Speaker 1: Good afternoon.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Gambling with an Edge.
Speaker 1: Now Here are your hosts, Bob Dancer and Richard Munchkin.
Good afternoon, Welcome to Gambling with an Edge. I'm Bob
Dancer and I'm Richard Munchkin. Our guest today is Anthony Curtis.
We're going to be talking a lot about sports betting contests,
mainly football contests that are happening on the upcoming NFL season,
and there's a bunch of other things we're going to
talk about as well. Anthony Curtis, Welcome to Gambling with
an Edge.
Speaker 3: All right, it's going to be back. It's been a
little bit of a little bit of a gap between appearances, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it used to be on almost monthly. The I
think you might be the have both first place and
second place tied up. Insofar as visitors on this show,
I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: It's good to add to own some kind of record.
That's cool.
Speaker 1: So are NFL season season long football bets are happening
all over Vegas.
Speaker 3: Tell us about some you're talking about the contests, yeah, contests, Yeah, okay,
well contests coming up. You know, it's it's all starting
the first deadline is the twenty ninth of August, and
that's for the new College Football Contest. So Westgate has Okay,
let's go back a little bit. You know, for a
long time, Westgate was the thing when it came to
football contests. You know, the Super Contest was a gold standard,
and that's what everybody played and everybody wanted to do.
And then you know, long comes Derek Stevens and Circa
and they blow Westgate out of the water. And they
did that a few different ways. You know. One way
they did it was by Westgate decided after a while
they were going to write the pot and they were
taking seven or eight percent, I believe, out of the
prize pool. So Cirke says, okay, we're not going to
write anything. It's one hundred percent return to the players.
And then Circa did one other thing that was huge,
which was the guarantees, and Westgate didn't guarantee, so they
were you know, they it was they were. The prize
pool was whatever. Everybody the some of the entry fees
minus the rake, and Circa was like, we're going to
guarantee you X million a dollar, so if it doesn't
hit this number, you've got an overlay, so you're going
to get be getting back it, you know, theoretically more
than you put into play. So those two things just
propelled Circa to the top by a mile. And Westgate
kind of, you know, took their medicine for a couple
of years and then started making moves to to try
to compete again. Then the first thing they did is
they took the rake out and they so they no longer.
They now give back one hundred percent like Circa does.
And this year they made a bunch of moves with
new contests, and one of them is the college football
and that's the kind of the coolest one as far
as I'm concerned, because everything has been pros for quite
a while and this is the only except for the
last man standing at the station Casino's twenty five dollars
entry fee, this is the only which would call a
major college contest. And where the others are one thousand
to one hundred thousand for Grand Desimo at Circa, this
one is only five hundred. So it's kind of cool.
And you know, it starts, it starts this weekend, and
I've got a few entries in that, and then the pros,
the Pro contest will start next week with all the survivors,
and Westgate has put in a survivor and Circas put
in one hundred thousand dollars buy in Grand Desimo. So
there's a whole lot of new things going on, I
guess in the spirit of competition for the football contests
this year. So that's probably the longest I've ever taught
on your show without stopping.
Speaker 2: So what is the guarantee on the Grand Dcimo.
Speaker 3: The guarantee has already been surpassed. I believe the guarantee
was one point five million and it's at one hundred
thousand per so they only needed fifteen to hit their guarantee.
It is my understanding. Less I heard there is something
like twenty five already. I predicted they'd be between twenty
and twenty five. So I was under and I was
not quite right on that. They're going to probably get
up into the thirty five to forty area. But yeah,
that one's not gonna there's gonna be no overlay there,
but it's all being given back. So they get thirty players,
you know they're gonna be looking at three million dollars
if you can beat twenty nine other players. He's a
winner take all, winner take all. Yeah, These Survivor things
are brutal, man. I mean, you know, they're always a
winner take all, which is part of the pizazz of them.
And now the winner rarely takes all because it's a
season long thing. And I'm sure that Grandissimo with only
thirty or forty players won't go season long. But when
you look at the big one with fourteen thousand players
at Circus Survivor and fourteen thousand and above, it usually
goes all the way through. So you usually have several
that split that pot. And then there are a whole
lot of deals being made, you know, behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: And are you and Frank in the Grandissimo.
Speaker 3: No, Frank wanted to and he was this is Frank
b we're talking about, and he wanted to do it,
and I was against it. I didn't think that there
was a lot of value in it because of the
people you're going to be playing against and so forth,
and the huge, you know, the huge variance of something
like that. So he thought about it. He's like, don't care,
I'll do it myself. You know, he was saying, I'll
do it myself. And at the last second, he decided
the same that that just didn't seem right to enter.
So no, we're not going to be in that one.
We're going to be in all the other ones.
Speaker 4: Though.
Speaker 1: The change in the TETSWA which you get to right
off ninety percent of your losses instead of one hundred percent,
since the payoff for these is going to be in
twenty twenty six and it's going to be documented. If
you happen to beat the odds and win, does that
affect you that seem stuck? It can make a big
effect on your decisions.
Speaker 3: We didn't know. It didn't on ours, It will on others.
You know, some will well. With the numbers that we're
seeing right now, well, let's think about this. The prizes
will be paid in twenty six. Yeah, so they would
go under the new law, assuming it's not changed at all.
The numbers don't seem to indicate that it's bothering anybody,
because the numbers seem to be up everywhere at circup
for everything that I've seen, For me especially, I've always
made it clear that I declare my winnings. I always have,
you know, running a business and all, I don't want
to fool around with doing screwy things, so I declare,
and it has it will have an effect on certain
things that I do, but not on this one. Yeah,
never really honestly, And that's an interesting that you bring
it up. I'm almost I'm caught off guard a little
bit thinking that I didn't really give it much much thought,
although I am playing less this year than I typically
do in the contest for two reasons, I'm not sure
if I have an edge anymore in these things where
I used to do better than I have been doing recently.
Last couple of years have been pretty lean. And two,
I've just got all these things going in business. But
I hadn't really given the text a lot of that
much thought about it. But next year you just liked
might Yeah, let's put it this way.
Speaker 2: I had a good problem to have.
Speaker 3: I was just going to say, I sure, hope, I'm
kicking myself in a year from now, going, oh, you
should have thought about that, but well, you know, I
would have played then maybe I wouldn't have played.
Speaker 5: What I'm saying is I hope I have that problem. Yes, Okay,
be careful, be careful what you wish for?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Really, well, you know again, just to go back to
the contest. One of the points I'll make is that
what Westgate is doing the changes they made is they
went from one thousand dollars entry fee for their super
Contest back to one point five fifteen hundred Super Contest
Gold five thousand entry fee. Again they're having a Survivor. Okay,
so the Circus survivors are one thousand dollars and you
can enter ten times, so you can get ten thousand
in action there if you want to do it. The
Survivor at Westgate is five k, and I believe you
can do ten entries there as well, So that's kind
of more like a high roller Survivor. So it's you know,
I don't know, it's interesting to have friends and neighbors
can do a lot more than ten. Yeah, you can,
and you know, I'm not. That's another debate that Frank
and I have a lot, and we're pretty much of
the same thinking on that. That additional contest and the
entries diminish, The edge gets diminished quite a bit as
you go down the list, especially not so much in Survivor,
because you can play Survivor in a way that if
you're playing on the same one all the way through
until you get low and then you start diversifying. Then
there can be some value, quite a bit of value
in that. But when you're talking about the millions and
all of that, we're pretty much of the opinion that
everything passed the first and maybe possibly as a second
is quite quite quite a bit diminished value in terms
of equity and ev because you tend to be playing
your second and third picks. So why do that? You know,
there's like not a lot of value in that when
you're you're you're playing a suboptimal card just to have additions.
So we don't really go in that much for for
lots of multiple cards.
Speaker 1: Well, you're using your I don't know, you picked five
a week, you're using your top picks for it's still
on four of them. You're just varying one or two.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't you be, yeah, well well what or two? Yeah,
that's significant. That's forty percent of your card. You know,
if you're going to do two of them.
Speaker 1: So we have between your first choice and your on
one game and your second choice on another game. Isn't
that huge? It's pretty small. I would think it's like
it's a coin flip as to which one you pick.
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of this is just empirical as well.
Over the years, we just looked at the results of
playing multiple cards and we just haven't liked it. So,
you know, I'm not sure of the exact analysis of it,
but we just know that we don't like it.
Speaker 4: What do you think the the ratio between sort of
really knowing about football as opposed to really understanding tournament
strategy of players, or the ratio of value the value like,
which is more important or are they equally?
Speaker 3: No, I don't think they're equally. I think that a
contest strategy and tournament strategy far outpaces knowledge. Now, what
we're not including there is you know, the quants that
are really you know, they're they're they're modeling these things,
and they're they're they're kind of bringing everything into it.
And that's there gets more. That's where I said, I'm
not sure where my edges now, if my edge is
there at all, I think it is because well, when
you hear people talk about the World Series of Poker
and the main event and they go and I go, well,
they're taking seven percent out of that, out of our
six or seven percent out of that pool, and they're
like No, it's still the best tournament in the world
because there's so much dead money, as they call it,
you know, dead money or square money. I think there's
a lot of that going on here too, that even
though they're not taking anything out, there's so much so
many players that are that think their football knowledge is
going to bring them through and that they can handicap
their bastardized form of handicapping and pick winners. And I
don't think that that is anywhere near the value of
contest theory and playing off numbers and you know, knowing
when to pivot, knowing how to to correlate and not
correlate when that comes into play. And so I think
that there's so much dead money in that that it's
it's worth doing. And playing contest wise is much stronger
and very and much fewer play people play that way.
There's way more people to just pay play seat of
the pants and make their picks.
Speaker 2: Well, and there's an overlay to start with in the circuit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, especially when there's an overlay, I mean, you
just people you can't undervalue that, you know, I mean,
that's one of the fundamentally, you know. I've been saying
this for years now, it seems. But Blair Rodman is
all about sports betting is extremely close and it will
come out this year. And I'm doing the chat. You're
on contest play and number one, the first thing you
look at is equity in the contest. You know, how
much are they taking out of the pool or is
it even money return or is it an overlaight? And
those overlays are you know, it's powerful, it's mathematically, it's
very it's strong.
Speaker 1: All right, let's pivot to something else. You mentioned Blair's
book is coming out. Uh, you have a slot book
in the works, yeah, Jeff say on that.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, my, my, my burden these days is all
the books we do have in the works. We've got
so many books in the works and they're so good,
and there's so many other things happening in business for
you know, for Huntington Press right now. And I painted
myself into a little bit of a corner with gambling
books and that I'm the one who is the editor,
the final editor on the gambling books for content, although
Decastlemen as the senior editor, and he makes them all
readable and fabulous in terms of readability. But when it
comes to the actual gambling aspect. I've got to read
these books, and it's becoming harder and harder to find
the time. So here's where all that stands Blair Rodman's book.
I was best man at Blayer's wedding, so I've been
able to play that card and put his book up
for a couple of years now, and I can't play
that card anymore. I mean, I've got to get this
thing out, and we're extraordinarily close. We really are. We're
in final production, chapter by chapter right now. And the
interesting thing is because of the way usually I would go, man,
this is terrible, because it's going to come out a
couple of weeks into the football season, and then there's
going to be another six or eight weeks to get
it printed and get it back. But things have changed
so much in the publishing world so that as soon
as it's ready and we send it to the printer,
we'll also send it to Amazon and it will be
available that day or the next day on print on demand.
And yeah, these print on demand books can't tell the difference.
You know, we've bought them, We've set them side by
side with books that we run through regular web presses
and things, and you cannot pick out the pod. So
although Blair's book typically wouldn't have come out till towards
the end of the season, it's going to come out
very close to the beginning of the season. So then
as soon as we're done with the It's all about
sports betting, as soon as we're done with that one,
then we'll turn our attention to the Slot book, which
is breaking the slot code it's called. What's holding that
up a little bit too? Is it's complicated, It's you know,
it's very complicated, and I've got it my nose into that.
But we're also almost certainly going to open up a
website that goes with it, because things change so quickly
there that we want the book to be almost more
not more conceptual. It's going to have actual examples of
how to beat twenty six games, you know, the ones
that a lot of people know about Ocean's Magic and
Scare Up and things like that, but also games that
are new. But there's just so many, and so we
wanted to open pretty closely in tandem with what we're
going to do with the website, And the website will
be paywall that will be a you know, that will
be a subscription type thing. Then we've got we still
have James Grosstein's next.
Speaker 6: One, which is I'm almost afraid for you to bring
it up because you know, I get asked when is
that book coming out? All the time, and we've been
talking about it on the show for over a year.
Speaker 3: Right, well, I know a year year and a half,
and I you know, I hate to throw authors under
the bus, but this one's pretty much on him. I mean,
I keep telling him we're ready, you know, give us
your final edits. He sent me a batch yesterday. We'll
put those in today, and then he goes. But there's
more because you know, James is a perfectionist and he's
rerunning his code again and everything else. So when it
comes out, we'll be able to trust it for sure.
But I can't do it till I get it, you
know what I mean. He's he's he's the mastermind on
this one. You know, he's There ain't much editing I
do on his books. He's the mastermind. Until I get
his copy, that book won't be available, but I think
it will be available this year. Then we got a
book on Bakea which is it's an old Baccara book
from the eighteen hundreds that Stuart Ethier and Don Slessinger
wants to republish with some added information. Is one of
the first books on Bachara, so very scholarly, and people
who are really into gambling history will love this book.
That's about all who will love it. But you know,
we got that. Then we got a book on Roulette,
believe it or not, and it's called Roulette by the Numbers,
and we just don't have a book on Roulette. There's
all kinds of things going on with Roulette, you know
when when you're talking about physics and so forth. And
Stuart Ethier also was contributing to that book. And then
we've got another book that came to Don Slessinger from
a guy named Oliver Larson, on Blackshack. So there's our
I'm trying to get as many of those out as
I can by the end of the year. And where
I find the time, I don't know, but we'll get
a few.
Speaker 4: Of them up.
Speaker 2: I'm just curious about the Roulette book.
Speaker 4: Is that is there anything about advantage Roulette in the
Roulette book.
Speaker 2: Or it's it's more for like the recreational player.
Speaker 3: It's in the middle. I mean, there's enough for the
recreational player for sure to be able to read it
and understand what they're doing and you know, debunk systems
and you know, things of that nature. But yeah, there's
definitely discussion about all the things in Roulette. You know
when you when you talk about location and you talk
about uh dealer signature and you know our favorite topic,
Richard right, and you talk about you know, prediction and
those kinds of things and bias, and you know, there'll
be things about all of those things. It won't be
going deep into into that, like it's a book for
advantage players, but it will be covered.
Speaker 1: Will it be a name that we've heard of? You
we've had some authors on here talking about relig No.
Speaker 3: It's a new guy who names Jack Hayes h a Z.
He's been writing about Roulette for years. We looked at
his book. He's he's a mathematical and uh, you know,
we've gotten lots of books over the years that are
not mathematical, but this one was. And then we sent
it to stu ether and ether Is. People don't know
who Stewart Etherier is, but you know, the great Peter Griffin,
the blackjack and gambling mathematician once told me that he
thought Etheri was the best gambling mathematician in the world.
So and Etherier loves games like Bakara on the off games, craps, roulette.
We sent it through ste you know, Stu said good,
good stuff and added a few things to us, So
it'll be it'll be a good It'll be the kind
of roulette book that you probably want to have on
you know, if you're a gambling officionado, you're going to
want to have it on your shelf. Very good.
Speaker 2: So I guess we should talk about what's going on
in Vegas. Is at the end of the world.
Speaker 3: If you were, if you were to listen to the
mainstream media, you might think it was, you know, I do.
I don't know how many interviews I've done, you know,
from la to London in the past thirty to forty
five days, you know, asking me, is it all over
for Vegas? Is it through? You know, is Vegas done?
Because of the numbers have been bad for the casinos
in terms of visitation, although the gambling numbers aren't that bad,
you know, the gambling numbers are pretty flat, but it's
fewer people and everybody's smart enough to know that the
correlation there are fewer people that come to Vegas, the
worst is going to be for the city. So everybody
wants to know why, you know, what's the reason. And
it's twofold, you know, I tell him it's twofold. It's
it's and they don't really think about it this way.
Everybody talks about the gouge. You know, the Vegas is gouging.
Prices are up, that's really the hook of the whole thing.
But it's I think the gouge is what has you know,
put the put the knockout punch, you know, not that
there has been a knockout punch, but it certainly emphasized
the other problem, which is economic uncertainty right now. And
you know, you look at what's going on in the
United States and around the world with travel, in the
travel industry, and everyone's feeling it, and it's all because
of economic uncertainty tied to tariffs. And you know, you know, me,
especially Richard, I think pretty well that I'm not really political,
and but this is certainly tied to what Trump is
doing right now. And I'm not saying it's his fault
or anything else. I'm just saying this is the way
it is, and economic uncertainty is leading to fewer people
wanting to come here. Now you add to that the
prices they've been charging and what we call the gouge
on the strip, especially on the Strip, and people are
just they've they've had it. They're just tired of it.
They're tired of the ridiculous prices. You know, we hear
these stories the twenty six dollars Fiji water. You know,
some at Caesar's Fallas took a Fizi water out of
their mini bar and got a twenty six dollars tab
on that. And I mean I went to I was
on a comp but I went to the Horseshoe in
which used to be Ballet's so it's now the Horseshoe
Las Vegas, that's Center Strip. And they didn't have a steak.
I mean on that menu, I think they had. Their
smallest steak was some kind of a a six ounce ribot.
I mean, excuse me toil a for like sixty eight
bucks and everything else was in the eighties and nineties,
and you just look at that, say, you know, come on, man,
you know, I mean, nobody wants to pay this kind
of stuff. The sides were twenty dollars, the salads were
twenty dollars, and it's kind of like that everywhere, and
they've just pushed it and pushed it to the point
where people are getting tired. And you start reading, when
you start reading people's responses to podcasts about this, it's
very telling. I mean, we copied one in LVA where
a guy said, came to Vegas with my wife for
a concert and I felt like I was getting mugged
from the moment I stepped off there. So you know, people,
they they're just not they're just not digging it now.
On the other hand, the good things that come from
that are the deals are going to start to get better,
and we're starting to see that. You know, there's a
bunch of things that we're writing about in LV eight
and the room rates. We did our big room rates
serving in July, and room rates are definitely down. And
you know, the city is a yield management city and
and they're they're a reactionary and this is actually a good,
good thing for the customer.
Speaker 2: And there were I'm sorry, go ahead, man, Okay.
Speaker 1: Well after the pandemic, uh, when the casinos found out
they didn't have to give away as much as they
used to be given away, and they're still going to
be making profits.
Speaker 3: They seem to have shifted to a.
Speaker 1: Let's say what we can get away with attitudes, and
that's lasted five years now.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's this whole all began coming out of
the pandemic when they you know that term that I'm
so sick of hearing. There's two terms I cannot stand anymore.
And one of them was when you talk about passpot,
you know, the law for sports betting that was struck
down by the Supreme Court. Struck down. I mean, wasn't
it just like overturned or something, you know whatever. I'm
just so sick of hearing that term. But the other
one was pent up demand, and you would hear it constantly,
pent up demand, and it was true. And the people came,
you know, they came roaring out of the pandemic with
money that they had. Oh God, you know, God forbid
saves over a year. You know, people don't like to
save money. They like to get it in their hands
and spend it on something right right away. But they
didn't have anything to spend it on. So now they
got stimulus checks that they couldn't spend, and then they
had regular money coming in that they couldn't spend, and
they ran into the casinos like they'd never been in
one before, and it was just ridiculou us. And to
Bob's point, it went on and on and on, and
they kept saying, you know, what is of running a business?
You know, one of the key things is what the
market will bear. Right, one of the key economic ideas
of profit is you charge what the market will bear.
And the market was bearing it and bearing it and
bearing it again, and they just lost their minds on
the casino side and said, well, let's just keep raising
prices and we'll see how long we can get away
with it. And they finally got to the point where
people are said, you know, I kind of had enough.
You know, going into the pandemic, resort fees, which everybody hates,
resort fees were hovering around, you know, the high thirties,
and now you can hardly find one for under fifty bucks. Unbelievable.
Speaker 4: Now some of the places are waving resort fees right
now because business is so bad.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, Well, you know, to my points where we said,
you know, here here it comes. We actually in LVA,
we wrote a story in March. It was called the
Hamburger in Vegas, and that was the lead story in Kuponomy,
which is the one I write. And I said, Station
Casinos has come out with a five ninety nine cheeseburger
and fries good in all of their almost all of
their casinos, in their coffee shops twenty four to seven,
five ninety nine. Well, Station Casino used to be famous
for things like that. They were all about value, you know,
That's how they got to where they are. But in
the past decade too, you know, set and then since
the pandemic, Station Casinos doesn't give away anything to anyone
for any reason. I mean, they've joined the evil empire,
you know, with with Caesar's and MGM. And all of
a sudden we see this five ninety nine hamburger, and
I said, something's up, something's happening. And lo and behold,
here here it comes. All the bad numbers start coming
and places started reacting. So back to your question, Richard,
right off, the bat resorts World, which had been having
troubles anyway, resends the resort fees, you know, no more
resort fees one week later, no more parking fees, they say,
ostensibly throughout the summer, so we'd be coming to the
end of that going into September. And then Fountain Blue
did the same thing to their lesson. Then the Sahara
did that to their to the public in general, so
we do we are seeing these reactions that way. That's
why I say bad for the casinos, good for the public.
Speaker 4: So Fountain Blue and Resorts were in real trouble, and
so the Grand Downtown also right was in real trouble.
Are they still Is that getting worse? Are any of
them going to close?
Speaker 3: I don't think that. I don't think things are getting
necessarily better for let's say, Resorts and Fountain Blue because
but they're okay, because you know, they're just really well funded.
They've got a lot of money, and maybe they'll see
that what they did during the summer was good for them.
You know, I'm not privy to what their results were,
but maybe they're maybe they'll see that doing giving a
better deal will bring in more people and help things.
Fountain Blue also finally up their video poker game a
little bit. They had really pretty bad video poker there,
and their payoffs got a little bit better. Not great,
not dancer great, but you know, a little bit better.
Downtown Grand, on the other hand, doesn't have the deep pockets,
and there was there was a lot of word that
they were in big trouble. However, I'm hearing otherwise now,
and I've talked to some people that are pretty close
and they said, don't believe everything you hear, and I
sort of believe what I'm hearing. They said it was
pretty pretty bad in the beginning of the summer, and
then things have seemed to begin to turn around a
little bit, and they're like, no, we're not going anywhere.
And I'll tell you this. They just ran a video
poker tournament at the Downtown Grand and people were telling
me fifty to fifty that it even comes off, that
they'll they'll cancel it or they'll close. Before that came
off and it went fine and everybody got paid. And
so I don't think that any of them are on
the precipice of something like that happening. But then again,
when the pandemic started to hit high gear, I famously
told USA Today that Vegas would never close. So take
it with a grain of salt.
Speaker 7: What I have to say, Vegas closed two days later
after I told that publish in USA today, Vegas closed
for seventy two days.
Speaker 1: All right, Thank you Anthony Curtis. You've given food for
thought a lot of different subjects. And thank you Richard
and got and hit lots of royal flushes. Everybody, Good day,