Good afternoon. You're listening to Gambling with an Edge. Now you're your host
Bob Dancer and Richard Munchkin. Good afternoon. Welcome to Gambley with an Edge
on Bob Dancer and I'm Richard Munchkin. Our guest today is named Porter.
He bets player props in sports, among other things. Porter. Welcome to
Gambley with an Edge. Hey guys, thanks for having me on. All
right, so how did you get started betting sport? So before sports,
I had a little history and other types of gambling. So for almost a
decade I was and while I was going to school, I was a professional
poker player. Eventually got to like midstakes after online poker got banned, played
mostly study eight Omaha eight. Then I moved abroad and was an economist for
a little period of time, kind of didn't really like that lifestyle. Came
back to America and I started doing some advantage slots, and from there I
did a little bit of Basically in the state of California, you can be
the bank at some of the Los Angeles casinos if you play two hands as
a player two hands as the bank. So I did that for a period
of time and then at that same exact time, I sort of got into
daily fantasy sports, and again all these other little things were for short periods
of time, and then I just sort of found sports betting market. I
started off in the larger markets, didn't really like the swings, wanted it
to somehow be like a job, so I focused on smaller markets and that
kind of cut out a lot of the variants. There's still variants, of
course, and from there the rest is history. I've been doing it for
about seven years now. Let's say the first year was not like full time,
but so like six plus years full time now, I just want to
go back to banking in California because I have some experience with that as well.
Did you get Now this to most people who are not familiar, this
sounds crazy, but did you get heat for banking and backed off in any
of the card rooms? So I did it with me and a couple of
my friends, where I sort of taught them or we discussed a lot of
It's very important. It's kind of closer to a customer service business where if
you see any backlash whatsoever from the table from you banking, you need to
walk away. In general, the La Casinos I don't want to say which
ones were better, which ones were Some were very bad, some were very
good. They really didn't give you that much heat if the customer wasn't upset,
as long as you took accountability and saw and you know, in an
analysis, and when you felt the table was not appropriate to bank at,
or if you saw any pushback and you got up, we were kind of
allowed a pretty long leash. Now, of course, eventually all long leashes
come to an end, and we did get backed off. But really,
I actually think they were relatively reasonable, and it was more about just good
interaction with the other people at the table and not upsetting them. It gave
you a pretty long sustained run. See, we experienced the opposite in that
the players liked us a lot because we also tried to be entertaining to the
players. But the banking corporations hated us because basically we were taking money out
of their pocket. And you're, oh, this would have been two thousands,
you know, so like you know, fifteen years ago that something like
that, And there was a large there was a large banking group that sort
of we were convinced had to be laundering money that they were sort of an
Asian mob group, and you know, we had players threatened in the parking
lot, like you know, don't come back, or you know you're gonna
you know, you could be dead kind of stuff. I think maybe it
got cleaned up in the last seven eight years, or I haven't done it
in about eight years, so I wouldn't know today. But I didn't have
too much too much. I mean, yeah, every once a while the
floor actually would come and say something, but I would say, as much
as I want to criticize casinos and how they operate, I didn't have a
bad experience really going through that. Well, that's good, that's good.
We also ran into a lot of cheating, so that was always a problem.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, when you bank, you're kind
of responsible for the dealer knowing what he's doing, and even if they're not
cheating, sometimes the mistakes they make, you know, that could be the
swing of your own higher hourly net. Right, So you're talking about cheating
by your employees, Richard, No, Well, that was an issue as
well, But no, the main thing we ran into in the beginning was
the dealer would have an agent at the table, and the dealer would cheat
to send off money to the agent, which is coming out of the banker's
pocket. So and they had myriad ways of you know, scamming you as
a banker. So doesn't sound like a profitable business, all right, So
let's get back to sports betting. On one of the podcasts I've heard you
on, you said you started off with closing line value and understanding that.
How important is that as a starting place do you think for news sports bettors
to understand? So, especially in considering large markets, will start there.
The story changes significantly in smaller markets, but in large markets, the concept
is that they're relatively efficient. Now we're not talking you know, as complicated
and as many hetche funds and you know, big industry companies in stock market
and bond markets. But as you look up the scale of the market size
and sports betting, you'll notice that the closing line in general is extremely important
and over a period of time, before understanding modeling, before even understanding sports,
understanding how the line movement and where the line closes, and consistently getting
the better number over time, you're going to realize a profit in the large
markets. Now, what starts happening is people and as blackjack players. I'm
sure you yourselves understand. I always like large markets a little bit closer to
classic blackjack, where your margins are relatively small. It's very hard, very
hard for the casual and beginner to understand what a one or two percent edge
really means. It means you can go through extreme, prolonged periods of losing,
and when your edge is so small, it's hard to even know if
you have any edge at all. By the time something changes in the market,
you know, and you're realizing such a small edge, you might have
had no edge to begin with. Your edge might have changed along the way
if you haven't made adjustments. So closing line value over time, though,
gives you a true indicator between you know, tens of hundreds of thousands of
people betting and seeing where the line ends. The problem that starts occurring with
that is when people try to extrapolate that into medium and small markets, because
they do not close efficiently. So as time progresses, the idea is that
I think these small markets will continue to get more efficient, But the reliance
on trying to find a sharp site or a sharp market for sites taking very
little money on plays is not realistic. So because they're not taking volume on
these plays. You're not getting the wisdom of the crowd. You're really getting
the wisdom of a few flagged accounts when it comes to when it comes to
legal sites where you know easily I could misspet a play or just be wrong.
You know, everyone's wrong every once in a while, and I'll still
get CLV. So to me, once you're an originator and you're and you're
capping these smaller markets, and at the end of the day you're sitting there
looking at the CLV, it's a fools it's it's a chase. Means very
little when you yourself are moving markets and that's not that complicated in tiny markets.
So what do you do? Are you just left with looking at your
result? Yeah? So unfortunately it's kind of do you have enough volume to
be confident that you're a winner or a loser? I feel like a lot
of beginners though, there's this let's move on to the next part of kind
of after CLV, there's this fixation really on CLV, really on learning how
to handicap, using tools to give might give you an edge, and at
the end of the day, all of these intricacies that you're learning along the
way on you know, how to handicap. First of all, they probably
take hundreds, if not a thousand plus hours to actually get good. A
lot of people forget that there's this whole other component to sports betting. So
let's say you have like understood how the markets work, if you're a top
down better, let's say you've become efficient at handicapping or reading the market where
the lines will move. There's this entire other issue that just kind of gets
put aside, where people are sole products, soul things, and eventually they're
not able to bet anywhere. So there's this extreme fixation on the first part
of sports betting without the realization where if you become efficient at what it takes
to win, there's this whole other world of how it's hard to actually be
able to even bet, and I think that gets lost on a lot of
people, and it's I guess it's sad because people are putting in a lot
of work to become good and don't realize that they should be putting equal,
if not more work into being able to actually bet after they do become good.
It just seems like that part is instead spent on complaining and telling people
you're good or you know, churning into selling picks that become difficult to follow
if they have any value. And it's this whole fixation in the industry that
I ignores the business component, and I think a lot of that has to
do with the type of individuals who are one either good at the handicapping or
to what I call the gift of gap, good at the networking. There
isn't a good melt of an individual or many individuals who are good at the
business side of the industry, and a lot of that has to do with
I believe it's this fixation that sports spending is very unique or very different to
other industries, but in reality, I don't see it being very any different
than other entrepreneurial industries where you have a million different tasks you have to achieve,
and it's not just byproduct, sell a product, or you know,
come up with a model at the model. I think it's just it has
a lot more components and there's not really anyone out there, nor should they
be, I guess, really covering too much about the business side of what
it takes to make it work after you are a winner. This is a
concept we talk about a lot on this show. You know, the first
step is finding a way to actually have an edge. But then, as
you say, it's an entirely different skill set to take the money out of
the casino, and you need both. And you know, in sports betting,
it seems that often the originators do better teaming up with somebody who understands
the second part. Right, you do the originating, I bet the money
for you. We become a team, and often that can be a very
effective way to go forward. Yeah. Look, people don't love stereotyping people
too much, but in reality, if you think about the individual who's most
likely good at sports betting, which basically implies they have a COMPSI math econ
finance but probably closer to math and compsie knowledge, you know, the stereotype
of that individual is most likely not the greatest communicator networker. Look, that's
that's a stereotype. It's not one size fits all. But in general,
and then the individuals who are good at networking probably and the gift of gap
probably are not the strongest in the math science comp field, which is so
you know, often those COMPSI people, they don't want to do that job
right at least the friends that I have that are you know, the the
numbers guys. They want to sit in front of their computer and let somebody
else deal with the other parts of it, right for the most part,
which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But you know, if
you look got a guy like Billy Walters, obviously he's not a numbers guy,
but man, does he know how to get the money down? Yeah?
So how big is your team at doing whatever your combination of whatever is
that you do. Are you doing this by yourself or do you have partners
or friends? Right, So there's kind of two different components. There's the
workspace where we do the actual work, and that's a team of four guys
actually ideally, to be fair, though those guys are really overworked, then
I need more temporary guys to come in and out and help them along.
But and then there's this other component of how you actually get the money down,
which is sort of the side ideal more with where I find lots of
people who in general probably not winners, and I find them and I work
with them across the betting landscape, but mostly the PPH space. But you
know, getting out at casinos, there's there's plenty of ways to work,
to work with people, but in general, on that end you're talking about,
it takes a lot of people to provide enough liquidity. So you're talking
about like forty forty partners on that side that aren't involved in the day to
day inputting, day to day modeling, you know, waiting on news actually
doing the inputting work. They're kind of I think of them as a different
type of partner, but just as important as the partners that help me,
you know, with the betting side. So um, just for our listeners
that are not familiar, PPH stands for pay per head and those are basically
the equivalent of your local bookie at the barbershop who now has a website somewhere
and you're betting with him. Yeah, and legals also, you know,
the vandals, the Caesars of the world. Yeah yeah, yeah, but
now so do your we used to call them clients, the people who basically
hold the accounts. Do they actually do anything or or basically you're just using
their identity? No, I mean their their their job is mostly their interaction
with the with the money side of the business, and my job is to
provide them the winds so that's kind of our relationship. They actually go in
and place the bets themselves, some do or some interact with where you know
where where the betting occurs, so they you know, they collect and you
know, the idea is that it's not just it's smoother ride. See,
I don't like to call it clients. I like to call it partnerships because
in reality they do have some responsibility. You know that you have some work
at the end of the day. And that's any healthy relationship. It doesn't
have to be in sports betting. You kind of want both sides to to
just you know, do a little, make sure they feel involved, be
a part of it. So you have enough of these, you must get
stiff some of the time. So yeah, so that's a little that's a
little bit more nuanced. You know, if you're in a good partnership with
a lot of accounts, just like it's my job and it's very difficult to
win, some partners will cover parts of the stiff or some partners are big
enough where you know, you put into makeup and eventually it's one back.
Anyways, and there's a range, you know, if you're getting stiffed.
Now everyone's range is a little bit different. I know there's probably some optimal
number, but I like to think of it sort of like taxes. If
you're getting stiffed less than five percent of the time, you're not taking enough
chances on accounts. And if you're getting stiff like fifteen percent of the time
or more, that's just my personal range. I know there must be an
optimal way to calculate that. It's probably even higher. Actually it's the optimal
range. But if I think if you're getting stiff more than fifteen percent of
the time overall in a year, you're taking on way too much risk and
way too much. It might be like financially optimal, but just in terms
of emotionally, you know, you might have a bad week and then on
top of that you're taking a few stiffs. Just emotionally, it's not healthy
for you or your team. And that's another interesting thing. How you treat
your team. Are they just hourly guys? Do they have equity? Are
some of the expenses on them? And it's a wide range of the type
of employee you'll get, who's just their inputting. Look, I'm a huge
fan of skin in the game. I really dislike a lot of talking heads
that you know, they say one thing and then they don't put money online.
And the reason behind that is I don't believe it's possible for most individuals
to operate optimally or with enough intent and focus if there isn't enough risk to
actually matter. It's just nearly impossible to operate at a high level when that's
not there. Now, of course, there are some individuals who can do
it, but I would say for the general the general rule is that that's
not true, and skin in the game is incredibly important. There's risk,
of course being stiffed by these paperhead bookmakers, but there's also the risk of
having one of your partners stiff you. Right, if they control the money
on an account and the account wins a lot, it's certainly possible for one
of them to just walk with the money absolutely so that you know, that
boils down to kind of the person in charge of the networking his skill.
And some people are really good and some people are really bad at it of
judging other individuals in their character. And honestly, I have a lot,
you know a lot of times where I have accounts that will eventually get stiff
where I know it's coming just based off a few lines that the partner tells
me he'll just write something and I'm like, oh, this is so obvious
what's coming. But it's still worth it for the time being to continue the
relationship. I really and maybe that's just an individual skill set. It really
seems to me obvious not all but many of the times where relationship is going
to go sour down the line. I think the general strategy, though,
from my end, is just kind of to kill people with honest like pay
on time, you know, you know, when things aren't going well,
like you just just just be good with the money and be honest to people.
And I think I'm and it's not just because I'm some like amazing person.
I just think those are sound business tactics that work in the long run.
Brutal honesty, fairness, and communication. Again, there's this weird fixation
in the gambling community that's sports betting is something unique, but again it's just
another business and if you run common sense business practices, they go a long
way. You mentioned you would see signs ahead of time. Can you give
us a for instance, or what kind of a sign that one of your
people would give you that you know that this is going to go south soon.
I mean, you'll just get a line where someone tells you why they
need to delay this week, or how they're having issues with PayPal or Venmo
or just all the time they will be a day late or two days late,
but for no real good reason. It's just happening. And when you
can't point a you know, really can't. It's a story. When you
can't piece the story together, it usually means that there's a hitting, something
is broken in the story. So it's the moment. I would say many
people have it, and it's they have a hard time, like they'll feel
that something is wrong or think that something is wrong and just kind of suppress
it. And over time I just felt like this ability of less and less
suppressing that feeling me, hey, wake up, something's about to happen.
And it's usually these one liners that just you know, you're talking with somebody
that give you the story, and then you say that doesn't make sense,
and then you just let it go. That's the norm of what people do
instead of kind of you know, what do I do next? Is this
relationship worth the headache? And I think a lot of people just sort of
let it go. Because agreed. And then so there's two different business strategies
in this industry. A lot of people love these huge accounts where you can
get down huge sums of money, and in my opinion, that's a terrible
business angle for this. You want your you know, you know, just
like in any other business, all your eggs not in one basket, so
there isn't any one situation that really wrecks you on a week. And if
you're spread out that way and you have proper liquidity and you've built a bankroll,
these stiffs they're just they're just not going to ruin you, so they're
worth taking the shots on partnerships to do them. One of the red foot
one of the red flags for me was twice twice people who ended up stealing
from us told me at the beginning that it was good that, you know,
we had hired them because they would never steal, which you know,
in retrospect, like normal people just don't tell you that they don't. They
don't offer that up out of the blue opening the negative is not a great
yeah h Well, then I I'll never tell Richard that I'll never steal from
him, because he'll get suspicious if I do that, right. So I'm
assuming you have lots of accounts and you're winning player, so presumably some of
your accounts, say the book you say, we don't want your action anymore.
So you're always in the mode of finding new places to bet. Is
that true? Yes? So in reality, UM, I know sometimes I
have my tips with touts, but I can understand how a person who's a
winner and is tired of the grind moves on and decides to sell picks because
this endless process of what I call searching for liquidity, searching for where to
bet, it tiresome. So I can see at the end of the day
why people transition to something else now that has its all other set of issues
and difficulties, and why it's probably not good. But in general, it
is a grind to endlessly be searching for these accounts while at the same time
also trying to provide winners. Yeah, and how do you if you actually
do have the skill to provide winners, how do you prevent them from just
being crushed immediately once you give out your pick? You don't. So when
you when a tout is good, what will happen in this industry? The
industry is just not that big. So the big players who have lots of
accounts, they'll find you, and if you're posting these picks, they will
extract the value, especially in small markets and media markets too. Now,
there probably aren't any real winners and Sunday Morning NFL sides and totals, but
in these small markets it's there are individuals who when they post you on Twitter,
they are winners. But you're talking about one account that got two hundred
dollars down in New Jersey. You know that that's what that's what you're that's
what these records are really showing. So and that really discourages individuals too,
who might see like a fifty seven and fifty eight sixty percent win rate.
And it's just like listen, if you had thirty accounts and you picked off
the stale, slow or just broken line, your record is going to look
good. And that's really discouraging to the casual that expects some you know,
you win eighty percent of the plays or again, it's very hard to conceptualize
and understand what even a seven percent edge means, let alone a two percent
edge. Yeah, yeah, And if you're betting, say NFL, you
can't get enough bets in a season to have a statistical relevant result, right,
I mean how many games? So yeah, I would say most people
nowadays, if you're listening to this show or follow gambling Twitter, they're not
really believing people beating Sunday morning lines, NCAF, NCAA B, these medium
sized markets, extra games, those things make more sense. But I would
say your listener probably on this show is a little bit more advanced than thinking.
I mean, it would be the equivalent of someone effectively saying they're crushing
the stock market over an extremely long period of time. Although we did have
at Thorpe on the show. Nice. Nice, Yeah, Well, you
know, teach your zone and we have lots more to talk about with Porter,
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we are back talking with Porter tell Us about losing streaks and winning streaks in
sports betting. Right, So, in general, I think the simplest way
to think about it is the larger the market, the larger your variants will
be. So the more prolonged down settings, the smaller the market, the
less variance and the shorter year down streaks can be. Now in large,
medium markets, I've heard of individuals who I know are good and who I
know our winners have losing seasons that would be relatively abnormal in a very small
market. But honestly, you know, if you flip the coin ten thousand
times, you're gonna go through streaks where a thousand times you're gonna get tails
three hundred and head seven hundred and if you're in this business long enough those
events, they're definitively going to happen to you eventually. And a lot of
it is you know, your mental fortitude and not making you know, not
making mistakes because of the tilt that you go on. I think actually one
of the best strategies for that for people who do go on tilt is to
actually find markets that are so small you can't bet enough to actually hurt yourself.
And if you focus on those markets, you're one edge is greater,
and two it's basically impossible for if you do have you tilt. Tilt is
usually some kind of like this thought process of your owed or deserve something.
So I think if you can kind of get around this I'm unique, I'm
different, I'm owed, I deserve better than this mindset, you can really
avoid a lot of this like mental weakness. I guess you could say during
tilting times. But in general, every single person, no matter what they're
doing, no matter how big, their edges, will eventually go through swings.
And some people have the makeup for it, and then some people honestly
don't. And it's a lot easier to go through those swings if you're appropriately
betting, or I would even say under betting your bankroll. It's difficult to
really send yourself into a spiral if again, you're just using common sense business
strategies. You know, would you rather invest in a company that's making the
same amount of dollars but has ten million in loans or one million in loans?
You know, it's just all about are you properly leveraged, are your
properly positioned? And a lot of times, of course you're going to go
on tilt if you lost forty percent of your bankroll. There's there's there's no
one who's, you know, mentally strong enough when you lose half of everything
in thirty minutes. So it's just a question, and you know that puts
you in another situation. I mean, some people are putting in a lot
of work, get good, bet small and when you calculate your ev you
might as well be working at McDonald's making the same amount of money. So
it's hard to really conceptualize swings, conceptualize how much it takes to get down
to make meaningful, and that's different for each person what meaningful is and what
it takes to sustain their lifestyle. But swings happen, and they're anytime you
hear anybody telling you they're up one hundred and seventy five units in a short
period of time, you know they're either one lying or two. They also
have spreeze of negative three hundred units. You know, there isn't this magic
formula of just absolutely crushing and destroying. If there was, no one would
be posting about it because they would be a billionaire. You know, if
you actually could have a five ten percent edge on Sunday morning NFL for us
to share, there are plenty of places to get down enough on that where
you would need to talk to another soul, you would be so rich.
So again, a lot of this has to do with stories. When you
listen to the story, if the story doesn't add up, it's probably best
to move on and make some other decision. It's really not that shouldn't be
that difficult when people are making outlandish claims to sort of, you know,
turn your shoulder to it and figure something else out. When you talk about
unit size, I mean I would assume you're not betting the same unit on
every bet, right, The larger your edge, the more units you're going
to bet. So it's it's kind of hard to compare just based on number
of units. Yes, that works on a medium large sized market. Like
me personally, my unit is just whatever the maximum I can get down across
all the sites, because it's never enough to actually properly fill like a Kelly.
Because I'm not betting NFL Sunday morning. I'm betting these small markets where
a lot of places. You know, even if you have one hundred accounts,
you can only get two hundred dollars down on each one of these.
So you're not really able to bet these astronomical numbers no matter how big you
are, especially because of the fact that if you do do well, are
you really able And maybe some people do have the gift of gap ability to
replenish at an even higher rate than they're losing. But when you go through
prolonged down swings. I had a guy once tell me this, and I
scoffed at it. But I see a little bit of a little bit of
truth behind this, where you're kind of building equity in the account where in
reality you should get be allowed some playback. Now, in the PPH world,
you know, person could get upset after two weeks of winning and cut
you off after you're down. But in general, not every loss is exactly
a loss, and not every win is exactly a win. There is some
different values to what happens in a situation. So sometimes you win on an
account that's crushed the week before, and that win is going to cause you
to get stiffed losing on that Monday. While nobody wants to lose, it's
not the same as losing on an account that lost the week before. So,
even within the unit sizing and the betting, wins and losses don't always
mean the same thing. Do you do something to try to season an account
when you get it to at the beginning, or do you just all right,
I have a new account, I'm going to bet it the way I
always bet it. Absolutely, no seasoning. I don't recommend anyone do that.
Maybe on legal sites like Drafting Caesars there might be some logic to that,
but absolutely, under no circumstances. It's already hard enough for people to
win to actually season it. It's better to spend your energy and time on
finding more outs than trying to do now. Now, if you have one
or two or three accounts and can't get more, that's a different answer.
Slutely, if you're trying to preserve the account, you should take a different
approach. But on a large scale it makes zero sense. It actually makes
like negative sense. But yeah, this is what I tell blackjack card counters
too, that you do not have an edge big enough to warrant playing any
cover at all. You can't afford to play cover when your edge is so
small. Yeah, that's soft skills and heart skills. It's two different components
of the business. Yeah, there's no cookie cutter answers to any one thing.
In general. These are rules to follow for sports betting, of you
know, focus on winning, not on extending the life of an account.
But there are probably situations where that would be a viable strategy. It's very
difficult to incorporate them when you're running something at scale though. Yeah. So
now you are not a fan of efficient markets or books that take that approach,
you want to talk about it. Yeah, so I would say there's
you know, a couple companies out there that a lot of sharps like,
and to me, it reminds me of poker. It's a story of the
beginning of the end. When you see markets taking astronomical size bets, it's
because they are efficient. Now I get that a lot of people have egos
out there and think they have a three to four percent edge when they're getting
down one hundred thousand, and it probably does happen sometimes, But it also
happens where those guys are getting down and it's a negative one percent edge,
where this love of like large betting places that allow you to bet large is
misguided in reality, especially for most people, it's already hard enough to win.
This idea of large bets means that the market is becoming more efficient.
So a lot of people's greatest strength is actually the fact that these site limit
Now. I know that sounds crazy to people, because even by myself,
I'm all the time saying how unfair it's that we're limited. I mean,
they're running a business. It's fair that it's limited. But the idea behind
limiting it's actually good for sharps, and it's especially good for like mediocre winning
small winning players. And that's because it directly implies that the market will become
Now still, the market over time will become more efficient. That's just nature.
It's going to become more efficient year over year. But in general,
when the limits are smaller and the bands and the limits occur faster, it
implies that the market will have inefficiencies. They just go hand in hand.
So now you're shifting your focus on networking and gathering accounts and still getting tibet
into inefficient or relatively inefficient markets. I know that concept's really hard to swallow
because people hate the grind of the account getting and that's why I kind of
try to stress this over focus on handicapping, top down winning or using tools
to win, or whatever it is that it takes to win is greatly overemphasized
because in reality, if you become proficient in those you will be limited.
And yet limiting keeps the market inefficient. So there's this balance of the casual
just basically needs to accept that somehow or way he should either form a partnership
or he himself be more well rounded, because in the end, you need
a lot of different components to succeed in this industry monetarily. Yes, in
theory you can write your plays down you're a winner, but at the end
of the day, it's about extracting the dollars. It's not about having good
plus EV. It is about having good plus EV plays. And I know
that if you have the right process, you'll end up with the right results.
But part of that process has to do with figuring out how to continue
to be able to get down and not just this over focus on how to
win at sports betting, which is really all you see out there being sold
to people. This argument goes on in the blackjack world too, where people
believe that conditions in the states where they are allowed they are allowed to bar
you are better than places like New Jersey where they're not. So. Yeah.
Now, recently we had plus ev Analytics on and he similarly he kind
of blamed this on the on all of the odd screen tools that if you
if if more and more people start using odd screens, then the whole market
becomes more efficient and makes it harder for everyone you know, to actually find
winning plays. Yeah, plus EV and I don't always see ey'd eye,
But in this sense, there's no question not just odd screens odd screens also,
but a lot of these tools that are being sold I don't want to
mention them specifically, but a lot of these tools being sold to people that
are good are making the market more efficient. It's just straight up a zero.
Some game, someone wins, someone loses. In the sharp and non
sharp mark. I'm not talking about what the casino takes out themselves. But
at the end of the day, it's no different than when this one company
came started coming out with videos for poker. It started teaching people how to
become more efficient. There were always articles, but then there was coaching,
and then there was in depth and that made every single individual better. So
today, I mean, I remember sitting out like a World Series of Poker
event and this lady flashed her card and I googled her and she had no
tournament results, and she made a really weird fold, looks at me and
tells me I needed to protect my three bet fold equity in the future.
And I'm like, this lady has no catches in a live poker tournament,
and it is talking about advanced strategy. So you can see these trends over
time where the market is becoming more efficient. Now people will immediately say something
new is always coming back, but you know what, the sports book themselves,
while they're pushing the envelope and creating new product, they're also becoming more
efficient over time. And like every other market, over a period of time,
I believe that people stay in those markets because of safety and familiarity for
too long, and when a market gets more difficult, if you're an individual
who was crushing at poker and then doing less well, and then crushing at
sports betting and doing less well, a lot of people, Now this could
be because maybe a lot of them also have life leaks where they didn't save
enough. But if you didn't have those leaks, I believe a lot of
people are too conservative and too worried about moving on, and when it's obvious
that things are getting more difficult, people are afraid to take the next step,
which sometimes means moving on to something else. And I know for me
personally that sort of happened with where I did really well then started doing less
well and tried to hang on. And I would say as shocking is maybe
it would sound, because right now things are good, I have no qualms
that if I see a turn in the market that I'm ready to move on
to something else. And that's part of having an edge. In reality,
there are other edges other than just the winning the ws and the l's in
the bets, and it's just kind of like this, all encompassing. I
guess you'd call it like a life life skill of understanding these things where it's
don't just focus on this like one component of winning and losing. There are
so many other elements that are necessary to actually make you a winner when it
comes down to that final result, which usually means you know, extracting money,
holding onto the money because what good is it to win? And then
after a year you just tilt and you lose everything. There's really not why
did you spend so much time learning to become a great handicapper, learning to
read the odd screen? There's these other skill that just completely seem to get
neglected when you talk about going out to find potential partners. Are you involved
in some kind of social thing that brings you in contact with lots and lots
of people all the time, or I mean, you can't just go out
to a bar and and you know, meet people and say can I bet
on your account? And if you go to a bar and you see someone
watching their phone more than talking to their friends about like whatever that is that
they're hanging out, this is indicative of something A lot of people I guess
wouldn't do that, but I don't mind striking in conversation now, by no
means is the second line, let me bet on your account. That's of
course, yeah, yeah you can. What if you have thirty forty situations
like that where you're building them over time, you know, talking to them,
and eventually you know, that becomes a process. Look, then invent
especially post code or during COVID, Twitter has become a very powerful tool.
Podcasts and YouTube have become a very powerful tool. So there are a lot
of tools available to people. Look, in my opinion, it would be
very difficult today to start from scratch and be a network gatherer because there are
winners out there. So really, what is it that you're setting yourself apart
differentiating yourself from other people at this point to make you That's why I actually
never targeted large markets. I could never see a clear pathway in my mind
as to why someone would give me an account over someone who's established. So
I wanted to hit the markets. Look, so I got everything in life
kind of it's if you're early. You know, if there's fifty percent of
the information available and you're operating at eighty percent, that's much better than if
there's ninety five percent of information available and you're operating at ninety nine point nine
percent of the edge. So a lot of this has to do with early
and I would say that today, while and you'll see this on Twitter.
While a lot of people think they're early now into sports betting, they're not.
This isn't The legalization of sports betting was not the beginning of sports betting.
You know, this has been going on for a while. Usually I
believe legalization and market tightening, all these things actually lead to the end of
a market. You're starting to see the end I'm talking about from the sharp
side. This is just the beginning for a gambling addiction in America. Don't
get me wrong. Yeah, yeah, I go ahead. You now specialize
in betting props. Why did you choose this particular specialty and what kind of
props? So kind of like what I was talking about before, where size
and totals the edges were smaller. I consistently heard people that I respected say
you cannot get serious money down on props, and that immediately told me it
was so obvious. It's kind of like someone says, this is no good
that in this space. It almost either means they're doing it, which I
later found out they weren't, or they haven't figured out how to do it,
So there must be a hole in a gap to fill in this market.
So the real reason why I got into it was I consistently would hear
you cannot get down in this market. So I was like, that means
they're not doing it. That means there must be a niche to fill in
this market. And then the type of bets that means is basically you're looking
at individual players, so it can be from a bench guide to a starter.
So will Lebron score more or less than twenty seven and a half points
today? Will Mahomes passed for more or less than two hundred and ninety six
and a half yards on this Sunday morning? So it's almost always what the
individual player is doing, and it's just a much easier market. The truth
is, it's just an easier market to be now. There are a lot
of people entering the space now, especially from the DFS industry, where that
market has become efficient because so many people are actually giving good advice. See
a lot of those people now shifting to sports betting, and they're not dummies
like there is. There are good tools and good information out there where people
will begin to make this market more efficient over time That's just how it works
in any market. If it seems good, people enter the space, and
you know what, there's a cultural shift in America too. I know,
now this is just anecdotal, but I believe it's happening on a larger scale
where a kid is finishing his masters in comp side and he's not embarrassed to
take a year off and give a shot at sports betting. I know that
sounds crazy, but you're talking about it only takes ten or twenty guys like
this, and I'm sure it's more to begin to make a market more efficient.
So you're starting to see a leak where it's culturally acceptable to sports bet
or culture acceptable to work at a sports betting company that didn't exist beforehand.
You know. Now, I guess one of my guess is the sports betting
companies are not willing to invest enough money in individuals who are like good at
the handicapping process. So those guys are betting. But I bet if the
market gets big enough that you will begin to see a shift in the other
direction and they will acquire talent. You know, other corporations have gone through
these swings too, you know, where they just hire better talent over time.
It's still a young industry here. But don't get me wrong. I
mean, I know I sound pessimistic. There's still plenty of edge there today.
But to me, it's very obvious the market is getting tougher and people
will then immediately counter and say, well, something new will come up.
And I would just like to say that I think the sports books are getting
better over time. And it's like that in every market that becomes position and
it's been around for a while, it's not unique. Nothing lasts forever,
right, And but for the skilled apiece, as you said, they constantly
adapt and shift and move on to something else, right, So then it's
just a factor is my time better spent somewhere else or best spent here,
And then you're just allocating your time for resource for you know, your result.
Really at the end of our show, we have a recommended section,
Richard. Do you have anything to recommend to our listeners today. Yeah,
I recently used hotel Slash. There's a For years and years, Bob and
I have been fans of auto Slash, as many of our listeners are.
Where once you make a reservation, auto Slash will automatically contact you if they
find a better rate. So they now have a hotel slash site that does
the same thing for hotel rooms. They are still in beta and you have
to ask for an early activation code, but I've just used it one time.
I like it, I will use it in the future, so you
might I want to check it out. That's hotel slash dot com. So
I was just in Vegas this last week and after a little battle at the
customer service area, they reinstated my seven stars and to celebrate that the joyous
moment event, I ended up going to Guy Savoy at Caesar's. And if
Caesar's is out there giving you a comp I highly recommend eating there. Very
good. I'm actually eating a lot of Caesar's restaurants. I've not eaten or
Gavoi. I heard it pronounced so many different ways, but yeah, I'm
not sure it's a very good all right. Thank you Porter for joining us
today. Thank you Richie. Yeah, thank you guys very much for having
me on. Go out and hit lots of royal flushes. Everybody. Good day.