The Gambler's Mentor

We were talking about Pete when the bell rang yesterday. Pete took a look at NASCAR when he tired of becoming routinely angst ridden by the incessant droning of the baseball season. Pete and I began to regularly chat about the upcoming race each Friday. I was impressed with his eagerness to learn about what clearly was his new passion, NASCAR racing. That assumption turned out to be correct, but it was the tip of the iceberg.

My bud Petey, you see, was digesting our Friday morning chats to facilitate his Sunday morning wagers on the races...and he was winning! When Pete invited me to throw a few bucks his way along with the race discussion, I briefly hesitated, then jumped in. Our first dual wager was for the staggering sum of five bucks, split between us. The "us" part is what became the most interesting part. At the end of our first year of wagering, I had to write a check to my partner for about twenty bucks, our net losses for the year. While none of us likes the idea of losing, I had enjoyed a lot of entertainment for twenty dollars.

The beginning of our second season is where things began to get interesting. We started to win a little, very little, and the third leg of what would become a three partner betting machine came to the party; a new partner with no racing knowledge in his past and who would reveal some eccentric and aggressive betting habits. My new partner was Pete's octagenarian father, Tony.


Take a look around your life, there may be someone near you with high mileage who can give you a unique and cherished ride. That was the gift I received from Tony. There's little happy slices of life that came from meeting him. He was, by his son's recount, a bit of a scoundrel bettor. Unable to work with the computer to place bets, he'd call his granddaughter in Florida and give her log-on instructions and have her place his wagers. Tony bet intuitively, a message for those of us who try to do everything by the numbers, and picked winners. He also seemed to become a true racing fan, teaching us the "goose 'em, goose 'em" phrase when he wanted his driver to lay a little paint on someone to make room to pass. He also used a couple of phrases that aren't PC enough for me to share with you. Though becoming frail, Tony came out to the track with us on a summer afternoon to watch qualifying. It was one of my best days, watching him light up as the cars thundered by.

We've been betting on NASCAR and college football for six years; our partnership was cut back to just Petey and I a year or so ago. The bets are always just a few dollars; this is recreation, not addiction. We have built up a nice cushion in our bankroll and we have shared a lot of excitement.

The biggest winner I had in six years was getting to know Tony. The Gambler's Mentor.

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Picks on the Bricks at Indy this weekend: #48 a former winner (whom I can't stand) and #12, an Indiana native who won the big one in February.

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Photo Day 4, last hint. The place is in Streeterville. The rest of the story is revealed on Monday.

The Gambler

If you have any money parked in traditional investment vehicles, you are probably accustomed to getting hammered. Real estate is in the tank, equities have been in a steady decline and low interest rates mean low returns for cash. Don't despair, there is an alternative.

The alternative is the Sportsbook.

I was never much of a gambler. I didn't play cards, I didn't set foot in a casino until I was into my, well, not a kid anymore, and I didn't get into betting on games. Playing cards was like work for me. I could explain the arithmetic behind all the casino games and I wanted to be the casino, not the gambler. Betting on the games required research that I didn't want to do.

Then along came Pete. Pete was an inveterate oddshound. He tracked the horses, worked the baseball lines (a weird subculture of wagering) and followed the football spreads. Pete and I would talk baseball generalities, as he is a devotee of the history of baseball and a veritable font of statistical minutiae, as well as an all around good guy.

One day, when Pete brought up the current outlook for whichever team he was following at a time when I wasn't any too interested, I pointed out the arithmetic that makes baseball a bad addiction. I explained to him that there are 162 games in a season. Every team is going to win 50 games and lose 50 games, so there's a hundred games, or about three months worth, that we can push to the side of the road, almost 2/3 of the season played to get back to where you started. So, if everyone skipped the first hundred and played just the remaining games, I continued, we'd have a six week baseball season and I wouldn't get so bored and we'd all have time for things that matter. Pete uttered "national pasttime" and I responded with "it's time has passed" as he considered my argument.While this was a pretty clear case of figures lie and liars figure, it appeared to assuage Pete's current state of angst.

Pressing on, I challenged Pete to consider a new source of entertainment that provided a compact and immediate gratification completely unlike baseball, plus time for a nap. I introduced Pete to NASCAR. What followed this introduction is a parade of rewards that I could never have expected.Tomorrow, I'll explain how we corrupted a casual conversation for our mutual gain, both personal and financial.

DAY 3 of the Amazing Photo Mystery: Here's another hint in the ID the Photo challenge. The photo was taken from the perspective of a place named in honor of a Chicago politician (imagine, honoring a Chicago politician!). By the way, the place doesn't have an actual street address, how 'bout that!