Good afternoon. You're listening to Gambling with an Edge. Now here are your
host Bob Dancer and Richard Munchkin. Good afternoon, Welcome to Gambling with an
Edge. I'm Bob Dancer and I'm Richard Munchkin. Today our guest is Captain
Jack Andrews, one of the principles and co founder of unabated dot com who
talks about all things sports betting related. Captain Jack, Welcome back to Gambling
with an Edge. It's a pleasure to be here, guys. I guess
this is the Farewell Tour, so I'm honored to be one of the guests
on the on the farewell Tour. Yes, and right now, we don't
know how long this Farewell Tour is going to last. We hum when we
announced it last week. In the next two days, we've got four emails
from people who want to be part of the tour and they seem to keep
coming. So I don't know if anybody's going to let us retire, but
we're trying. So in the meantime, let's have a good show today with
Captain Jack. All right, So, last December, Unabated put out a
new tool that some of your users have been able to use to extract a
considerable amount of money from sports books. What happened. Yeah, So here's
the funny thing about sports betting is when we started Unabated, one of the
main detraction point of detractions was what if they suck all the edges out of
sports betting, then there'll be nothing left for everybody else. And what we've
found in the two plus years that we've been around is edges keep on showing
up. There are always new ways that sports betting is expanding throughout the country,
and as a result, there's new edges to be found just about every
day. And we put out a tool in December. Now let me let
me just cavy out this by saying, I'm a firm believer that discretion is
the better part of valor. So I don't want to spell everything out implicitly
here, explicitly here, because I don't want other sports books to say,
oh, okay, well, here's what we can learn from this, and
here's how we could protect ourselves from this. I'm talking more to the players.
And so we put out a tool. And this tool was intended for
one thing. It was intended for It was intended for football, and we
found just through coincidence, that this tool could point towards edges in basketball,
and our user base quickly found this out as well. And there was a
major US sports book, one of the bigger brands that's out there, that
had a couple different inefficiencies in how they were making their markets. And I
don't want to again, I don't want to spell it all out, but
they were doing multiple things in an inefficient manner, and our users picked up
on it. Rufus and I picked up on it. In fact, we
had a discussion shortly after this tool became public going man, if we would
have realized that this was going on, maybe we wouldn't have made this tool.
And long story short, our users were able to use this tool to
find edges in a basketball market and do so to great profitability. In fact,
in the first week of March, the major sports book finally realized the
error of their ways and they kind of changed a couple of things that caused
it no longer to be as great an edge there. But we took a
poll and found that our users had already made somewhere between six and eight million
dollars they had taken from this sports book in the roughly three months, and
it wasn't something that got blasted all around Twitter or anything like that. That
wasn't how the edge finally got under uncovered. It was probably just due to
the sports book saying, wait a minute, our numbers, we don't seem
to be holding as much in this market as we once were, but our
users who did a great job in finding the edge and then sort of kind
of keeping it on the down low, not blasting it around to everyone else.
We make a point at unabated to kind of teach not only the science
of sports betting, but also the art of sports betting, and they find
that sometimes you need to be a little discreete and how you handle things.
You need to go about things in a way that not only allows you to
get the money down, but also allows you to stay under the radar or
stay outside of the radar that many sports books are looking at when they're trying
to find what the shark betters are on and who's beating them. But I
think we did a very good job, you know, pulling off that substantial
score from that major sports book was a big boost to a lot of users
on our site as well as as well as to Rufus and I and the
other founders that Unabated because it kind of helped prove that, uh, you
know, there was an edge out there. Nobody else really picked up on
it. We quietly were able to help our users kind of get the money
and it was a success story for us. I want to be clear that
the tool was there, but but there wasn't anything at Unabated that was saying
to the players, hey, look at this, here's you know, here's
a big edge for you. That's correct, right, right, So the
tool was out there just to be used against any sports book in any market,
and it was able to everyone kind of thinks of this tool as being
focused on football. Stamford Wong made it a very popular way to approach football.
There's that's probably too big of a hint, but I'll throw that out
there, and people were used. We were able to use this tool to
apply it to basketball, and it was, you know, sort of one
of these things that kind of popped up in our community discord that we have.
We have a community of like minded betters that all kind of correspond with
each other on the discord, and uh, you know, it got posted
a few times, like, hey, does anyone have as anyone tried this,
and once I looked at it, I go, oh wow, that's
that's that's really powerful. And it sort of kind of went from there,
and like I said, I kind of I kind of preached to these people
that hey, look, discretion is the better part of valor. That's something
I've learned early in my AP career that you definitely need to figure out the
best way to approach and edge rather than just kind of just blasted all over
the universe. So, yeah, the tool was very agnostic and how it
approached things, but it was able to kind of uncover something that people just
really didn't think was possible. So you originally started out gambling as a black
deck player and moved into sports. Did you see um correlations between you know,
being a card counter and sports betting. Yeah, you know, Richard,
I started out as a blackcheck player as a card counter, And that's
one of the reasons I kind of wanted to come on gambling with an edge,
is because gambling with an edge was always very influential in my career,
in my personal evolution as an advantaged player. I was able to kind of
learn about things that maybe I wouldn't have otherwise learned about by listening to episodes
of Gambling with an Edge, and I go all the way back, Bob,
I go back when I would have to tune into an internet link for
a radio station somewhere in Vegas, and the show was just aired at that
time, and if I missed it, I missed it until it showed up
in some archives somewhere. You know, it wasn't necessarily a regular podcast like
it is these days. And I learned about a lot of new things in
advantage Play, and I guess one of them was sports betting. You know,
maybe those early episodes with like Frank b or somebody like that, that
really kind of piqued my interest into what's out there. And I found over
the years that sports betting and card counting are not as far apart as people
might think. It's all about it's all about game selection. It's all about
quantifying your edge. It's all about betting your edge. It's all about getting
the money down when you have an edge. And you know, for a
card counter picking the right casino to play in is a huge part of the
battle, right you know, everyone knows this. You got to find the
games that are beatable. Not all the games are beating and the right table
within that casino exactly like you got to find you know, what games are
being dealt, and sports betting similar you got to find what sports have a
beatable, have some kind of inefficiency that's beatable. You need to find the
right sports books to play at. You need to find where the edges are
at. You need to quantify your edge, right, you need to say,
and now, in card counting, it's very simple. Oh, it's
all based on a fifty two card finite deck or you know, a multiple
of that in a shoe game, and so it's easy to quantify your edge.
In sports betting, it's a little harder to quantify your edge because you
don't know the exact quantification of how the game is going to play out.
However, it's all about being less wrong than the bookmaker. And so if
you're using sort of like that, we call this the top down method.
You're looking to sources of truth within the market that are sharper than the rest
of the market, and when they move, you move, and you play
those lines at the less sharp books that are that are more wrong than the
market makers, and you can profit that way, and you can quantify your
edge that way, and you say, oh, I have a two point
four percent advantage based on what this sharp book has the line at, and
then you know you can bet Kelly criterion subsequent to a two point four percent
edge, although you probably wouldn't bet full Kelly in sports betting. You bet
more of like a half or a quarter Kelly. And that was kind of
the it is behind Unabated We we built these tools that people probably don't have
on their own in order to help them find the edge using our odd screen,
quantify your edge using our various edge tools that basically show right on the
screen you have a two point four percent edge if you bet this at Caesar's
Sportsbook relative to the unabated line, which is the unabated line is your your
market maker truth line, and you know, and then we have various tools
for helping you to get the money down, maybe in derivative markets or alternate
line markets, or maybe you're just here for the education and talking about the
art of sports betting. It's a lot like card counting, where you kind
of you basically rinse and repeat and you grind out your edge over time,
and you can always learn a little bit more about ways to beat blackjack,
just like you can always learn a little bit more about ways to beat sports
betting. Yeah, anything else, yeah, yeah, or any form of
gambling right right. I was talking to my son the other day and he
said, you know, you could be the smartest mass genius in the world
and find a way to get a big edge at sports betting. But if
you only have one account, you can't make any money. I mean even
if you have one account at every sports book. So to really make money,
you need a lot of outs. And which do you think is actually
more important finding being able to find the edge or being able to get actually
get the money down. Well, you know my answer to that, Richard,
because this is something I learned from gambling with an edge for years.
Because you're you're the guy that I think put this into everyone's consciousness the most
over the years. Has been uh, you know, you're old saying of
it's the gold mine that nobody's figured out how to get the gold out of
yet, or you know, you can have the science of something, but
the art of it is trying to get the money down. So absolutely getting
the money down is big and just like a card counter. They don't ever
just play at one casino. That's no way to have a career or even
a side hustle. As a card counter. You need to go around and
find where the games are, find the better games. Just like a sports
books sports better you need to be able to shop around find the ideal line.
We talk about the landmark book The Logic of Sports Betting by Ed Miller
and Matt David l And what they kind of put in everybody's head with that
book was this idea of synthetic hold, where your disadvantage against the sports book
is only as great as the best line at multiple different sports books. And
so if you have one shop that has seven mins one ten and you have
another shop that has plus seven minus one oh five, well then you've already
kind of lowered the synthetic hold because you're not betting into a four and a
half percent disavanta. You're betting into more like a like a three point two
percent disadvantage. And if you get enough sports books and you shop enough lines,
you can find that synthetic hole gets lower and lower. Look, we're
into baseball season now, and baseball is probably the king sport of synthetic hole
being low. You can shop around and you can basically find no more than
a one percent disadvantage when it comes to betting baseball based on the best line
of l but multiple books now you're still betting into a disadvantage, which for
many of your listeners is not something they kurt want to do. But when
you have that many different options, you sometimes have a synthetic edge, a
synthetic house edge that goes against the casino and as an advantage for the player,
and you can get into arbitrage betting that way, and you can get
into situations where you have the edge over multiple books and zero risk. There's
a lot of betters that love that, and yeah, getting the money down
is the hardest part. But if you can kind of get this large stable
of sports books that you can play at, maybe you're in a good state
for sports betting, like Colorado in New Jersey and some others Ohios a kind
of an up and coming state. You have a lot of options. And
then if you don't have a lot of options, well you always have friends,
right, and maybe you're friends that are willing to put a bet down
for you at a sports book that they have access to and you kind of
work as a team that way, a little bit of a division of labor,
right. You come up with the plays use maybe using a site like
unabated, and you send them out to your friends and they get the bets
down, and you know, you kind of group all your funds together and
and pretty soon you find that you know, you're a you're a pretty good
little mini syndicate there attacking sports betting. How do you see sports betting in
five years or ten years from now? Uh, you know, that's that's
a big question that I think a lot of people are trying to approach,
both people in the industry as well as advantage players who want to know what's
the next wave. You know, I've talked about that in the past.
It's like you always need to be a little at what's coming next when it
comes to any form of advantage play. And so if you're able to have
a crystal ball and you don't want to use it to find out who's going
to win the World Series this year, but you want to use it for
you know, where is this industry headed? You kind of have to look
at what we've seen in other countries that are a little bit further along the
evolutionary scale than the United States is, and what we've seen is that sports
betting tends to give way to fewer operators. You know, I think there's
going to be more consolidation as some of the smaller operators just don't see the
profit in the relatively low margin of sports betting. And we've seen that sports
book operators tend to, because of that low margin, tend to dream up
ways to get more of your money. So they're dreaming of things like the
single game parlay, where you know, the the edge is significantly higher,
or they want to talk you into playing microbetting where you're betting on like at
batter even each pitch of a baseball game, each drive of a football game,
and they tend to pack a lot more theoretical hold into those markets.
But the ultimate goal of any sports book operator in the United States right now
is to get you towards their forthcoming internet casino. And many of you that
are listening to this right now in the United States, you're like, well,
my States has sports betting, but they don't have internet casinos. Trust
me, they will, they absolutely will. That's the end game here of
all of this push towards legal legalization sports betting. They want to get to
the point where people are going to be using their internet casino. And why
is because the frequency of betting in an internet casino is so much higher than
sports betting. You can make a bet on a football game, and you
could sit down and watch that football game and you have your nice little sweat
there for three hours. Whereas you sit down at a slot machine and you
make a bet, you're still not sitting there enjoying the machine. Three hours
later. Your spin was done in six seconds, and you can make ten
of those bets in a minute, and you can make you six hundred bets
in an hour, and that's far more advantageous for the casino, you know,
for the house to take your money from you by having you bet into
these markets again and again and again more frequently. So they want to kind
of get us to the point where we're playing in their internet casinos. Now,
do internet casinos offer any edge for the advantage player, It's yet to
be seen. Like we know, there's promotions and bonuses. We saw that
with the sports betting boom over the past five years or so. Look,
I remember coming on gambling with an edge and talking about all of the opportunities
that are out there for betters to maybe fly to New Jersey and sign up
for all these accounts and maybe make six to eight thousand dollars in an afternoon
just going through all these promotions and bonuses. Those opportunities are gone that you
know, New Jersey is a very saturated state. You can still find some
edges as new states pop up. We saw Massachusetts earlier in March, we
saw Ohio in January, but they're not nearly as strong as they used to
be. And internet casinos they're going to be a certain wave of that.
But for the most part, you already signed up for their sports book.
They already have your name, they already have your information. They don't need
to entice you with a bonus, so they don't have as many people that
need the brand awareness. In terms of ap plays for casinos internet casinos,
there's going to be some of the same plays that are available to the slot
hustlers that are out there. Some of the same slot plays are going to
be there. Some of them won't be there, but some of them will.
There's going to be progressives and things like that. One of the things
that I think I've found most refreshing about internet casinos in relation to land based
casinos is they all run on basically the same part sheet. They all have
the same probabilities, and they broadcast not broadcasts. They spell out those probabilities
in the help screens. So you can find a slot machine where the average
return, the average theoretical return is ninety six point seven percent, and it'll
say that right on the instruction screen. This game returns ninety six point seven
percent over time. So those of you who want to kind of figure out
how to find an edge at online slot machines, you can go ahead and
try to find that when they come to your area or you go to an
area that has them. There's not a lot of edges out there for online
casinos, but I think there will be some, and there will be many
who who profit from it. Yeah. Boy, there's a lot a lot
to unpack there. But first I'd like to say that when you were talking
about how the sports books want to push you to, you know, bet
on every down in football or whatever, you know, there was this big
problem of you try to make those in game bets and you get the spinning
wheel and then the bet doesn't go through unless you've already lost that kind of
thing I mean is that's still a big problem, and how are people going
to be able to bet that frequently if if that continues to be a problem.
So we do still have that certain amount of lag time that favors the
operator, it doesn't favor the better. That's sort of that free role against
the better. Now, we've had some advances over the years. Some of
the first advances have been in some of the operators. They they now are
trying to be a little bit more agile with that betting process. You know,
you had Alex Kane from sport Trade on not too long ago and he
talked about how sport Trade has kind of taken away that spinning wheel, and
it's yes, it's an instantaneous you know, how much money is available to
you to bet into. You can bet rapidly. There's far less friction in
that market. You get in and out of a position very easily. I
use sport Trade. I love sport Trade. It's very it's a very good
product. In fact, a lot of my action these days are on the
exchanges here in New Jersey. But how are they going to kind of make
it so that that's a little bit more available to the general public. Well,
there's this company called simple Bet and they have been the pioneers in microbetting.
Microbetting is betting on the smallest details in sporting events, such as,
you know, will this player have a strikeout, a walk, a hit,
or make an out when they come up the bat in this inning.
And it's not as much rapid in terms of like the batters up to bat
and you make this bet. It's sort of like you make this bet because
they are the third batter do up in this inning, and you can make
it sort of in advance, so it's not as instantaneous as you might think
when it comes to microbetting. But we're going to get there. And what
will be the driving catalyst of all of that is advances in broadcasting technology and
we're starting to see that. We're starting to see they're coming up with ways
to make less and less latency in the broadcast of sporting events. And when
that becomes available to both the operator and the better, that'll be a good
thing. If that is something that is only available to the operator, that's
a bad thing. The better is at a disadvantage. And what we're seeing
with a lot of these streaming services out there is a better that's watching a
game on YouTube or watching a game on some kind of streaming service like MLB
dot tv. You are a good minute and a half behind what's actually happening,
and the operators have access to the fastest feeds from sport Radar or from
Betting Is though, the two companies that handle most of the major sports leagues
and their live betting data, and they have the fastest feed, you don't
have the fastest feed. There's an inequality there. Look at un Abated,
we actually contracted with sport Radar to get the fastest feed we could, and
we're pretty fast, like we're ahead of broadcast television when it comes to this
doors for like the NBA, But we're still not ahead of the sports books
because the sports books have access to it and even faster fee that we can't
as a company access. So there's always going to be an unlevel playing field
until we get to the point where there is full zero latency, and we're
very close to zero latency and the betters and the bookies can be on the
same playing field. But I don't know that the bookies are going to want
that because that's just too much of a risk to them, and then they're
going to start to build in the little delays like they have now the spinning
wheels. So I don't know that it will ever be perfect, but we're
getting closer to perfect than we have in the past. I just want to
point out too that, sorry, Bob, I keep cutting you off,
but when you're talking talking about adding these all these different kind of bets,
this is a tremendous opportunity for players, just like for the card counters and
the blackjack players when they start than adding all of these different carnival games.
Every time they add something or side bets, every time they add something new,
it's an opportunity for them to screw up or to not realize that they
haven't fully analyzed what it is they're doing and that you may find vulnerability.
So absolutely, the more they throw out there, the better it is for
the players, because if there is no edge, well then you just don't
have to bet on those things. Yeah, absolutely, Richard. We're not
on video right now, but I was nodding my head. I was kind
of pumping my fist because that is exactly what any advantage player should welcome is
the proliferation of this industry because they trust me, they're going to step in
it, like they just can't help themselves. They're going to make mistakes.
Trust me. I know of plenty of mistakes that are out there that you
know, I probably don't want to share because I can't believe how dumb they
are, Like they just there's too much surface area for them to defend.
And the skill level on the operator side in sports betting is not as strong
as the skill level on the player side. And I don't think that I
don't think we're going to reach the kind of like a uniform distribution of skill
level for quite a while because there's just very few people that have in the
US at least that have experience in being a really good bookmaker. And this
industry doesn't seem to like want to pay to people what they're worth, and
they can make far more money on the player side and just you know,
pick off the edges in whatever way they want to. And that's great for
any aspiring advantage player to continue to find new edges in sports betting. All
right, I'm going to stick in a quick question before Richard was so root
it cuts me off again. You mentioned you mentioned casinos want to get you
onto their online apps. Well, in many states you have a bunch of
bouts, whether it will just say Caesar's, MGM Van Duel and among others,
and on sites like unabated, they will tell you what the current price
is on each of those sites, and the sites are probably eighty percent identical
at any given time. But Raftkings is going to be better in one direction
on something and better at something else. The players can pick and choose whereas
using the online, whereas they couldn't do that so easily when they had to
physically go to the sports books to place the bets. And because it's now,
this is a huge advantage for the players and a disadvantage for casinos in
the online. You agree with this, Oh, sure, absolutely, it's
it's definitely a huge advantage line shopping compared to what you used to have to
do. Is I remember my earliest days going to Las Vegas and trying to
do a little bit of line shopping. And I think I would maybe go
across like I usually would stay at Center Strip area there and maybe I'd get
to the Imperial Palace and then maybe I would get too over to Caesar's and
then I would be like I just walked like two miles. I'm done,
Like I'll just bet it here, you know, I don't care. And
with spots betting these days, I can see what the line is. I
can see not only in the books. I have access to a New Jersey,
I can see offshore, I can see around the world. I can
see exchanges in Europe, I can see sports books in Australia. And that
doesn't mean like I need to go bet there, you know. And I
think that's one of the misguided parts of regulation in the US is they tend
to say all offshore betting is bad. You know, the bad actor is
offshore. No, that's all part of the ecosystem, all part of the
economy. Like you don't watch CNBC and just focus on US stocks. You
focus on what the world is doing. Events overseas impact events in the United
States economy. So it's similar in sports betting. I want to see what
the line is at Betfair, at Matchbook, at some of the bigger European
sports books, even on US sports because sometimes there's an influence there. And
similarly, I want to see what the line is in Nevada at CERCA because
I don't have circu out here in New Jersey, but I know Circus really
sharp, and I want to see what they have as their line and when
their lines are moving, and how they're moving, and when their limits go
up because they're willing to take more liquidity on a market because they're more certain
of their number. It's all part of this market, and I think that's
one thing that advantage players need to understand when it comes to if they want
to get involved in sports betting, if they're looking for an edge, even
after gambling with an edge goes off the air, you need to approach this
as if it's a living, breathing market and trying to see the intricacies of
how the market moves and reacts. And baseball is not the same as football,
is not the same as hockey. All of these markets kind of move
differently. There's different market makers in each market, and you kind of have
to learn that if you want to get involved in a certain market, you
don't need to learn the players and the coaches. You need to learn how
the market moves and what it moves and reacts to. All right, let's
shift scars scars a little bit. You've been a listener to gambling with an
edge for a decade or so. Do you have any favorite memories? You
know, I have a lot of favorite memories of gambling with an edge because
gambling with edge has been like an institution for me and for a lot of
advantage players out there. And we live in an age where there's plenty of
podcasts these days, you like, look, I even have a podcast.
Everybody's got a podcast these days. And well, the thing of gambling an
edge was it was always a little bit different. It was always there was
always something. It wasn't just focused on card counting, it wasn't just focused
on you know, video poker. It was everything was covered. And it
really opened my eyes to all the different things that were out there as an
advantage player. Look, I remember you talked about a guy that was getting
an edge at scratch cards with lotteries. You know. When I was a
card counter early on, I would say, you know, if you're playing
scratch cards, man, you gotta you're dreading into a huge disadvantage. Well,
maybe you are. Maybe there's an inefficiency in that market, you know,
And and hearing some of the legends of the industry, of our industry
of advantage play. Hearing them talk that was a great education to me.
You know, Anthony Curtis, Like, there's just something about the way that
Anthony Curtis talks about things that I always find appealing, Like I like listening
to the guy. I like even when I see him in person, like
Blackjack ball and things like that, I just like hearing him explain something.
He just has a way of talking that I've tried to adapt and try to
relate to people when you explain things to them. And you know, some
of the things with Gambling with an Edge have been they take me back to
a time when I would store up a lot of episodes because I would have
some travel and I know there's people listening to this that can relate to this.
You have a long flight coming up, you store up three or four
episodes of Gambling with an Edge to listen to on the flight, or you
have a long car ride. And I had this play that I was doing
for a number of years that would often require about a four and a half
hour drive, and me and my partners we would always store up Gambling with
an Edge episode to listen to in the car as we drove between these two
areas that we were making this play at, and we always had like a
running commentary of the episode as we go, and to this today, when
I hear certain words or certain phrases, it takes me back to be driving
those roads and listening to it, and you know, we were laughing or
we were saying like that's a great comment, or that's that's a dumb comment.
You know, it was. It was all over the map. So
I think when it comes to gambling with image, I think one of the
things I'll miss was the variety of it, and it had a certain structure
to it that was was very unique. And I think Bob, that's a
credit to you and Richard as well, and even to him, Mike Shackelford
before him like it. It was just a unique way of looking at advantage
play. And uh, you know, I still I will still go back
to some old episodes and he listened to them. List Bob er session episodes
were always great because there was always something that maybe I didn't understand about the
legal intricacies that Bob would would explain well and he'd pound the desk and it
would it would always be a great listening to anytime he had had things to
say about the legal side of things. Always great for recording him pounding on
the desk, right. Yeah, he takes the award for the best pounder
on the Gambling with an Edge guest. Yeah, yeah, he's leading that.
You know. I just want to say, I'm one of the things
I'm proudest of about this show is that we have had people on the show
talking about ways to beat almost every possible game you can imagine, and as
he said, from scratch off lottery tickets to you know, craps roulette,
I mean everything. Um, you know, ten years ago, if you
had said, uh, yeah, there's this podcast where they have guys on
who are beating slot machines, I would have, you know, said that's
ridiculous. But you know, now that's the up and coming thing. I
would have said it's ridiculous, said for years in my classes that you're not
going to be slot misses. Now I spend a lot of time doing it.
And it's as a and it's because, yeah, as a consumer and
Gamily with an Edges. Even though I'm a host, I still get I
get to listen to what these guys say and some of which I've applied personally.
And another advantage I had when I would get the same guy coming back
they year and a half later, I would frequently go back and listen to
his earlier episode to refresh what we talked about before and what in mind,
what his individual stick was, and I would hear things that I had missed
the first time around. And so if when I only listened to him once,
I don't like watching a movie twice. You see things. If you
watch a movie twice, you see something different in the second time than you
did in the first time. And so I frequently did that, and that
helped my personal gambling career absolutely. I'll add to that you always had a
very wide spectrum of guests. It wasn't just Blackjack Hall of famers, it
wasn't just known advantage players. Sometimes it was people that I had never heard
of and I had no idea that they even existed in the world. And
I've probably made some contact based on listening to somebody on Gambling with the Edge
and going that's a really smart person. I need to find a way to
get in touch with them and maybe work with them in the future. It
was a great way to kind of get your name out there if you were
an advantage player and you know, there's two sides of that coin. You
sometimes had guests on that's what's the phrase. But I think Mark Twain is
like, better to be a fool and not expose yourself by opening your mouth
or something like that. Um. There we there's many guests that I've gone,
wow, I gotta steer clear of that guy. Like so it goes,
it goes both ways. Yeah, they're definitely ye guest who will be
making our farewell tour appearance. Yeah. Yeah, But and that is one
of the criticisms of the show is that, Yeah, sometimes a guest will
get on and you know, I mean, we don't know all these people,
right, and and you think they're going to be a good guest,
and then you get them on and you're like, oh my god, you
know, um but you know you still I mean, we have to fill
fifty two weeks a year, so um And and that has been one of
the struggles in doing the show is doing that. Um. So yeah,
So we have more questions for Captain Jack, but first we're going to do
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to decide if unabated dot Com is right for you. All right, we're
back talking with Captain Jack. Can I just say what an honor it was
to be a commercial as sponsor on on your podcast. Trust me, there's
a lot of advantage players out there that I know try to skip through the
commercials as as efficiently as as possible. So to having been one of the
sponsors that people tried to skip over. Um, it was a little bit
of an honor, but it was good to be associated with such an institution
as your podcast. You know, thanks, I appreciate that, and I
also I just want to add that, um uh, you know, for
people who think that, um, I don't know whatever, there are sponsors
that we turned down, like not everyone who wanted to be a sponsor,
did we just take so uh. One to come that comes to mind is
the ball shaver. Bob refused to shave his balls, um with this thing.
So but anyway, so I just wanted to point that out, that
that we were selective in who we accepted as sponsors. Bob refused to talk
about shaving his fault all right now, is anything coming up in the near
future Unabated that our listeners should listen to, should be aware of. So
I like to say, Unabated it's a lot like Disneyland, because you go
to Disneyland and there's always something new. Now, there's all the traditional things
that you always want to see when you go to Disneyland, but there's always
a new ride. And we've Walt Disney said Disneyland will never be finished.
Well, Unabated will never be finished. We're always adding something new. We're
always kind of finding a better way to present something or a more efficient way
of presenting it. So we currently have an array of tools for baseball.
We're getting started into the baseball season here we have the main push lately have
been towards prop bets. I think there's more liquidity being offered in prop bets
than ever before in sports betting. I think NFL props are a viable play
for a lot of advantage players that may have thought that prop plays are just
too esoteric to be able to last long at a sports book. I think
you can last betting NFL props. I think you can last betting some NBA
props, and I'm hoping to see some of the same thing with baseball props
going forward. So we have a tool that allows people to simulate player performance
based on the projections they give and convert a mean projection and average projection into
a median projection, because sports books put out a line based on the median
line, not based on the mean. And that's an important part that I
think a lot of people never really realize when it comes to sports betting,
is you're betting against a medium, not against a means, so you reach
that medium by running simulations, and so we have stimulation tools that users can
use. We also have some partial game derivative calculators coming out to attack not
only first five inning lines, but first three and first seven inning lines.
That's something that some of these bigger, newer sports books are putting out there,
and it kind of lends to Richard's comment earlier about they keep coming out
with new stuff and maybe they're making a mistake. Well, you know,
maybe they're making a mistake in first three inning lines or first seven inning lines.
So we're going to have that in addition to the first five inning lines
that some sports books have out there. Most sports books have first five,
some have first three and first seven. And I'll give a point here to
this is how edges show up is member as we're coming out of COVID,
the Major League Baseball started doing seven inning games with their double headers, So
if you had a double header, it was two seven inning games. Well,
there was a sports book I knew that had lines on the first three
innings of a game, and they reached that line by basically dividing the total
or the side by three. So if the game total was nine, they'd
make the first three inning line to be three. Well, when you had
a seven inning double header, they divided that number that total by three.
So you can see you quickly, like you might have been a normal mine
inning game, you might have like over under three. Well they were making
with a seven inning game and a total being more like six or seven,
they were making like over under one and a half for the first three innings,
and they didn't realize it for the longest time. Like this went on
for months and months and months where they just didn't realize that they had that
blind spot in how they were creating their lines, you know, And it
goes back to that, well, what's the art of getting the money down?
Well, sometimes the art of getting money down is giving them the best
in a way that they want to see it. And sports books love to
see parlays. So I was going through and I was parlaying these anytime that
there was multiple double headers to be had, or even parlaying both games with
the double header to have the over one and a half on the first three
innings of both of the double header games, things like that. So that's
just an example of like there's always going to be blind spots out there,
you just have to keep your eyes open to find them. But usually those
blind spots are not going to be in the total of in you know,
NFL or MLB. It's not just going to be betting aside, right,
but it could be in some derivative markets, like alternate lines. And that's
one of the first ones we created at Debated was to be able to price
out what an alternate line should be. So if the game line in an
NFL game is six, well, what about if you're able to find minus
seven, what should that be priced at? Or what if you find an
alternate line like minus eight and a half or minus ten and a half,
what should be the accurate price of that? Because that's often where you find
inefficiencies in the market. And then that Quinta lends to like, okay,
well, you can use these alternate line calculators to calculate what optimal teaser prices
should be and other kind of promotional things where maybe they're like, you know,
add three points on each team's score this week, and here you make
this parlay out of it, and you can find out how much that should
be priced at. All these tools that allow users to say, Okay,
I have a giant sandbox here and they're they're they're offering me this bet.
I can kind of construct in this sandbox how I need to approach this bet,
what the math is behind it, without unabated saying oh, hey,
look right here, this is where you have an edge. By doing this,
you can kind of find your edge yourself. You can teach the person
to fish rather than just feed them a fish. Yeah, I was.
I enjoy one of the things I just had figured out so much. What
you just said was you found this edge and so you parlayed it two edges
together, partly to the sguise that that's where the edge was. Just hit
each of the edges individually, it would be a lot clear to the sports
book exactly where your edge was. But when you're parlaying it for aren't thing
you hit less often but a bigger amounts. But if this guy's feature and
video poker players need you to disguise themselves all the time. And that was
an area that I didn't realize that sports betters did. Yeah. Absolutely,
because look, when you are betting an edge and you are kind of identified
as a sharp better, they're gonna say, like Hey, what is this
guy doing? You know what if Richard in your book Emily Wizard's still one
of my favorite books. You mentioned you were talking. I was in the
I think the Doyle Brunson part of the book, and I think you asked
him, do you ever do anything else like card counting or something like that?
And Doyle's like, well, if the casino where to see me at
a blackjack table, they're gonna say, you know, what's what's Dolly doing
at the blackjack table? He must have an edge at the blackjack table?
What do we got going on there? You know? Similarly, like you
know, if somebody he knew who Richard Munchkin was and saw him doing this
at a casino, they go, well, he clearly has an edge.
He wouldn't play a game that doesn't have an edge. So sometimes you need
to disguise who you are to the casino, even when they don't see you,
even like in a sports book operator online, they just don't they don't
see you. They just they just see the name, and you know,
you kind of throw them off the scent. And maybe maybe that means you're
making a lot of parlays in your first ten twenty bets at a at a
sports book. Ela who Foystel mentioned that when he was on your show a
while back. H you know, maybe you're using look parlays increased variants,
right, But round robins are a very popular way to do parley bets,
and they actually reduce variants of parlay bets because they basically take all the permutations
of a parlay between multiple teams. And so sports book see somebody making a
round robin bet and they go, ah, this guy's just he's like an
action junkie. He's just looking for action and all these different parlay options.
And sometimes like that's actually good the advantage player because you're making the parlay bet,
but you're also lowering your variant. So sometimes round robins are a good
way to approach it that looks square, but you're actually being sharp. Many
different ways that you can be in a sports book finding your bets and still
come across as somebody who doesn't have an edge. I want to make two
points. One is that variance is really good for the players. And to
give you an example from video poker, there are people who if they hit
a twelve hundred and fifty dollars jack Pott. They will hit the double up
feature because it means that their expectation is exactly the same. But half the
time they're only getting half as many W two gs. So yes, it
means that you may lose that twelve hundred and fifty dollars half the time,
but you know the other half you're going to get twenty five hundreds, but
you've made you've gotten one less W two G out of it, which eats
up your time sitting there at the machine. Also, it's much more likely
for you too, for you to look like a loser. Right, It's
it's much better to have a player that, um, you know, loses
small, small, small, small, small, and then one day he
hits, you know, twenty thousand dollars on some being hit that looks like
a degenerate gambler to the to the casino. Um. The other thing is,
if your edge is big enough, then there are times where you could
make parlays on things that where you have your big edge, but the other
the other legs of the parlay maybe don't even have an edge at all.
But your edge is so big on the one that you're trying to disguise that
it's okay to take that, even if it's small negative on those things to
hide what it is you're doing up. And I know some people agree.
Some people would just like hate the idea of you know, doing anything negative.
You know, but if you have something that's really really strong, well
it's okay to give away some money in what I would call advertising, like
like for example, you know, you tip a lot when you have a
really good hole card game. You can afford it, and you know it
helps. Speaking of tipping the play that Richard mentioned of doubling up, when
you get a twelve hundred and fifty dollars, you're only tipping half the time.
So even if it's the same ev on the play tip on every w
TG, you're only tipping half the time. And so for most people,
a tip on twenty five hundred and a tip on twelve fifty would be their
same minimal amounts for thing at your tipping costs in half, which UM definitely
positive. Yeah, So we're getting close to the end of our hour.
Any if this is going to be likely your last trip on gambling with an
Edge? Do you have any last words for our listeners? I, you
know, I just I just want to say thank you. Like I mentioned,
you have been very influential in the my journey as an advantage player,
and not just you, Bob, but the show and the topic of the
show, and how the show has kind of been there week after week over
the years. So I think that's I think that's my biggest takeaway is I
still remember the first time I was asked to come on, I probably spent
twelve to fifteen hours writing out all of my replies and then memorizing all my
replies so it wouldn't sound like I was reading anything. And you know,
I've been on subsequent times since then, and occasionally it'll just be I just
kind of send a couple of notes saying, oh, here's a topic that
I could talk about, and then we just wing it. So it's it's
come a long way since the early days when I had to memorize was like
six pages of type notes that I wanted to sound authentic without sounding like I
was reading it. Yeah, well, thank you. You've been a great
guest over the years, Yes, and very great guest, and I'm glad
to have become your friend over the last five or six seven years. It
was I appreciate that definitely, all right at the end of the show,
we have recommended Richard, you have a recommended for our listeners. Yeah.
My recommended this week is a podcast called People I mostly Admire, and I've
recommended this podcast in the past different particular guests. It's an interview podcast with
Steve Levitt, who wrote Free Economics, one of the authors of Free Economics.
And this week the guest, I think it was this week, maybe
last week is doctor Peter Atilla, and he has done a deep dive into
the study of longevity, and so the interview is about longevity and the things
you can do to live longer. And he has a new book out called
Outlive, The Science and Art of Longevity, and the interview was fascinating,
you know, because Levitt is an economist, there's a lot of stats in
there as opposed to yeah, I think you should eat more whatever. So
anyway, I have ordered the book. I haven't read the book yet,
but the podcast was fascinating and if you're at all interested in health and longevity,
I would recommend you listen to it and then you will know very quickly
whether it's a book you're interested in reading. And it's one I certainly am.
Yeah, and I've spoken about longevity and number of times about my search
for that. And I have a new author on the subject. Name is
Dan Buttneruet and here he has two or three books. They all have blue
Zones in the title. And a blue zone is an area where there's a
high proportion of one hundred year old plus people living. And there's some in
the Pacific, there's some in California, and there's some in Central America,
and there's some int training area. And his books discover what they have in
common, how you can apply those lessons to wherever you're living. And so
I kind of simultaneously reading two of his books, the Blue Zone Solution and
The Blue Zone r itself, and then he has another one, one Recipe,
and so I'm not finished with him yet, but I'm enjoying what I'm
reading. And so it's the same general subject is what Richard's talking about.
I wasn't going to have it recommended until he said that, and then it's
gone, oh yeah, well I can talk about that. So, Captain
Jack, do you have a recommended for our listeners? I do, But
after this this love fest that I've had over the past hour with you guys,
it's gonna sound a little repetitive, but honestly, the archives of Gambling
with an edge like there are some great things to discover. Any Bobner ses
seen episode, any Russell Fox episode, any Anthony Curtis episode, any Frank
b episode like those are some of the tops that you know you're going to
get quality information and it's going to be entertaining. And even in the case
of Russell Box with the tax stuff, it's it's still knowledgeable information. And
the if you go some of the really the deeper cut that I've found the
most interesting small cap growth when you guys had him on, that's a hilarious
episode or two. The episode with Prax and the episodes with Phoenix. Look
those up. I'm not saying they're going to be the best thing you ever
heard, but they're entertaining. I'll leave it at that. So I look
forward to going back in the in the archives from time to time in the
future when I feel like I need a little Bob and Richard fix and listening
to some of those old episodes. Well, thank you, this is a
love fish. We're having a nice little bromance here on our our farewell tour.
Thank you very much. Jack on good luck with future of unabated,
Thank you very much. Richard Well had lots of oil flushes. Everybody,
good day,