I love this game, and I'm trying to make horseplaying a profession.
If I can earn $30,000 a year, I'll be elated. I think most men would feel tremendous stress if that was their income.
It's also a great, great gambling game that allows you to apply intelligence and hard work. Most of life is 'rhetorical', and seldom in life can you be rewarded for having a correct but unpopular opinion. Being 'right' consistently is one of the slices that makes up the horseplaying pizza pie.
Not a 'meritocracy', as it's nearly impossible to beat the takeout, and you are facing syndicates that bet in batches of computer calculations. You are betting against parties privy to inside information that honestly go beyond honest things like
opinions of trainers etc...
Short term winning is mostly luck and catching a score. Modest long-term winning is nearly impossible but is the area where skill and fanaticism can at least reward merit, if not 'crowning' merit.
Today is my birthday. I'm 44 years old, and I'll be very happy if I live to 50 and can still think clearly (bonus points for walking, and participating in life to some degree).
As high as I feel about horseplaying, I would NOT choose it, if I had a re-do. I would get a degree or accreditation, such that consistent diligence would pay me, and I could have things like independence and confidence as a man in society.
Horseplaying chose me.
It's hard to believe, but I was reasonably bright as a young person.
I have a genetic mutation and whether that played a role, or whether it was just funky parenting and social groups, I was discouraged from standing out intellectually. My father was very proud of his Master's Degree in mathematics from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (a relatively high ranked university). Rather than continue on, he knocked up my mom and took a department head position teaching math in inner-city Baltimore.
While my father was diligent, and relatively accomplished in mathematics, my mother was more intelligent. As I've grown older, it's been my experience that I have not been exposed to a ton of intellectual women, so in hindsight she was a bit unusual in that regard. It's very likely just my experience as we are told that all races and sexes are the same, with maybe just the slightest difference between men and women due to society.
My father taught be to be a baseball coach. I mastered that, and became a Double-A level hitter and an obssessive compulsive student of the game. Society taught me to be a basketball player and coach. I am 6'9" and I grew up in an area outside of Washington D.C. which has produced many basketball players. I became a division-2 level player, and I mastered the understanding of the game with an obssessive compulsive hunger.
Today I am not healthy enough to be a head coach, but I can help a team or individual players, and I would do that in exchange for pay. I do not have those opportunities, and I don't see them materializing. Basketball has a long-shot chance, if only for the fact that people tend to associate height with basketball. I doubt that I will ever get paid a significant amount for consulting, training, or assistant coaching in Baseball or Basketball.
I did terrible in school. I can blame that my mother was ill during much of my childhood with the same genetic differences that I have health issues because of. I can blame that my father was an alcoholic. I have a plethora of excuses, but it was in fact my fault.
Aside from 'marine biologist' as a child who liked sharks, I also was never prepared or had a drive for any real world job in my life. My father always assumed that I'd get a colllege degree and a job and that he'd be there to help me in life if my health declined.
When the SATs came to to town, I surprisingly had a near perfect score. I had perfect English/Verbal but had missed a few Math questions. In hindsight, had my father spent
any time on it with me in preparation (he was a math teacher) I would have had that attractive perfect score.
I was told I had to stop Baseball and Basketball due to my heart conditions. I majored in Biochemistry at a mid-level university. My mother died in a traumatic fashion. I dropped out, and moved to a Florida beach town.
A year later my aorta dissected while I was training at 5:30am for basketball.
I was never able to regain social inclusion after that aortic dissection. Have had 3 open heart surgeries, and can't have a needed fourth due to the danger of the procedure. My brain does not work as well as it did when I was a naive and ignorant young man. It works well enough to think and remember in patterns, which I've obsessively worked on.
I am happy and this is not a sad story, or a 'woe is me' situation. The whole point of this
lengthy and personal story is to illustrate that I am in a unique (snowflake?
) situation. I have 20,000 posts or whatever and I feel like I know some of you guys. I ought to give you all a vulnerable-favorite to bet against as payment for this 'therapy.
This game is meant to be a wealth-concentration mechanism that separates the herd from it's money. This game is best experienced as either entertainment (w/ modest spending), or as an exciting intellectual puzzle (with modest spending).
Almost everyone who has any hope of long-term consistent winning, would be well advised to use those skills somewhere else.
1 cup of coffee and I'm telling my life story again...
