Breeders' Cup

I went down to Red and Jerry's on Saturday to watch and bet on the Breeders' Cup races. I did all right the last time I was at the off-track with my father, and I wanted to watch War Emblem run his last race in the $4 million Classic. This guy fared significantly better than I did that day. Winning that kind of money in one day of gambling is incredible. He fared better than any of the jockeys that day. I couldn't pick a winner to save my life and lost almost $170.

Watching and betting on the races reminds me of a thought that I wanted to mention after going to the OTB with my dad back in early August. My father and I sat down at a table where we had a tv on the table and two tv's just across the aisle. We could flip between about 8 to 10 different horse tracks that were running that day. Now my father has been betting on the horses for more than 20 years, so he knows what he's doing. I also have known how to read the racing sheets for about 20 years, but rarely get the chance to go to a track and rarely think to spend some time at the OTB.

I'm pretty big into multi-tasking and information processing and trying to do a bunch of things at once. I surf the net with four instances of the browser running and have my email open at the same time while I listen to music and download songs from Kazaa. I feel like I pretty good at handling the flow of info. My father is no novice when it comes to computers or the internet. For him they are a practical way to monitor his portfolio, check on the news, and maybe read The Onion or something fun like that. He's competent, but he's no super-surfer.

But what I witnessed while spending time at the OTB with dad made my head spin. He was flipping through the charts for all 8 to 10 tracks, flipping through the channels on three televisions, crunching all of the numbers, commenting on horses and jockeys he had seen recently or who had been having good years, making bets at the counter, eating lunch, and staying so far ahead of me that I couldn't keep up. He probably analyzed and bet three races for every one that I did. On top of it all, he was winning. I was so impressed. I thought at the time of the similarities between surfing through the race channels and racing information and surfing the internet, and realized that I have a long way to go before I am a super-surfer.

Jonathan 10/30/2002 03:03:00 PM