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[ 12 minute read ]

Accident or Designed for Change?

In 1988, I made a huge amount of money by winning 46 consecutive horse races that I had bet on. It started with my friend coming over and he finding me watching horse-racing on channel 4 on the television. In those days, there really wasn't much else to watch on the 'telly'. He suggested we put some money on the races. We chose a horse in a race that had a start time that was after the time it would take me to cycle two and a half miles to the nearest betting shop. My horse won and his lost. He went home and I made another choice, cycled, bet and won. 

This started an interest in gambling that never became an addiction. I told myself that I would stop betting once I lost, and I did. But that loss was on a different type of horse race. In that Summer, I had been betting on 'flat' races with the horses never having to jump fences. Track conditions remain pretty much the same ('firm' and 'good' and not 'heavy' or 'soft') and the horses form and jockey weights can be read by anyone.

Word got around that I always won and friends and acquaintances gave me their last money and told me to make a bet for them. They always got a good return, of course, and had a good night in the town that evening.

I lost that 1988 Autumn because the horses went over the 'jumps'. In Autumn, the flat (no fences) horse racing stopped and the Autumn and Winter races had fences for the horses to jump over. The ground conditions were changeable even on the same day and became a variable that could not be relied on, but there was a factor that I had not recognised before. It is quite difficult for a jockey to slow a horse down without some protest being made when they race over the 'flat'; people can see what is going on. When a horse jumps over a fence it 'might' jump badly. A horse could be in the lead as it jumps and then by the time it recovers after it has landed, is fourth or fifth, even seventh. I also noted that it was much more difficult to find horse races with less than seven horses in it. But I was intrigued by how a horse jumps and lands and recovers.

Anyone who has seen the Grand National can see for themselves that horses with no jockeys still jump but not nearly so well that they get to the lead, even without the weight of the jockeys on them. Quite obviously, a jockey can guide a horse to jump well or not. This is a variable that is not openly quantifiable, in that not many people know if the owner or the jockey wants a horse to perform well. 

I realised that I had been paying close attention to the odds of a horse winning over the flat, and knew that if a horse performs badly enough times, the odds of it ever winning could become quite large indeed; 33-1 and 60-1 were not uncommon. This meant that in a fantasy horse racing video game, as an owner I would instruct the jockeys to 'pull' my horses (hold them back when they jump) for a while, knowing how good my horses really are and then place a million pound bet for it to win a race when the jockey was instructed to win.

I have made more bets on horses and F1 but only with pence and only after decades without betting. It is too easy to lose by not recognising that we can't see all the 'opportunities' of serendipity likely to become 'opportunities' of failure and loss. I heavily hedge my bets when betting on the Formula One races these days, quite simply because it is much more difficult to see a pattern and so I would never make a large bet on a single racer or team.

All the above is entirely true, in that I hedged my bets but always returned a significant profit; and so I lost as many races that I ever won, apart from the first two in 1988. The tiny losses I make these days are because I don't hedge my bets and I only spend pence so it is really to check for the same things i could see forty years ago.

What follows is a work of fiction based on how my imagination works and real facts. The race results and events in Formula One are accurate; the boxing and football are all true, but whether I made any money on them, or why, is based on imagination inspired by my earlier days of betting on horses. The Swiss Cheese method is absolutely real.

Incidentally, it is true that I have been able to apply the same mental tactics of hedging my bets with betting strategies in horse-racing on Formula One races and always come out on top. A good story should always make the audience believe it is true; sooo...I leave it up to you to pick out the fictional parts or make your own 'guesses'. 

Accident or Designed for Change?

In 2007, Lewis Hamilton narrowly missed out on becoming the Formula One World Champion. In the final race, at Interlagos, Brazil, he only had to finish third; he was set to do so, and then mysteriously, and suddenly, his car developed electrical problems and his position slipped to seventh. (Wikipedia states that it was a gearbox problem but I remember Murray Walker (it wasn't him) saying it was an electrical problem -it also states that Hamilton needed to be second or better to win but I heard the commentators say it was third). Mysteriously, Hamilton's race car, once he was safely in seventh position, started running at race pace again. He had no chance of improving his position and remained in seventh for the rest of the race. He lost by a single point to Kimi Räikkönen; so seventh is where Hamilton needed to be to not become World Champion. Had he have won the World Championship he would have been the first rookie (first year of racing at that level) AND the first black F1 Champion. While Michael Schumacher was winning his World Championships, Formula One races were widely seen as representing merely a procession of highly tuned, and very expensive, race cars; people were getting turned off from watching the races at home and, I suspect, there was something else more interesting to watch on the television. This meant that, although I can't be sure, revenue from TV rights to air the races was dropping or negotiations were showing a lessening of interest to show them. 

The Swiss Cheese Model

In high-risk and complex systems, such as in aviation, healthcare, and manufacturing, it is incredibly difficult to establish what when wrong when there is a failure in the systems or when a lot of people suddenly die; was it human error or did something in the manufacture or amalgamation of a non-human system break?

In 1990, British psychologist James Reason developed The Swiss Cheese Model of accident causation. His model has been 'widely adopted to help identify and mitigate risks by emphasizing that accidents are often the result of multiple, smaller failures that align like holes in Swiss cheese.' (Michael Matthew, 2024).

Essentially, if we imagine some slices of Swiss cheese (lots of holes) taken at intervals in the cheese (random slices), not all the holes will line up. If we take a pencil and stab at these slices there will be almost no chance the pencil will pass through the slices by only moving within the holes (in other words not damaging the slices). While we can understand that not all complex systems are designed with random Swiss cheese slices in mind, we might understand that John Gall, a systems theorist told us in Galls Law that a complex system must first start from a simple system; so there is always in the development of complex systems, significant opportunity for 'slices' of the system to be aligned in order that no 'pencils' can pass through any aligned 'holes' in the complex system. In aviation and space travel particularly, there are as many as two redundant systems just for vehicle control, such as for attitude, direction, and elevation. If one of three systems breaks there are still two that are available. There are often three computers that do the same job in complex systems. At least two of these computers must agree as to what is taking place, and/or agree as to what to do next, just for normal activity.

Moving the slices

What if we wanted to generate an 'accident' or perhaps more generously, someone or an entity wanted to manipulate an environment for some reason. That may come across as sinister, but there is a common term for this, 'moving the goalposts'. Most of us will understand this to mean that if we interacted with a system, it used to be easier than now to benefit from it. Those of us who do not understand the common term; imagine that goalposts in a game of football (soccer) are 4 metres apart today and 3 metres apart tomorrow, it would be harder to score a goal tomorrow than it is today.

The football match (soccer) is a good example for showing that something can be made easier to do if the 'goalposts' are moved or the 'slices' are moved so more holes line up. A while ago, 'Match' footballs (soccer balls) used to be made of leather and were quite heavy (even heavier when wet). It was difficult to score goals from far from the goal-line simply because it was heavy. Moreover, footballers had less control of the ball, it didn't bounce much, and no-one really wanted to head the ball. Later, 'Match' balls were vulcanised rubber covered in leather panels; modern technology and innovation was the primary drive towards this. These were still pretty heavy due to the leather component.

Ultimately, Adidas, who had the contract in 1982 for making World Cup match balls, started the process of changing the scoring rate in football, by moving the 'slices' so a favourable event, a goal, became more likely simply because their 'Tango' football, although still having leather panels, were coated in polyurethane to make them water repellent.

In the late 1980s, the World Cup match ball had no leather and instead had a latex bladder and synthetic outer panels; way lighter and did not get significantly heavier when wet. Sometimes we see footballers dry the ball on their shirts when they 'thrown in' the ball from the sideline to one of their team-mates. We can guess that they want the ball to be as light as possible, by removing the water (which also creates drag) so the receiving player can control it better and thereby increase the chances of scoring a goal. Football became much more exciting and new generations of talented footballers became stars with their clever ball manipulation; 'Bend it like Beckham'. A talented footballer can take advantage of the drag on a football moving through air, simply by making it spin for longer than a slightly 'furry' leather panelled ball.

Slices of Boxing

Floyd Mayweather Junior, by my understanding, is undefeated in all his fifty fights. In 2015, he fought Manny Pacquiao and won (obviously). That was a while ago. BBC news, on their website, has reported today that Pacquiao and Mayweather are to agree to another professional match. Pacquiao is 47 and Mayweather is 48.

Here is the thing. Many people say that Mayweather is only undefeated because he never faced a good challenger. Well, Pacquiao was a very good fighter; he won twelve world titles across eight weight classes. So, why did Pacquiao lose? And why is the BBC reporting that Pacquiao saying he will only agree to fight Mayweather if the two fighters come to understand one another? Doesn't this imply Pacquiao has always been upset by how Mayweather has remained undefeated?

Slices of Formula One

In 2007, The results for the final race were:

1. Kimi Räikkönen
2. Felipe Massa
3. Fernando Alonso
4. Nico Rosberg
5. Robert Kubica
6. Nick Heidfeld
7. Lewis Hamilton 

(https://www.formula1.com/en/results/2007/races/824/brazil/race-result)

In 2008, Lewis Hamilton in the final race of the season, in Brazil, only needed to come in the top five to become 2008 World Champion. On the chicane immediately preceding the finish line Hamilton was running sixth behind Timo Glock. For no apparent reason Glock went wide on the bends and Hamilton overtook him, to become F1 2008 World Champion.

I won a lot of money on Hamilton being the 2008 F1 World Champion because I understand how holes in Swiss cheese can be aligned; and he developed engine problems in 2007. I think Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather know their sport exceeding well. My large bet in September will fully, and firmly, be on Pacquiao winning. I shall also bet on the fight (of however many rounds it will go), as being, going right to the very end. It will go the whole distance for full excitement factor for the fans. I can't decide on which rounds either of them will be knocked down, nevertheless, it will be really close to the bell for the end of the round; for both of them. Perhaps, I shall instead hedge my substantial stake on who the winner is, by betting on both of them being floored twice, as a very safe bet!

You can lose more than just your money if you gamble.

References

Michael Matthew, 2024, 'What are the key principles of The Swiss Cheese Theory of Accident Causation?', SAFETY.INC, https://www.safety.inc/post/what-are-the-key-principles-of-the-swiss-cheese-theory-of-accident-causation