What Do You Miss About Being a Fan Who Didn't Bet? The Before-Version of Watching Sport

[Klaus]

Oli's point about the gain becoming invisible through familiarity.

The analytical capability I've developed: so integrated into how I watch football that I can't notice it as a capability anymore.

It's just how I watch.

The before-version: no longer present, therefore noticeable as absent.

The trade: still evaluating.

What I've built: real and produces outcomes I value.

Petra watching Bayern matches: the before-version fully intact.

She describes matches in terms of beauty and effort and drama.

I describe them in terms of what the model would have predicted and how the actual performance deviated.

Same match.

She got more from last Saturday's than I did.

I'm not certain she's wrong about which version is better.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

Klaus saying he's not certain Petra's version isn't better.

That's the honest version of the question this whole thread has been circling.

Is what we built worth what we gave up.

The Chiefs games as complete things: I had that.

The Chiefs games as things I've also thought about financially: I have this.

The thirty minutes of the before-version visiting during the unbet game last season.

That was the most purely enjoyable thirty minutes of watching football I've had in three years.

Then the habit came back.

And I haven't managed to get thirty unbet minutes since.

 

[DublinDegen]

the thirty unbet minutes that don't come back when you try to find them...

the before-version as something that returns when not sought and disappears when sought...

the GAA match with the friend from meath last summer...

sat there for a while just watching...

the match doing what the match does... the crowd doing what the crowd does...

was present in a way i haven't been in a long time...

didn't notice it until about fifteen minutes in when i realized my phone was in my pocket and had been there since we sat down and i hadn't checked it once...

the phone that stays in the pocket for fifteen minutes at a match because something else is happening that's more complete...

didn't last...

eventually checked...

but fifteen minutes...

the before-version arriving quietly when the attention was somewhere else...

the before-version not surviving being noticed...

 

[TaffyTipster]

The before-version not surviving being noticed.

That's the truest thing in the thread.

The moment I recognise I'm watching a match completely: the recognition breaks the completeness.

The before-version needs to not know it's the before-version to be the before-version.

My grandfather watching Wales in the 1970s with complete absorption.

He didn't know he had something I'd miss one day.

He was just watching Wales.

The not-knowing being the thing that made it complete.

 

[SharpEddie47]

The not-knowing being the thing that made it complete.

Before 2004: I didn't know I was in the before-version.

I was just watching the Cowboys.

The Cowboys as just the Cowboys.

That's what's gone.

Not the Cowboys. The just.