Risk Reversal, Win By Default
When I was a kid growing up here in Miami, my dad used to take me to watch the insanely popular local sport and parimutuel Jai-alai.
Now, if you’ve never stepped foot inside a Jai-alai fronton before, you’d be in the solid majority…
Jai-alai is played with a small as a golf-ball, hard as a rock “Pelota”, a ball that is caught and thrown using a “Cesta”, a woven basket worn on the hand.
The ball is traded back and forth like, sort of like psycho handball or racquetball on steroids at 100 mph+ speeds(!), bouncing off of an enormous 3-sided granite court with a wood side-court and netting to keep the ball from going into the audience.
Speaking of the audience, a Jai-alai audience is a betting audience which means it leaps to its feet at least 400 times a night. It’s THAT exciting, really.

