I’ve spent years writing about the intersection of technology, culture, and policy. When social media is increasingly used to create events, rather than report on them, I find that work increasingly relevant.
It is one thing to write an essay here or a newsletter there. Given the potential harms, utilizing adding additional forms, like narrative, seems warranted. Moneyballer Americana is a seven-part novelette about a struggling bluegrass musician who accidentally ignites a sports-betting media frenzy.
Come back each day for the next installment. When all seven parts are published, they’ll be compiled into a single downloadable version.
~Matthew
Scene 2 - Encroachment
This Monday, Eli was subbing for Mr. Hendrickson, the middle school’s history teacher. Huey, Dee, and Louis sat toward the back of the room during their home base hour. Supposedly, they were to catch up on their overdue assignments.
But that was easier said than done.
“I see you’re currently covering World War 2 - the German invasion of the Soviet Union? Operation Barbarossa?”
The trio looked at each other, doing some kind of telepathic risk assessment between themselves.
“I guess so?” Louis ventured.
“OK! So where do we start?”
“Well,” Louis said, “Germany decided to attack the Soviets.”
“Sure.” Eli looked expectantly at the others. “What else?”
Huey had given up any pretense of participating in the conversation and had retreated to his phone almost immediately.
“What happened next?”
When Dee shrugged, Eli went to where the draw strings for a variety of maps mounted to the ceiling. Finding one for WW2’s European theater, he tugged.
“Until 1941, if I remember, Germany had looked unstoppable.” Eli picked up the pointer and circled areas as he spoke, “They had easily steamrolled Poland, France, and much of the Scandinavian Peninsula.”
A phone chirped.
Eli recognized the chime.
All three boys perked up instantly, like squirrels at the first screech of a red tail hawk.
Eli sighed. “Guys, come on-“
Huey groaned.
“My four-leg just busted!”
He showed his screen to the others.
“Dude, you still falling for those?” Dee said, slumping back in his chair.
“The free bonuses are free for a reason!” Louis said. “For real, when have those ever paid?”
Eli felt a chill. He sat in on Ty and Lance’s show enough to recognize this song. To date, whenever he monitored the live stream chat, Eli had always pictured college-aged or twenty-something men with more time and disposable income than sense. It hadn’t occurred to him that Chuckles27 and PHATRICHARD might actually be the same kids he sees in the classroom.
When Ty talked strategy, he’d always joke about “broadening the demo[graphics], “ but this was ridiculous.
Eli put down the pointer.
“Your history lesson; let’s try this again.”
The three boys looked at him, skeptically.
“OK, Operation Barbarossa. Imagine World War II Germany is about to place one massive bet.”
“Bet?” Louis looked skeptical.
“Yeah, a bet. Nazi Germany’s success, to this point in the war, was largely about overwhelming their slower, less mobile opponents.”
“Blitzkrieg.”
Eli pointed at Dee.
“That’s right!”
Dee looked embarrassed as the other two regarded him with surprise.
“What? I play video games.”
“OK, so Germany knows that’s there’s tons of useful resources in we now call eastern Europe. They also had gotten a taste of winning; they wanted to chase it while they had a hot hand.”
“You said there was a bet?”
“A big one. To conquer Europe and have a chance at the world,” Eli paused, making sure he was getting the terminology right, “Germany was, essentially, betting they would win a multi-leg parlay.” Huey looked up from ruminating on his phone, suspicious.
“What kind of parlay?”
Eli hesitated. “A… big one?”
He uncapped a marker.
“It doesn’t matter.” He started making bullet points on the white-board. “What does matter are the different events, or legs, of their bet that all needed to break in their favor.
“Leg one, Germany needed to advance fast, to outrun any sizable counter-attack.”
He started a second point. “They needed undisrupted supply lines, despite stretching further and further into enemy territory.
“They needed a late, or mild, winter - weather that wouldn’t ding either of the first two points.
“Finally, Germany needed demoralize the Soviets so much that reinforcements would never arrive.”
Eli underlined the points. “Germany needed ALL those legs to hit to win their parlay.”
Huey tilted his head. “So if one misses-“
“You lose the eastern front,” Dee answered.
“Cool.”
“Not cool,” Eli corrected. “Cold. Lots of Operation Barbarossa soldiers literally froze to death. The early, harsh winter rallied the Soviets. They stopped Germany before they could take Moscow. It was a huge move of the line, and the Soviets would later join the Allied Powers.”
The boys sat silently for a moment, processing.
“OK, but… if the Soviets were the underdogs, what were the odds?”
Eli smiled, relieved. “At the time? Massive. Nobody thought they’d cover. But they did.”
Dee was scribbling in his notebook. “Can we use that? Like, the odds and stuff?”
Eli was surprised by the question and it took him a second to respond.
“I- I don’t know if Mr. Hendrickson knows what a parlay is,” Eli laughed, “Just remember the bigger point: don’t bet against the Russian winter.”
They laughed - laughed! - and wrote it down.
Eli had gotten through. But why, in God’s green earth, were middle-schoolers betting? Let alone during school hours?
“Guys, let me ask you a question. You’ve got that app - but don’t you have to be 18 or something? Like to have an account?”
“I just use my Dad’s account,” Dee said, “I see him on it all the time, and he uses the same password for everything. I don’t think he even notices.”
Huey shrugged. “My older brother doesn’t have time while he’s at work, so I play during the day. If we hit, I get a cut.”
“Yeah, and when was the last time that happened?” Louis teased.
“Hey, I was THIS CLOSE to doubling my mowing money. Stupid steam move.”
Eli had heard Ty rant about that - jumping on a popular bet right as it was turning sour. Dee and Louis exploded into laughter.
“No hedge,” Louis shook his head, “and you chased it.”
Eli sensed a line had been crossed. Huey grew angry.
“Well, at least my Mom didn’t take my phone away because she had to cover my losses - again!”
“Whoa,” Eli stepped forward, “Guys, guys, guys - easy. Relax.”
He took a breath and released it theatrically, palms up, making eye contact with each and encouraging them to do the same.
“It sounds like you all have a lot of experience, and not a lot of good. So why do you keep doing it?”
They exchanged glances.
“Because,” Louis said, “it’s - fun?”
Eli looked at him in disbelief.
“You can’t win if you don’t play?”
“Even if that were true, it sounds like there isn’t much winning happening, anyway.”
An idea occurred to Eli. He went back to the white board and began erasing it.
“Have you done probability in math yet?”
“Math?” Huey was confused. “This is history home base.”
“We were talking parlays, right? That’s probability. We still have ten minutes. Go with me on this.”
Eli drew four boxes.
“Say we have a four leg parlay. We want to see if we can get four heads on a coin flip in a row.” Eli pointed at the first box. “What are the odds of getting a heads on the first flip?”
“50%?” Dee said.
“Assuming its a fair flip, yes, you have a 50% chance. What are the odds of getting a heads on the 2nd flip?”
Louis squinted, thinking. “It would still be 50%, right?”
“Yes!” Eli said, getting excited, “and it would be 50% for the third and the fourth flip, too. So what are the odds of us winning the parlay?”
“If everything else is 50%, then this would be 50%, right?” Huey guessed.
“You might think that,” Eli said, returning to the board, “but we actually need to multiply the percentage of each event happening with every other event’s percentage. Taking the first two values, 50% times 50% is 0.25, or 25%. It goes down. If we continue to multiply all legs, we get-“
Dee read from his phone’s calculator, “Zero-point-zero-six-two-five, or 6.25%.”
Eli capped the marker.
“So we could expect that four-leg parlay in this example to pay out a little more than 6% of the time, or only 1 out of 16 times. And just because you might have lost the previous fifteen times does not mean you’re due on the 16th play. You still have-“
“-a 6.25% chance of winning the next parlay,” Louis finished. “Huh.”
It was time to bring this home.
“And that is only a four-leg parlay with each leg having a 50% chance of happening. I bet - I mean, I suspect - that if we looked, the odds for the events happening in these offers is far, far below 50%. I mean, we pretty quickly get into ‘struck by lightning’ probability without trying too hard. Think about that - how many people do you know that have been struck by lightning?”
The trio again looked at each other. There seemed to be a dawning realization. Maybe he taught them something valuable today.
“So you’re saying boosted odds are always bad?”
“Like the Nazi’s chances of taking Moscow in November.”