Don't Jinx It! An Office Gossip and Tale

Ever heard of tipping? Well, that's the social trend that my office had been doing for ages!

Tipping is basically betting. We bet on the favourite sport of the country, consisting of 16 teams playing for 25 weeks to make a season.

The rules are logical and simple: If you tipped the winning team correctly in a match, you earned one point. Vice versa, zero points for a wrong tip.

16 teams mean 8 matches per week, indicating you can get a maximum of 8 points per week.

Throw the dice to make your bet!

This is my first introduction to the sport, let alone tipping. I started off very badly for the first two weeks because I tipped for the teams with more "macho" names.

I do not even bother researching the team's past and their current state (injuries, player swap etc). I was the second last among my league (the entire office) if I'm not mistaken.

Now, this tipping is just-for-fun tipping: it's merely part of the office gossip... I mean *social culture* of my office.

However!

I. Hate. LOSING.

I made some simple calculations and tipped the teams with a higher probability to win. I managed to have 6 correct tips for a few weeks and eventually climbed up to a comfortable fourth place.

FOURTH from the second last position, oh yeahhhhh.

And I kind of bragged "It's just simple mathematics..."

Jinx activated!

Yeah, you guessed it right. Thanks to the office gossip, I'm now jinxed. The tipping then went badly, gaining only 4 tips correct per week (right at the passing mark of 50%).

A few weeks later, the underdog teams suddenly overthrew the stable teams, thereafter jumbling up the winning predictions. Mr Fate started pulling my legs and bestowing its victory on my opposite tip.

I tipped for strong and stable teams. But the underdogs won. So I changed my next tips to the underdogs. Then the stable-strong teams won.

Conspiracy theory detected!

At the time of writing, I'm already pushed to the last position. Oh, how sad.

Don't underestimate the power of jinx.

Hey, I'm serious. I heard one of my office colleagues complaining, "This week's matches will be tight. I'll be happy to get only 5 right!"

And the jinx worked again. He only had 2 right that week.

So. What's the lesson here?

Tipping is akin to gambling; every team has a 50:50 chance of winning. Calculations and statistics are dead considerations, whereas teams playing are the actual living flesh and blood.

There are so many factors that can affect ones playing, so there will never be a definite win or loss if everyone started from the same ground.

And that's life! Work hard, play hard, and enjoy!

My office is still playing this social game, I am still at the last position but well. As my personal motto goes: keep learning and never stop learning!

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