| Home | My photos | Forex | My trading | Contacts |
|
|
You Can't Become Rich In Your Pocket Until You Become Rich In Your Mind | ||||
|
Predictions about the movements of a stock market indexRough Idea: Math nerd runs a clever sports-betting scam and accidentally nets an innumerate mobster. Act One Louis is a short, lecherous, somewhat nerdy man who dropped out of math graduate school about ten years ago (in the late 80s) and now works at home as a technical consultant. He looks and acts a bit like the young Woody Allen. Hes playing cards with his pre-teenage kids and has just finished telling them a funny story. His kids are smart and they ask him how it is that he always knows the right story to tell. His wife, Marie, is uninterested. True to form, he begins telling them the Leo Rosten story about the famous rabbi who was asked by an admiring student how it was that the rabbi always had a perfect parable for any subject. Louis pauses to make sure they see the relevance. When they smile and his wife rolls her eyes again, he continues. He tells them that the rabbi replied to his students with a parable. It was about a recruiter in the Tsars army who was riding through a small town and noticed dozens of chalked circular targets on the side of a barn, each with a bullet hole through the bulls-eye. The recruiter was impressed and asked a neighbor who this perfect shooter might be. The neighbor responded, Oh thats Shepsel, the shoemakers son. Hes a little peculiar. The enthusiastic recruiter was undeterred until the neighbor added, You see, first Shepsel shoots and then he draws the chalk circles around the bullet hole. The rabbi grinned. Thats the way it is with me. I dont look for a parable to fit the subject. I introduce only subjects for which I have parables. Louis and his kids laugh until a distracted, stricken look crosses his face. Closing the book, Louis hurries his kids off to bed, interrupts Maries prattling about her new pearl necklace and her Main Line parents nasty neighbors, distractedly bids her good night, and retreats to his study where he starts scribbling, making calls, and performing calculations. The next day he stops by the bank and the post office and a stationery store, does some research online, and then has a long discussion with his friend, a sportswriter on the local suburban New Jersey newspaper. The conversation revolves around the names, addresses, and intelligence of big sports bettors around the country. The idea for a lucrative con game has taken shape in his mind. For the next several days he sends letters and emails to many thousands of known sports bettors predicting the outcome of a certain sporting event. His wife is uncomprehending when Louis mumbles that, Shepsel-like, he cant lose since whatever happens in the sporting event, his prediction is bound to be right for half the bettors. The reason, it will turn out, is that to half of these people he predicts a certain team will win, and to the other half he predicts that it will lose. Tall, blond, plain, and dim-witted, Marie is left wondering what exactly her sneaky husband is up to now. She finds the new postage meter behind the computer, notes the increasingly frequent secret telephone calls, and nags him about their worsening financial and marital situation. He replies that she doesnt really need three closets full of clothes and a small fortune of jewelry when she spends all her time watching soaps and puts her off with some mathematical mumbo-jumbo about demographic research and new statistical techniques. She still doesnt follow, but she is mollified by his promise that his mysterious endeavor will end up being lucrative. They go out to eat to celebrate and Louis, intense and cadlike as always, talks up genetically modified food and tells the cute waitress that he wants to order whatever item on the menu has the most artificial ingredients. Much to Maries chagrin, he then involves the waitress in a classic mathematical trick by asking her to examine his three cards, one black on both sides, one red on both sides, and one black on one side and red on the other. He asks her for her cap, drops the cards into it, and tells her to pick a card, but only to look at one side of it. The side is red, and Louis notes that the card she picked couldnt possibly be the card that was black on both sides, and therefore it must be one of the other two cards-the red-red card or the red-black card. He guesses that its the red-red card and offers to double her 15 percent tip if its the red-black card and stiff her if its the red-red card. He looks at Marie for approbation that is not forthcoming. The waitress accepts and loses. Tone-deaf to Maries discomfort, Louis thinks hes making amends with her by explaining the trick. She is less than enthralled. He tells her that its not an even bet even though at f i rst glance it appears to be one. There are, after all, two cards it could be, and he bet on one, and the waitress bet on the other. The rub is, he gleefully runs on with his mouth full, there are two ways he can win and only one way the waitress can win. The visible side of the card the waitress picked could be the red side of the red-black card, in which case she wins, or it could be one side of the red-red card, in which case he wins, or it could be the other side of the red-red card, in which case he also wins. His chances of winning are thus 2/3, he concludes exultantly, and the average tip he gives is reduced by a third. Marie yawns and checks her Rolex. He breaks to go to the mens room where he calls his girlfriend May Lee to apologize for some vague indiscretion. The next week he explains the sports-betting con to May Lee, who looks a bit like Lucy Liu and is considerably smarter than Marie and even more materialistic. Theyre in her apartment. She is interested in the con and asks clarifying questions. He enthuses to her that he needs her secretarial help. Hes sending out more letters and making a second prediction in them, but this time just to the half of the people to whom he sent a correct first prediction; the other half he plans to ignore. To half of this smaller group, he will predict a win in a second sporting event, to the other half a loss. Again for half of this group his prediction is going to be right, and so for one-fourth of the original group hes going to be right two times in a row. And to this one-fourth of the bettors? she asks knowingly and excitedly. A mathematico-sexual tension develops. He smiles rakishly and continues. To half of this one-fourth he will predict a win the following week, to the other half a loss; he again will ignore those to whom hes made an incorrect prediction. Once again he will be right-this time for the third straight time-although for only one-eighth of the original population. May Lee helps with the mailings as he continues this process, focusing only on those to whom hes made correct predictions and winnowing out those to whom hes made incorrect ones. There is a sex scene amid all the letters, and they joke about winning whether the teams in question do or not, whether the predictions are right or wrong. Whether up or down, theyll be happy. As the mailings go on, so does his other life as a bored consultant, cyber-surfer, and ardent sports fan. He continues to extend his string of successful predictions to a smaller and smaller group of people until finally with great anticipation he sends a letter to the small group of people who are left. In it he points to his impressive string of successes and requests a substantial payment to keep these valuable and seemingly oracular predictions coming. Act Two He receives many payments and makes a further prediction. Again hes right for half of the remaining people and drops the half for which hes wrong. He asks the former group for even more money for another prediction, receives it, and continues. Things improve with Marie and with May Lee as the money rolls in and Louis realizes his plan is working even better than he expected. He takes his kids and, in turn, each woman to sports events or to Atlantic City, where he comments smugly on the losers who, unlike him, bet on iffy propositions. When Marie worries aloud about shark attacks off the beach, Louis tells her that more Americans die from falling airplane parts each year than from shark attacks. He makes similar pronouncements throughout the trip. He plays a little blackjack and counts cards while doing so. He complains that it requires too much low-level concentration and that, unless one has a lot of money already, the rate at which one makes money is so slow and uneven that one might as well get a job. Still, he goes on, its the only game where a strategy exists for winning. All the other games are for mentally flabby losers. He goes to one of the casino restaurants where he shows his kids the waitress tip-cheating game. They think its great. Back home in suburban New Jersey again, the sportsbetting con resumes. Now there are only a few people left among the original thousands of sports-bettors. One of them, a rough underworld type named Otto, tracks him down, follows him to the parking lot of the basketball arena, and, politely at first and then more and more insistently, demands a prediction on an upcoming game on which he plans to bet a lot of money. Louis dismisses him and Otto, who looks a little like Stephen Segal, promptly orders him into his car at gunpoint and threatens to harm his family. He knows where they live. Not understanding how he could be the recipient of so many consecutive correct predictions, Otto doesnt believe Louiss protestations that this is a con game. Louis makes some mathematical points in an effort to convince Otto of the possible falsity of any particular prediction. But no matter how he tries, he cant quite convince Otto of the fact that there will always be some people who receive many consecutive correct predictions by chance alone. Marooned in Ottos basement, the math-nerd scam artist and the bald muscled extortionist are a study in contrasts. They speak different languages and have different frames of reference. Otto claims, for example, that every bet is more or less a 50-50 proposition because you either win or lose. Louis talks of his basketball buddies Lewis Carroll and Bertrand Russell and the names go over Ottos head, of course. Oddly, they have similar attitudes toward women and money and also share an interest in cards, which they play to while away the time. Otto proudly shows off his riffle shuffle that he claims completely mixes the cards, while Louis prefers solitaire and silently scoffs at Ottos lottery expenditures and gambling misconceptions. When they forget why theyre there they get along well enough, although now and then Otto renews his threats and Louis renews his disavowal of any special sports knowledge and his plea to go home. Finally granting that he might receive an incorrect prediction occasionally, Otto still insists that Louis give him his take on whos going to win an upcoming football game. In addition to not being too bright, Otto, it appears, is in serious debt. Under extreme duress (with a gun to his head), Louis makes a prediction that happens to be right, and Otto, desperate and still convinced that he is in control of a money tree, now wants to bet funds borrowed from his gambling associates on Louiss next prediction. Act Three Louis at last convinces Otto to let him go home and do research for his next big sports prediction. He and May Lee, whose need for money, baubles, and clothes has all along provided the impetus for the scam, discuss his predicament and realize they must exploit Ottos only weaknesses, his stupidity and gullibility, and his only intellectual interests, money and playing cards. Both go over to Ottos apartment. Otto is charmed by May Lee, who flirts with him and offers him a deal. She wordlessly takes two decks of cards from her purse and asks Otto to shuffle each of them. Otto is pleased to show off to a more appreciative audience. She then gives him one of the decks and asks him to turn over one card at a time as she, keeping pace with him, does the same thing with the other deck. May Lee asks, what does he think is the likelihood that the cards they turn over will ever match, denomination and suit exactly the same? He scoffs but is entranced by May Lee and is amazed when after a tense minute or so that is exactly happens. She explains that it will happen more often than not and perhaps he can use this fact to make some money. After all, Louis is a mathematical genius and hes proved that it will. Louis smiles proudly. Otto is puzzled. May Lee tells Otto again that the sportsbetting was a scam and that hes more likely to make money with the card tricks that Louis can teach him. Louis steps forward with the same two decks, which hes now arranged so that the cards in each deck alternate colors. In one, its redblack, red-black, red-black ... In the other its black-red, black-red, black-red ... . He gives the two decks to Otto and challenges him to do one of his great riffle shuffles of one deck into the other so that the cards will be mixed. Otto does and arrogantly announces that the cards are completely mixed now, whereupon Louis takes the combined two decks, puts them behind his back, pretends to be manipulating them, and brings forward two cards, one black and one red. So, Otto asks? Louis brings forth two more cards, one of each color, and then he does this again and again. I really shuffled them, Otto observes. Howd you do that? Louis explains that it involves no skill; the cards no longer alternate color in the combined deck, but any two from the top on down are always of different color. There is a collage scene in which Louis explains various card tricks to Otto and the ways in which they can be exploited to make money. Theres always some order, some deviation from randomness, that a card man like you can use to get rich, Louis says to Otto. He even explains to him how he avoids paying waitresses tips. The deal, of course, is that Otto releases them, understanding, vaguely at least, how the bet ting scheme works and, more precisely, how the new card tricks do. Louis promises a one-day crash course on how to exploit the tricks for money. In the last scene Louis is seen working the same scam but this time with predictions about the movements of a stock market index. Since he doesnt want any more Ottos, but a higher class clientele, hes redefined himself as the publisher of a stock newsletter. The house hes in is more sumptuous and May Lee, to whom hes now married, bustles about in an expensive suit as Louis plays cards with his slightly older chil dren, occasionally doodling little bulls-eyes and targets on an envelope. He excuses himself and goes to his study to make a secret telephone call to an apartment on Central Park West that hes just purchased for his new mistress. |
|
|||||||||||||||
Previous Issues
|
| ©2007 Olesia | Home • My photos • Forex • News • My trading • Contacts |