Category Archives: betting tips

Sports betting: Feel-bad entertainment

Nostradamus I am not. For this, and many other reasons, I am not rubbing my hands together in anticipation of nationwide legal sports betting.

That puts me somewhere in fuddy-duddy territory. A recent poll found that the majority of Americans—55 percent—now support such activity, a reversal of attitudes from just 25 years ago. And that shift in mood coincides with the Supreme Court ruling in May that struck down a 1992 federal law prohibiting most states from authorizing gambling on sports.

Teams and leagues, so opposed for so long to betting as a risk to “the integrity of competition,” suddenly are rushing to arrange partnerships with casinos. Calvin Ayre, a Canadian-Antiguan entrepreneur and founder of an online gambling company, has cited an analysis that sports betting can be “the cure to declining TV sports viewership.”

Having money on the line, the reasoning goes, will draw gamblers to tune in and monitor the progress of their investments. Those self-proclaimed oracles and clairvoyants out there, convinced they can see around the corner, will want to track their potential windfalls.

But I tend to subscribe to the argument that gambling is a sure way to get nothing for something. I confess to an aversion to barrel apparel. At this writing, my one annual attempt at sports prognostication—joining 35 others in a $1 college football bowl pool—reminds again of the financial ruin I would face as a serious gambler.

Of the 21 games played so far, I have correctly foreseen the winner of nine. (A losing percentage of .428.) Over the pool’s 20-year existence, I never have finished in first place, while my friend’s daughter won the whole thing when she was 3 years old! She did so by prophesying results based on which opposing teams’ mascots would be natural predators of the opponent’s mascot. As reliable as any betting system available, I suspect.

Furthermore, I cling to the outdated belief that the unscripted theater of sports—the sheer unpredictability—provides quite enough action. And to apply such an outlook precludes involvement with the soul of the betting industry—point spreads. Since the purpose of sporting contests is to determine a winner and loser, the exercise of divining—guessing?—by how much a team will win or lose strikes me as (sorry) pointless.

And don’t get me started on fantasy sports, in which wagering on the statistics of individual players takes precedence over team performance—a clear devaluation of the very idea of sports competition.

One final thought, after struggling to compose these thoughts on the vacuous—and fiscally perilous—racket that is sports betting: The English author and critic M. John Harrison has judged that “writing is like gambling. Unpredictable and sporadic successes make you more addicted. Not less.”

Hmmm. But I haven’t lost my shirt.

 

Playing the ponies (or vice versa)

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There is an old horseplayer joke that goes something like this: I bet on a horse at 10-to-one. He didn’t come in until quarter past two.

I was reminded of this—and other wagering wisdom imparted over the years—during a recent day at the races. “You take a dart,” one veteran patron of the betting windows once counseled, “and you throw it at the board.”

You blindfold yourself and try to pin the tail on the donkey.

But who doesn’t like a challenge? About once every year or two, my friend Tony and I venture to lovely Belmont Park—the green, almost rustic arboretum covering 430 acres on the edge of New York City—for an afternoon of idle chatter and the dare of channeling Nostradamus, with the full understanding that we are unlikely to become hundredaires. At best.

There is no point in affecting a hard-bitten railbird’s disguise by, say, not shaving and purchasing a big cigar. Or buying a Daily Racing Form to pore over the lineage of the steeds and the successes of various trainers and jockeys. None of that will help.

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Over the course of six races last week, the only four-leaf clover I found was a nag named Warriors Diva, who paid a measly $3.80 on a $2 bet. One other choice, Dot Matrix, finished second. (The official race chart said that Dot Matrix “stalked the winner from the two path and proved no match.”) Another, Mean Season, came in third.

At least those “almosts” were better than One Nice Pal, who finished 10th in a 12-horse field. (Official chart: “Chased the pace along the inside, forwardly placed under encouragement from three furlongs out, swung just off the inside for home. Folded.”) Among my other $2-to-win bets, Kettles On was fourth, Graceful Gal sixth, Singsong ninth. (Singsong also “folded”).

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In fact, even before the racetrack bugler had played his little “Assembly” ditty for the first time, calling the horses to the post, Tony lost $3 on Preferred Parking and I parted with $3 on General Admission.

On one of my occasional thoroughbred racing assignments for Newsday over the years, a Belmont regular recited to me the gambler’s prayer: “Dear God, let me break even. I need the money.” He also recommended that the first question to put to a handicapper is, “What kind of car do you drive?”

Another teaching moment, about how the track is not a consequence-free zone, came years ago during an interview for a story about former Giants running back Joe Morrison who, at the time, was in the midst of his NCAA coach-of-the-year season at the University of South Carolina.

Among the musings of Morrison, who was a horse owner and racing fan on the side, was a recollection of his first trip to the track during his playing career. He had been invited to look into some mutuel windows with a service station owner he had befriended, and “the first time I went to the races with him,” Morrison said, “he threw his pocket change on the floor of the car just before we got ready to walk into the track. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘We have to make sure we have toll fare home.’”

When I was a mere proverbial knee-high sports journalist, dispatched to help with coverage of the Belmont Stakes, I was appalled to learn that there was a betting window right there in the press box. Naivete is not a sin, but I had assumed that fellow ink-stained wretches were too busy with their unbiased reporting on the races to indulge in an activity that required all-out rooting (quietly, be assured) for a particular result.

It turns out that thoroughbred reporters aspire to be thoroughbred reporters because they are as drawn to those windows as to the sport’s characters and story lines. I’ve come to accept that reality as an innocent enough way of hedging their bets: Get paid to write about the ponies, while engaging in what the Brits and Australians refer to as “punting skills.”

Nevertheless. I am only able to rationalize my participation in the gambling aspect of thoroughbred racing by retaining a rank amateur’s dread. Handicapper Harvey Pack used to tell neophytes that a horseplayer must be “confident and resilient. “ I would suggest “fearful.”

My proposal: Instead of having a race-track official on the other side of that window to accept your down payment on the great riches that theoretically will result from your powers of prediction, why not just have a small toilet in there? You put in your money and flush.

All of this is not to say that I can’t justify forfeiting around $20—always just $2 bets on eight to 10 races—as the price of entertainment for a day of occasional adrenaline rushes and the fellowship of disappointment.

But I know how my trip would come out in the unique prose of racing charts: The Dilettante started sluggishly, rushed up momentarily, briefly threatened but quickly came under pressure, wandered and fell back steadily. Folded.

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