I've received a couple of emails...

... the tenor of which has indicated to me that I should be more clear about what this blog is likely to be 'about.' In order to make that happen, it might be necessary to provide my small, committed readership some autobiographical detail. A little bit of flavor. All thr while, making efforts to retain some shred of anonymity.

I am between 26-32 years old.

I am male.

I attended and graduated from a prestigious liberal arts college on the East Coast.

I placed my first bet (on the NBA, as it turned out) in high school, with some little wanna-be mobster kid who ended up welching. He still owes me $35. $35 in 1993 dollars is probably something like $50 now, in 2006. That son on of a bitch.

I placed my first "real" bet on an internet sportsbook back in the summer of 1997, while still in college. I made a deposit of $300, via Western Union. I bet $30 per game on baseball, and watched the primitive ESPN.com scoreboards as though my life depended on it. I loved being in action. I couldn't buy a winner, it seemed. And I immediately reloaded whatever and whenever I could. Again, via Western Union. I didn't have a credit card, and debit cards hadn't really made it into the mainstream of American commerce yet. So I had to walk about 2 miles to the nearest Western Union outlet, which was housed at a supermarket. The clerks didn't know what to make of the short, bespectacled gentleman with the serious face who was sending cash to Antigua.

I haven't sat down to figure it out, but my best estimate is that I've lost approximately $150,000 gambling. I'll dedicate a future post to a breakdown of the numbers.