McKay Coppins

Well, the first game, I was kind of flying blind because I had never gambled before.

And while I'm a sports fan, I had never really bet on sports in any meaningful way, maybe aside from little small wagers with my brother or something.

And so I remember that first night when the first game was about to start kind of scrolling through DraftKings in this kind of state of wide-eyed bewilderment.

You know, I didn't know any of the terms, profit boosts, alternative spread, money line.

These were not words that I really knew.

And I was almost kind of punching in bets at random just to see what would happen.

Eventually, I developed a slightly more sophisticated approach.

I learned the basic betting math.

I learned the terminology.

And I also consulted with a sort of gambling guru, Nate Silver, who is a

well-known statistics nerd and journalist who is a longtime gambler and kind of taught me some of the best practices.

He actually started laughing as he was looking at my bet slips.

And it was a surprisingly emasculating experience.

But, you know, the thing that he told me was like, you are gambling like a recreational bettor.

Which was literally true, but I also took to be a withering insult.

He was basically saying, look, you have to understand the basic economics of sports betting.

The sports book on any given bet charges you about four and a half percent.

So in order to just break even, it's not enough to win 50.1% of your bets.

You have to win 52.5% of your bets.

And that's before taxes.