I wanted the argument,
not the bookmaker.

Every group chat I am in has the same three people. One who has watched every minute of every match and still gets it wrong. One who picks on vibes and is somehow top of the table. And one who only turns up for the final and claims he called it in August.

The apps built for us all want money. Entry fees, promo codes, a sportsbook two taps away. I did not want to put real money between my friends and I did not want a product that needed me to lose for it to work. I wanted the other thing: the pleasure of being right, in public, with receipts, for years.

So this keeps the receipts. Every call you make in every league settles into one record that follows you. The Bird watches all of it and has opinions. If you want to feel the sting of a bad bet, the paper book will give you that with money that was never real, and the tables will take it off you fairly, with the maths published.

There is no name on the door because the names that matter are the ones on the table. Mine is somewhere near the bottom of a league about the Premier League, under a Falcon, losing to someone who picks on vibes.

If something is wrong, broken or unkind, tell me. If something is good, tell your friends.