Going Soft

First, my wife is out of town and when I finally see her again, eight days will have passed. This is a very long time to be without someone you spend large chunks of every day with. It messes up your rhythms and affects pretty much everything you do in a day. I had potato chips for dinner one night. I used the same pot to cook with multiple times before washing it. I spent a couple of entire evenings without speaking. I left a pile of dirty clothes out on the floor. I watched the MLB Network for about three straight hours one night. I slept right in the middle of the bed and rolled around at will. Wild, I know.
In spite of all this blissful debauchery, I would much rather have her around. I was gone when she left for Chicago last weekend, so she left a little note for me taped to the bathroom mirror. It didn't say anything profound or hugely romantic, was just a normal note saying she'd miss me. I've left it hanging all week as a little reminder, a small inconvenience that I have to deal with when using that mirror, one little tiny thing to keep me connected to her presence in a much stronger way than simply speaking together on the phone ever could.
Second, a few days ago, I found myself watching some show about animals struggling to reproduce. I mean struggling to carry on their genes, not struggling to have sex. There was a thing about how an octopus mother* will gently and methodically blow water over her many eggs to keep them from accruing algae, and something else about a tree frog carrying her tiny tadpoles one at a time up a huge tree so they'd be safe. For obvious reasons, this really got to me. I am a human being with innumerable advantages in this world as compared to these animals, and in a few more months I'll start the same "struggle" as them in trying to protect and nurture a new life. It's nice to be reminded how much effort some creatures will put into parenting, so that there is really no excuse for me given how much easier it will be than having to climb a massive tree several times a day with my baby on my back.

*Did you know that after its eggs hatch, a mother octopus dies? This also got to me. I used to love Hemingway and even in my most cynical phases the ending to A Farewell to Arms always seemed terribly heartbreaking to me. In fact, multiple times I've stopped and reiterated to Sara that should anything dangerous happen relating to this baby being born, should any kind of crazy situation arise where her health is ever put in jeopardy attempting to keep the baby safe, then I'd stop it in a second.

A Little Bit of Shame in the Health Care Bill

I don't know if you've heard, but the Democrats seem to have successfully hoodwinked most of America into allowing poor people to systematically harvest our organs. On top of that, they deviously exploited a loophole that allowed them to pass a bill with a horribly un-arbitrary simple majority, instead of the happily more nuanced 60%.
I haven't been on pins and needles following this whole drama along the way, so thankfully the NY Times site has a couple of handy "interactive graphics" that explain the House and Senate bills, though beware the caveat that as far as I can tell neither says anything about death panels.
The one that focuses more on the differences between the bills contain a delightful little passage detailing a House bill addition:
MEDICARE PAYROLL TAX: Would impose an additional 3.8 percent tax on capital gains, dividends, interest and other “unearned income.”
Heh. "Unearned income." You can argue all you want about the responsibility to the robustness of the overall U.S. economy and the admirable foresight required to actually receive capital gains, dividends, or interest, but you have to enjoy that someone has labeled these as "unearned." I agree that probably these incomes shouldn't be penalized because they are there to exploit by those capable to exploit them, but I wholly support calling a spade a spade here. Those incomes are not actually earned, they are exploited. It's like finding a $10 bill on the sidewalk. "Unearned."
Awesome, which leads me to my other curiosity: who is responsible for those quotation marks around "unearned income?" Was it someone at the Times? I doubt it. Was it Democratic congressmen, who actually wrote the phrase into the legislation? Maybe. I'd like to know though, because it was a very deliberate choice.

(On a more serious note, as with anything debated in a political setting or with political consequences, there are multiple very intelligent arguments to made for or against either side. It costs too much, it's socialism, we're behind the rest of the world, government is too big already, the current system is broken anyway, etc etc. But there is one simple immediate effect of this that I think can't be ignored no matter your stance: 32 million of the 54 million uninsured Americans would gain coverage. Isn't that really the most important thing? "I'll have to pay more for prescriptions, I might have to wait longer to see a doctor, I won't be able to pick and choose what I want all the time," and on and on. So what if the new plan isn't perfect? It's a huge and difficult issue and will take decades to successfully implement true changes, so you have to start somewhere. It would be easy for me or you to take a principled stance in favor of more thought or more discussion or more discretion on this matter (and we'd almost always be right). We can afford to do this. We can waltz into a hospital and be treated at little cost to ourselves almost whenever we want, but there are a lot of people who can't (54 million, evidently), and those are the people who probably ought to be considered first.)

The Joy in Riding the Wave

I said multiple times yesterday to "trust the system" and to remove emotion from the gambling experience, so as not to negatively influence my otherwise-sound wagering habits.
Well that's all very true, and that's how I'm navigating this stretch of wall-to-wall basketball games. But an important thing that I failed to note is that this system doesn't remove emotion from the equation, at least not post-bet, meaning I'm still very susceptible to the exhilarating and depressing swings that come with success and failure. I can still watch and follow with a fan's rooting (and sporting) interest, and betting on so many games each day serves to make every day like a first-round-NCAA-Tournament day, where it seems that every basket has actual meaning.
As prophesied yesterday, I had an up-and-down day with the wagers. I started off hitting four of my first five bets, for a net gain of $19. Then I lost my biggest bet of the day, a $44 loss, followed by a small $5 win. I had two games left and was down $20 for the day. Bad news was my last two bets were only about 50/50 shots each. I figured a split there and I'd only be out $20 for the whole day, not too bad. Of the first of the late doubleheader goes very poorly, my teams falls behind and never ever makes it interesting. The final game wasn't starting until 11:45pm though and as much I really wanted to follow that one live, I decided to turn in.
When I woke up there was a little anxiety over that last game. It represented a $45 swing in my daily performance, and my team was only a 52% likely winner. Surely karma would be coming back to get me. Surely I had to know what happened. Surely I was extremely happy to find out they'd pulled out a four-point win. Way to go, Cal Poly Mustangs, for overcoming a six-point halftime deficit and putting me in a very good mood this fine Thursday.

(All this after a net losing day yesterday, too. Thanks mostly to that big $44 loss, but moreso really to my 1-2 record in swing games. One thing my system has is inherent risk for large losses. A large portion of my bets sees me taking favorites, sometimes big favorites. It's hard to win much money on these games without making large bets. In order to bet on an 80% likely winner, I'll usually need to put up something like $20 to win only $7. The system also likes to tell me to place larger wagers on teams I'm only about 55-60% likely will win. The good news here is that I still have an edge and I'd stand to win virtually the amount that I put up, but of course if the numbers hold true I'll lose these bets almost half the time. You just have to stomach it.
To use yesterday as an example, I made nine bets. Three of them were basically gimmies, with expected win% of 85% at minimum. I actually lost one of these, but still broke even on them because the loser was the lowest bet amount. Three of the bets were medium favorites, with win% expectations between 69-81%. I won all three of these for a $26 gain. The last three were a little under 60% likely to win individually. I lost two of these and very nearly all three. But my net result was -$45. You see how the losses hurt more than the wins help.
Remarkably, I've been slightly unlikely on these swing games since starting the system, with just a 6-8 record in games where the price I bought was within 10% of a 50/50 shot. My financial balance on these 14 50/50 shots is -$149. That's a lot. So while I've had overall good luck, my small amount of bad luck on these highest-value games has balanced out the luck factor quite a bit.)

Diaperpalooza

(I'll say up front that maybe this is a stupid post at the moment. Very high jinx potential. Maybe I should wait for the wave to crest. But kind the whole point is I don't believe in voodoo or superstition, so here we are.)

A few months ago, in order to try to erase that sad scrunchy face that Sara would get whenever I talked about my sports bets, I attempted to reframe the conversation. I spoke of the winnings in terms of diapers. A diaper costs roughly 25 cents. So if I won a $20 bet, then I'd say "We won 80 diapers today." Notice also the use of the word "we." I wanted to make her feel less icky about me gambling online while expecting a baby.(1) Also--genuinely--I wanted to convey to her that any winnings I might produce would go to the baby and not back into my personal pot.
This strategy has been about as successfully as I could have hoped. No, of course she doesn't ever support my degenerate efforts, but at least to a small degree she shares in my excitement with winning. Or at least she is happy when I have good gambling news, as opposed to rejoining with something like this: "That's great, maybe doing something legal would set a better example for our unborn."

That out of the way, I'm on a hot streak right now. "Hot streak" there being slightly misleading, because it connotes that it's been mostly about luck or guessing. I've got a system now. It's come from a couple months of relative immersion in the world of smart (analytical) sports gambling. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I find it all incredibly fascinating. I'm much more addicted to the theory behind exploiting an edge than I am to actually exploiting it. This might not be 100% healthy, but it's many times moreso than simply rolling the dice and hoping to win.

Anyhow, to the system. It pertains to college basketball and contains two components. First is a strong rating system. Taking a poll amongst your friends doesn't count. Neither does reading up on the subject and trying to rank teams yourself. From my extensive research on this matter, the best college basketball rating system is put out by Ken Pomeroy. The second, and equally important component, is a betting calculator set by the Kelly Criterion. The rating system will tell what team is most likely to win and the calculator will tell you how much to wager. Case closed.
The trick to the system is to trust it and to not think about it. If kenpom says that Ohio State is 78% likely to beat Illinois, and your betting website is offering OSU at only a 70% rate, then you take OSU, no questions asked, no subjective judgement allowed.(2) Elimination of the subjective element is of paramount importance. It prevents you from getting emotional and reacting foolishly to a hot streak or to a single unlucky loss. It prevents you from being just another gambler, basically. The computers are smarter than you are, so trust them.
--Important aside here. You ask, if the computers are smarter than me, then why shouldn't I also assume that the bookmaker is smarter than me? Shouldn't those cancel out? Yes and no. Bookmakers are usually even smarter than computers, this is true. A lay person will never beat a bookmaker on his own over a large sample size, and in theory a single computer should not either. Thankfully for me, it's not that simple for the books. They have to take into consideration public opinion because if they set a "true" line that disagrees at all strongly with public opinion, then they'd really be opening themselves up to risk, which they of course don't want to do. So, the books will shade their lines toward public opinion, meaning there is still room for value to be exploited. To a smaller degree, books will also sometimes put up initial lines just to take the temperature of the public; they will offer a line they know is off just to see what happens. Or they might not devote enough attention to a line by the time they put it up, so in the time it takes them to correct it, there is a window of opportunity.(3)
Let's talk for a minute about edge. Edge is really the key to the whole thing. Most point spread bets are sold at -110. This means you pay $110 to win $100. It also means that you need to win more than just half your bets, you need to win 52.4%. This is not insignificant. If you bet all 16 NFL games some weekend, and go 8-8, you did not break even. You lost. If you bet $10 on every game, you'd have won $80 but also lost $88 for a net of -$8. If you only go about 50% over a long time, the loss total adds up. That most people don't consider 50% a loss is probably what amounts to much of the money Vegas makes.
So a -110 bet requires a 52.4% likelihood of success to be a winner over time. If I have a system that tells me a team being sold at that price has a 60% likelihood of winning, then--voila--I've got a 7.6% edge. I should bet. This works across all types of wagers. My system only spits out a win% expectation for straight-up bets. It doesn't work for point spreads, so I don't bet on point spreads.(4) In every game where I have an edge, I run the numbers into the Kelly calculator, which requires inputs for the bet price, the win expectation, and your total bankroll. This last factor is basically what determines how much it tells you to bet. The Kelly criterion is meant to be "maximally aggressive," but it's not meant to bankrupt you overnight. If your edge is small, then it will tell you to bet small; if it's big, then it'll tell you to go big. It does the heavy mathematical lifting so I never have to worry about being bold or being timid.
Which brings us back to the point: trust the system. It's a very liberating thing, actually. I used to make bets based on personal preferences, maybe including stuff I've read or stuff I attempted to discern using some statistics-oriented sites. I would make almost all my wagers the same amount. I knew nothing about exactly what my edge was or when to hit the gas and when to hit the brakes. Of course I was going to lose over the long run.
Yes, I keep fairly detailed records of my bets. During the whole NFL season, I went exactly 42-42 and finished up about $30 (this thanks to often taking underdog moneylines, which pay out more than even of course. It also is thanks to getting lucky and winning $160 just on the Super Bowl). For college football, I went 39-46 and lost $113. Factor in my initial $300 deposit plus the free $60 bonus the website gave me, and after the Super Bowl, my balance was $291, but it fluctuated a lot in-season. Twice my total balance dropped below $60, and at one point it was over $500. I scuffled with college hoops too, running about -$80 before fully implementing the system.
As of right now, taking into account pending wagers, my balance is $415. Since starting the fully objective and analytical system one week ago, I am up $189.77. This is slightly higher than would be expected, because I've also benefited from some luck, but a majority portion of it is legit. Over the 58 bets placed during this time (yeah I know, it's a lot), the average price given me corresponded to a 68.8% break-even line, meaning my bets would have to win at least that often to break even.(5) The expected win% of these games based on the kenpom preditions was 75.2%. So you can clearly see that my average edge over this sample is 6.4%. That's good. My actual win% was 79.3%. I've been more than 10% better than the break-even line, which pretty easily explains why over 58 bets I'm up $189. Some small regression might be in order, but I'm extremely confident that over the next 58 bets I place, I will do better than 10% worse than break-even, meaning that in the end I will finish up.
The mutually happy part of this whole story is that next Monday I will be making my first-ever online gambling withdrawal. Depending on how the system fares between now and then, I expect to withdraw close to $200. That's 800 diapers. Over the first year, a baby will go through on average about 8 diapers per day. Those 800 diapers would last 100 days, or at least as long as we will be living in NYC after the baby comes. So, thanks to daddy's adoption of the system, baby girl folger will be shitting for free in NYC.


1. Granted, this is something I did think about. But then the money I deposited was from my personal stash and not our family's, and also I did so well before she became pregnant. Gambling online requires an upfront deposit, so in a sense the money was lost right from the get-go. Finally, by the time we were safely into the pregnancy, my initial $300 investment was down to like $100, so at that point, what's the use cutting and running? Might as well stick around and try to bump it back up to even.
2. Just yesterday I broke this rule of doubting the system. UConn was playing St John's in the first round of the Big East tournament. The system said that St John's was a 50/50 shot to win the game, and my suggested bet amount was $35 at a price of +170, meaning I would stand to win about $60. But it didn't look right to me. I couldn't believe St John's was as good as UConn. I let subjective analysis (UConn was playing without their coach for a few games, St John's was really playing at home in MSG, UConn is playing for an NCAA tourney bid, etc, etc) talk me out of trusting the system. So I didn't bet. This is the only time since starting the system that I overruled an output so deliberately (I have nudged my bet amounts slightly up or down based on my perceived risk avoidance, though). I'm sure I don't have to tell you that St John's won the game by 22. Of course they did. This "loss" made me angrier than all the others I've suffered combined, and I didn't even technically lose any money. I lost the opportunity to collect $60. Because I didn't trust the system.
3. This paragraph is actually why it's often better to bet on obscure games. Books don't pay as much attention to them and so you're more likely to get a line that is off. Obscure lines are also more susceptible to shifts in movement based on small samples of bettors, so not as many idiots can move a line farther in your favor than if the whole public is watching it. Just last Friday, I made plays on all of the following: Yale, Hofstra, Citadel, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Harvard, Drexel, Bradley and Long Beach St. My first wager Saturday was on Stony Brook. Trust the system.
4. I've placed at least 75 straight moneyline bets since my last point-spread bet. No, I'm not missing them, thank you.
5. This is roughly true, because a loss in a -700 line is not the same as one on a -130 line. Over a large sample though, this is a good shorthand.

Being There

We're less than four months from Sara's due date. We're a little more than seven months from our approximate moving date, which doubles as my job-quitting date. I'm maybe four-five months from starting to send out my resume and about five months from thinking seriously about going to Chicago for interviews. It's this last thing that has me just very slightly concerned.
I'm not "worried" exactly, since I know that when the time comes I will have the confidence and the ability to find a suitable job, but right now, this far away from the process, there is space for me to be concerned. I blame this wholly on my upcoming fatherhood, meaning that I wouldn't be concerned if it were just me I'd be supporting.
When we move, our baby will be about three months old. Sara will have no insurance even before the move. I will have mine, but that will end as soon as I quit. There will be COBRA to float us along, but that's not ideal and I hear it's not cheap. Me finding a job will be about more than just income, it will be about protection. For once, I will have to concern myself with benefits. I'll also have a real sense of urgency.
When I was on my last job search, I was right out of college and so the mere idea of urgency was a little foreign. I searched in earnest for a while, but it wasn't until I approached my self-imposed deadline that I bothered much with really getting it done, and then even when I did, I wasn't very picky. This time I will have to be picky. I will also have to find something relatively quickly. You can see how this might create a conflict. I want to have a high-paying job with good benefits, but I will be under pressure (both the real kind and the unnecessarily self-imposed) to take whatever I can get.
There is also the important matter of availability. For me to get a job that pays higher than my current one, it's quite likely that I'll have to take on both added responsibility and added hours, with the former being basically a prerequisite. The problem here is that with a newborn at home and a wife that will at some point be trying to re-enter the workforce herself on a part-time basis, I will have a very very strong desire to be home to help and just to enjoy my family. I have no desire to be one of those dads who gets home late and is too tired or too preoccupied with thoughts of work to be of any use. My priority will always be my home first and my job a distant second. (Not something I'm going to put on a resume, but that's a shame, because isn't that kind of loyalty/devotion/responsibility something that a company would value? Sure it is, just not in the bottom-line corporate world we live in, where all employees are meant to wholly exist to serve the company. At least that's how it works in NYC. Maybe Chicago will be different. Probably not.)
One of those TLC home-improvement shows was on the other day. One of the couples doing a full renovation had a newborn child, and the father was doing most of the renovating himself. The work was so comprehensive that they couldn't live in the house during, so for multiple months the mother and child stayed with a family/friend. During this time, the father worked his full-time job, then spent the evenings away from his family renovating the house. I will always admire a man willing to make that kind of sacrifice, but I'm not sure at what point it would be an acceptable trade-off for me. I don't want to ever be a hands-off parent. I don't want to ever leave my wife to care for the kid alone, even if I'm away doing something to make us more comfortable in the future. Some people can do it, but I'm not sure to what extent I can. I'm thinking I'd have to figure out an alternate solution if I were ever in the same situation.