I have something to share with all of you.  I like to gamble a little, not too much but a little.  I’ve never been one to play sports much, dabble yes, but not play like my life depends on it and for sure I find it a waste of time to watch it on the tube.  Baseball, football, basketball and all the rest, and yet I have friends who can’t live a day without some sort of view, story or dialog about these sports.  They even have imaginary teams they make up with the real names of players and they play their imaginary teams against their buddies imaginary team and bet beers and such on them.  I never could understand any of that.  How on earth do they know who won what?  Anyway, suffice it to say, I will watch the big games like Super Bowl and World Series, but only if I have a number on the game.  I really could care less about which team wins, as long as my number comes up and I win some money!

So, I get talked into “running a board”…..100 squares for $X per square.  I make up some rules and away we go.  It’s not too hard to find enough people willing to “pay to play”, as I have found there are a lot of people who think like me, but who have to have the game playing in their house because of a fanatic that lives in the same house and so they might as well have some money riding on the outcome.

Well the board has been full for several big games, but at the last World Series a small group of 5 guys who have coffee together have 5 squares on my board.  When the numbers for each of the squares had been pulled they complained that 3 of the 5 of them had “tied” scores….like 8 to 8, or 9 to 9….When confronted my defense was that I choose totally at random.  I have 100 playing cards with numbers 1 through 100 on them and I mix them into a box and pick one out at a time and corresponding that number with my list of names, beginning with the first name and going down the list, that name gets put on that square.  Square one is the upper left square and square 100 is the bottom right square.  In choosing what number goes at the head of the column or row, I take 10 cards out of the mix, 1 through 10 and pull the number and write it either in the first square along the top or the last square along the top and move either left or right across the top accordingly.  The same with the side numbers.  At any rate, it is totally random and anyone can end up anywhere on the board.  AND when you think about it, there are 10 numbers across the top and 10 numbers down the side, 10 of the squares in the field (of 100 squares) will be ties, who cares?

Well, they accepted that fact and went on about business.  Did they win?  I don’t know, but at least they had a square, which is more than most people….and I have a waiting list of people wishing they could get on the board.  The way it is set up, the 100 squares are spoken for until someone opts off and then the square becomes someone else’s…it’s all fair!

Randomness is always the most fair when it comes to something like this.  Some people run their boards by allowing the square holders to write their names in any open square on the board when the come to pay and will continue to sell the squares in this fashion until it is full.  Then put the numbers along the top and along the sides…those being the only randomness of their board.  I’ve played with boards like that and they are fine.  Any gambling board is fair, especially if the end of the game numbers are the same as my numbers on the board!  Then life is really good!

Ok, so it is Super Bowl time!  Big name teams paying out tons of money to big name players, who may or may not be taking bribes etc. to sway a game one way or another.  Maybe even deflating the balls to give them a better advantage.  The gambling casinos in Nevada and other places around the world are taking all sorts of bets on this game.  Bets on who will win the coin toss.  Which team will score first.  Which player on the team will actually carry the ball across the goal line.  Which water boy will drop his basket of water bottles.  Which players will pick up the drink cooler to dump on the coach when the game is over.  They bet on anything and everything.  And so, trying my best to be like them…..I have this board (insert humble smiley face here).

Giving a lot of thought into how to make this drawing as fair as possible so as to avoid these 5 guys from getting tied scores.  There are 90 squares that will not be ties and only 10 that will be ties.  What are the odds that I need to worry about any of them getting a tied score on this board?  Hey, gambling guys!  There you go!  What is the bet and what can I win?  They have a 10 to 90 chance of getting a tied score.

Well, I’m still worried about it and so I really put my thinking cap on.  I have a list of 96 names and the four of us who collect and distribute money get one square each for “working” the board, for a total of 100 names.  Today I decided to number each of the names on the list 1 through 100.  I mixed up the multiple square holders (some have two, some have as many as 5) so that each name had numbers representing their numbers of squares.

Then I went to the internet and found a “random number drawing system” and had it print me out a random list of numbers from 1 to 100.  The first number on this list was “51” and the last number on the list was “6”….as random as it gets.

Comparing the list of names to the list of numbers, number 51 was “Joe Dokes”(name made up to protect the innocent).  I wrote Joe’s name in the first square on the board.  The second number on the random list of numbers was “62”…The name on the list that was numbered 62 was “Martha S.” (We all know who she is), and her name was written in square two on the board.  I did this for every number on the random list and checked off the name from the list.  Multiple square holders were treated the same as their respective numbers came up.

I ask you, how could I have ever done this any more random than that?

OK, there is more to this than that.  We still have to select the numbers that go across the top of the grid and also down the side.  There are 10 squares across and 10 squares down…10X10 = 100.

I again went to the magic of the internet and used the random numbers list generator to give me two lists from 1 to 10….the first one I printed I wrote…across the top….the second one I printed I wrote…down the side.  Those numbers were written in their respective squares, across the top of the board and down the side of the board.

One last detail!  There are two teams playing in the Super Bowl…Denver Broncos and South Carolina Panthers.  A quick flip of the coin and I wrote the Panthers down the side and Broncos across the top.

Random as random can get!

Well, all of us “workers” like to make sure everyone playing has a copy of the board once it’s filled out and ready to go.  The rules are also copied and made ready to anyone wishing to know what those are as well.  Everything is above board and with that…Happy Campers Every One.

As I was highlighting the names of the 5 guys who drink coffee together I was thinking to myself just how fair I had been to everyone involved and then I looked at the scores for each of them.  Player one…5 to 6 (not the real score, in fact none of the scores I’m about to write are correct, but you will get the drift), Player two…1 to 1…..Player three…5 to 5…..Player four…8 to 8 and Player five…7 to 7.  (How about that odds makers?)

OH MY HECK!  Four of the five players have tied scores!  I’m going to be hearing about this soon.

Now for real.  No score at this point in the process is a bad score.  In fact every score is a winning score.  It isn’t until the game is played that the winning scores will be known.  But, as a consolation and as I have two squares of my own, I have offered any one of them the chance to trade one of my squares for theirs before the game begins if they would like.  I’m very fair like that.

Bears Butt

January 25, 2016