Daily Fantasy, Daily Life: Volume XXXIX - DFS Colonoscopy
What if I told you I was going to promise you no worse than 800th place in the Milly Maker this week? Would you fire off a lineup? Of course you would. You’d book a $130 profit just for showing up.
But what if I offered you a 40% chance of cashing? Would you still do it? Well, again, of course you would. As it stands, everyone else has a 22.2% chance, but you’d have a 40%.
In either scenario, you’d max enter – or max out your bankroll – to have a chance at those odds. And that’s why – if you’re 45 or older – you should go get a colonoscopy. Go let a stranger stick a camera five feet up your butt. The math says so.
Seriously: Go Google around., and you’ll find the stats: About 40 in 10,000 screening colonoscopies find cancer – that’s like 800 people in the Milly Maker. And furthermore, about 40% of colonoscopies find pre-cancerous polyps.
So yeah. Math dude. It checks out.
OK fine, maybe this is a bit of a stretch but … not really. After all, if you’re anything like me, playing DFS has changed your mental calculus. I think in DFS terms, basically. I used to think like a normal human being – you know, consider the facts, consider my emotions, talk it through, go back and forth, lose sleep, eventually come to a decision about whatever it was I was thinking about, rinse, repeat.
But now? Oh no. I don’t think like that. I think like this: This is the information I have, and based on that information, this is the clear decision to make. It is rare I will ever perseverate on any of my real-life, day-to-day decisions. I’ve found almost all the time, there is a clear way to go. There is “math” behind it. All the worry and consideration is a waste of time.
I recognize I’m having a hard time describing this, but I think readers in this space understand what I’m saying. Playing DFS – as I do, every day, for almost a decade – changes the way you think about everything else.
And so that’s how I ended up knocked out on Propofol with some dude checking out my innards.
I didn’t want to get a colonoscopy. Wasn’t high on my list of must-plays, you know? But when looked at through a DFS lens, it was a no-brainer. It’s good chalk.
Of course, if only 5% of colonoscopies found a polyp instead of 40%, the math changes. If only one in a million colonoscopies found cancer instead of one out 250, the math changes.
But the math is the math. There were decent odds the doctor was going to find something, and if he did, it would be nipped in the bud and I’d “cash” my lineup.
Of course, even if he found nothing – and I didn’t “cash” – it’s an even bigger win. (Not everything has a DFS parallel, alas.)
In the end – pun alert!!! – my colon was clean as a whistle. The prep wasn’t as bad as people make it out to be, and the procedure was a breeze (the drugs are waaaaaay too good).
So yeah: If you’re 45 or older, go get a colonoscopy. This is good chalk. Eat it. Just don’t eat anything 24 hours before the colonoscopy.