Why I Can't Beat a Monkey

A millennium ago, when I was still in my 20s, I was so impressed with my ability to pick football winners (NFL & College) that I fantasized about forming a closed-end mutual fund that would allow me to invest Danny DeVito’s money (and other people’s) with my local bookie…or, eventually, with an authorized Vegas sportsbook through my Nevada subsidiary.

But as with most concerns of my 20 something self, I got distracted and only just woke up, 40+ years later, to ask, “What ever happened to…?” Not that I regret my 40 years in the Wilderness! Far from it.

During that time I helped raise a full roster of kind and creative children and grands and I helped guide well over 100,000 people through the vicissitudes of the American healthcare system, enabling them to receive higher quality care for less out-of-pocket cost. (Park your cynicism at the curb: it is possible to do something positive.)

But in the process, I lost touch with many of my adolescent dreams including my plan to eliminate injustice on a global scale and my plan to bankrupt the Vegas’ casinos via my insightful handicapping.

A few years ago, sports gambling was legalized in my home state; the timing was fortuitous: it coincided with my retirement. At this point, I won’t be investing anyone else’s money but there’s no reason I can’t make a little bit for myself and my family, right?

So, so wrong! Let’s set the stage. The simplest way to bet on football is to bet on the winners of individual games. The Vegas sportsbooks set ‘the point spread’ - all I need to do is pick the winners.

Now, without knowing a single thing about football, you or I should be able to break even (minus the house vigorish, of course). If I pick teams at random it stands to reason that I should be right half the time. Case in point:

My aunt Mabel from Missouri loves a flutter, but sports is not her thing; so she bets on teams with birds in their names (e.g. the Baltimore Ravens). She should win approximately 50% of her wagers…and she does. The laws of probability stand!

Therefore, you can evaluate my football acumen by comparing my win-loss percentage with the 50% standard established by ornithologists like Mabel.

Would you pay me for my expertise if I could show you a 3^rd party audited track record of, say, 55% wins? Ok, how about 60%? How about 75…or 40? 

40%? In my three years as a professional gambler I have never come close to duplicating, much less exceeding, my twitcher aunt’s track record. Why did I waste money on Lions, Bengals and Bears when I could have been betting on Cardinals and Falcons? 

So much for all the hours I ‘wasted’ watching games, live and on rerun! I would have been better off wading through a swamp with a pair of binoculars around my neck. But why? How is it possible that I cannot at least duplicate the results of a ‘monkey’ (sorry, Auntie) who picks winners randomly?

Here’s where I went wrong. I assumed I was pitting my expertise against that of professional handicappers who are paid 7 figure salaries for their insight. I’m oddly OK with that…but that’s not what’s happening. I am trying to outsmart something much more powerful than mere expertise. I am going up against the collective wisdom of the gambling universe.

(As we learned from the Soviet era, centralized intelligence, no matter how prodigious, can never beat distributed wisdom, no matter how inefficient. This is why models of God as a personal ‘Central Intelligence Agency’ are inherently flawed.)

Here's how it works IRL. A game is posted with certain preliminary odds set by the illuminati. Immediately those odds shift as punters around the world weigh in. Assuming no unexpected mid-week developments (e.g. injuries, trades) the so-called ‘line’ will quickly settle on a consensus figure, reflecting the collective wisdom.

Now along comes yours truly shopping for a bargain, a mismatch, an anomaly. I see an attractive proposition: The Buffalo Bills are 3 point favorites against the New York Giants. No way! Buffalo is a much better team; they should be favored by at least a touchdown. Let me lock it in before the line changes. 

Presto, bet made. I can’t believe my good fortune. This proposition is simply too good to be true. Aye, there’s the rub. It is too good to be true. There’s some relevant factor I’ve not considered (snow is in the forecast or somebody has the flu): the big money gamblers know something I don’t. I am smart enough to detect the anomaly but not smart enough to figure out what it is I’m not seeing.

But it gets worse. The line on Buffalo has just dropped from 3 points to 2 and I’m still locked in at 3. Maybe I should place a second bet, taking advantage of the extra point. 

In any event, I should have a 50% chance of winning, like Mabel, right? Wrong again! As the odds drop on Buffalo, the probability that Buffalo will ‘cover the spread’ (i.e. win by more than 3, or even 2, points) is now much less than 50%.

How so? No matter how much the odds drop, there will always be punters like me who think they’ve found a bargain. While all the smart money is moving to New York (as usual?), me and my lot are doubling down on the Bills. No matter how much the line shifts, the real shift in probability is even greater. 

Game day! By kickoff time, the game is rated a toss-up, no points. I should be afraid, very afraid, but at this point

I’m all-in on Buffalo. So I place a third bet on the Bills, order Door Dash, and sit back to watch my ship come in. 

Like a Nantucket widow on her walk, I’m about to have a very long wait. No ship! The Giants win the game outright, of course. Everyone says, “It’s the upset of the week…” but that’s cold comfort; I lose all three of my bets. 

So, I called my aunt to commiserate. But no ‘joy’ there; she bet on the Eagles and the Seahawks and broke even. Of course she did. Mabel may not know football but she does know her birds. And me? My so-called ‘knowledge’ of the game did me in, proving once again that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” (Alexander Pope)

And so I lose to monkeys…not occasionally but steadily, week after week, over 3 long seasons. What to do now? Stop betting on football, of course!

Or…watch the lines move and bet on teams that are moving up rather than down the ladder. Look for bargains…and then bet against them. Assume that ‘knowing’ whatever it is I think I know is knowing less than nothing. 

Sidebar: There’s a school of philosophy (Nicholas of Cusa et al.) that claims that all knowledge (e.g. re God) is ‘negative knowledge’. The closer we can get to “I know nothing”, the closer we are to the truth.

Now that I know nothing, I’m ready to make some serious ‘bread’ and leave Auntie in a pile of feathers. (Note: no actual birds were harmed in the process.) Wish me luck; perhaps I’ll let you know how it goes. Perhaps.

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Edvard Munch’s By the Roulette Table (1892) captures the tense allure of gambling, where shadowed figures lean toward fate’s spin under dim light. The scene reflects Munch’s fascination with human anxiety and the fragile line between chance and despair.