Reality Reconstruction

Sure Thing

As I sat there, I wondered how in the world I had gotten into that situation. What had seemed like such a good idea had rapidly turned into a nightmare, and I was starting to become extremely desperate. At the very least I was going to end up in jail. My only question was for how many crimes. If I was lucky, none of the would be life sentences, but at the rate things were going, I wasn’t so sure.

“Dude, I got this great idea.” He said. The look on his face told me that he’d thought it through. He wasn’t the kind of guy who just came up with random ideas for the sake of listening to himself talk and watching the reactions of others. I know people like that, I’m sure you do to. They just spout off ideas, or thoughts, or comments, not because they are worth saying or doing, or even thinking about, but because the resultant conversations and arguments make them feel as if they are involved in something important.

Not this guy.

He rarely came up with a plan, or an idea, or a thought unless he’d carefully thought, or at the very least it was something he felt very good about on gut level. A few people have made the mistake of getting into an argument with this guy, and quickly realized that he has clearly thought through any objections to his proposal.

So when he says, “Dude, I got this great idea,” you usually stopped whatever you were doing and paid attention.

The plan seemed reasonable enough, and surprisingly, it only seemed illegal based on how you interpreted it. The worst-case scenario was that we’d get caught in the middle of the act, and we would have several plausible explanations for our behavior, all of which would be completely believable by the authorities.
It was pure genius. Best case, we’d make off like bandits, worse case, we’d get a talking-to and sent on our way. It’s one of those rare exploitations of events that only comes along once in a great while.

There was once a case several years ago of such an event. If you ever go to the racetrack, they have something called a “pick six.” If you correctly guess the winners of the first six races, you win quite a bit of money. It’s similar to a lottery, but the odds are completely different. Lottery numbers all have the same probability of coming up. Any six numbers have just as much probability of any other six numbers.

But at the races, if you pick six long shots, then you have a much slimmer chance of winning all six races. A long shot is a horse that nobody thinks has a chance of winning.

So the odds of picking the correct six horses vary greatly depending on the horses that are running. But just like many lotteries, if nobody wins one week, the prize money is carried over to the next week, and so on until somebody wins.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Once, several years ago in New Jersey, the amount of prize money grew to be higher than it would cost to bet on a pick six of all possible combinations of all horses in the first six races.

It was suddenly a sure thing bet. A guaranteed return on your money, in about three hours.

The only problem was, it would take considerable cash, and manpower, to bet all possible combinations. This was in the days before Internet betting, and even today this wouldn’t be possible over the Internet, as there are restrictions.

But for somebody with sufficient cash reserves, and manpower, this was no-brainer. And that is exactly what happened. On particular syndicate sent their workers out to all the places where you could make a bet, and they each had several different combinations of “pick six” horses.

Sure enough, one of them had a winning ticket, and the payout more than paid for the manpower and the expenditures.

They say a sure thing like this exists in the stock market, from time to time. When a stock price falls below a company’s book value, they say this is a fairly good investment to make. That is, when the number of shares, multiplied by the price per share, is less than the physical worth of the company, then it’s a bargain.

It would be like buying a brand new car for fifty percent below sticker price. Even if you drove it off the lot, and it depreciated twenty percent, you could drive right over to the next dealership, and sell it to them at a decent profit.

Of course, this involves some risk, and unless you are prepared to actually go to the company and collect some office furniture to recoup your losses, it may not be such a good investment strategy.

This is exactly how it sounded when my friend started off with his “Dude, I got this great idea.” The way he described it, we were going to make quite a bit of money in a short period of time.

Now, however, I was just hoping to get less than five years in prison.

My thoughts were interrupted by the crash of the glass, and the thud of the canisters hitting the floor behind us. It didn’t take long for the smoke to start burning my eyes and my nose. I looked to my sure thing friend for advice. His eyes said everything.

It’s funny how you can get so much information by a quick glance at somebody’s eyes. I wish I had this realization sooner, as his eyes were about twenty percent apologetic, and the rest, sixty percent determination, and twenty percent madness.

You ain’t getting me alive.

I shrugged. In for a penny, in for a pound.

We charged at the door, guns drawn and ready.

To be continued…

Share this: