A Gambling System: Use Your TOOL
I have a confession to make. I’m pretty embarrassed to admit this, but I’m really not much of a gambler. Now if I was writing for Ladies Home Journal or International Figure Skating or The Advocate or something, this wouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. But before Barstool began its relentless assault on the world of publishing, it was basically a betting rag. So around here, admitting I don’t really wager much is like being a staffer with the Globe and saying you don’t feel real good about all these illegal immigrants; it sort of runs counter to everything we stand for.
I don’t mean to suggest I never bet at all, just that I’m not a degenerate. I’ll do a March Madness pool and an NFL pool and buy a couple of Super Bowl squares. Plus I’ve got guys I grew up with, guys who were in my wedding party and I was in theirs, who I only communicate with if it’s in regards to making a Fantasy Football trade. But none of that exactly makes me Edward Norton in “Rounders.“ I guess it qualifies me as a “generate” gambler.
So this isn’t a moral issue with me. Hell, I like making money without earning it as much as the next unmotivated, unambitious failure. What keeps me from making sports betting a lifestyle is the fact that I’m terrible at it.
This is a true story, about the last time I made a straight-up, non-office-pool sports wager. It cost me every meager sum I had in the world and gave me the epiphany that kept me on the road of the righteous for good. It was 1990 and the Oakland A’s were facing the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. This was the A’s of Dave Stewart, Dennis Eckersley, the Bash Brothers and Rickey Henderson. The Reds had…Barry Larkin, and um…Tom Browning? You get the point. Oakland swept the Series the year before and won 103 games. Cincy won 91. The A’s were 3-1 favorites.
I was out of college and working full time. While I wasn’t the sophisticated, debonair guy I would later become, I was starting to bank some money for the first time in my life. And the A’s-Reds Series would be my chance to put that money to good use (much better use than, say, paying off my student loans). So I let it all ride on the Oakland to win the Series. It was a sure thing; they couldn’t lose.
You don’t need to go scrambling for the Baseball Encyclopedia to know what happened. The Reds swept them. I had placed the bet through my degenerate gambling friends, and now I had to go meet their bookie. It was one of those formative moments in a young man’s life. Standing around in some crappy bowling alley in Quincy looking for a lowlife I’d never met so I could pay him every dollar I had, it struck me. “This isn’t my life, it‘s somebody else’s,” I remember saying. “I’m Bud and Irene’s baby boy; I don’t live like this.” At the time, I couldn’t be sure if I meant it, but I’ve stuck to it. And it’s worth mentioning that I never met the bookie. I found out later that my degenerate gambler buddies had held the bet and didn’t tell me, which is one of a hundred good reasons to only talk to them during Fantasy Football season.
This is the crux of my non-gambler issue. I simply can’t pick games well enough to win money. Nor am I bad enough that I can just go against my instincts and win that way. Like when I was a kid, I used to watch Jimmy the Greek pick the games on CBS and while he was a tedious old gasbag, he was fascinating because he lost every game he ever picked. That’s not hyperbole; he was wrong 100% of the time. I wish I was that consistent, at least I’d have something to work with. But my predictions are right just often enough that if I actually tried to bet, I’d be raising my kids on government surplus cheese.
But I’d like to. I hang out with gamblers, work with them, and publish a humorous bi-weekly newspaper with them. I listen to their stories and know they’re having more fun than I am. But I can’t actually be one until I can figure out how to beat the bookies. I need a system. My whole life (well since October of 1990, anyway) I’ve been trying to devise a system, like a physicist working on the Grand Unified Field Theory to explain the universe. And at last, I think I’m in the midst of a breakthrough.
A while back I read in one of the Friday NFL betting columns a story about a bookie who had a Catholic priest come in once in a while to make a bet. He didn’t bet every week, just at random times, but he also never lost. Finally the book asked the priest what his system is, and the Father said “You know how the paper has all the football writers pick the games every week? I wait until they all pick the same team, then I bet against them.”
Eureka . That’s my system. I’ll call it the Law of Opposite Outcomes. No, wait. Call it Thornton’s Opposite Outcomes Law, because I like the acronym “TOOL.” I’m not just talking about those times when one team is an obvious favorite. I’m saying that when every pundit in the world, every one, is guaranteeing you an outcome, go the opposite way. TOOL. In the ’90 World Series, no one outside of Cincy gave the Reds a chance (I bet my life on it) and they swept. TOOL. Take Super Bowl XXXVI, Patriots against the Rams. In spite of what we all think five years and three championships later, at that time not a single football expert in America picked the Pats. There was no way on God’s green turf they were going to be able to stop the Rams receivers. So what happened? TOOL happened.
I’ve got more recent examples. Last weekend, you could find a pundit or two willing to pick the underdog in any of the Wild Card games. But there were a couple of points that every expert agreed on. First, while Indianapolis might win, there was no way they were going to be able to stop Larry Johnson of the Chiefs. The Colts have the worst run defense of the modern era and Johnson is an unstoppable workhorse who set the NFL record for carries in a season. There was no disputing it, no dissent: Johnson would run over them like an illegal immigrant across the border. The result? 32 yards on 13 carries. The Colts TOOLed him. Next, in the Seattle-Dallas game, the Seahawks were missing three of their top four defensive backs. Dallas has the best pair of wideouts in the NFL. Plenty of people picked Dallas to win, but there was 100% consensus that they would burn Seattle all day. So Terry Glenn had 4 catches, Terrell Owens had two. The ‘Hawks TOOLed everyone.
This week everyone is saying LaDanlian Tomlinson is going to run all over the Patriots. Good. That means they’ll shut him down with the TOOL. I’ll bet on it.