An Ethical Dilemma

Okay, so I’ve added a new link today. I was a bit conflicted about it until I sat down and thought about it for a bit. You see, the link takes you to my friend Adam’s blog, which he has entitled “The Gambler’s Parking Lot,” and which he uses to dispense gambling advice and document his rate of success in games of chance. So here’s the conflict—I like Adam, and I want to help people find his site. At the same time, I don’t want to promote sports gambling. Excepting some money laid down in NCAA tournament pools over the years, I’ve never placed a wager on a sporting contest. Frankly, I’m extremely turned off by sports gambling, since I suspect that if I ever did get started betting on sports, I’d probably become obsessed by money and the pure fun of sports would be ruined for me. I’ve seen it happen to friends. So do I give my friend Adam a friendly link, or do I take a stand against sports gambling?

After some careful thought, I’m I realized that I could have my cake and eat it too. Adam gets his link. How does this move both help a friend and discourage gambling? Well, allow me to explain. Over the years, Adam has developed several computer systems for picking games, most notably his baseball program “Charlie Hustle 2.0.” Last year he asked me to loan him a portion of my college basketball library so that he could enter schedules dating back to 1998 as part of the development of his basketball program. This latter move gave me pause to consider who was the bigger nerd—Adam for wanting to enter data from 6 years worth of magazines for a gambling program, or me for possessing upwards of 6 years of basketball magazines.

But I digress. Adam’s been working hard to get his systems in place so that he may continue working towards his gambling goals. Let’s take a look at what he has to show for all his hard work:

1) A baseball program (the aforementioned “Charlie Hustle 2.0”) that is popular fodder for mocking Adam when he gets together with his friends.

2) A college basketball program that, at least in part, is basing its suggestions on games played six years prior. Six years, mind you, is a time period that encompasses the turnover of an entire college roster, and in many cases, a change in coaching staff and/or arena as well.

3) Hundreds of hours of free time lost to program design, data entry, and analysis of betting lines.

4) A betting success rate that is no greater than what I have seen from most of my other friends.

So really, when you look at the above facts, it’s doubtful that anyone who would go to Adam’s site would leave any more inclined to gamble than he or she was before. If anything, Adam’s results, combined with his tireless work in anticipation of a quick buck probably would make one less inclined to gamble. And as an added bonus, my brief review of his site yesterday revealed such tremendous jargon that I wouldn’t have understood his system any better had he opted to write his explanation in German. Even if I wanted to gamble before I had read his notes, not knowing the meaning of a term like “reverse juice” would have sent me running as far as possible from bookmakers, after realizing that I had no idea what I was doing.

So there’s your link off to the right, Adam. Thanks for your inadvertent public service message, and enjoy your season of playing the FERD system, however the hell it works.