Barry's Blog

For Dan Gati, a 29-year-old lawyer in New York, the most exciting night of March Madness isn't the final game, or any game, for that matter. Rather, it comes in the days following the NCAA's announcement on CBS of the seedings for the Big Dance. That is when Mr. Gati presides over a "Calcutta" auction with a gathering of his friends in an Upper West Side apartment, with two or three more conferenced in on a speaker phone, and conducts an auction for each of the 64 teams in the tournament. The money that's collected will be distributed in the following weeks to the "owners" of the winning teams in each round of the tournament. The big winner last year was Mike Kestenbaum, a second-year M.B.A. student at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, who collected $1,871 - just over a quarter of the pot - when one of the teams he bought for $500 at the auction, the University of North Carolina, won the tournament.

In addition to participating in the New York pool, Mr. Kestenbaum runs a Calcutta with about 25 of his classmates. Last year, they held their auction at a Philadelphia bar, laptops aglow as groups of M.B.A. students furiously typed numbers into Excel spreadsheets during the bidding. "The Calcutta has appeal to students here who are investors and are getting ready to go into careers in banking and hedge funds, which require real knowledge and skill about valuation disciplines," says Kestenbaum, himself off to a hedge fund after he graduates. And some Calcuttas get really big. For the past decade, a 69-year-old lawyer in New York has run a Calcutta with a group of about 50 attorney friends. They gather at a bar on Long Island and run an auction similar to Mr. Gati's. The difference? This auction runs well into six figures, with the annual pot reaching between $150,000 and $200,000, the lawyer declares. The owner of the tournament winner gets 18% of the total. "If St. Johns, Notre Dame or Villanova are in the tournament, then the bids spike, it all goes up," the lawyer adds. "We've go a big Catholic contingent!"

By The Numbers: As you "finalize" your brackets before the action begins, here are a few telling statistics about how various seeds have fared since the NCAA men's tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. Interestingly, No. 6, No. 10, and No. 12 seeds ALL have better records than the seeds immediately above them; of the 21 national championships won since 1985, the No. 1 seeds have won the championship 12 times, No. 2 seeds since 1985, 4 times, No. 3 seeds since 1985, 2 times.

Another, and more significant, area of debate dealing with odds concerns the question of whether or not God exists. Arguably the most famous of the "wagers" ever made was penned by the French scientist, philosopher, and inventor, Blaise Pascal. During his brief life (he died at the age of 39), Pascal, who lived in the mid-seventeenth-century, left his mark on mathematics, physics, and religious discussion. He is generally credited with  the founding of probability theory, as well as the invention of a calculating machine in 1647, which served as a precursor to the modern day computer. In his classic work, Pensees (which can be loosely translated, "thoughts, meditations") his unfinished notes and essays  were collected by his sister after his death, and intended as a systematic and uncompromising defense of Christian belief. On the Wager as to whether God exists, Pascal wrote:

"Either God is or He is not. But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails. How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose either, reason cannot prove either wrong. Which will you choose then? Let us weigh up the gain and the loss involved in calling heads that God exists. Let us assess the two cases; if you win you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing...Do not hesitate then; wager that He does exist...."

Pascal suggests that in this life, there is no absolute proof available to the skeptic that there is a God. Nor is there any way of proving that there is not. Reason by itself cannot decide the issue. We live in a world that seems to many people to be profoundly ambiguous. Life does not speak clearly of its ultimate nature. There are some indications that a religious view of the world is true, while others would suggest that it is not. Pascal asks us each a very simple, yet profound, question about the Ultimate Issue - How will you wager?

Thomas V. Morris, in his excellent book, Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life, rightly observes that: "Pascal believed that each of us is either betting for God - betting that there is a God - or betting against God - betting that there is no God - by the way we are living right now. There is nothing equivalent to staying home from the track. Either we are living as if there is a God, praying, seeking to determine God's will, and trying to live in accordance with those determinations, or we are living as if there is no God...There is, according to Pascal, no middle ground. We already are making one bet or the other. Which is it? Which should it be? If we find that our answers to these two questions diverge, it is not too late to change our wager."

As you seek to finish well in life, where are you placing your wager?

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow