an exponential line – 1,2-, 4-, 8-, 16-fold growth – until the
culture turns turbid, and the sugar source has been exhausted.’
Even though I’ve conceded defeat to Olya, there’s
still a battle to finish 2nd between my wretched cat and I. I’m just
1 game ahead of her, and the pressure and nerves are really starting to show:
she’s been a nasty, fierce little shit this week, hissing at me, trying to
scratch me, attacking me on the back of my legs as I leave the shower. I kid
you not: she’s threatening me and is in a foul mood over our gambling picks.
She really is taking it seriously.
Our cat's name is Eshe for short – her full name is Escherichia Coli. Olya, the good
biologist that she is, gave her this name.
And she acts like a gut-dwelling bacterium, and she survives on eating way
too many sugars, and her wrath and anger have been doubling exponentially all
week as the pressure mounts, and my God, she is so close to turning turbid,
whatever the hell that means. All I know is that she is out for blood, and I’m
determined to beat that little bacterium, the filthy wee beast that she is.
Word count: 1919
I’m…slowly…getting there.
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