All the Alex Bain you can handle!

My godfather, Uncle Michael, for whom I got my middle name, turns 60 today.

I emailed him my best wishes, and he replied:

I hear all the action was on the “under 60”. Surprise!

My Uncle Michael also taught he a great party trick for SuperBowls, which I suggest you copy wherever you’re going:

• Go to any gambling website, and look up the “prop bets” for the game. A prop bet is something like “Who will win the coin toss?” You ideally want bets with 2 possible outcomes.
• Make a list of 10-30 bets in one column, than have two more columns with the possible answers. The answers are usually either yes/no or the names of the teams.
• Print out at least one version of the list for all attendees at the party. If gambling were legal, you could charge people $5 to buy a list from you, before kickoff.
• Each partygoer circles an answer for each prop bet on the page. Since they’re all 50/50 shots, everyone in the room is equally likely to win.
• If gambling were legal, all the $5 payments would go into a bowl. At the end of the game, you’d see who had correctly guessed the most prop bets, and they would hypothetically win the pot.

Gambling made easy. Sounds like fun, right?

Pro tip: Try to choose prop bets that are decided throughout the game, to keep people’s interest. If all the bets are about whether the final score will sum to an even or odd number, or which side of the field the kicking team will kick toward, you’ll lose interest in between. “Who will score first in the 3rd quarter?” or “Will the Colts punt in the 4th quarter?” are the kinds of things to include to hold attendees’ interest.

FWiW: This was my 2000th post on this blog.