Thursday, September 14, 2006

Over the last couple months I've been spending much of my free time writing a piece of software that will predict the outcome of baseball games. This activity has been deeply satisfying to me and I'll probably bore you all with the details sometime.

The program isn't done yet, but it's functional enough to start tossing out some predictions with a reasonable level of accuracy. The goal is that one day I'll figure out a legal way to actually place sports bets using this software. Since Hank was in Vegas this week, I had a small window of opportunity.

So, after months of late nights working on this program, and after teaching Hank how to read a casino sportsbook chart, and after spending a large chunk of time this week massaging data, and running reports, I gave Hank some detailed instructions on which bets to place. This was very exciting for me, to finally see the fruits of my labor turned into actual casino bets, albeit on a small scale.

Well, although she isn't here to tell me the exact result, as near as I can tell, my herculean efforts have resulted in about $1 of profit. Meanwhile, Hank managed to sit down at a No Limit Texas Hold 'Em poker table for an hour and a half and earned $700.

The way I see it, we both turned a profit.

6 comments:

tinyhands said...

$1 profit after expenses for your computer, software, overhead utilities, time & labor. Not bad. Frame that bad boy.

Unknown said...

Congratulations!

But, but could you turn a profit and chew Juicy Fruit at the same time?

Anonymous said...

I bet your win was more satisfying. Seeing the hours of labo(u)r come to fruition. You must've had tears in your eyes.

Mike said...

Tiny, upon further computation, it looks like I might have earned FIVE dollars. That means that if we had bet $100,000,000 instead of $100, I could retire now.

JR, no.

SiƓn, I'll admit that I was quite proud. Now I'm proud of BOTH my children.

Anonymous said...

Zelda here,
I'm so happy to see your program is paying off. I am one of those skeptics and find it hard to follow that a computer can increase the odds of winning a game of chance or a ball game, although, a ball game has factors that can be used like good players, heavier bats, and so forth, so maybe I do see it. I hope you perfect it and make millions.

Mike said...

Zelda, thanks. Predicting baseball outcomes isn't quite as much a game of chance as predicting the a roulette wheel, but I'll admit it's not exactly a science either.