my good friend Jose Antonio is a sports betting aficionado. It all began in the 2015 Australian Open when he linked six matches of the first round and parlayed 2.50 soles (less than $1 USD) into 550.00 (approximately $160 USD). Shortly after, he hit it again with the same initial investment. Since then, his "edge" (allegedly understanding the psychology of tennis - having been almost a tour pro himself) has dissipated. The winnings have turned negative.
I read somewhere that parlays are on the rise but when I look at Jose Antonio's bets, I find no excitement.
The terrain is invisible but mild.
Even when the parlay paid 220 times, what my good friend caught was a streak of individually improbable events. The underlying randomness was ordinary: multiplication.
In tennis, contagion does not exist. Rafa Nadal losing to Dustin Brown in the second round at Wimbledon does not spread panic to the other top seeds. There are no feedback loops, no complexity.
If you play tennis parlays, you will lose. Multiplication is not complexity. Dustin Brown's drop shot is.