Opportunity

As I write this column, the Super Bowl is a little more than a week away. By the time you read it, you already will know whether the Colts or the Saints won the game. If you bet on football, you also will know whether or not the Saints covered the point spread, and whether the total number of points scored in the game went over or under. Everywhere I go, people are talking about their bets, and how smart they were to make the ones that they did. And I don’t mean just professional gamblers, or even habitual gamblers; I mean everybody — bank tellers, supermarket clerks, and cab drivers. It seems to be common knowledge that more money is wagered on the Super Bowl than on any other event. What puzzles me is that so many of these bettors are convinced that they are doing something clever, and are not betting just to have a rooting interest and a little more fun when they watch the game.

Can they all be right? Is this really a great moneymaking opportunity? Probably not! Unless you are a bookmaker or a statistics nerd who specializes in weird prop bets (like how many field goals will be made, who’ll score first, and so on), you have negative equity on your Super Bowl bets. You might win or you might lose, but you are taking the worst of it. This is a game that receives more scrutiny than any other. Don’t kid yourself that you know something that nobody else knows. Don’t think that the oddsmakers haven’t put a lot of thought into coming up with an accurate line. They might blunder on a basketball game between two small colleges on a night when 50 games are being played, but they won’t on the Super Bowl. If you make some Super Bowl bets, treat them as entertainment, like buying theater tickets. In fact, making two $1,000 sports bets is probably cheaper than buying two tickets to a hit Broadway musical, since on average you will win one bet for $1,000 and lose the other for $1,100 (including the juice), for a net loss of $100.

The Super Bowl occurs only once a year, and by the time you read this, it will be over. Why should I warn you about betting on the Super Bowl after it is over? The lesson I want you to learn is that you must look for situations in which you have an advantage. Most gambling situations will not offer you an advantage. But there are many opportunities to bet, and some will offer you an advantage. They are most frequent in poker. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find good games. A good game has a lot of bad players, or at least players who play a lot worse than you do. If you play in good games, you will have an advantage. Once you are in a good game, you must wait for good hands and good situations. That sounds simple to do, but more players go broke by failing to wait for good situations than for any other reason. Oftentimes they overestimate their skills, or underestimate those of their opponents. Opportunities — or, in this case, games — always look juicier going in than coming out. If I had applied this bit of wisdom to various non-gambling investments that I’ve made over the years, I would be a lot better off than I am today.

Anyone who has ever witnessed two golfers or pool players setting up a match will realize that more than 90 percent of the time, the better negotiator will end up with an advantage. A pool hustler will often wait around for days, hoping that a sucker will walk in. He won’t risk a penny until he is sure that he has the best of it, and he won’t make a big wager unless he is sure that he has much the best of it. Strangely enough, even poker players, who will spend hours bargaining for a small advantage in a golf match, will leap into the first open seat they see. Small- or medium-stakes players have an unbelievably huge choice of games. A $1-$2 no-limit hold’em player can find hundreds of live games in Las Vegas, and quite a few in California or Atlantic City. Almost every big city has a number of private games. If you prefer to play online, there is an almost infinite number of games available. Make sure that you are in a good game. If a game that was good starts to go sour, quit and find another game. Alexander Graham Bell once said, “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” There is no bonus for managing to grind out a tiny win in a tough game. Those hours of effort should be allocated to finding a good game and then easily winning a lot. If you develop the habit of passing up bad situations and actively seek good ones, you will quickly see your bankroll increase.

Steve “Zee” Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful games player. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. He can be found at many major tournaments and playing on Full Tilt, as one of its pros. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A — Nice Guy Eddie’s at Houston and Doc Holliday’s at 9th Street — in New York City.