>betting on major sports and political events
While these things will likely turn out the same way as they did in reality, you'll need to roll to recall the less obvious things. Like the winners of World Cups or 9/11 would be automatically recalled, but other events will require a roll.
For (you), these things occured twenty five years ago.
Same story goes for trying to patent future inventions.
Inventing the Smartphone is going to hard, but stealing concepts like Facebook would be easy.
(You) did have some mechanical and electrical knowledge, though.

Part 1