What Did You Give Up To Get Good At This?

[SharpEddie47]

Different question from what betting has cost you.

Cost implies something taken. This is about something traded.

The hours I put into developing a methodology were hours I chose to spend. Not hours that disappeared. Hours I allocated deliberately.

Twenty years of deliberate allocation adds up to something significant.

What I gave up to get good at this:

The ability to watch sport without analysis running in the background. Gone by year three. Never recovered it.

A simpler relationship with outcomes. I can't watch a game I don't have a position on without my brain automatically forming one anyway.

Probably some career development. The hours spent on models and data between 2003 and 2010 could have gone into the consulting work that actually pays my bills. At my billing rate the opportunity cost is uncomfortable to calculate.

And something harder to name. The version of myself that didn't know how to do this. That person had something I can't fully describe and can't get back.

What did you trade for the skill.

 

[FadeThePublic]

Social flexibility.

Being good at this requires information that doesn't respect social schedules.

Line movement at 11pm Saturday. Injury news Sunday morning. Market shifts during hours when normal people are doing normal things.

Being available for that information meant being unavailable for other things.

Over fifteen years the other things accumulated into a specific shape.

The friends who stopped inviting me to things on weekends because the answer was too often no.

The relationships that required a version of me that wasn't always partially elsewhere.

I got good at this. I got worse at being present for things that didn't have odds attached.

Not sure the trade was worth it. Not sure I made it consciously.

 

[TaffyTipster]

The Saturday.

Before serious betting Saturday was just Saturday. Games, pub, family if there was family stuff, mates if there wasn't.

Now Saturday has a structure. Prices to check in the morning. Bets to place before kickoff. Scores to monitor. Results to process.

The unstructured Saturday is gone.

Bronwyn's mentioned it. Not accusingly. Just factually. That she misses the Saturdays when we'd decide what to do at ten in the morning instead of around the rugby schedule.

I gave up the Saturday that didn't have a job to do.

Didn't notice it going. Just woke up one day and it was already gone.