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The journey to becoming a successful bettor · Pinnacle Podcast

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: [inaudible].
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the pinnacle podcast brought to you by pinnacle.com the online bookmaker that helps you the best odds, highest limits, and a unique winner's welcome policy.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: So you've had a bit of time away from these long form interview episodes.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Bumped, delighted to say that joining me today is a man who's well known within the bank community.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: We've waited a while to get him on and I know it's going to be worth the wait.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Hello to Rob per Zola.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Hi Ben, how are you doing?
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: I'm very good.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I'm glad to have you on the show.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Hope and follow you on Twitter and looking forward to the insight you have to share today.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: So I mean as I said there, you're, you're well known within the veteran community, but for anyone that doesn't know you, can you just kind of maybe give us a little bit of background, maybe what you did before betting and exactly what it is you're up to now?
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: It's been a sort of a, a complicated history of things for me.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: I'm probably most well known because I started in sports media in Canada.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: Uh, I live in Toronto right now and, uh, I used to work for a large media company called the score.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: Uh, and I started out in the radio department.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: They're hardcore sports radio and which I was a at first the producer and then eventually an on air host where I, uh, hosted a number of shows that were centered around sports betting.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Uh, from there I sort of moved on into a behind the scenes role working in the digital department at the score.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: I was the product manager for the score sports app, which is a pretty large, uh, sports app in North America.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: And actually they just ventured into sports betting a themselves in New Jersey recently.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: Uh, and then I made a call at one point in my life to sort of stop and give up the day job.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: At that time I was big into daily fantasy sports, uh, DFS and, uh, sort of left there, pursued a career in DFS, which sort of then evolved into a career in sports betting.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: So it's been a complex history of, uh, sort of a, a number of different paths that I've taken over the years, but that's where probably I gained my biggest following.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: And obviously working in that kind of job, I'm assuming that the interests or passion for sports was there, was there kind of like a, an education path that led to betting or was it just a sports that was the main driver for you?
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: Um, it's, um, it's really complex.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's more luck, um, more so than anything because I've been a sports fan my, my whole life and any career centered around sports, uh, whether that's just in media or an embedding, that's something I'm going to be passionate about.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: And for me, I've always wanted to work in, in places and work on things that I'm passionate about.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: I just find it much easier.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: Um, you know, to live day to day when you're, you're doing something that you like.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Um, but the sports betting thing was just kind of, it was kind of dumb luck.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, I was, uh, again, I was kind of building my own social for myself.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Uh, I've developed a pretty big following on Twitter and that was when I was sort of into mathematical modeling.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: So I started posting my numbers publicly, um, on a regular basis.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: And then that just kind of opened the doors and, and led to other opportunities with people reaching out to me saying, this stuff's good, we'd like to bet it and so on and so forth.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, the sports element definitely helps.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Um, I w, you know, I'm not glued to sports, so to speak.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: I'd love to work in, in different environments, in different industries.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: But, um, you know, just having that passion certainly makes things, uh, it just, it just really helps in the day to day essentially.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: And then she started, you've kind of said it's been a bit of a, a long road as it is often for people and sometimes a, a difficult one to navigate, which I'm sure we'll talk in detail a little bit later, but was there, was there any points from those early days of betting that, that stand out where you kind of changed your approach or you learn a really important lesson about being?
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: Oh, there's, there's definitely many of them.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: I started betting when I was in high school.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: I was in grade 10, and um, uh, I grew up, I grew up, grew up in a community where, um, pretty much everyone bet.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: Um, I, you know, I, I in grade eight, even elementary school, I knew of people that were already betting and I, being such a passionate sports fan and someone who at that time was literally watching sports all day long.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: It just seemed natural to me to bet on sports.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, uh, you kind of develop this ego of, you know, I'm a huge sports fan.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: I know what's going on, I should be able to win.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: And then over the course of time you learned that that's really not the case.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: And when I was young, I fell on hard times cause I built up quite a large debt when I was in high school and when I was in early university, a betting on sports and those were rough times for me.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: And then eventually you just get to the point of I can't do this anymore.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: Either I need to stop altogether or I need to figure out some other way of doing this.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: And at that time I was studying, uh, statistics and computer science at school.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: So I've started to apply some of those practices to sports betting and that's kind of what led me onto the positive path.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: But it was several years.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: It was like five or six years of me just constantly losing.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: Um, before I actually learned my lesson.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: More of a stubbornness than anything.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: But, um, you know, I honestly wouldn't change it for anything cause I think I, I learned a lot of valuable lessons in that time and the money from when I was younger is not the same amount of money that I'm making nowadays.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: So it's just kind of a blip on the radar.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: But it, um, it taught me a lot of things about sports and, and taught me to kind of learn the right approach.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: And in kind of learning that approach, is there, obviously there's a lot of like motivation that's come from yourself and a willingness to learn and change, but are there any like people or books or resources that you think have been influential in that stage where you are in debt and kind of essentially not very good at betting to, to where you are now?
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's, there's a few things.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: I, I say this all the time that people are asking you questions about, Oh, you know, where did you learn these things?
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: And so on and so forth.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: And I basically tell them like, Google was my best friend for a long time.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: I Googled everything.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: If there was a question that I had, I mean, I wouldn't always find the right content, especially 10 years ago.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: It was a lot tougher to find good bedding content than it is nowadays, but I just search for it.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: Um, in terms of an actual, you know, a book or, or, or resource that helped me.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: Um, there's a book called trading basis by Joe PETA.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: Um, if you are an experienced sports better, you're not gonna learn anything from it.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: But just reading that book, um, it really helped me with my process, uh, so to speak.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: Um, for, for those who aren't familiar with it, it's a, it's a very easy light read about baseball bedding and essentially Joe PETA was a wall street trader, um, that got into a severe car accident and he was forced to work from home for a long time.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: And while he was at home, he was trying to apply a lot of the principles from the, uh, stock market to the baseball betting market and then developed his models and started betting that.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: And again, I don't think that I really learned much in terms of actually how to model games so to speak, but just the process and going through someone's logic, um, over the course of a summer embedding baseball, I found that to be a really interesting read and it kind of opened my eyes.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: Um, so that's a really good light read.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: Again, you probably won't take away a whole lot from it.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: Um, but I would say that that certainly changed the way that I looked at sports as a whole and I, I probably owe a lot of what I have just to simply reading that book.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can definitely back you up on that.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: I've, I've read the book myself.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: We've had, Joe's actually written a couple of articles for pinnacle.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: He's been on the podcast, but I mean it's a, it does a really good job of, there's, there's a bit of narrative underlying there and it really teach you the basics are kind of using data to inform your strategy and everything like that.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I completely agree on that one.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean a until that, I don't want to say I didn't think it was possible to that point cause I was already using data, but I was sort of using it in a different type of way.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: Uh, and then that kind of just shifted my aspect to the whole modeling, uh, aspect of things.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: Um, whereas what I was doing before was more systematic and situational type of bedding.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: So, um, yeah, that it was just a, it was a whole new lens on things.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: And, uh, I was in my mid twenties at the time that I'd probably first read that book.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: And um, yeah, it was, it was eye opening for me.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: And, and in hindsight, I look back on it and it's really simple concepts.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: Uh, but when you're not used to thinking in that capacity, uh, it really changes the scope of things for you.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's one thing to kind of get to that point and learn those lessons and stuff like that.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: But obviously it's, we try to make no bones about it.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: It's a very difficult task to succeed in batting and it takes a lot of motivation.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: So for you, what was the, after reading that Burchell the, the resources and using Google and stuff, like what was the motivation to keep on pushing through and bet yourself in terms of betting?
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: Was it the, the monetary value that you could get?
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Was it the fact that you wanted to beat the market?
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: What exactly was it?
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: At first it was out.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: Honestly, it was just a hobby.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: Uh, I got to a point in my life where I had lost so much money betting on sports that it was, um, again, I was looking for a kind of a new way to apply myself, but I really wasn't betting a whole lot at the time.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: It ended up becoming entertainment money more than anything else.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: If I won, I won.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: That was great.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: If I lost it was only a little bit, it wasn't gonna affect my day to day.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: So I was only doing it as a hobby because I'm, again, I'm very passionate about sports.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: So it was something that was challenging for me.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: I'm very numbers driven.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: I'm an analytical guy.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: It was just something I did in my spare time.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: Um, one what really opened my eyes.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: Like I said, it was when I first started posting my numbers publicly and I did so for about a year, uh, in both baseball and hockey to my Twitter profile.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: And then one day somebody just reached out to me, uh, via direct messaging on Twitter and basically say, uh, you're posting your baseball numbers every day.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: And then somebody immediately betting them on screen.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Um, and I kind of had to ask them what that even meant.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: Cause those very novice at the time and basically somebody said, your stuff is being valued by someone in the community.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: You're getting none of nothing out of it.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: They're just betting it.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: Uh, would you be interested in coming aboard with this group, uh, on a free roll type of basis where we will actually give you a, a large bet on the game, um, when we bet it and so on and so forth.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: So that was the first time I was actually aware that I actually have something of value.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Uh, until then I wasn't really sure.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: Um, and then over time I've kind of, I, you know, I've learned the basic concepts that, uh, of closing line value and, and things of that nature that have, um, sort of just solidified to me that I have an edge in sports and that's when I slowly started ramping up assuming a lot more risk on my end.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: Um, to the point where I've gotten to today.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Well, I think we've done a good job of kind of setting a backdrop into to who you are and what you're about.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: I think now we can maybe dig a little bit deeper into to what it is you do exactly now.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: So could you maybe talk about the, you mentioned baseball and hockey there, but the, are those the two sports you bet on?
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: Is there more than that and is there kind of any specific markets that you bet on?
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Uh, there, I, I pretty much do everything except for basketball at this point.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: So I'm a, I'm a pretty big, uh, football better.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: I'm a very, I mean, hockey is my bread and butter.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: Um, I would say probably just because there's not as much competition in the market right now, uh, that it's probably a little bit easier to beat and it's still fairly decent limits on hockey.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: Um, which is nice.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: I've kind of, uh, I don't want to say given up on baseball, but it's not as big a part of my, uh, betting repertoire as it used to be.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Uh, I find it significantly more difficult to beat now than it was five years ago.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: Uh, but in essence, I really try to do as much as I can without overloading myself.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: Um, it can certainly get difficult and we're, we're going to get into hockey season next week, which, uh, I'll have hockey ongoing with football at the same time, which is always a little bit of a struggle.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: Uh, and I do work a lot more during that time.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: Uh, but I'm not a big basketball guy.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: Um, I do some golf as well, wherever I can, you know, wherever I think I can find an edge, I'll try to apply myself to that or apply that as do some back testing, um, to confirm whether I have an edge or not.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: But I do try to keep my options open.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: Um, and I, I'm, I would say that one thing I'm particularly good at is sort of evolving my craft, um, and trying to just bet where I'm getting the best ROI.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: And is it a case of, you said there like you're, you kind of dropping away on baseball.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Is it, do them feel like I need to pick up another sport to kind of pick up that Slack or is it just maybe you put more into the hockey or is it just you want to fill your time with, with betting on something and you need to find that edge somewhere?
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: I'll be completely honest with you.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: I dropped a lot of baseball this year just so that I can pick up golf in like actually playing golf, not betting on golf, just because, I mean it's difficult and it weighs on you.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: Uh, you, you can bet on sports and you can have losing months where you put in a lot of effort into that month and it's emotionally draining.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: And when you're betting sports throughout the year, uh, all year round, it's just, uh, it can get tiresome at some point.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: So I'm trying to keep myself sane is essentially what I'm getting back to.
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: Um, and taking up more hobbies.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: Uh, so golf is one of them.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: Uh, I played the guitars so I'm practicing a lot more, um, like when I was younger and so on and so forth and just trying to keep myself busy with items outside of what I consider work.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: So I'm more of a personal decision.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: Um, my edge is certainly decreased in baseball.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: Don't get me wrong, I would not have made this decision if I had, was turning a 10% ROI and baseball.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: But the reality is I bet baseball for half a year this year and a turned just over a 1% ROI, which to me is not worth the time.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Uh, so, uh, I've decided to go another route and I've picked up golf, uh, as a hobby and, um, I've sort of become addicted to that over the course of the summer.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: And are these, you said the edge there was kind of dropping away in baseball at the other sports.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: I'm guessing the edges are kind of different for different sports, but is, is that because of the quality of the data you have or the amount of time you've kind of spent refining the model or just the amount of time you put into it?
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: In general?
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: It's a combination of factors.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: I think the largest factor is that there is much sharper overnight action than there used to be.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Um, so when I used to, you know, when I bet baseball three or four years ago, I would wake up in the morning, uh, get ready for limits to come up, uh, come off and I would have a dozen baseball place on, uh, you know, any given day.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: Uh, I was finding this year I'd wake up and a lot of the, um, edges were steamed overnight and I was finding myself with two or three plays in the morning and then the majority of my action came as a result of fading someone else's steam, which, I mean I'll do that cause I trust my numbers.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: But for the most part, somebody is putting a lot of money on a baseball game cause they believe with a fairly high degree of confidence that they have an edge and they're moving that number and then I'm playing against that number.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: It sort of makes you question things a little bit more, but the reality is the volume just wasn't what it used to be.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: I started having like this internal debate with myself this year of whether I just start betting overnight into smaller markets.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: Um, would that offset the, with the increase in edge offset the amount of money that I'm able to get down?
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: Um, it's tough questions, but, uh, that, that would be the biggest factor.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Certainly I think there's some sharp people in the market.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: Uh, I, I do try to adapt every off season.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not using the same baseball model and the same metrics I was using five years ago.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: I think if you do that, you're going to be in serious trouble in any betting market.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: So I've tried to keep up with things over time.
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: I've tried to automate things a lot more than they used to be.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: Uh, in terms of the amount of manual work that I'm willing to do.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: But, um, I think the biggest edge and not, it's not really only in baseball, it's really across all sports and why the edges are, uh, decreasing is the amount of sharp early action.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a bit, it's a bit weird to say, isn't it?
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Because back in those days where you were struggling in terms of your betting and not winning a great deal, it's almost as if you've got better, but in a way it's, it's become harder as those markets get more efficient.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: I would totally agree with that.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, oftentimes I wonder, um, this'll sound pretty narcissistic.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: I don't mean it to come across as arrogant or whatever, but I wonder if I was born 10 years earlier, um, well my life would be like now, um, because I, I mean, there's obviously a lot of things that have impacted in my life fall together, but, um, I just feel like at this time, I've, I'm, uh, I've, I'm at the best point that I've ever been in terms of my modeling and just my process overall.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: Um, but it's at one of the toughest points ever, arguably the toughest point ever to actually profit off of that.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: Um, so timing not so great and it's the same as, I mean, I left this out at the beginning, but I played poker for a living for a year as well, towards the end of the poker boom.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: And when I first started that I was having a huge ton of success.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: And then towards the end of that, I noticed that people start to catch up in the game, start to get harder.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: So I'm sort of seeing the same thing with sports.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: That doesn't mean that they're not beatable, um, because they are, but, uh, I have to be a little bit more creative in the way you think.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: And you know, also looking into alternative markets as well.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: Uh, things that were edges sizable edges still exist.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: And with this, the statistical background and using data and stuff like that, is it fair to say that your approach to betting is a hundred percent model based?
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: I would say a 95% model based.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: Um, I run numbers on every game.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: I tend to trust the numbers for the most part, but I'll just give you an example of what I mean.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: Uh, I, my model shows an edge on the Miami dolphins every week in the NFL for the first three weeks of the year.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: But to me, this is a Miami team that I questioned their motivation.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: I can't accurately quantify their motivation as a team.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: Um, so there'll be instances, rare instances where, um, I will do some subjective analysis and I'll just lay off a game, even if I have a mathematical edge on that.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: Some people agree with that, some people disagree with that.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: It's all a matter of personal preference.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: That's just my personal preference.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: But yes, the vast majority of it for the most part is, is mathematical modeling.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: And then obviously someone, someone listening to this who wants to replicate that approach, they need to get hold of the data to do it.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: And I guess when you start out, you can, I mean, you can go from collecting yourself, you can scrape it and then maybe as you get more successful you can pay for it.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Is that kind of a progression you've seen or are you kind of, you still gathering your own data or are you scraping it?
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: I'm mostly scraping my own data.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: I've paid for data before just to, to test, um, certain sports.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, that that becomes a significant costs.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: And it's sort of one of the reasons that I don't do soccer or a European football is because of the amount of data that I would need and the amount that I'd actually have to pay for in order to be successful at that.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: With the size of the, you know, the football markets or soccer markets under the, I know you have probably a mix of North American and European listenership, but what the size of those markets, you're competing against the best betting groups in the entire world who have access to a ton of data.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: You can't get away with just scraping whatever's publicly available.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: You need to have those same data sets.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: That's not the case with some other sports.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: Uh, for hockey for example, everything that you could possibly need is publicly available right now.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: Um, and, and with some other sports as well.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Baseball I would say so it, I guess it kinda depends on the sport, but for the most part I'm using all data that is publicly available.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: And then obviously once you've got the data, you need to actually model it.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: And what if we're talking about programming languages here or you are using our Python or Excel.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: So, um, I went to school and I learned Python, but, uh, what ended up happening is naturally in moving into sports media and not practicing Python for many, many years, I developed into a pretty bad programmer.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: Um, I'm what I, I consider myself a, an Excel guru.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Everything I originally built with was in Excel.
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: Uh, but then you get to a point where, uh, it's just, uh, in order to automate a little bit better and do things a little bit better, I needed to move it over to a programming language rather than code it myself.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: I actually contracted people to build it for me in Python.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: I'm still skilled enough to go through the code and make changes as a need be.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: But in terms of being an efficient coder, I'm pretty terrible.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: It's probably my big liability as a sports better is that I'm relying on other people to do that stuff for me.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: Um, and I've never found the time to just pick things up again and, um, become proficient at coding.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: But I'm very good in Excel.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: I tend to build things in Excel first, um, and then port those over into Python.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: But, um, I will readily admit that I have not built any of those models myself.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess it's a, it's a strength to know when to invest in the strengths of other people to kind of help you out I guess, isn't it?
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: Well, it is.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, and that's the thing when I talk about efficiency all the time, there's only so much time in the day and in the year.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: And if I was to manually have done all these things myself, if I would've suffered in other aspects of my bedding, I wouldn't have been able to keep on top of the logic changes that I make every year and a number of other aspects.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: So, uh, I agree.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, one of the, one of the things I'm pretty good with is knowing where my strengths are and where my weaknesses are.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: And, um, in this case, I mean, I'm fully comfortable admitting that, um, coding is not a strength, uh, or is certainly a weakness.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: And, um, I mean I just explored alternatives from, from that perspective.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: And you just mentioned there kind of hours in the day.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: I'd be interested to know as I'm sure people listening would, if we're, we're say we're in the mix of the NHL season and the NFL season, everything's kind of going on a day to day life of a better, how much time are you actually investing in this?
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: It's, it's, it's dependent on the day.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: Uh, I'm lucky enough where I work with other people so we can kind of split workload.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: I'm also very lucky in that I have a lot of things automated.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: Um, so for baseball for example, I really don't even need to be at a computer at all.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: Um, because I'm constantly scraping different websites to see when lineups become available.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: And when an MLB lineup comes in, my model is going to automatically rerun the game's at that lineup.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: If there's a play that comes into range, I'm going to get a message, a shot to me on a social app on my phone.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: And basically I just confirmed the play and someone will bet it for me.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Hockey is a little bit different because you don't have the same level of lineup information available.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: Um, and if I was to wait on a website to update lineups for hockey, uh, I would, I would lose numbers.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: People would beat me to market.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: So, um, hockey is typically a tough point of year for me because I'm at a computer or at least bringing my computer with me everywhere I go, uh, to stay on top of things.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: So I work pretty long days during the hockey season.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: Um, other sports not so much.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: It's much more of an automated.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: Um, so it really depends.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: Um, but yeah, I mean the hockey season I could be working 12 hours every single day.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: And when it comes to those, the parameters that you're, you're feeding into your model and refining your model and stuff like that.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm thinking as a, as a soccer fan and someone who follows soccer quite in depth stuff, like expected goals, which I know you have in hockey as well.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: It's relatively new kind of metric to use.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: The, obviously, I'm assuming that's gotta be part of your model, but how does that work in, in terms of a new data point and how to kind of feed that into the process?
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a, it's a good question because I'm there, this happens every year.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: There's always, well not every year, but there's always some sort of new metric available.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: I shifted to expected goals in hockey three years ago.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: Um, whereas I was more reliant on other possession based metrics prior to that.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: And essentially when these new metrics become available, you just, um, what I tend to do is I, I applied them how I see fit and then I back tested, uh, compared to my previous models.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: So that's one thing that I have.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: I'm very glad I have in place as a good back testing infrastructure for all the sports that I have so that I can apply changes and test them against what my previous model outputs were.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Um, so that's sort of how I go about it.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: Anytime I see something interesting, I play around with the data.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: Um, I wa I've looked to see if there's any specific flaws and how potentially I can improve that metric.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: Um, and then I go about applying that metric, uh, but also ensuring that by applying that metric, I am, um, reducing my air rates and, and making my, my predictions, um, more accurate than they worked or useless.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: So if we kind of imagine you've, you've refined this model.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: It pings a notification to social app.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: It says this is a good bet.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: It's a good play.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Whatever it is.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: You then placed that bet or you are you then going to go and watch these games?
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Do you still see it as like an entertainment or is it, do you watch it to analyze it or are you someone that just wants to be removed and not kind of sweat those points on the board or anything like that?
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: This has changed over the years.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: I used to watch every bed I made for the most part.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, obviously that's difficult to do on a college football Saturday when you have a ton of bets and games are going off at the same time as one another.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: But, um, I've made it a personal goal of mine, you know, starting a couple of years ago to not let it, uh, the sports betting influence my life as much as it was.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: So I'd be that tie.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: I'd be that guy that was laying in bed and I'd wake up in the middle of the night and I'd have to check scores on my phone.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: And my wife always used to constantly say like, the scores aren't going to change if you check.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: The more, you know, the game is, the outcome is not gonna change if you're watching the game.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: And I've kind of tried to apply that.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: Um, but the reality is I'm still a sports fan, so I do still like to watch sports.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: It's just, um, I would guess to answer your question, it's just completely random.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: There'll be days where I bet on a game and I'll watch the game and there'll be days where I bet on it and I don't even check the scores and only check the final afterwards.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: It's, I'm more living the cycle of a sports fan now than I am a, uh, sports better.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: And I will say I do still like watching games cause I do think that you do pick up on things, um, that maybe the, the data is not picking up on yet or, or at least you can come up with these hypotheses in your head of certain things that are happening and go back and test them.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: So I think there is an advantage in actually watching sports as long as you don't become extremely biased from watching one particular game and seeing one player play bad or something along those lines.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: So there is an advantage there.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: That's why I still like to do it.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: And uh, and I'm just passionate sports fan.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: But um, yeah, it's, it's a, it's sort of a random thing for me.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: I don't make a a point of emphasis, a point of emphasis of doing it one way or the other.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: And then I guess in addition to that advantage of being able to kind of work on things from watching the game, some people will claim that being a fan from the start can, can have a positive impact.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Other people obviously things like the green lumber fallacy and stuff like that suggest that perhaps sporting knowledge can almost work against you.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: So where do you sit sit on that?
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: Do you think being a hockey fan helps you as a hockey better?
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: Um, people ask me that quite regularly and I definitely do.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: I've seen a lot of sharp people try to, um, model hockey and, and fail at it.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: And frankly they can't.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: When I hear this all the time, to be completely honest with you, uh, people are always saying to me like, you're one of the only people I know that bets real money on hockey because, um, now I don't know the reason for that.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: But I do think that my knowledge of the game allowed me to come up with, um, a strong way of modeling it.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: Uh, and I do think that there's little things that I pick up on as I watch games.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: I'm a big hockey fan, um, that allow me to improve my, my models as well.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: So, uh, I'm, I'm in the camp of that is an advantage, um, to be knowledgeable about the sport.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: Um, I, I've seen, I mean there's tons and tons of examples I could personally think of of just teams of mathematicians and quants, uh, failing to apply that logic properly to sports because they're just unfamiliar with that sport.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: So, uh, I'm definitely on the team, uh, at team advantage there.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: And[inaudible] when we say betting here, I guess kind of cut could have covered this off a little bit earlier.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: We talking, uh, you just pregame betting, do you bet in play or anything like that?
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: So I do bet in play, but it's not anywhere to the degree that I'm betting pregame right now.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: I will say that one of the personal goals of mine is to shift, you know, a couple of years from now, we'll expect that I'll have as much live handle or end game handle as I do pregame.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: Uh, because that's just sort of where I see the market heading.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: I think NFL live NFL, second half markets, I mean, they're already quite big, but they are, I think they're going to be huge at some point.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: Uh, and just with the amount of engagement now with live sports going on, I'm sort of gravitating to that.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: And in fact, a lot of people ask me, I get this message on Twitter quite frequently.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, at least a couple of times a week of I'm new to sports betting or I want to start betting on sports.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: I don't know where to begin.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: I have a good solid math background, good statistical background.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: Where would I start?
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: And I tend to lead these people towards live markets and second half markets because I really think that that's the way that it's going.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: And because I see the pre-match and pregame markets edges, uh, slowly diminishing over time.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: Uh, that's a personal goal of mine, so I don't do a whole lot of it now.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: A couple of years from now.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: I hope to be pretty good at it.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, given the kind of figures that are quoted between splits of, of in play and pregame, it could be that there's almost a gap to be exploited there.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: You said kind of baseball and stuff like that.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Maybe CR pregame is, has been hammered into be so efficient that switching focus, you never know there could be an edge to have to be had in play.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: And when you also look at, I mean, what sports books are reporting in terms of hold for a pregame versus live.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's still a lot of inefficiencies in the live market now there that obviously lends itself to having lower bedding limits as well.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Um, but for the most part, uh, I don't think the, you know, the sports book live algorithms are, I'm really accounting for everything that needs to be accounted for.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: I'm not, I'll give you an example.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to mention what sports book it was particularly, but last year for live hockey bedding, they were not accounting for the fact that, um, goalies are being pulled earlier in games.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: So this is sort of like, um, an analytical discovery that was made in the NHL a few years ago.
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: But typically in the past, if a team was losing by one goal, they would pull their goalie to get an extra player on the ice.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: In the last minute of the game.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: Uh, analytics are saying that this should have happened much prior to the last minute of the game, four minutes, five minutes, six minutes.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: So we're seeing teams do that now, but the live algorithms that certain Sportsbook was using, we're not accounting for that.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: Uh, so you'd still get some very good prices on, on puck lines and overs and things like that.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: Um, and it took months before they recognized that that was a flaw in their, um, in their modeling.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: So I think that's only specific to hockey.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: I think this applies to many sports where there's these little flaws that can be picked apart.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: Uh, since we're still in the fairly early stages of live betting, it's certainly not an efficient market yet.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Well that's it isn't it from a, I guess from a sports books perspective, they're not going to invest time and resource into refining those in play models if there's no interest there.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: And it almost seems like now there's just been this, there kind of the switch been flicked and there's just an influx of volume and all of a sudden they're almost having to play catch up into what's coming to the market.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: So if we, I mean with bang there's some things that are there.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Obviously black and white.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: I mean if you, the very, when you very first start out things like online shopping, it's pretty straight forward.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: You know, what, what you have to do, you obviously do get better at it, but then there's other things that are new.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Kind of touched upon it earlier, like dealing with the inevitable losses and the psychology of betting.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: So, I know you kind of touched upon like finding a hobby, finding a release in golf, but how have you found the experience kind of over your career of, of dealing with those ups and downs?
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: Um, it's been difficult to be completely honest with you.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: I'm always someone that's, that's um, uh, not dealt with stress and anxiety.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: Well ever since I was young, I was medicated for anxiety as well, so that doesn't really lend itself towards wagering large, large as large amounts of money on games.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: Um, so it's been a struggle, but I've sort of learned to deal with it over time.
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: Uh, I do some meditating as well.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Uh, and they're just like, like I said, there are certain behaviors that just really helped me calm down a little bit, especially in times of stress.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: Um, but I'm certainly not immune to stress.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, a, just a personal life example for me is, uh, December of last year would have been my worst betting month of all time.
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: Uh, I was a negative 18% ROI, uh, in NHL.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: Um, despite beating the closing, lied on pretty much over 90% of my wages in that month.
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: Uh, so I chalk a lot of it up to bad variance, a lot of overtime and shoot out losses in hockey.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: But regardless, even knowing that and even knowing that it's just a bad run of variants, it's still, it still weighs on you.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: Um, so I don't really have a perfect solution to that.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: I still find it something that I'm getting better at, but I still struggle with at times.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: Um, and I don't, I don't think I'll ever get to the point where I can completely just dismiss that and get that out of my head.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: Um, but, uh, I'm just trying to, you know, I've tried a number of more relaxing techniques to help me with that and I, I've certainly, uh, I found some success with that to the point where I felt, I feel like I've come a long way in five years.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: And I think, I mean, my kind of perception is that people almost, they're so intent on whether it's like research in these new metrics or learn learning a programming language or whatever it might be.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: They spend so much time devoted to those kind of materials that they potentially neglect the psychological aspects.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: So do you kind of spend time researching and reading about the psychology and how it can impact your decision making process?
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Like especially when it comes to betting?
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, for sure.
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: I mean I, I'll openly admit this and I, I mean I don't really care cause I think if it helps, you know, you should use any resource that you have access to.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: But I, I've done therapy and before where, um, which has really, really helped.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: Just talking to someone about the, the, the stresses that you're facing on a, on a regular basis.
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: Um, there's a number of things that I've done, but yeah, I mean I, I think it has just as, there are certain people that this is not going to affect, I mean I know of, of sports betters that, that they kind of tell me, well I'm just immune to the ups and downs at this point or I'm kind of, I'm numb to the upper ups and downs.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: I don't have the personality traits that can make me immune or numb to the ups and downs of the sports betting, uh, aspect of things.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: I also just from a personal level, I'm married to a wife who, I mean I love very much but is one of the most risk averse people on this planet.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: Someone that has very, very low risk tolerance, which I obviously have high risk tolerance, but you know, that leads to some stresses as well at times because um, you know, that's your personal life and you don't want to disappoint someone that you obviously care about a whole lot and things of that nature.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: So, uh, for me, I don't want to say I spend equal amounts of time on it, but I'm much more cognizant now of when I am going through periods of stress or anxiety, uh, poor psychological state and I'm much more willing to do something about it now.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: And I mean, I would say that it's, you know, it doesn't cripple me, uh, anymore and in the past it certainly would have.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Um, I'm really glad you shared that.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: Cause I think people, I mean a lot of people on Twitter are trying to spread that message of, of how much of a challenge betting is.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: But that doesn't, that doesn't just mean it's difficult to beat the market because it's efficient.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: It's a challenge because of that daily grind and everything that comes along with it.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: I mean it's a, is it though?
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: It certainly can.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: You can feel the weight on your shoulders a lot at, at points.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Uh, and it's not always easy you like, like I said, I mean there's times where I put in a lot of work.
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: I, you know, 250 hours in a month into sports betting.
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: And I might lose money in that month.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: And that's, you know, it's not a lot of, that's not an easy pill for me to swallow, but for a lot of people to swallow.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: So, um, it's, it's just trying to stay in that right mindset and understanding that, I mean the edge does exist and that you will be, there's always volatility and you're always going to be subject to these either short term bad runs, even sometimes some longterm bad runs.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: But over the course of the time it balances out.
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: And, um, you know, when you do have that mentality and you're doing things, um, you know, to help you from a psychological perspective.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: I, I think, I mean, I can't even think of what I was like four or five years ago, but I, I just, you know, biting my nails, stressing games constantly all the time.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: Like I said, constantly refreshing my phone for scores and it's just not healthy.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: And once you realize that it's not healthy and you need to do something about it, then, uh, um, that's the, that's the first step.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: And, uh, I think it's been, it's worked out for me, luckily.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure that's kind of given some great insight into to what it's like to kind of bet for a living and the the day to day life.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Now we can move on to kind of the betting industry in general and I guess the current betting landscape.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: So I mean, one of the hot topics at the moment is this whole tipsters touts and selling picks and stuff like that.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: Again, it's, it's by no means a new phenomenon, but I'm just interested to know what are your whole thoughts on this kind of selling picks stuff and things like that.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: So I'm inherently biased on this because at one point I did sell picks.
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: Uh, so I'll just give a little brief background, but, um, I ran a website called, uh, prediction machine.com which was a pretty, um, large website in North America and when their owners sold it, I signed on on a one year contract to, uh, to run the website.
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: Now I'm going to give a little caveat here.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: Um, my goal when I took this over and other members of management were fully on board with this is I wanted to run what I call a pick site in the right way.
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: Um, too often I see a handicappers just giving out picks on either stay aligns or lines that aren't widely available.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: I wanted a plethora of tools on the site that would actually be beneficial.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: Um, essentially I wanted to run a website that I myself as a better would be comfortable paying for and using.
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: Um, I found that there's not a lot of demand in the market for that.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: Um, so people, I mean, the reality was I would really try to educate people and post a lot of content on the fact that, you know, if I recommend betting the Toronto blue Jays at minus one 20 and you go to bet the game and it's minus one 50, the value is probably gone in that game.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: And that's a very difficult concept for people to understand.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: And a lot of people just don't want to hear it.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: They just are, I want the pic, just tell me who to bet.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: And, and the whole concept of line movement and what numbers to bet at, it falls on deaf ears.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: Uh, I think we have an education problem in the market.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: Um, and I think that there are a lot of touts that take advantage of that.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: Um, and that's where I don't really like to T, you know, 99% of the total industry is absolute garbage.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: It's people that can't win at bedding that are not really even offering a service.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: Uh, you'd be better off just flipping a coin at home and betting on games and paying for those.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: Um, but I do think that there are some people that do it right or some people that actually provide value.
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: So I won't say that they don't exist.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: Uh, but for the most part, from what I saw in my time, uh, one year of doing that, um, there's, there's just a, a lot of people that are adamant of this is specifically what I want.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: And there's a big market that is catering to that.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: And, um, I don't really know how we get away from that other than just as, you know, educating people better on what matters in the betting world.
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: Um, but there's also an inherent problem with doing that, especially when you bet on sports for a living because you kind of don't really want everyone to be educated because they can turn out to be your competitors.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: So, um, there's a lot of things that play into the equation.
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: I'm not an anti tote guy per se, I'm anti most touts, um, because I don't feel that most provide value.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: But um, I see why they do it because there certainly a, a large demand for it in this industry right now.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, completely agree.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: And I think the, the education comment there is really the key isn't it?
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: And just kind of trying to let people know like what's involved and what, what you might not see behind someone's record or something like that.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Obviously sometimes the great ROI looks great, but there's often more than meets the IVD survivorship bias or whatever it might be.
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a number of factors.
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, I honestly, I think the biggest piece of advice I'd give to people all the time, especially novice betters, is the concept of closing line value.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: And your goal is a better is obviously to win.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: I mean everyone wants to win betting on sports, but the best predictor of whether you're gonna win in the long term is whether or not you're consistently beating the closing line and by how much.
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: And that's just a piece of advice I give to all my friends and, and others as well is um, you know, keep track of all your bets and keep track of the closing prices.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: And if you are not consistently beating close, then go back to the drawing board because you're not gonna win in the long run.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: And vice versa.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: If you are, then good job, keep doing what you're doing.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: Um, but I mean I, the concept falls on deaf ears too.
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: A lot of people, I mean I post publicly about this stuff on Twitter all the time and I'd say probably 75% of the comments I get are positive and people who are generally interested, but there's still a portion of the population that doesn't want to hear it and thinks that it's complete garbage and it's nonsense and as long as there's people that are still posting that stuff publicly as well, it's very difficult for someone who doesn't know to understand what's real and what's not.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: So that's another challenge I think that we face as a whole.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: And just to kind of touch upon, um, closing line value there and assuming you can't just subscribe to the efficient market hypothesis and things like that.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: When you talk about say that the edge you have over the goalie getting pulled in, in NHL when the puck Klein and stuff like that, is that that could be seen as potentially an edge that if the market is behind and hasn't incorporated that, then would that potentially reveal itself in closing line value?
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: Do you kind of consider those things as well or is it just you stick with one kind of measurement method and that's the way you go?
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: So a, that's actually a really good question.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: So I, I wouldn't consider that in closing line value.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: So when I'm talking, when I tell people about closing line value, I'm referring to really large markets, uh, for the most part.
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: So all the major sports leagues essentially pregame markets, live betting I still don't think is efficient yet.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: Um, so I really wouldn't value closing line value all that much in a live betting market.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: Plus it's very difficult to really see what the closing line was, um, at a specific time just because of all the movement that's happening during live betting props markets are another one to me that are not really all that efficient just because the limits on props are generally so small.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: Uh, at the majority of books you can only really bet a couple of hundred dollars, maybe$500 on a specific prop.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: Um, so you're gonna tend to have less sharp betters focused in on that market.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: But for the major sports leagues, NFL, college football, any major Euro soccer leagues, NBA, NHL, MLB, um, closing line value is a very, very good indicator of whether you're going to win or not in the long run.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: And then just going back to the, the betting industry kind of in general, I mean obviously we've had the, the perhaps or repair is still quite fresh.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: Do you think we've kind of seen a shift in the perception of, of betters and bookmakers from the general public
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: in terms of, of how they're perceived, so to speak?
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: Like I, I S I think that, I mean, sports bet this perception of sports betting as a whole, as much different than it was five years ago.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: It's now more widely accepted than it than it was, if that's what you're asking me.
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: That's what I was getting up.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, it's definitely more widely accepted.
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's becoming much more mainstream.
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: Obviously all the big outlets and then us in the U S whether it be ESPN or Fox sports are producing gambling content now, Bleacher report, uh, it's become sort of an arms race to produce gambling content, um, which is also comes with its inherent problems now because you see a lot of the faces of who people are getting massive audiences, um, when, I mean it can be questioned whether they're qualified or not to really talk about gambling is as a whole.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: Maybe they understand betting and how it works, but probably not necessarily how to beat sports and how to profit off sports.
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: So, um, but in terms of perception of the market as a whole, certainly it's, it's much more widely accepted now.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: I think there was a stigma on it and I'm Canadian, we're not experiencing the same regulation as of yet.
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: Uh, as in the U S it will come eventually.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: But even in Canada, I can say that 10 years ago I'd kind of be ashamed to tell somebody that I was betting on sports.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: It was negative stigma.
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: Nowadays it's pretty open and people are pretty open about that.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: And it's not as negatively viewed.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: And when you were talking about these people that kind of, um, DM you on Twitter, or when they reply to this stuff about closing line value and their negative and things like that, do you, do you see kinda shades of your old self in those and is it, do you get frustrated or are you kind of hopeful that eventually these people will learn and listen to the information that's out there?
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: Uh, I don't get frustrated unless it comes with a negative tone.
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: Uh, so to speak.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: I leave my DMS open on Twitter because I'm, I'm actually very willing to answer those questions because, um, I don't want to make this seem like I'm some, you know, great person so to speak.
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: But I remember the struggles that I faced when I was younger, find good content and accessibility to people who actually understand what they're doing and know what they're doing was not easy to come by.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: And that was one of the biggest struggles for me when I was younger and, and trying to seriously get into this.
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: Um, so that's sort of why I allow people to ask me those questions and I do these Periscope videos to give a little bit of insight into my process.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: It's a fine line between giving away what gives me my edge and giving away little tidbits that people can take away.
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: But I do try to educate as much as I possibly can.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: Um, it's frustrating.
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: Um, when I get challenged on things that I am certain that I'm right about.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: That's one thing that bothers me quite a bit.
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: The second thing that's frustrating, uh, that I find is when people, um, will challenge me because I don't publicly post my picks or I don't publicly post my records.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: Um, I mean for anyone who bets professionally you, they'd understand.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: It's very obvious why we don't post our picks and why we don't post our records.
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: But that's very tough to relay to an average person who doesn't really understand much about the betting market.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: So I get a lot of questions of why should I trust you?
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: Um, when you know, you don't publicly, you're not publicly transparent about your record, which I guess is a fair question, but that can be frustrating.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: And then on the, the idea that the markets are kind of getting more efficient, do you think that's down to bookmakers kind of doing a better job, having better quality data?
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: Is it like a small segment of sharps that gang sharper or do you think it's actually the, the betting, the general bang population that's kind of not as square as maybe they used to be?
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: I think it's the ladder.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: Um, so I definitely think that the average better now is, uh, better than they were a decade ago.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: Um, probably because there is, I mean, there is a lot of bad content out there, but there's also a lot of good content.
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: Um, I think people are naturally trying to educate themselves a little bit more now with the regulation happening.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, I don't, I honestly don't think it's a matter of bookmakers getting better.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: Funny enough, every now and then I, I'll, I'll check the opening lines that, um, that come out for games and I'll kind of scratch my head as to how those opening lines could ever come out because some of them are pretty bad.
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: Um, the reason I don't do it more often is actually frustrates me to, you know, when blinds my edge is constantly reducing from that opening line to the time that I'm betting it.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: But, um, I, I don't think it's necessarily a, a fact, you know, a matter of bookmakers getting sharp sharper.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: But I do think that that, that betting population is certainly driving those lines into place a lot quicker, uh, than it used to.
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: Um, so those edges don't tend to hang around a lot longer.
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: And, um, yeah, certainly there's more, there's more good educational content out there than there was years ago.
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: So, uh, that, that is, that is, I think, the biggest factor
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: and the reason behind kind of taking the opening line when the massive edge is there, is that, is that a limits issue you're having?
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: Um, yeah.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: I, I mean, in order to sustain what I'm, what I'm doing, um, I mean I need a certain bed size.
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: Uh, and if I was betting into the opening markets, then I would probably need a full time job on top of it.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: So, uh, that's, that's the story.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: I'll go with it.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: [inaudible]
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: and then one of the other hot topics, just kind of off the back of that I guess is that this idea of account restriction or people getting banned, we've obviously seen a lot of it in the U S but it is kind of like the go global problem.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: Is that something you've experienced throughout your bet in Korea?
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: I have.
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: Um, but I'm also not in the same boat of other people.
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: I, if I put myself in the, in the shoes of someone who's running a business and someone is repeatedly taking money from me, um, I'm going to do what I can to stop that.
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: And yes, I mean, it's unfair, but there, there's no regulations in place that prevent books from doing that.
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, I get it.
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: I'd like to be able to bet wherever I want for as much as I want.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: But the reality is every book is running a business.
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: Their goal is to profit as much as they possibly can.
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: And if a that means limiting betters or even preventing them from betting altogether, I think they're within their rights until someone tells them that this isn't allowed anymore.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: So it's something I've personally experienced.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: It's frustrating as a better, but I think you, I mean you need to be able to see both sides of, of every equation and um, I can get why it happens.
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: So, um, I mean it probably doesn't bother me as much as it bothers a lot of other people out there.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess there's something that probably sits in the middle there of like that potentially were within their rights to do it until it becomes illegal or whatever it is.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: But I think potentially a lot of people have the problem with the fact that it's not really, there's no awareness about it.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Bookmakers, it's almost like this kind of secret that you only find out about once you actually get restricted or banned.
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: No, I mean, and I get that.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, but the reality is that the current state of, uh, sports betting, I mean, there's a lot of shady Enos that happens and that's just the vast reality of it.
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying that it's right.
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: Um, I'd love to see that more open communication from sports books down the road of, you know, if you're a holding this amount, um, then we're going to restrict your bed sizes.
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: And if they're upfront with that, it's a little bit different.
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: But, uh, I, I mean, I don't think we're gonna get there anytime soon.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: And, um, I, I, there are other means to Tibet.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's, there's, there's pinnacle, obviously there is other, there's Chris, which is a sharp book that accepts big wagers.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: There's, I mean, you can still bet into, um, I mean technically illegally into offscreen markets, but, um, there's other avenues.
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: So, uh, to me it's, if, you know, a random offshore sports book restricts my bets.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: It's not, I'm not really losing sleep over it.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: So if we just now look ahead to the future, what are the, what do you think the future has in store for the betting industry?
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: Um, I certainly think a lot of the same trends, uh, that you see right now will continue.
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: Uh, in terms of a more mobile betting, more live betting, uh, those are the, uh, the obvious factors, but especially with millennials and their tendency to gravitate towards phones versus desktop.
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: Um, I think you'll probably start to see some more um, mobile unique, unique products on mobile devices.
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: Uh, but also this, uh, live betting eventually becoming, I mean it's already sort of 50, 50 with pre-match markets, but, uh, becoming huge at some point.
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: Um, in terms of other items, I think with this regulation happening, uh, in the us, what happened over the gate was it was just an arms race to get to market.
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: Everybody just tried to get to market as quickly as possible.
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: And what ends up happening is all these regulated a us facing books, draft Kings, fan duel points, bet a score, all those books, they all look like the traditional offshores that we're used to and accustomed to seeing.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: I think over time, um, when this arms race has sort of ended, um, three, four, five years ago now, you'll probably see some more creative Sportsbook products, a sports book presented in a way that is not traditional to betters, uh, something that may be is, um, catered towards millennials and younger betters and something that is maybe more visually appealing.
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: I don't really know.
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: It's very hard for me to imagine what that looks like, but I certainly think we're going to see some innovation in the Sportsbook um, uh, market in the next three, four or five years.
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: And then for you, are you, are you planning to, to be involved in betting for the foreseeable future or do you have aspirations outside the world of sports betting?
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: Maybe get that handicap down to scratch and go pros, a golfer.
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: Um, I don't think I'll get there, but, um, I think it's important with not only betters but just humans in general obviously have goals.
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: Um, I have certain short term goals and longterm goals.
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: Um, you know, I'd like to not be working as a certain age in my life and have the, um, enough wealth built up to be able to travel the world freely and to, to golf as much as I want to.
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: So that's sort of my longterm goal.
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: Uh, I'd be willing to pursue Evan any Avenue that takes me there.
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: Uh, even if that's outside of sports betting.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: Um, I'm a big, I'm big into crypto as well.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: Um, I'm a big advocate of Bitcoin and I've been a hold there for a long time and, and slowly help help me get there as well.
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: Um, but I'm not tied to sports betting.
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: I just do it because it provides a good income for me right now.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: Uh, I'm good at it.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: I'm passionate about it.
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: It kind of ticks all the boxes for me, but if there was another opportunity that comes up that would help me achieve my life goals at a faster rate or uh, at, in a higher likelihood, um, then sports betting, that would be something that I would certainly consider.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: So you enter these, the crypto bookmakers or whatever, cause that's to me it took about the stresses of banking.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: That's like a double gamble isn't it?
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: You're betting on the value of a currency, but you're also betting on the outcome of an event.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: It must be madness.
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: Um, so I mean, I use nitrogen Sportsbook, um, and have for a long time.
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: I tell people this story all the time, but, um, I remember this would have been a three or four years ago.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: I, I bet the golden state warriors to win the NBA title before the season started.
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: And by the time the NBA finals came around, my wager was worth six times the amount that I actually bet on it.
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: Um, just because the price in crypto fluctuating, I mean, it's obviously very volatile right now.
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: Um, so yeah, there's an element to that.
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: Um, but personally, I mean, when you're a longterm believer in crypto and you think that, uh, the price will go up over time.
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like as much of a gamble even though it really is.
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: Um, like certainly, yeah, there's been times where, um, I've had way bigger waist, smaller bets just based on the volatility of even one or two days.
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: So that's a, that's always fun and interesting.
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a bit of a difficult one for if you're using Kelly or something like that, trying to handle that must be a nightmare.
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: But there's advantages in betting in crypto as well, right?
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: I mean it's very easy to get once you're familiar with how crypto works, uh, I mean there's, uh, there's certainly a learning curve, right?
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: Cause you need your crypto wallet, you need to deposit in an exchange.
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: And for some people that just seems so difficult to do and they don't really want to grasp their head around it.
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: But once you go through that, like your first crypto transaction, you get things all set up.
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: It's just pretty easy.
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: And I personally love it.
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, you can get your money in and out of sports books fairly quickly.
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: Um, you know, there's just not a lot of fees associated with crypto.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of inherent advantages to gamblers.
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: Um, if they were, you know, willing to use crypto.
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: So for me it's just something, um, I remember I, I was, um, the group that I was first working with, um, that was free rolling meat, this is years ago, three or four years ago.
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: But they, uh, when it came time to settle up, they basically said, okay, what's your, what's your Bitcoin wallet?
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: And I was like, I don't even know what the hell Bitcoin is.
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: I have no idea what you're talking about.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: And they kind of walk me through it and I'll never forget that first transaction of just waiting for my payment to come through on there and biting my nails and making sure I sent my wallet address properly.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: And I can get why there's, um, a lot of people in the, in the market are not believers.
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: But, um, once you, you really understand it, it's just, I mean it's a really powerful currency and um, yeah, I anyways, a fucking get a point across.
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: Obviously my wellbeing in the future is tied to a somewhat tied to crypto, but um, for those who think it's overwhelming, I mean it doesn't take much to educate yourself.
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: That's actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: Alright Robson, let's just get some final thoughts before I let you go at it.
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: If you erode self listening to this, now you're, you getting into a bit of debt or wherever it was, you're kind of struggling a bit with your bang, what would you say to yourself to change the way you think about being on sports?
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: The first piece of advice I would give to my old self is don't bet to be completely, completely honest with you.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: I tell this to people all the time.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, the reality is people are going to bed anyways cause it's for a lot of people it's more so a form of entertainment than it is an actual means to gain profit.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: And profit is just, it's a bonus if they can do that.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: Um, but the vast majority of people are not going to win at bedding.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: And that's just the reality of it.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unless you're willing to invest the time and effort into getting better and really understanding what it takes to win in the long run, that's the first piece of advice I would give to myself is don't bet that if I was unwilling to listen if 10 years ago meat was unwilling to listen to that advice, um, I would probably just tell someone not to get ahead of their selves.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: Uh, and I see people make this mistake a lot.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: Um, I dunno, three weeks into the NFL season and there's people that are probably like 15 and five against the spread, 75% hit rate and they think that they're reinventing the wheel or they have some sort of massive edge and they really get excited about things and then regression sets in and it goes, um, downhill.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: And I kind of used to be like that as well.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: I used to be a believer, as dumb as it sounds and like hot streaks and cold streaks, even though these are just random periods of variants.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: Um, so I, it's very, very cliche, but understanding that it's a marathon and not a sprint, um, really, really, truly understanding that it's very difficult for some people to do so.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: So that's certainly advice I would've given to myself in the past.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: Well, it's all about the process, not the results, isn't it?
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: Don't get too bogged down with the losses and don't get too carried away with the wins, I guess.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, I would tell some people sometimes, um, if, if people are modeling and they're actually not betting, which is my suggested course of action for some people, if you're in your infancy of modeling and you don't actually know if you have something that's good or not, there's no reason to bet it.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: But if you're doing your, you're tracking, I mean, I would not even concern myself with the wins and losses, especially if you're tracking against, uh, like I said, the major sports markets just track the closing line value and don't even get, don't even let that the wins and losses affect you.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's easier said than done.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: I understand that.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: But like you said, it's, it's just the process.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: It's the process more than anything.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: And everyone likes to be a results based analyst.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: Uh, but it's not healthy and it's not really gonna get you anywhere.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: And is there any, um, any kind of online resources or people to follow on Twitter that you'd recommend to help someone that's just starting out?
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: I would recommend myself, um, uh, no.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, uh, Rufus obviously, um, Rufus Peabody on Twitter, uh, who I have a high degree of respect for.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: Um, I'm, I'm trying to think.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: There's so many, there's so many different people that I follow that have become an asset for me or provided value to me in one way or another.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: Um, it's funny that you actually mentioned that and I'm sorry to drag this on and, and just a little side tangent, but, um, yesterday I started a thread on, on my Twitter account.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: Uh, I often get people always saying to me, Oh, you're such a negative person, which is kind of true.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: And I've really tried to, to focus on that and become a little bit more positive with my Twitter rather than just ragging on people that are, what's wrong with the industry and things like that.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: Really trying to put a positive outlook on it.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: So yesterday I actually started a thread on Twitter, uh, which I will continue to update over the course of time, which are people that or follows people that I follow specifically that have provided value to me over the course of time.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: And specifically why and in which sports and in which areas and I plan to keep on updating that, um, pretty much forever as long as I see an account that provides value with the hopes that, um, at least people can use this as some sort of a, as a source of educational content and follow the quote unquote right people in the industry.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: Um, versus the people that are really not going to provide them with anything.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: I threw up a softball there, Rob, because it said pinnacle gallery, the articles on petting resources.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: I was waiting for it.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: You know what I will say though, those I, there's a couple pinnacle articles that I always direct people to regardless.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: Um, so I'm not going to just say this because I'm on the pinnacle podcast obviously, but there is one specifically about closing line value and when people are, I pretty much have a link bookmarked on my computer because I get this question so often in my DMS like about explaining closing line value and I kind of linked to that.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: I'm sure when you guys go through your analytics and uh, your SEO and where the traffic is coming from, I probably sending you half the traffic you're getting on that article specifically.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: But yeah, there are certainly, there are some good articles with pinnacle and I'm not exclusive to pinnacle either, but there are, there are a couple of go-tos that I, uh, I recommend for people pretty regularly.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: There we go, we've got a plugin.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: But Robert, I said at the start of the show that this, I knew it was going to be worth the wait and it certainly was.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: I know you must be a busy man, so I really appreciate you taking time out for us and, and the listeners.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: So thanks very much.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: All right, thanks for having me, Ben.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: And if you don't Twitter, I definitely, definitely
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: recommend following Rob on the handle at Rob Pizzaiola, and if you don't already, you can follow pinnacle sports on Twitter as well.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: If you want to learn more about betting, then visit Pitt betting resources on pinnacle.com I hope you enjoyed today's episode and bye for now.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: [inaudible].