The Match You Can Never Watch Again - The Ongoing Avoidance Years Later

[TaffyTipster]

Not the biggest loss.

Not the worst bet.

The match you actively avoid.

The one where something happened that has made rewatching it specifically impossible or specifically something you choose not to do.

Mine is Wales versus England at the 2003 Rugby World Cup.

Not even a final. A pool match. Wales lost narrowly.

I had a significant bet on Wales by the standards of the time. Significant enough to matter. Not enough to be devastating.

But the match ended in a way that produced a specific feeling that has never fully dispersed.

A try in the final minutes that the television angle made look like it might have been held up. The TMO review that confirmed the try.

I was in a pub. The pub went quiet in a Welsh-specific way. Not silence. The sound of people deciding not to speak rather than having nothing to say.

I've never watched a replay of that match.

Not because of the money.

Because watching it would require going back into the pub-quiet of that specific evening.

The match lives behind a specific quality of feeling that I haven't chosen to re-enter.

Whether this is about the bet or about something else entirely: the bet was the thing that made me present in a particular way during the match. Without the bet I might have felt the loss differently.

Whether the avoidance is about the money or about what the money was doing during the match: I've never clearly separated the two.

Has anyone else got a specific match like this.

 

[SharpEddie47]

2007 NFC Championship Game. Green Bay versus New York Giants.

Cowboys had been eliminated the week before. I'd backed them in the divisional round and they'd lost in a way that was genuinely difficult to watch.

The Championship Game itself: I had no stake in it. Should have been neutral football.

I couldn't watch it.

Not because of any bet on that specific game. Because the Cowboys' exit the previous week had produced a specific feeling about that entire playoff period that contaminated the subsequent games.

I turned the Championship Game off after twenty minutes. Watched something else.

In the following years when that game has come up in NFL historical discussions, I've been aware of a specific reluctance to engage with it.

The reluctance not logically connected to anything in that specific game.

Connected to what that period of football represented that year.

The match that exists within a contaminated period: avoidance behavior that isn't about the match itself.

The bet on the earlier game: the thing that made the period contaminated.

The Championship Game caught in the contamination without having caused it.

 

[DublinDegen]

lads this thread is one i've been thinking about since taffy posted it...

the match i can never watch again isn't one i had money on...

which is the thing that surprised me when i thought about which match it was...

ireland versus france. euro 2016. last sixteen.

€0 on it...

watched it with friends... the whole thing... rivaldo-esque... robbie brady header to equalise... the roar in the pub... thirty minutes of thinking it was possible...

then france took over and it ended 2-1 and ireland were out...

haven't watched a replay of it since...

the reason i can't watch it is specific and has nothing to do with betting...

emma was beside me when the robbie brady header went in...

we were four months from the end and neither of us knew it yet...

we were just two people in a pub who'd been together two years watching ireland nearly hold france to a draw at the euros...

the roar that went up when the header hit the net: i remember looking at her in that moment...

the match lives in that moment...

watching a replay would require going back to the last period where everything was still normal between us...

normal while being a few months from over...

the match as a container for a specific before that can't be revisited without the knowledge of the after...

the bet that's not there and the loss that's not about the football...

 

[ThePuntingProf]

The match I cannot watch again is the final match of the 2018-2019 Premier League season.

Manchester City versus Brighton. The final day.

I had a specific and significant position on Liverpool to win the title. The title would go to Liverpool if City dropped points.

City were drawing at half time. The position was briefly alive in the way that only the night-before thread can describe from the inside.

City scored three goals in the second half. The position was over.

The match itself I watched until the end. The mathematical elimination was clear by the sixty-fifth minute.

I watched the remaining twenty-five minutes in a specific state.

That state is not one I want to re-enter by watching the match again.

But the specific reason the match is unwatchable is not the position and not the money.

Margaret died seven months later.

I've never sat down to watch that match in the way I sometimes revisit significant betting moments to understand what happened.

When it has appeared in broadcasts or documentary content about the Premier League season, I've left the room.

The position I was holding that afternoon is not the reason.

The afternoon itself as one of the last normal betting afternoons is closer to the reason.

Normal in the specific way that the period before you know something will end has a quality that can only be seen from the other side.

I was managing a significant outright position while sitting in my Hampstead house with Margaret in the next room.

The match as a date on a calendar that had things after it and before it that I didn't know would be different kinds of things.

 

[FadeThePublic]

The match I can never watch again involves a specific person rather than a specific outcome.

I won't describe it in detail.

But there was a playoff game several years ago that I watched with someone I was involved with at the time. A meaningful stake on it. The game was good. We won.

The relationship ended badly approximately six months later.

The game clip appears periodically on sports media when that season gets discussed. The last time it appeared I closed the tab within ten seconds.

The money won that night: irrelevant.

The win: irrelevant.

The watching it again would require re-entering the specific physical and emotional context of that evening.

The context: no longer accessible without the knowledge of what the subsequent six months looked like.

The contamination going backward in time.

The good evening seen from the after: no longer simply a good evening.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

Mine is small and I feel slightly embarrassed describing it next to everyone else's.

Super Bowl LIV. Chiefs versus 49ers.

Chiefs came back from ten points down in the fourth quarter to win.

I was watching with my dad. He'd been really sick earlier that year and this was one of the first times he felt well enough to watch a full game properly.

The comeback. The fourth quarter. Mahomes.

I had money on the Chiefs obviously. The money won.

But the thing that makes it hard to revisit isn't the money.

It's that my dad cried when they won.

Not dramatically. Just briefly. The release of a really difficult year ending with the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl.

I've never watched a replay of that game.

Not because of the bet.

Because watching it would require going back to what that afternoon meant and I'd have to watch my dad being that relieved from the safe distance of a recording and I don't want that experience.

The match as a specific container for a specific moment between me and my dad.

The replay as a version without him in the room.

The room is the thing. Not the match.

 

[CoachTony_Bets]

The game I can't watch again is a high school game I coached.

Not a professional match. Not a televised fixture.

A playoff game six years ago that we lost in a manner that still sits in a specific way.

We were ahead late. My son was playing. He was eleven at the time, too young to be fully aware of the stakes.

We lost on a turnover in the final minute.

The game is available on footage from a parent's camera. I've never watched it back.

Not because of the result.

Because watching it would mean watching my son's face at the final whistle. He didn't fully understand the loss yet. He was looking at me to understand how to feel about it.

The replay would show me his face looking at me for guidance on how to respond to losing something important.

And I'd have to watch myself not giving him the moment he deserved because I was managing my own response to the loss rather than fully present for his.

The avoidance: not the game. The version of me in the game.

 

[Klaus]

The specific match is from the 2012-2013 Bundesliga season.

Bayern versus Borussia Dortmund. Der Klassiker.

I had my largest single bet to that point on Dortmund at odds that the model suggested were significantly undervalued.

The model was correct in its assessment of the probabilities.

Bayern won 3-1.

I've reviewed the mathematical post-mortem. The model's output was right. The variance resolved against me.

The reason I've never watched that match again is not the loss.

It's what the loss represented for me professionally and personally at that specific point.

2013 was the first year I had invested significant time and resources in building the model infrastructure I still use.

The largest bet from that infrastructure lost comprehensively.

Watching the match again would mean watching the moment when everything I'd built first failed visibly.

The model has been profitable across every subsequent season.

The rational understanding: one loss in the first year of a system that has been validated across fourteen seasons means nothing about the system.

The emotional residue: the 3-1 final score from a match I've never revisited.

The avoidance not being about the money.

Being about what the money represented at that specific point in the development of something I cared about making work.

 

[oli_sussex]

There's a match from my exchange trading period that I've never gone back to.

A match where I made a position-sizing error. Not catastrophic. Significant enough to matter.

The error wasn't the loss. The error was the process that produced the position.

I can describe the match result without distress. I've never watched the footage.

The footage would show me the ninety minutes during which I was making a sequence of decisions that I've subsequently identified as departing from the methodology.

Watching the match means watching the departures in real time.

The departures visible from inside the match footage in a way they weren't visible during the match itself.

The avoidance: not the outcome. The version of me making the decisions.

 

[TaffyTipster]

Everyone's match is about something other than the match.

The pub quiet that was Wales deciding not to speak.

The championship game in a contaminated period.

Emma beside Conor when the header went in.

Margaret in the next room during the Liverpool title afternoon.

The dad who cried when the Chiefs won.

The son's face looking for how to feel about losing.

The first failure of something that subsequently worked.

The version of yourself making decisions you've since identified as wrong.

The match as a container.

The thing in the container: always something other than the football.

 

[SharpEddie47]

The avoidance behavior is consistent across every version in this thread.

Something happened during the match that has a quality of specificity that replaying it would require re-entering.

The re-entry not being about the score.

Being about the state of things during the match that the match witnessed.

The match as a specific slice of time that had specific people in it or specific versions of yourself in it that the replay would make present again from the wrong angle.

The wrong angle being: knowing what came after.

Watching it again means watching it with the knowledge of the after already present.

The thing in the container seen from the outside with the full subsequent timeline visible.

The avoidance protecting you from the specific quality of watching a before-moment while knowing it was a before-moment.

 

[FadeThePublic]

The before-moment watched from the after.

That's the mechanism.

The match exists in a moment when specific things hadn't happened yet.

Watching it means watching the not-yet from the already.

The not-yet: the breakup. The illness. The death. The understanding of what that season meant. The version of yourself you've since examined and found wanting.

All of it: not-yet during the match.

Already when watching the replay.

The replay as a time travel that goes in the wrong direction.

You arrive in the before knowing you're in the before.

Nobody in the before knows they're in the before.

The match as a moment of genuine not-yet that the replay converts into a moment of obvious about-to.

The avoidance protecting the before from the knowledge of the after.

 

[DublinDegen]

the before protected from the knowledge of the after...

ireland versus france in that pub...

emma beside me when the robbie brady header went in and i looked at her...

that specific look: the last version of looking at her where everything was still completely intact...

four months before it ended... nothing wrong yet in either of our views...

the look that has no knowledge in it of what the following months would be...

watching a replay means watching that look knowing what i know now...

the look retrospectively contaminated by the knowledge of the after...

the match protecting something i'd rather leave protected...

the replay as the thing that would make the protection unnecessary...

which is also why i'll never watch it...

the protection as a form of preservation...

the robbie brady header and the pub roar and emma beside me: frozen in a state that precedes the knowledge that changes them...

staying frozen by the decision not to watch...

 

[ThePuntingProf]

The final Saturday afternoon with Margaret in the next room while I managed the Liverpool outright position stays frozen in precisely the way Conor describes, and I want to add one final observation which is that the match-I-cannot-watch-again is a different category from the match-I-watched-while-losing, because the match watched while losing is available for the post-mortem, available for the analytical review, available to be folded into the model's subsequent development, while the match-I-cannot-watch-again is specifically the match that has been taken out of the analytical process and placed somewhere else, somewhere that isn't the betting record and isn't the P&L and isn't the model refinement history, it exists in a category that the analytical framework doesn't have a column for, the match as a date that contained something irretrievable rather than as a data point that contains something learnable, and I've thought carefully about whether the refusal to revisit these matches is a failure of analytical discipline or whether it's the correct recognition that some experiences are being held somewhere other than the betting record and should stay there, and I've concluded it's the second, the unwatched match is the evidence that betting has been present in life in a way that makes it continuous with everything else rather than separate from everything else, and the everything else includes the things that have the quality Conor identifies of being protected from the knowledge of the after by the decision not to revisit, and those things belong in their own category that the spreadsheet was never going to hold anyway, and Margaret in the next room during the final day of the 2018-2019 season is in that category and should stay there, frozen in the specific not-yet of that afternoon, protected from the after by the match that I have not watched again and will not watch again.

 

[CoachTony_Bets]

The spreadsheet that was never going to hold those things.

The record that's complete as a record and incomplete as an account of what was actually happening during the matches it documents.

The boy's face at the final whistle: not in the record.

The pub quiet: not in the record.

Emma beside Conor: not in the record.

Margaret in the next room: not in the record.

The record as the legible surface of something that has a significant illegible depth.

The depth not being recorded doesn't make it absent.

Makes it somewhere else.

The match-you-cannot-watch-again as a marker for the depth.

Evidence that the activity contained things the activity's records don't capture.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

My dad in the room when the Chiefs won.

Not in any record anywhere.

Just in the specific quality of that afternoon that the replay would flatten into ninety minutes of football with a specific final score.

The afternoon was more than that.

The record shows: Chiefs win, parlay successful, stake returned with profit.

The record is accurate.

The record has no column for what else was in the room.

The match I won't rewatch: keeping the room intact by keeping the match unwatched.

The unwatched match as the protection of the room.

 

[TaffyTipster]

The unwatched match as the protection of the room.

Princess putting it simply enough to be the thread's last word.

The room protected by the decision not to revisit the footage.

The footage that would show the room from the wrong angle.

The room kept in the correct angle by leaving the footage alone.

The pub in Wales in 2003.

Still quiet in the specific way.

Still the specific quality of people deciding not to speak rather than having nothing to say.

Protected by the decision not to watch.

Frozen in the before.

As it should be.