Speaker 1: Good afternoon. You're listening to Gambling with an Edge.
Speaker 2: Now Here are your hosts, Bob.
Speaker 1: Dancer and Richard Munchkin.
Speaker 3: Good afternoon, Welcome to Gambling with an Edge. I'm Bob
Dancer and I'm Richard Munchkin. Today we're discussing Blair Rodman's
new book all about sports betting, The Definitive Guide. Blair
is here along with his two co authors, Anthony Curtis
and Frank b.
Speaker 2: Gentlemen, Welcome to Gambling with an Edge.
Speaker 4: Thanks Bob.
Speaker 2: Let's start with you, Blair. There are a lot of
books out there about betting on sports, some of them
are very good. What does this book offer that the
other ones don't?
Speaker 5: This book basically offers soup the nuts look at the
whole sports betting industry. So I go through everything from
the history of sports being right to are all, what
types of bets, where to bet, how to bet, and
I include a story I was with a majorly successful.
Speaker 6: Sports betting group in the nineties.
Speaker 5: I write a diary of that, which is something I
always wanted to write, which is why the book kind
of expanded from what Anthony originally wanted and then we
ended up with Once Frank came on board. We ended
up with an underd page chapter on strategy, which is
very I think illuminating for a lot of people. And
the basic target audience is people are new to sports
betting or relatively inexperienced and might not be getting the
results they want, and to help them figure out how
to find good bets, how to avoid bad bets, and
basically how to enjoy yourself betting sports without thinking you're
going to make a leaving at it.
Speaker 2: It's hard for me to know which question to ask
which of you? All three of you are all purpose
aps with winning knowledge about several games, include sports betting. Anthony,
you've been good friends with Blair for decades. How did
it happen? This book came about with three authors?
Speaker 4: Yes, this was.
Speaker 7: It's kind of interesting the genesis of this, I mean
five years ago this was. This was a different book
with a different author, and the original author I won't
mention his name. He's not really well known in the
sports betting circles anyway, but he you know, he was
able to write it. What I wanted was a how
to book. I wanted to buy how to I mean
like how to bet. I wanted a basic beginner's book.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 7: We saw what was going on with sports betting and
being legalized all over the United States and of course
the world, and I figured that a lot of people
would like to get involved and didn't even know how
to place a wager. So the original person I gave
the book too, he came back with a book on
handicapping with no way. I asked for ye and it's
not what, you know, what I wanted it to be.
So we made a settlement. I went to Blair and
Blair had written Obviously Killed Phil, which was a great
beginner's book for poker turned into players, and I thought
Blair would be with this sports.
Speaker 4: Betting background, he'd be the guy. And he was.
Speaker 7: And that's what there's a lot of that in this book.
If you've never made a sports bet, it will tell
you how to do it. I mean this, give this
one to your wife or your girlfriend. You don't no
offense on genders here. But it just got into more
and more, and as it got bigger and bigger, I said, well,
let's get into the strategy.
Speaker 4: And that's when we pulled Frank into it.
Speaker 7: And Lady Blair says, almost a book within a book
ninety seven pager called Ken You Win.
Speaker 4: But it began as a beginner's book. It remains a
beginner's book with a lot more on top of it.
Speaker 8: I was just going to say what I really appreciated
about the book. Just as when I was learning to
play blackjack and reading all the blackjack books, the ones
that stood out the most to me are the ones
that I enjoyed the most were the ones with the
stories about going out and playing and the actual, well
sort of day to day of being a professional blackjack player.
And so that's what I appreciated most, was your chronicling
of being part of that big team and going out
and actually making the bets and the stories that went
along with it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was a great ten years.
Speaker 5: And that's why it kind of expanded from what Anthony wanted,
because I always wanted to tell that story. It was
a great story. It was a great time in my life.
And there's a lot of good lessons in there also.
And so they think things we did in the nineties
are they still applicable? A lot of them are, some aren't.
You know, technology is really accelerating things. But from what
I see now, the way people are using AI and
the very best betters. It's just making a bigger gap
between the pros and the jos, and so they need something.
You know, if you just like the bet sports to
enjoy it and have a little excitement and have a
little wager on it. A lot of people are losing
too much money doing that. So we try to do,
without getting too far into the weeds of being professional,
is how to cut down the aus edge as much
as possible, possibly reverse it in certain situations, but let
you enjoy sports betting without having be a real economic
drag on your butt.
Speaker 4: Here's you know, I'll throw this in here too, just
for background.
Speaker 7: The team that Blair played on, you know that morphed
from the blackjack team that we played on. Now, originally
it was Blair and I played on Stanford Wong's original
tournament team, and when Wong broke that team up, we
went to another group that we.
Speaker 4: Had met along the way. A guy named Alan Brown
ran it, and we played that.
Speaker 7: As a group for probably three or four years, and
then everybody kind of split up there and Blair and
Alan and some others went into the sports by things.
So it all came you know, this this long trip
from black Tack into sports.
Speaker 2: So, Frank, you've been on our show numerous times, sometimes
with Anthony, sometimes not, and the subject you've spoken about
to our audience most frequently have been sports betting, tournaments,
prop bets, and the Mattress mac Hedge. Not surprisingly, in
this book you talk about tournaments, prop bets, and the
Mattress mac Hedge, among many other things. What other topics
did you write about?
Speaker 1: Okay, So, first of all, the two out of those
three topics Anthony covered he covered his chapter. Our portions
were primarily with contests, tournament strategy, which is very important,
and the Mattress Max stuff. Anthony took care of that.
I chimed in when it came to the props along
with Blair. So I kind of anything that's in the
book I kind of added to try to elaborate on
and take it, maybe take it to the next level.
But you know, so two out of three of those
were Anthony's area that he did the bulk of the work.
So but the prop bet thing, Yeah, that's something that
a lot of people are interested in, and it's grown
a lot over the course of the like twenty years.
I would say that I've been betting props. It's probably
been a little longer that time flies, but prop betters
used to be considered a real pariah to the sports books.
You were really frowned upon and reconsidered the least desirable
type of customer because you were like picking them apart
on stuff that they didn't really have a handle on
how to make lines, and you got limited fast. And
you know, they always tried to tell you, hey, if
you want to keep this account, you need to give
us at least fifty percent of your action has to
be on sides and total. Stop all this prop stuff.
You're going to lose your account and so, but that's
not the case anymore. As time marched on, and especially
once it became legal to bet on sports in America,
props became more and more accept it. Okay, now you
can't get down as much as you can on side
in the totals, that's still the case. But when you
have an ROI that's double or triple that of what
you can achieve on sides and totals, it's a very
attractive area to get into. So I do cover some
prop stuff, and like Blair pointed out, this is an
introductory trying to get you heading in the right path
on all elements of sports betting. So it's an introductory,
uh treatment of prop betting, but it doesn't go all
that deep, uh to where you start getting really specific
and read really detailed about a strategy.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 7: All add to that, too, is that everything that was
in this book, the three of us, except for things
that were personal like blair story and things like that,
the three of us, you know, went over together.
Speaker 4: We talked about it. You know, do we want this,
do we want that she re embellish somewhere else? You know? Additionally,
what else do we want to do?
Speaker 7: When it got really specific where Frank was coming in
with information that sent of a s other part in
the book is highlighted in a way that you know
that spring talking and staying with me. In a couple
of areas, the majority of it is Blair is Blair's book.
Speaker 4: He's a lead author.
Speaker 7: I mean he wrote, you know, eighty percent of eighty
five percent of but be thus everything all of us
together said, yeah, that's good, we all read it. We
all corrected one another, so went through all three of
us in the process.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there were some areas you know, we wanted to
focus on that people get in trouble with parlays and
same game parlays being a primary one, so we cover
those pretty pretty in depth and basically a lot of stuff.
We talked about our warnings to people that you know,
these are bad things to do, bad bests, you should
avoid these. We talked about teasers, but not as much
because there's not that many people who are target audience
in his book that have teasers with decent prices. You know,
the best price you can get in America is minus
one twenty on it on a two teamer, Yeah, sixteen
sixteen two teamer or six point sorry to teamer, and
you know that's barely Maybe you can find some good things,
but that's only at DraftKings. As far as I see
in Vegas, it's dollars thirty dollars, thirty five dollars forty.
They're just not playable. So we didn't go heavily into
the math on teasers, but we do give some basics
if you want to play them and you know how
to just bullet points on what to do with teasers.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I really liked about the
book were the numerous QR codes. More than one of
these codes, for example, directing the reader to analysis by
Captain Jack Andrews, who has written expertly about a number
of sports betting subject since he covered the subject, well,
why reinvent the wheel now? I haven't seen QR code
uses frequently in any other book. Is this just that
I haven't read the right books, or is this brand new?
Speaker 7: Well, I guess that's for me as a publisher. Yeah,
this is a new way. Are very you know, everybody's
the phones are handy. Everybody's so good with their phones
that they can click on to it and get into
something that you don't have to rehash in those pages.
And we started it with really the first one we
did it with was the twenty first Century Card.
Speaker 4: Counter, where in the.
Speaker 7: Second edition of that book we realized that we could
use QR codes in a lot of different places rather
than putting URLs in the book that people have to
go to the computer or phones to put in, and
they could just click with their phone. So twenty per
Century Card Counter we did it worked real well. Blair's
we did even more. All about Sports Betting has a
lot of QR codes, leading to a lot of additional studies.
So I mean, it's a reference guy. What we call
it the definitive guy is because it's such a reference
guy to all great things, so many great things that
have been written by other people.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I like lots of articles that are interesting, and I
like the Captain Jack a lot because he's brilliant and unobated.
I gave a really good right up because I think
if you're beginning in sports betting, you should soak up
everything they have to teach you.
Speaker 6: He's he's really amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 8: The other good thing about QR codes is that as
things change, things get updated. So you're going to a
site where it may be more relevant, you know, two
years from now, depending on the site, whether it's been
updated or not. You know what I mean, Because like,
for example, you're pointing out about the teasers, you know, well,
you you may go somewhere and find out that, oh,
the prices have gotten even worse or whatever.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the q the QR codes, just as technology gets
better and people get more used to it, especially people
all of our age and our generation, you know, I mean,
we're even all learning to use it now.
Speaker 4: Now it makes sense to us. We used to look
at it and go that's all that's quickly.
Speaker 7: South, you know, and now we know what we're supposed
to do with it, and we can we can take
ourselves to areas of additional learning that we might not
have included in the book, and now we can do such.
So Yeah, from a publishing standpoint, the QR codes are
really really strong, and we're going to keep making use
of them in our products.
Speaker 6: Going four, Frank, I see you shaking your head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm getting the live reports from people around town.
What's going on.
Speaker 8: We should at least have mentioned you're in the middle
of a war zone in Mexico right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been five hours now, not even a little
were coming up on. Five hours ago, the Mexican military
here I live in Puerto Ayerta in the Mexican military
just outside of town apprehended some guy. It's the leader
of the Jalisco cartel, which is the state of Livan.
They tried to apprehend them. They end up killing him
in the process, and it took about thirty minutes before
the cartel started retaliating and they're burning it. They're literally
burning the city down right now. As I'm sitting here,
I'm reading like they just burnt down this building. They
just you know, did this. This taxi driver just got shot.
You know, it's I'm sure you go because this will
be uh produced and then put out a few days
for now. You guys all know what I'm talking about
by by the time that you hear this. But in
Porto Bayarda, we are on complete lockdown and uh the
city is literally burning down around me. We have four
hundred cars on vehicles on fire. They're burning every bus
because they don't want anybody leaving the area. And this
is just our retaliation because the cartel is you know,
they're they're they're gonna they're trying to make a point
right here, and their point is they're gonna burn this
city down. So we'll see what happens tonight. But yeah,
it's not a good situation.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Airports are closed here in in Guadalajara, and uh, the
police are dealing with an issue. It's almost like it
was a created distraction. They also burned the prison down
nearby and thereby all the inmates got out and now
have all the prison guards weapons and they're making their
way towards that. So that's you know, it's not too
hard to get a vehicle we're talking about ten miles out,
so it's not too hard to get a vehicle if
you have a weapon. So we're bracing for a pretty
rough night here. So that's why Bob said, I'm shaking
my head. It's because I'm looking at the phone of
people are telling me all this bad stuff that's happening
by the minute.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the world's crazy.
Speaker 5: Another thing we talked about there is touts, and I
think that's an important.
Speaker 6: Warning for people speaking of evil entities.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we go the you know, I go into
that affairly in depth, and it's just such an easy
trap to fall into. And you know, you look at
all these things, I mean, on every TV show, every
sports show, it's linked to fan duel or partners with
draft kings, ever, and you have people giving you picks,
and if you spend your life following these people's picks,
you're going to go grow fast.
Speaker 6: So you just have to be careful about that. It's
a trap. A lot of people fall into that trap.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So since you're on the subject that I'm almost
equally against is cartels and touts. Touts, really, the chapter
that Blair wrote on touts really needs to be paid
attention to and really could have gone a little even
further because so much misinformation is out there these days,
being put out by touts and other actually other people
that are just out there creating content as sports advisors. Okay,
they really don't have a grasp on the fundamentals of
sports betting, and all of us here understand that, you know,
the most important thing that the foundation of any winning
strategy is your is your basic strategy. You have to
know the game, the mechanics of the game, how it works,
the house that you're up against, and how to climb
that hill to break even and then hopefully get you
over the top. Touchs ignore all that sort of a
lot of these sports and these guys you see on
the internet on YouTube and Twitter and all that, they
they don't care about that, and if you start to
engage in a conversation about that, it quickly becomes a
parent that they don't know what they're talking about. So,
you know, it's it's it's it's it's not something where
it's just like a casual thing like, oh, hey, this
guy has an opinion. You really have to steer yourself
away from all this bad information and build your foundation
from the ground up, and that's what a lot of
this book is about, is about building your foundation from
the ground up and avoiding the early mistakes that most
gamblers make whenever they enter any game and try to
get you know, and try to figure out if they
can beat it. If you start out with bad ideas
and flawed strategies, you are you're not going to get anywhere.
And so that that's you know, avoiding mistakes and building
a foundation a basic strategy is a lot of what
the book's about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there are a lot of these kids get trapped
is with influencers. This is you know, they see this
is prime territory and there's lots of them out there,
and you know, it kind of started with uh Vegas Dave.
You know, he was kind of an influence who he's
always on social media and he made tons of money
and didn't make money for anybody but himself. And that's
what these guys are doing. So the influencer thing is
so so everywhere now with these younger generations.
Speaker 6: You really need to be careful with that.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 7: There's almost four hundred pages in the book and we
hit a lot of different things. I mean, we talked,
we can't talk a lot about it because it's just beginning,
but you know, prediction markets and things like that, the
exchanges and where they're going. But there's a lot of
fundamental stuff in here. Blair, you can probably speak to this.
You know, when when we decided to do the strategy section,
we explained that, you know, what are basically the two
methods bottom up and top down sports betting, And you know,
I haven't seen that in a lot of different place
with Blurry you can.
Speaker 4: You don't go further with that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you know, when we're with my group,
I had two guys that were geniuses, that were you know,
bottom up guys that would the programmers and the modelers
they call them now, and we put out a line
and when it was different than the casino, we bet,
and that's what basically handicappers do. But you know, without
those guys, I just went the other way and.
Speaker 6: Do more top down stuff. I'm not a modeler. There
are people that are.
Speaker 5: But modeling is a tricky thing because there's a lot
of people doing it that I know.
Speaker 6: They're a lot smarter than me.
Speaker 5: So if you think you can just get in and
do basic modeling and find an edge, it's not gonna work.
Speaker 6: So you have to be careful with that too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when it comes to models, model is as good
as the information that that fed into it. So there
are there's this there's this misconception that if you got
a model, you must be winning. No, that's not the case.
I've seen terrible models. I've seen models that spit out
stuff that you wouldn't believe. You go it just with
a cursory familiarity with the subject. That can't possibly be right.
You're doing something wrong. So just because you have a
model doesn't mean you've all of a sudden got the
keys to the kingdom to make money.
Speaker 5: Yeah. One reason I put the story of a group
in there is to show people what it takes to
really be a long term significant winner. You know, we
worked seven days a week, sixteen hours a day for
you know, eight months a year, and at the end
it got to where we had a tough time beating
it anyway, and so why the group broke up. So
to think that you can just watch games or have
opinions or read you know, the internet and think you're
going to get an edge, you're not. And it's a
real trap for people and I try to make that
plane to people that for ninety eight percent at least
to the people you should be doing for entertainment, and
doing it in a way that makes you enhances your
experience rooting for your team or rooting for woevery bet
on and not thinking that you're going to make it
living on it, because almost in every case you're not.
Speaker 1: Twenty plus years ago, it was much easier to make
a living bottom up, you know, not as as time
went on and information became more readily available, all of
a sudden things became the market became more efficient, and
and and starting beginning with a top down approach, you know,
which is basically like we've been saying, basic strategy, it's
it's it's it became more important to start your education
that way, you know, foundationally with a top down approach,
and then you could add the handicapping aspen or the
bottom of where we want to say it. So, so
that's that's why it's important to uh, you know, to
to not get too far ahead of yourself with with
your your you know, the way you go about trying
to beat sports betting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when we started, we started in nineteen ninety, there
was no Internet, there was barely cell phones. You know,
we did stuff with payphones and then walkie talkies and
we found a way. I explained this in the book
and that it was brilliant that Alan Brown came with
the idea, let's have a clipping service in every city
where there's an NBA team, because we started with the
NBA and we got sports pages every morning, like five
in the morning. We got injuries, we got game plans,
we got everything. No one else had it. And you know,
the newspapers started coming on line around ninety four, and
we hated it because now people are having the information
that we had that no one else did. And it
took a couple of years for it to really get
to where everyone had the information we had that no
one else had for years, and it was a huge
advantage for us.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that that news that that distributor, that
shop on Paradise that used to sell the out of
time newspapers. No, it was over there by Firefly, remember that, Anthony. Yeah, Yeah,
So that was a very popular spot. The newspapers were like,
I guess, come off the airplane. They would end up
there and guys would go there and they get all
the newspapers from around the country to get the sports section.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think going back, going back to the QUO
R codes where they've become very important in this is
these days you've got to use a lot of the
the calculators and the tools that are out there for
sports petting, and we link to those. This book links
to those, those that are unabated, those are at other areas.
UH talks about where you can find line services and
how to do that.
Speaker 4: These are all the things you need. These are the
tools you need to beat the game. These days.
Speaker 7: Sports is a beatable game. Of course, that's a market.
Markets are beatable. But to do it right and to
do it efficiently, you've got to use all these great
tools and calculators that are out there now and relate
to a bunch of them. There's a ton of them,
and I think that's one of the for those who
who want to aspire to be very good at this,
This is one of the best things are going to
get out of it.
Speaker 5: And we also have a lot of references to if
you want to further your education, books that I've used
and that you guys know about, and other sources that
can help you improve.
Speaker 6: Maybe beyond what we teach you in this book.
Speaker 5: But you know, we teach you enough, like I said,
to help you cut down the house edge and where
you go from there up to you.
Speaker 2: Now, the sports betting industry is going to be different
in ten years than it is today. We don't know
how it's going to be different, but we do not. Well,
do you expect to have second editions and third editions
or Blair?
Speaker 1: Are you retiring? And this is it?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 5: The one thing we really didn't get into heavily. I
covered it but not depth was the prediction markets and
the sweep set betting. It's just the legal landscape is
changing so quickly that it's hard to keep up with,
and we finally just had to publish. But a lot
of the stuff we talk about is also you know,
it is applicable to prediction markets, your basic strategy and
all the other things you do. It's just a different
miliu which may or may not be here in six months.
Speaker 4: Who knows.
Speaker 7: One thing we did we went with small print run
and we went on a small prim run run, so
we can we do that a lot now.
Speaker 4: You know, that's the strategy of these days.
Speaker 7: When you do a book with technical aspects to make
sure you can fix any problems that might be in there,
but also to to to stay up on top of
what's going on and changing. So we'll we'll continue to
update this book as we put it into additional printings.
And then of course there's las Latest advisor dot com
where Blair will hang out. We're putting together like a
chat room for him for people who read the book
and want to come back and ask questions and so forth.
Speaker 8: I'm kind of amazed at you know, now they're calling
them prediction markets instead of betting exchanges, and the uh,
you know, the wrap on that was always that it
was so difficult for Americans to understand how to use them.
And I'm pretty amazed at how popular Calshi has become
so quickly. There didn't seem to be the same hurdle
for people to understand how to get in there and
start making bets.
Speaker 4: Well he didn't. Didn't they disguise them?
Speaker 7: I mean, didn't they disguise this and make them look
a lot like regular sports book bets? I think, I
mean that was That's a big part of it to
begin with, Like I mean, yeah, you know, we don't
have access to it, so I don't know, but that's
what I've been told.
Speaker 5: Betting exchange is the ones that are out there are a
little bit clunky and it does take some learning to
figure out to use them.
Speaker 6: And I haven't done much with the exchanges because they're basically.
Speaker 5: They were legal air and then not. Now they are.
But it doesn't give you any kind of menu that
compares to some of the sports books.
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't that you can do there. Yeah, no
it doesn't. It doesn't give the same menu. But that
is This is where you're going to start to see
a separation between you know, the top fifty percent of
sports baters as far as education goes in the bottom,
you know, the more advanced sports braders are going to
gravitate towards whatever you want to call them, prediction markets exchanges.
Prediction market is just another term, I guess you could
say for wisdom of the crowd. This is what these are.
These are these these are things where that we're there,
you're putting up offers, they're being accepted by other other players.
It's not a book posting anything. They're just dragging a
commission and it's it's gonna be the way of the future.
But what's gonna be. It's gonna attract the sharper guys,
because yes they are, I guess you could say quickly
if they become sharper markets, But they also have smaller
or tighter straddles, And that's what's attracting the smart better.
The conventional sports books, like your DraftKings and fans, they're
fine with the sharper betters going there. They don't really care,
they don't really want them anyway. So you're gonna start
to even more separation between the squares playing at DraftKings
and the sharp guys playing at wherever cal sheet and
and and that's that's gonna be. That's gonna be the
evolution of this, you know, because it is a little
more difficult to understand the mechanics of betting at an exchange.
It is a little more work to get into the
book because you don't have like bonus and stuff dragging
you in. So yeah, I think that's the way it's
gonna go. In the next couple of years, you're gonna
see all of a sudden the square books are become
more square, and then the rest of them, the rest
of the crowd is going to start going towards better value,
and that would be with your inter exchanges, your prediction markets.
Speaker 4: But for the average better though, the average participants.
Speaker 7: They're not going to be put putting up authors, I
mean offwards, they're not going to be seating markets and
putting up upers. It's just yes and yes and no
for them, right, I mean, they go look at it
and say yes, yes or no on these propositions, in
these totals, in these in these.
Speaker 4: Sides, which makes it very easy. It just looks like
a regular sportsman as far as I understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they're not getting all the perks that they get.
They're not getting all these boosts and these things and
these same game parlays and there's money bet on the thing,
and that, you know, all these little things that draw
in the squares or the recreational players. They're still going
to be. That's going to be all the territory of
fandel and Caesars and all that you know there and there,
and that that's powerful that keeps you retained. You know, say,
hey man, you know the one time two years ago
when I turned the toothpick into a lobberyard on some
six leg same game parlay that they have a memory
for that. You know, I can't do that at Calshi,
I can't do that, you know at Poly Yeah, I
mean that. I just think that's I just think that's
going to be the divide. That's the way things are
going to go. That's the way it's going to ball.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: And they almost don't want their their points, right, I'm
getting my Caesar's Points or my MGM points or whatever.
Speaker 5: Right, yep, yep, all that you know I use, Like
Stations has a boost every day I use them, and
most of the time they're positive bets.
Speaker 6: You can still get a boost.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Stations but yeah, I get bo I haven't
worn that out. But we cover how to use bonuses
and you know, the best way to bet, you know,
uh use them to your advantage and just basic things
to help you build your bank roll. And I think
that's very important for a lot of people because because
a lot of people are sucked into these uh sports
books like getting these offers for bonus bets. You know,
they could used to call them free bets, but they're
not really free bets. But they're also used, they are usable,
and they can be profitable.
Speaker 6: Another thing I.
Speaker 5: Talk about, which I think is important is the betting
splits that everybody seems the law. You know, every show
you watch they're talking about the betting splits, but they're
not really accurate because you don't know when they were
bat who bet them. If you know, if you use
the betting splits from books in you know, DraftKings are
FanDuel while you're getting predominantly the money by bad betters
because the good better has been thrown out.
Speaker 6: So it's just and you don't know what the numbers
are bet up. They're basically useless.
Speaker 5: And if you think about it, are sportsport's going to
really point you to good bets?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 8: No, it just encourages people to make more bets because
they find out that seventy percent of the money is
on the bulls tonight or whatever.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's just I notice.
Speaker 8: On ESPN they love to just throw out statistics that
mean absolutely nothing, you know, like the last six times
these guys played on a Friday, they you know, want
nor lost or whatever is if.
Speaker 5: That means anything, right, And that's what half sharp betters do.
Speaker 6: Who are the books bread and butter?
Speaker 5: If you think you know things but you don't really
you're you're gonna you're gonna have a problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there's a lot of people out there that
know just enough. And it's the same thing in blackjack.
I mean it goes across allthing with blackjack's a good
example for a lot of things. But there's a lot
of people out there they know just enough to get
themselves in trouble to where they can bet with They
start to bet with confidence because they think they know
more than they do. There's a saying if you can
if you could buy a person for what they're worth
and sell them for what they think they're worth, you'd
be a millionaire. And that's it goes a lot with
gambling information and gambling knowledge. That's kind of true when
it comes to gambling knowledge.
Speaker 5: And then a lot of people don't really have any
clue how variance works and how extreme it can be.
You know, you get somebody the worst the worst thing
that happened you start gambling is you go on a
winning street.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's another treble.
Speaker 4: Lot of people to hate it.
Speaker 6: That's what they a lot of people fall into.
Speaker 8: Is they even guys who think they're sharp or like
poker players. This happens to as well, right where they
start winning for a while and suddenly they think they
have an edge when it's just variants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll tell you what this is something I've repeated
a number of times over the years. But there I
started out running good. Okay, when I when I started
playing and I started most people know I started playing blackjack,
I started running good, and then that was all it took,
and then I was off the races. But there's a
lot of really really good players, and I know because
I've interacted with them. I go, you would be really
good at this. And then they ran bad right out
of the gate, and then they gave it up. They
didn't pursue it. They would have been really good advantage players,
really just as good as any of us who are
doing it now. But what stopped them from doing it.
They ran bad out of the gate, and they gave
it up and they went somewhere else. Some of the best,
literally some of the best gamplers I know, do not
gamble because they started out bad. But I know for
a fact they would have been super ed it. It
happened to me very it happened to me. I lost
counting cards for one hundred and sixty seven hours and
I quit And it was only because a good friend
of mine joined another blackjack team. They started making a
lot of money and he came to me and he goes,
you got to give it another shot, you know, just
try it.
Speaker 6: You know you ran bad.
Speaker 8: I was like, how can you run bad for one
hundred and sixty seven hours? But you know, anyway, it
was because of him, you know that I gave it
another shot and I started winning.
Speaker 4: And with your ask a Bob Dancer about that, did
you ever run bad?
Speaker 1: Ever?
Speaker 4: In your lifeblog.
Speaker 2: Had six months royalist streaks where my worst six months
was one hundred and eighty thousand in the soup. But yeah,
but I've had my lucky paids.
Speaker 7: I remember when I was entering your book million dollar Blackjack,
he'd get down to the last one boon it hit
a gianted roy like, oh he did it. Yeah, I
was getting that again.
Speaker 1: But that that is like another and this isn't even
more difficult hurdle to get over for the beginning. Better
is understanding variant and how it applies to the gambling
endeavor that you're getting involved with. And it will it will,
it will get in the way and limit you in
so many ways, including like you'll be unwilling to get
involved in something. You'll be unwilling to make a certain
bet because you just don't like the variance of it.
I could tell stories for hours about guys that they
should have been participating in something, that he should have
been making a bet in a certain way, and they
backed off because they just didn't like the variants involved
in it. They just they were just shining with no variances.
It's not like they couldn't handle it. It's like I
don't like to do it. And we see it in
sports betting. A lot of guys, you know, all the
way down to like the you see it all the time,
guys that try to mitigate by saying like I like
this UFC guy at minus two seventy, but I don't
lay two seventy on anything I don't like, so parlay
it with this other thing, and all of a sudden,
I guess to them, the variant disappears. No, what it
does is you're you're just you're just masking it by
including it in some kind of parlay. But it's still there.
You're still laying the same price. But people have a
real difficult time handling variants, especially when it comes to
risking a lot to win a little.
Speaker 8: Well, the other thing that I see is it and
I see this with sports betters, but even more so
with slot machine players, is so many of them are
I'm I'm ninety nine percent sure, so many of them
are grossly over betting their bankroll, and you know, they
just have no idea how how bad they can run,
you know, especially when they're in the slot area where
they're playing games with huge variants.
Speaker 1: You're talking about advantage slot players.
Speaker 8: Well they yeah, they're advantage slot players, but they don't
have any concept of of you know, bank roll management.
Speaker 1: I think there's that that's more of a case of
them just being you know, they have a little.
Speaker 9: Bit of a d john at them that they want
to hit that pig, they want to hit that big jackpot,
and you know, but there's but I see it almost
more so in the other direction, in that they have
the ability and the bank roll to tackle other things
on slots where a lot of the a lot of
the payback is wrapped up in something a rare occurrence,
and they don't like going after it because once you
get into advantage slots you're used to winning, or you
can get accustomed to winning like almost every day because
you're playing.
Speaker 1: You're playing those quick hitters, you know, boom boom, gonna
get in and get out and they shy away. I
don't like to play that one.
Speaker 4: I never went under.
Speaker 1: Well, no, it's not that you it's not so much
that you never win on it. It's that you don't
like the variants associated with the positive, positive expectation of
that one. That one is more top have. You don't
like that one. It's not that it's not worth your time.
It's just that you don't like the variants, and so
you're gonna cut You're gonna chop off your your ability
to earn. At that point, I'm not going to tackle
that one because I don't like the variants involved it.
And then you end up competing with all the other
guys that are running around trying to do all the
quick hitters. You know.
Speaker 5: I looked at I was a poker player for years
and see the you know, the biggest, the biggest games
with Doyle and chip Reeze and playing in it, and
you see these guys playing with them, and it doesn't
mean they were the best players. It just means they've
run well and then they end up running bad. They
borrow they all over millions of dollars, and you know,
it doesn't mean they're the best players in the world.
Speaker 1: I know, some of those guys.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well yeah, you look at after the money Maker,
you know, the years after Moneymaker in two thousand and four, five, six, seven,
the rock stars of.
Speaker 6: Poker, you know, most of them are broke or intermittently broke.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's tough to beat poker, especially you know with
in the old days there was so much bad stuff
going on, but now still it's TRD and they're all
playing above their bank.
Speaker 1: It's amazing some of those guys that got like they
got like sweetheart deals from the poker sites and they're
getting staked and they still end up down there. They
still at a bowl with money. It's amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it's tough to win.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you're playing that high, you're probably if
you're playing three and six hundred, you know, limit poker,
you should probably be playing thirty sixty with the bankroll
you have. So the guys that run lucky get there
and the other guys are out in the street begging
for money, you're begging for a stake.
Speaker 4: Another area I want.
Speaker 5: To get into is offshore bit offshore sports books because
there are a lot of guys that will run into
somebody and say, hey, you want to bet on sports.
You know, here's a number, go to this website, here's
your bash or whatever, and a lot of people think
it's legal, which it absolutely isn't, and there are traps
in there. You know, the agent, it's most likely the bookie,
and if you don't trust the guys that you get
in bed with, there's a good chance you could have
some problems.
Speaker 6: So there's a pretty big section.
Speaker 5: On offshore and how it works, you know, how it
came about, and how to be careful with it because
it's another warning. It's just a lot of people have
gotten in trouble betting with people or you know who
were agents that they thought the book was standing good
for it and they're not anymore.
Speaker 6: They used to in the old days, but they don't anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a much more violatile area to be involved.
Ninety five percent of my betting is offshore because of
where I live, but it has become more difficult. You
didn't like Blair said you got to be more selective
in who you're doing business with, especially you know, when
especially when it comes to credit, but also with post up.
I mean, I'm in a jam with a couple places
right now post up and it doesn't look good. You know,
the prospects of getting paid does not look good. So
you've got to be you got to be real. Uh,
you got to stay on top of your account, you know.
I recommend this. I wish I had include to this
in the book too as well, but I recommend this
to anybody. When you get involved with with any type
of sports betting where you it's a credit thing where
you know you're gonna owe me and we're working our work.
Do not get so comfortable so that you you just like,
let the let the figure ride. You know, are you're
up three thousand and say all right, just let it ride,
We'll carry it to next week. Do that before that
and you have a good week. Now a sudden it's
seven thousand, there's gonna be there's gonna come a number
where the guy on the other end of it says,
do is it really worth it for me to pay
this guy versus just cutting them loose? And just you know,
I'll just I'll just take the hit to my reputation
or whatever however they rationalize it. There's there's a lot
of that. And I mean, I've been stiffed more times
than I can count these days, and and almost always
the mistake was I did collect small amounts I thought
it was it was it was, you know, too much
of a hass. Don't worry about it. We'll let it
go till next week. And I encourage everybody when you're
starting out and you're making these arrangements that are on credit,
just collect. Settle up every week, no matter no matter
what it is. Kind of make it a habit, kind
of establish it is your basic strategy for for minimum
your the chance that you get stiff, just just settled,
no matter how much of a pain is. Ninety dollars
two hundred, just say, listen, this is just the way
I do it. Settle every week, and you can trust me.
You'll thank me later. You'll you won't know to thank
me elier because you'll be getting paid, you won't you
won't get that stiff. But it, trust me, it's the
it's the best way to go, even though it's a
little more work.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well yeah, you're talking. You're talking about paper heads
or credit books or whatever. But but or on the same.
Speaker 1: Also post ups. When you start to let things run up,
you know, all of a sudden, the post up can
be difficult to collect from. Yeah, more difficult with the
five figure more. It could be more difficult for you
with the with the with the low five figure balance
than it is for the guy that just wants twelve
hundred dollars. That guy's getting paid. You might catch any
of a whole laundry list of excuses why you got
to wait while you get what you have to do
to puy. I'm just saying, just just collect. Don't let
any balance get out of hand. If you don't know
exactly who you're dealing with, you to have complete trust
in it.
Speaker 8: We back in the you know, Internet boom days, you know,
you never knew about these places that you're playing off shore,
And we made it a policy to make a small
as soon as we opened an account and gave it
any play at all, we would make a small withdrawal
just to see what coops and shenanigans they were going
to make you jump through. The first time you tried
to make withdrawal and before we put any serious money
in there and got involved, we wanted to just make
sure that that process had been gone through and that
there was no trouble making withdrawal.
Speaker 9: Ye.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other side of that coin is there's a lot
of guys I was in that group where I thought
I mistaken that if if you didn't ask for withdrawal,
they wouldn't notice that you're winning. You know, It's like
you know so, but then you know that leads you
right down the wrong path. Now you're going to run
up a balance on I mean I ran up a
balance on a couple of places that was that was
ridiculous compared to what everybody else would do. And sometimes
it turned out good and sometimes they're not so good.
But yeah, like I say, I definitely think your your
path was the more correct one if you want you
want to minimize like big damage because you don't really
ever get stiff for a small a one. You get
stiff for a bigami. That's that's always how it ends up.
Speaker 4: Interesting.
Speaker 6: Do you have any more questions?
Speaker 2: No? But along the same line within the sports betting
is I play at Caesar's Sports Book, not because I
use what they call reward credits when you when you gamble,
you get reward credits, and if you use them in
the sports book, you can basically cash them at ninety
five percent if you're not very knowledgeable, but it's fifty
percent if you cash them at the turn them into
free play, or if you don't cash them at all,
then the hosts take them away for you instead of
giving you comps. So since I play, I get reward credits,
and so my balance is always going up. It basically
can't go down, and so I can't let it go
too high, so I have a when I get to
two thousand, I clear it out. So clearing it out
every two thousand dollars is doesn't cause any anxiety, and
because it's always going to go up the way I bet,
because I'm only betting with reward credits rather than real money,
and they give me bonuses, so like I have to win.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Well, I think that's a good tip for people who
didn't know that that you can use your reward credits
for sports bets at full value. So good that alone
was worth the price of this episode.
Speaker 1: Where have you heard? Okay, so you're so you're not
letting your run up too high? You've heard of people
with slot cards that let their comps roll up a
bunch and their points roll up a bunch, and then
they get cut off by the casino. So what's all
the spin is? Is what I was talking about earlier,
but always collecting those small amounts, you know, cash out
your card on a regular basis, use your comps, don't
save them for a lot of people like I used
to do, like all these mistakes I used to do,
we save them for a rainy day, and all of
a sudden, the casino goes from loving you to hating you,
and then you you get in the worst case scenario,
you get them all wiped out. You know, I mean
I've heard, I mean, I don't know what the biggest
amount you've ever heard, but I've heard like millions of
points at station getting wiped out and winded. Similar stuff
with comps, you know, like thousands of dollars. No, you're you,
You've you've gone from this category to that category.
Speaker 2: Sorry, right, Yeah, well I currently have five thousand dollars
of food comps at for queens. Cannot hear me not
eating cubos often enough to use them all?
Speaker 1: If we're going to Hugo cellar.
Speaker 2: So we take relatives and out of town there regularly.
Speaker 1: So now everybody's going to run into Four Queens and
see what Bob's playing to rack that up.
Speaker 2: That's the IP move ah for video poker. The Four Queens.
Now the only playable video poker game is fifty cents
in lower single line. They have a slot machines.
Speaker 10: Yeah sure it is, Yeah, okay, fifty cents checks ninety
six checks is their best video poker game. They have
some progressives, but if you're going to build up your thing,
he got to learn a little bit about slots. Anyway,
I thank all of you gentlemen for coming today. It's
been very informative, So thank you Blair, Anthony, Frank, thank
you Richard. Go out and hit lots of royal blushes everybody.
Speaker 4: Free audio post production
Speaker 1: Biophonic dot com.