IPod odds are fun for everyone

My old buddy Lyle Colane is sort of a gambler’s gambler. If you simply want to hang around an action junkie, he’s your guy.

If you want to talk odds and edges and getting the best of it, he’s not your guy. Lyle doesn’t know or care much about the odds of any gambling exploit, which explains in part why he’s always comped the $4.99 “ham” and eggs special from the folks at Bob’s Terrible Casino, who are always happy to see him. 

This is a guy who once tried to convince me he had found an edge in Keno because he “always plays the same numbers.”

Do tell, I responded.

“Seeing as the house’s numbers change every time the Keno guy hits the button on the ball popper, exactly how does this work in your favor?” I asked. 

“Because if I never change the numbers, they are bound to hit eventually,” he said. “Everyone else says their numbers hit as soon as they change them … I don’t have that problem. I’m not a chaser.”

Nor does old Lyle have much of a bankroll, I digress. But so long as he never pays for Terrible’s terrible breakfast special, he has no complaints.  

Well, last week I heard from him again when he believed he stumbled across an oddsmaking epiphany of sorts. He told me had accidentally downloaded the Lady Gaga song “Poker Face” twice from Itunes the last time he logged on. (Once would have constituted an accident for me, by the way.)

First, he was furious that Apple would not refund him the extra $1 (this buck could have been either another 5-spot or his tip at Terrible’s, so he was pretty steamed), but then he was amused at the following discovery.

“So this song gets loaded to my play list twice,” he said. “Now, I notice, when I hit shuffle, it comes up way more often than all the other songs.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Seeing as this song appears on your play list twice as often as all the others, I’m betting it comes up precisely twice as often?”

“Right! How did you know?”

Well, the math on that one sort of speaks for itself. But then I got to thinking about other sorts of IPod odds, and I realized there was something to it. I mean, there are times when I believe the shuffle gods are messing with my head.

For instance, if you have 1,000 songs on your play list and exactly two of them are Rod Stewart tunes, what are the odds of them coming up back-to-back during a purely random shuffle? Astronomical, of course, but the shuffle robot loves to tickle my oddsmaking sensibilities by doing this once in while. This one hits way more often than it should, which gets me thinking 10-team parlays might not be such a bad idea after all.

There are more simple equations, however. If your 1,000-song play list includes 25 Green Day songs, then the moment you hit shuffle there is precisely a 2.5-percent chance that Green Day will come up.

I got to thinking, a combination of boredom, beers and some shrewd oddsmaking could land me quite a windfall from Lyle and his friends if I played it right. At that moment, the game IPod Odds was on.

Keep in mind, this game works much better if you try it on stupid people. The key is, knowing the true odds, charging a substantial juice, and knowing the biases of your particular players toward certain artists and tastes.

The first step: Sync your play list to exactly 1,000 songs or the nearest even number from which you can make some easy, home-cooked odds. Place your IPod on a decent docking station with a remote control you can use in shuffle mode. 

The second step: Figure out the true IPod probabilities, then offer your friends prop bets that they can’t understand at a ridiculous level of juice for yourself.

Step 3: Enjoy the music and your newfound money.

Step 4: Be sure to remind your friends that it was all random. 

For instance, in the above example, let’s pretend your buddy is a huge Green Day fan. If you offer him a “one-timer” on the IPod – meaning you hit “play” once in shuffle mode – he’s going to be predisposed to believing Green Day will hit. Given that the true chance is around 2.5 percent, you should offer him about 45/1 odds. That is, if you played the game straight. You offer him 25/1 and he jumps at it.

Suddenly, “Poker Face” comes on – it was twice as likely to hit to begin with – and you take his $10. Happily.

Here are some other fun prop bets courtesy of yours truly from IPod Odds, for your entertainment (and hopefully business) purposes:

The over/under for song length: Set the number at 3:45 (the real average is 3:30, but people love betting overs) and give your buddies even money on the over. You’ll make a killing on the under.

Genre of the next random song. Ramp up the juice here. If the play list is 10 percent country, then you should be paying about 9/1 for this to hit. You’ll be giving your buddies 5/1. Well done, pardner.

The over/under for characters in a song title: Set this at 15.5 and give a break in the juice to the under. The over hits here more often than you’d expect.

Where will the next artist fall alphabetically? Offer odds on A-M and N-Z, just balance the juice based on what you know. If you are heavy on Springsteen tracks, adjust the price to get some action on the A-M side. 

Will the next artist be a band name or an individual? Again, the balance of the play list from which you are setting the odds needs to understood going in. If it’s about 50-50, then play off your opponent. The Green Day fan will be betting band name every time. Take his money.

Well, it goes without saying that IPod Odds is bound to become the next big thing for amateur bookmakers and the degenerate gamblers who love them. You don’t have to thank me now, but please remember, you heard it here first.

Good luck to everyone.

The old ball coach shows us a new trick

Leave it to the old ball coach to give Tim Tebow a new source of motivation for beating the crap out of the rest of the SEC. And while you’re at it, lay the points.

South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier made news last week when it was revealed that he was the lone coach from the SEC who failed to vote for Florida’s two-time national champion and Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback on the conference’s first-team ballot.

So, if you liked the Gators last year when they thumped South Carolina 56-6 in the Swamp, you’re going to love them even more this season when they face the Gamecocks in a Nov. 14 road tilt.

For a guy who once thought leaving Florida (+300 at www.bookmaker.com to repeat as national champion) for the Washington Redskins was a good idea, and whose Gamecocks were drilled 56-6 last year by Tebow’s Gators, you might have thought Spurrier, by now, would have a better grasp of what was in his best interests.

Evidently, he doesn’t. There’s an irony to Spurrier’s scenic round-trip in the SEC that saw him go from mastermind of an unstoppable offense at Florida, to leading a South Carolina club that is noted for its solid defense, but panned for its inability to score with the conference’s elite clubs.

Like Florida.

As if the Gamecocks didn’t already have enough problems … now this. After news broke that one SEC coach failed to list Tebow on the first team, the media broke out in a frenzied search of the unwise culprit.

It didn’t take long for every SEC coach to claim innocence except Spurrier, who had to take a few minutes to get his story straight before coming clean. Then, the old, head ball coach claimed he let the director of football operations fill out his ballot, which he then signed without looking at it.

Which seems a plausible excuse before you realize …a) no way it happened, b) why would the Director Of Operations for Football at the University of South Carolina, or DOOFUS for short, be allowed to fill out the ballot and, c) why type of DOOFUS would pick Jevan Snead of Ole Miss ahead of Tebow?

One who is a glutton for punishment, is the best we can guess. Tebow and the Gators were going to slaughter South Carolina regardless, but now you can count on a real merciless-variety whipping.

Keep in mind that whenever a Tebow-led Florida club has been disrespected by an opponent, he ensures that they pay dearly. For instance, Hawaii was first on the guillotine last season after former coach June Jones had suggested Colt Brennan was a better quarterback than Tebow, whom he described as the product of a gimmicky system and offense.

Florida 56, Hawaii 10.

Then, there was the annual rivalry game with Georgia in the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party (which has to be the greatest nickname ever for a sporting event), in which Tebow had a score to settle. The previous year, the Bulldogs had embarrassed Florida when the whole team rushed the field after Georgia scored the first touchdown. Tebow and friends remembered.

Florida 49, Georgia 10.

So when the news broke of Spurrier’s snub of Tebow, you had to think he must be looking to hasten his exit from South Carolina – evidently he didn’t try hard enough last year — and head back to the beckoning golf courses he so fancies.

He could have saved Tebow and the rest of the trouble and just resigned.