Against All Odds (Don’t Bet On It)
I know I’m flying too close to the sun when I start believing I can beat the bookies.
I started betting two years ago, on tennis matches mostly. I was obsessed with odds, swept away in torrents of sums. My system had just one flaw: it didn’t work.
The odds, I discovered, are empty. Probability predicts only the past.
Which, by the way, makes me feel more hopeful about writing. For although the cards are stacked against us, they collapse like houses of cards when met head-on.
Lately I’ve tried spreading the risk by betting both ways, with much the same success as before (i.e. none). And no wonder. As the ‘gambling fool’, Randle P. McMurphy, from Ken Kesey’s novel reminds us, ‘you hit or you sit’.
So I’ve decided to sit. I don’t want to be next to fly over the cuckoo’s nest.
timm in type 