BETTING, ITS A HUSTLE

The other day, my pal challenged me to come up with all the possible outcomes that you can be able to play on Sportpesa in order to win the coveted jackpot. The zeal in me got down to googling and programming and sadly, it's not as easy as we had thought. Men, being this jobless dudes, we had thought that we could easily come up with possible outcomes through permutations. As such, we took our calculators and worked out the math. Sadly, to get the possible outcomes, you need to raise the three games by the number of outcomes. If it is two games, there are a possible nine games. So for thirteen games, there are 1,594,323 possible right outcomes. Which means you need 160 million in order to win between 1 and 40 million if theoretically put. Not worth it, Right?

Damn. It looks like my dream of betting has gone to the dogs. Now I only have to concentrate on some other stuff. Even though I came up with the codes to run in the model, it was not able to fit into Microsoft Excel. Excel, unfortunately only allows for 1,048,576 cells, row-wise. I did run some input on VBA and stored it as a macro so that I could possibly view the output on Excel. Then I saw that debug error. Now I need to find a way of importing the model directly into an Excel Data Model as it can handle more than 2 million cells in a row.

What prompted my friend to ask me if I can be able to execute the outcomes? Since we had resorted to being full-time students (ideally, doing a daunting professional course can make you think you need all that time but you don’t), we sometimes found time to engage in garish banter over lunch just to sate our quest for being overnight millionaires. And in our parochial senses, we thought of investing some cash and voila, we would be smiling all the way to the bank. But the gods were not on our side. The first setback arose because we did not know how to execute the model even though he knew I had taken up some courses on programming and excel online.

So as not to shame myself, I had sleepless nights thinking how I could be able to solve the problem of aiding in us becoming millionaires. I even forgot that I had a mountain of an exam in due course and made YouTube, various betting blogs, programming sites and the knowledge I had in excel into use. After two nights of trial and error, I was able to come up with a program by modelling a seven outcome game. (You should have seen my Eureka! debut). Then a problem arose with regard to time. Even if you have all the time to play the outcomes, it will take you more than a week if betting on the games individually if you factor in you need sleep, toilet breaks, meal breaks and monotony.  My advice on this was to form a gang of like-minded pals to bet all viable games after eliminating outcomes that will not work. Like, say if Spain played with Kenya, you are sure Kenya will lose. So your bet for the game is a win for Spain.

If you choose a win for this game. You automatically reduce the chances of failure by a third. Ideally, if you can eliminate eight games which you are cock sure about in a jackpot, then you will remain with five games in the model to work with. That means with five games, the possible number of times you can play is 243 games. Those games multiplied by KSh. 100, you are sure to get your return on investments. However, you have to be contended with match fixing and the possibility of the team you had so much hope on not being in shape and therefore drawing or losing. Because football can be like an earthquake, unpredictable, right. Again, the games that are usually placed for a bet are usually very tricky to predict, zimekauka mbaya.  

So we are still stuck in a rut. I am still looking for mechanisms of running the codes in a data model as my friend looks for funds so that we can sit down and brainstorm on how to win ‘intellectually’. Given that I also performed Monte Carlo simulation on the outcomes, I am sure you can smile all the way to the bank if you muster how to work with the model given that we have been betting on a trial and error basis.

As for yours truly, I have to learn how to bet since I am not well versed with the betting industry. I should also not take for granted football noise. Noise in this case means the possibility of match-fixing, and all the various information that influences the outcome of a game. Albeit to counter this betting institutions, one only needs brainy football stalwarts who know how to predict successfully and you are good to go. This is after performing historical simulations.

Is it worth it to bet? I have been a firm believer that ridiculing that which has become a system will not eliminate it but will propagate it due to the advertisement it gets whether adverse or not. Plus, betting is for those we call risk seeking. Even though there are many people who are loss averse, the sheer aspect of not knowing the outcome makes it quite something due to the adrenaline that you might win. If my mental institutions serve me right, one day I will model a winning outcome with just 27 games. It’s possible.

Hasta La Vista Baby.

Link to outcomes of seven games

[Picture Source: My own]