Other / Perfect Punter / 27 January 2010 /

Finally the Perfect Punter has found a tale which sums up the weekly quest of gambling...

This week's Perfect Punter is a little bit different, as it contains a parable, and little else.

I've always loved the idea of a smaller story that sums up the bigger picture, ever since, as a somewhat pretentious child, I read Franz Kafka's "The Trial". Before the novel begins, Kafka provides us with an existentialist parable called "Before the Law"*, which sums up the themes of his finest novel in short, but unforgettable, form.

Kafka was a law student, and most of his short life was spent writing about injustice, and the nonsense of the legal system. Even though he wasn't a gambler like Dostoevsky, Fitzgerald or Hemingway, I've always liked to think that he probably understood the absurdity of gambling, and so I don't feel as uncomfortable as I might have done using him as a starting point for a punting blog.

I've spent the whole of this Perfect Punter journey so far looking for a gambling parable which does the same thing as "Before the Law", and last week, in the American journalist Jon Bradshaw's brilliant book, Fast Company, which was first published in 1975, I found it. A "Before the Law" for us punters, a story in which every frailty, every subtlety of this weekly quest that we're all part of, is beautifully summed up. It's a tale that we should all cut out and keep, we should take from it what we will, and it goes like this:

A gambler arrives at one of the Eastern tracks a few years ago with five dollars in his pocket. He was a familiar figure at the course in his rumpled suit and scuffed shoes, a punter down on his luck of late. In the first race of the afternoon he bet the five dollars on the second favourite and the horse came in paying 30 dollars. In the second race he bet the 30 dollars on a long shot which went off at 12 to 1. The horse won easily and the gambler collected 390 dollars. For the remainder of that afternoon, in each successive race, the gambler bet his total winnings on some previously selected choice. By the sixth race, he had amassed 4,000 dollars and he placed it all on the nose of a 3 to 1 shot. The horse, a tip from one of his friends in the paddock, came from behind to beat the favourite in a photo finish. The gambler now had 16,000 dollars in his pocket. In the final race of the day he bet the lot on the heavy favourite. The race began, and the favourite, taking an early lead, held it into the top of the home straight. At this point, the horse was more than a length in the lead but, tiring, she was beaten on the line by a short head. The gambler was broke. Buttoning his rumpled suit, he shuffled slowly along the track. At the main entrance he was hailed by an old acquaintance, who asked how he had fared that afternoon. Lighting a cigarette, the gambler shrugged and said, "Not bad, not bad. I lost five dollars."

As the Gatekeeper in the final line of Kafka's parable says: "Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I'm going now to close it."

A day's punting is like trying to weave a path through some parallel life, trying to get past each barrier and somehow find a way to what it is that we're all looking for. A hurdle here, a hurdle there. Like I said at the start, cut out the story and hold onto it. I'm sure that it will come in useful.

You can follow the Perfect Punter on twitter, and shuffle along racetrack after racetrack alongside him. Just go to www.twitter.com/perfectpunter and sign up

*If you want to read Kafka's parable, which is far deeper and more meaningful than Bradshaw's, then it will only take ten minutes. You'll find an English translation at https://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/beforethelaw.htm

'.$sign_up['title'].'

'; } } ?>

:

:

:

?

: