I admit it—I am putty in the hands of the mind-shaping juggernaut that is ESPN. By the time I wake up in the morning, the same episode of SportsCenter has been burned into my subconscious three times. (Thank goodness I don’t sleep late, or it would be twelve times.)
So, like millions of Americans, I followed the recent NFL Draft with bated breath, as if the fortunes of Jadeveon Clowney, Johnny Manziel, and Michael Sam have any significant impact on my life.
Nonetheless, my American sense of justice, market efficiency, and winning underdogs had me rooting for Michael Sam to get drafted, and I felt a sense of relief when he was, but disappointment that he went so late.
Now, NFL defenders will defend the late pick by arguing that Sam is a 7th-round-level player, based on his poor showing at the NFL Combine, and game tape that indicates that his style may not translate well to the NFL. That may in fact be true, but I wholeheartedly agree with Steven A. Smith on ESPN’s “First Take,” who argues that even with a poor Combine showing, an SEC Defensive Player of the Year whose sexual orientation is unknown would undoubtedly get drafted higher, probably in the 3rd or 4th round at worst. So, while a 7th-round pick may be appropriate for Sam, the point is that he still got drafted lower than the inflated position that he would have scored if he had followed the de facto “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. (In a regression model predicting how high a player will go in the draft, the coefficient on the isGay dummy variable is negative, not zero as the NFL would like you to believe.)
Many observers will anoint professional sports as the models of meritocracy, where job performance trumps lifestyle, character, and criminal background. Ha! Sports, big business, and academia can all be as political as government. Do you realize what career is in fact a true meritocracy? Professional gambling.
In gambling, skill and hard work are sufficient to succeed. A player does not need political connections, social acumen, good looks, or prior wealth. The professional gambler can succeed without having to answer to an idiotic boss whose position was acquired through nepotism.
What’s special about gambling is that it’s a two-way meritocracy. While the skilled succeed as we would expect, the unskilled inevitably fail. Lady Luck makes no Type I errors nor does she make any Type II errors. The cards don’t care if you’re ugly, or if you’re beautiful.
Have you ever watched professional athletes gamble in a casino? They seem to think that their athletic prowess makes them immune to probabilities, that career success automatically translates to other unrelated activities. This stubborn, ignorant attitude costs them millions. Ask Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods (all of whom I’ve seen in the wild) how much they’ve lost gambling. The Vegas hotties have the same attitude, somehow thinking that they can bend the cards to their will as easily as they can turn heads in a room.
On occasion, Internet posters will refute my claim, citing some supposedly skilled friend of theirs who had a losing year. Guess what—your friend isn’t skilled! (Or he’s being skimmed, but we’ll discuss that in another post.)
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Do have to hand it to MJ though: if you ever thought that athletic ability didn’t matter in casino gambling, talk to him. Dude played BJ for 36 hours straight with dysentery. Go ahead and find me a BP who will do that.
Oh, how I wish what you were saying was true. Given that gamblers, professional and otherwise, interact with humans, pretty people will get more breaks, get more of the benefit of the doubt, and in general be treated much better than un-pretty people. Furthermore, it is a total fiction that Lady Luck bestows her rewards based on merit. I know great players who have never been able to succeed and lousy players who have come up smelling like roses. We generally don’t experience enough iterations to have our results more than roughly approach expected value. The correlation between merit and ability and positive results is not all that strong. We just don’t have enough of a sample size in life to guarantee that it will be. And again, if you’re short and homely, you’ll get backed off more, won’t be able to form as many friendships, will never be given the benefit of the doubt by heat/bosses, etc. etc. A pretty, moderately skilled gambler, having all these intangibles in his/her favor, will do much better than the genius-level “2” (out of 10, in looks) player.
While low, the probability that a skilled player will have a losing year is not zero. Obviously much better to play with an advantage than not, but there is a tiny probability that a perfect advantage player will be a lifetime loser.
I’m sure you don’t need this reminder, but I’ve noticed a lot of posters on gambling boards confusing improbable with impossible. For instance, the positive expectation players with a bankroll based on a 5% probability of ruin convinced that they can’t lose, while in fact there’s a 1 in 20 chance that they’ll lose everything.
I always feel one of the biggest edges I have in sports betting is hating most of the sports I bet on.
Listening to sports center is the equivalent of listening to dealers of non-skilled players.
I’m pretty sure James is talking about casino players who are playing with small edges while other better opportunities abound for those willing to put the hard graft in and look.
And he is totally right.
But…When a bankroll reaches a certain size and you are forced to bet into markets with smaller edges and more uncertainty but MUCH bigger table limits, the bettor may not be lacking skills?
The bettor could have a much higher % return at more solid edge games but he wouldn’t make anywhere near as much money.
I take exception to the final paragraph: “On occasion, Internet posters will refute my claim, citing some supposedly skilled friend of theirs who had a losing year. Guess what—your friend isn’t skilled!”
I’ve had two losing years in the past 20. By any reasonable measure, I’m a very skilled video poker player. The scores of the other 18 years leave me quite comfortable financially — but on two separate years I was behind on December 31 compared to the previous January 1.
Royal flushes come about every 40,000 hands or so. Being down a few royal cycles on the biggest denomination machines you play in a given year is not that farfetched.
As others have stated differently, positive expectation doesn’t always lead to positive results in a period as short as a year. Variance guarantees negative results will happen to some experts some of the time.
In video poker, anyway, the clueless DO hit occasional royal flushes — sometimes by holding a suited ace ten which is almost always a sub-optimal play. Over short periods of time, ploppies can win and experts can lose.
I don’t play sports at all. My longest blackjack session was 32 hours.