Speaker 1: Good afternoon. You're listening to Gambling with an Edge.
Speaker 2: Now Here are your hosts.
Speaker 1: Bob Dancer and Richard Munchkin.
Speaker 3: Good afternoon, Welcome to Gambling with an Edge, John, Bob.
Speaker 4: Dancer, and I'm Richard Munchkin.
Speaker 3: Today we're speaking with Antonino de Rosa, known as AUNT,
a sports better who's work starting out on the other
side of the street, working for the biggest sports book
in the world.
Speaker 2: Aunt.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Gambling with an Edge.
Speaker 2: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Before you started on either side of the sports betting world,
you were a magic the gathering player. When was this?
Speaker 2: I started playing magic in high school, but I became
a magic professional in nineteen ninety nine and I played
magic professionally for five or six years.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Money is in professional magic.
Speaker 2: Not much. I think my best year I made one
hundred and ten grand.
Speaker 4: Oh that's a lot. It's professional just players often make.
Speaker 2: But most of the times, you know, like a good
year would be anywhere from forty to sixty back then.
The reason why some people choose that profession is not
really from the money you win at tournaments. Just like
an how any discipline you can make extra money by
writing articles. You can make extra money from sports sponsorships.
You know. It's if you're a single dude and you're
in college, it's a great gig, you know. But if
you want to start a family or have aspirations, you know,
it's it's pretty tough.
Speaker 1: What skills do Successful magic players.
Speaker 3: Need to have.
Speaker 2: Recognizing patterns mostly, but also trying to think. So magic
is kind of like kind of like chess, but with
with imperfect information. So so you know, you have a
deck of cards, and you can make assumptions on what
kind of cards they have in their deck, So you
have to you have to really make decisions based on
what is the chance that he has that card in
his hand or even in his deck. So so you
kind of just you kind of want to like, you know,
you need the skills of like trying to figure out
like where your opponent might be up to, and so
you want to always think a few turns ahead. Unlike
chess and magic, every turn could be so drastically different
that you can really plan too too many turns ahead.
But you know, you can plan two or three turns ahead,
you know, pretty easily. The funnest part of magic, which is,
you know some like the part that nobody talks about
is not really the well at least the part I
enjoyed wasn't. It wasn't really the game. It was the
I have a pool of five thousand cards. I can
only bring sixty to a tournament. Now I have to
choose my sixty cards. And the way you choose your
sixty cards is you want your your cards to work
together and do something cool and you know, powerful, but
you also want something a strategy that beats what the
other people were bringing, so trying to predict what kind
of cards other people would have in their decks. So
I was always one of those people that brought a
deck that was not considered the best deck, but it
was a deck that was good against the best deck.
But then you can like even go one step ahead,
and it said, if everybody has that thinking, everyone's going
to have the deck that beats the best deck. So
what is the third deck that beats what beats the
best deck? You know? So I always enjoyed that type
of metagame stuff, So I think I was pretty good
at that. So that was that was one of my edges.
Speaker 4: Did you start out playing other games before you got
into Magic?
Speaker 2: For sure, just like probably most of your guests. You know,
my parents would play cards when I was a kid,
so I loved watching them playing, you know, poker with
their friends. But as a kid, we used to play
these card games with There's a special car card deck
in Italy. I don't know if you guys ever seen it,
but it's a forty card deck and it's kind of
like a poker deck but not really. And there's a
whole bunch of games you can play with this deck.
You know. There's a game called scopa, which means broom,
and then another game called Briscola. So I used to
play these games with my grandparents, my parents, and I
was always fascinated by card games.
Speaker 4: So you grew up in Italy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did. I moved in the state. I moved
to the States when I was twelve years old.
Speaker 1: How's being a magic player similar to gambling? How is
it different?
Speaker 2: It's different because you you it's really hard too. In
most gambling things, like the ones you guys talk about
here on your show, where you know you get you
can get a lot of volume down. And magic there's
infinite variants because a magic tournament might only be where
you play twelve opponents, so you can get pretty unlucky
one or two matches and then you can't win the
magic tournament anymore. So the variance is really high. And
it's not like there's too many magic tournaments. You know,
there's maybe like one a week somewhere in the world,
so it's really hard to get lots of volume down.
It's very similar to gambling because you know, it's not
like that you have to pay buy ins to go
to tournaments. A lot of the tournaments that give up
prizes you have to be invited to based on your rankings,
so you're not paying the buy in to go. But
you know, it is kind of gambling because, as you know,
the first guy's going to win, I don't know, thirty grand,
the second guy will win twenty grand, you know, so
you know, you do play some matches for a lot
of money. So that's similar to gambling.
Speaker 4: And did you think that magic was a good preparation
for going into gambling.
Speaker 2: Oh, to be honest, I never I never had any
intentions of going to gambling when I was playing Magic.
I just thought the game was fun and I really
liked the feeling when you win a big tournament you
can say to yourself, oh, I was the smartest person
here this week, And you know that's what drove me
to keep playing other than the game was fun. But
while I was playing Magic, and even after I stopped
playing professionally got my first job, I never once thought
that I was going to pursue a career in gambling. No.
Speaker 4: I meant the skills that you use in a game
like Magic. Did you do you think those translated over?
Speaker 2: Oh, one hundred percent? You know it one of the
one of like So you know, I have a small
betting syndicate and one of our biggest edges is uh,
it's really trying to understand what other betters will do
in the marketplace. And and I think I only have
that skill because I did play Magic. You know. A
simple example could be the Kansas City Chiefs are losing
at halftime of an NFL an NFL game. It's obvious
people are going to bet my homes to come back
and win. He's done it so many times. So if
you think like that, you know you can get a
lot better prices, you know, on your bets if you wait,
or you know, if you don't wait.
Speaker 4: Depending on which side you think is actually correct.
Speaker 2: Correct, you know, and that you know it goes even
as simple as as simple as if I like the Yankees,
you know this this morning, I'm going to bet them
right away. But if I like their opponents on my
way to post. You know, there is you know, that
type of stuff that you know a lot of great
sports betters, you know, in this space, they don't think
about when is it actually the right time to actually
get in with your bet And you know, I do.
Speaker 1: Feel magic does teach you some of that. How did
you get started at Pinnacle?
Speaker 2: So I've said the story many times in many podcasts,
but I'll just keep it very short. There was a
guy in New York who was crushing Pinnacle for millions
of dollars.
Speaker 4: Not easy to.
Speaker 2: Do, not easy to do. In two thousand and seven,
I think Pinnacle closed their door to Americans. They reached
out to him and hired them. Said can't betty anymore,
but we would love to hire you. This gentleman went
down to New York, down to Cursow. And the story
that has been all the way it's been told is
they ask him, They asked them a buddy, like, why
why do you get to beat us? You know, for
so much money. And he said, in a very in
a very unpolite way, said, the reason why I get
to beat you guys is because all the people behind
these computers are not all that smart. And ORDERS asked them,
where do we find smart people like you? And he
laughed and said, well, those don't really exist. But if
you if you want to find smart people, you should
try to see. There's this thing called magic. The people
that play magic are because he was a magic player himself.
And uh. And then Pinnacle what they did is they
literally went down to the magic standings of you know
the best players were, and they started calling them. And
I was eight or ninth or tenth on the list
when I got the phone call.
Speaker 4: You know, it's funny because they one of the founders
of Pinnacle was Stan Thompson, who was.
Speaker 2: I worked with Stan all the time. He was actually,
let's call a little mentor. He plays Beckham and right
is that you guys know him? Right?
Speaker 4: And And I was just gonna say, I I know
a backham And player who has a very similar ego
to that guy you were talking, who I believe now
works at Pinnacle. I don't know how long you've been there.
Speaker 2: Oh, the Pinnacle player. You I don't know for a
lot to say names, but Willcox, Yeah, there you go.
So yeah, Will Cox was actually so so just you know,
I love talking about Stan and Will because they taught
me so much. But Stan, uh when his eyes started
giving up giving out, uh, they assigned me to him
to help him trade and you know, help him to
see that because he wasn't able to see some of
the stuff that was going on in the monitor. And
uh so over the years he's taught me a lot.
Then when Stan stepped away, Will was actually my direct
boss for a long time. He was he was he
was an NBA trader. He was in charge of the
NBA and I was not saying I'm his right hand man,
but there was a few of us that would, you know,
give him support. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4: I interviewed Stan for my book and the one thing
that I was really sorry about was we couldn't talk
about Pinnacle at all, you know, so we could only
talk about sort of the gambling he had done in
the past. But the boy that would I you know,
I'm sorry he passed and I gather he had dementia
at the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did it. It didn't end very well. I
I think I was around two thousand and seventeen when
he fully stepped away from Pinnacle and we kind of
lost contact. But you know, some people think he was
very unpolite who are thought very high to leave himself.
But I always found him to be such like a
kind guy and you know, just a really you know,
pleasant person to be around. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So NBA at Pinnacle, what did you do? And how
you went in there not knowing anything about NBA or
anything about gambling? How did you get good at? It?
Speaker 2: Took some time? But uh, you know another funny story
I like to tell is I remember the very first
day they put me in front of the NBA uh
and say, hey, you're in charge of the totals and
uh and here and here's this program called Dumb Best.
And I found it so funny that every time I
moved one of my odds, all these other sportsbooks will
follow me, you know, and I literally had no clue.
And uh, I always uh, I'm like, man, if I
do bad, everyone else is going to do bad. And
I found that very humorous. But no, it took it
took time. Pinnacle at this approach where they would put
you in front of the screen without basically any training,
and they would just say figure it out, and and
we figured it out. They got very lucky because they
hired a bunch of magic players who are very competitive,
who really cared about winning, even though it wasn't our money.
And we were all a bunch of single dudes on
this island with no friends or family, so we all
were always hang out even when we weren't working, and
what do you think we were talking about work so
and and the conversations would be like, hey, I you know,
I was trading and then this this customer wins at
this percentage, bets here, I moved it to this, and
then this other guy bet this other the other side,
Like where would you have moved it? And we would
like argue about it for hours on end, you know,
like if my line should have been minus one of
six or minus one of eight, like like it matters.
You know now looking back, it probably didn't matter much,
but uh, but yeah, we just learned by teaching each
other and by just you know, really caring about doing well.
Speaker 4: Sounds like a great place to be as a young person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was really fun.
Speaker 1: So you had to have days where you lost and
weeks that you lost. Did this eat you up? Or
was it stands money and you didn't care or what?
Speaker 2: Well, well we always cared a bit, but no, we
when we lost, like it definitely hit me up, like
a me up. I would like go back and look, like,
Pinnacle System was really nice. You can go and look
at the line of street, the order of the bets,
how you moved off of each bet. So I would
always go back and look, is like, is there something
I could have done different? And you know, and we
would always compare notes with the other traders. But at
the end if I want or lost, it didn't really
you know, we would get a bonus at the end
of the year based on how much money you want,
but it wasn't like that big of a difference, you know,
So like we just tried to win. But the funny
part about working out a sportsbooks and I always say this,
is that that the trader himself has very little upside
of taking a big stand. So so a lot of
traders what they do is they try to stay out
of trouble, right, they trade their game and the one
thing they don't want is the boss to call them
and ask them why did you lose so much? Right?
Because most bosses they will call you and ask you
why did you lose so much? But whenever you get
a phone call saying good job, you want as a
lot of money last night. Right, So there's this balance
that you have to try. Like and I had this
like little nick not nickname, but they will call me
loose cannon sometimes because I would take lots of big
risks because I thought it was right. Like you know,
but I don't think about that. It's still a business
and they have to meet quotas and they have people
they have to make happy. But I will always try
to make the right decision, even if it mentum was
going to get a phone call if I lost.
Speaker 4: So they really I'm kind of surprised that they, I mean,
unless it was a decision where they could go, this
was the wrong decision as opposed to well, this was
the right play. We just got unlucky, you know. Yeah,
they would try to distinguish between those two things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of times when you got one of
those phone calls, if you explain your reasoning for doing something,
they they would still try to find you know, like
you did maybe something wrong or maybe instead of risking
five hundred k usuld of only risked four hundred or whatever. Right,
they would still say those type of things, but usually
if you explain to them why you were doing something,
they were pretty understandable and they, you know, would say okay,
and just please next time, try to be a little
more risk averse. The way Pinnacle did it a little
bit was the bosses, you know, the stands of the world.
They would give us maxillent. It's on our games, right,
So if I'm trading an NBA total and my max
limit is twenty thousand dollars, what they wanted you to
do is your position should not be bigger than three
times the amount your max wager unless you have a
reason to be bigger than three times your max wager. Now,
sportsbooks nowadays that kick out winners, they don't have that
problem because it doesn't really matter. Losers will lose their
money all at the end, and it doesn't matter if
you risk a lot little if all your customers are square,
eventually they're just going to lose it right back, right.
But a Pinnacle, we really try to keep our positions
two three times the amount of our max wager because
most of the most of the customers at Pinnacle are
actually sharp. There's very little few squares that bet in there.
Speaker 1: You know, every gambler has bad beat. Yeah, now, bookies,
since there are in every game every day, I must
have tons more bad beats.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's tons of bad beats. I could remember, you dude.
Speaker 1: You so this was, you know, more than a decade ago.
Do any of these from that time period bad beats
still irk at you? Or is it just since shit
happens move on?
Speaker 2: Well, I I don't know if urk is the right word,
but there's definitely some funny stories that I remember, you
know or someone some games, So there was a do
you guys remember I don't know if you guys watched sports,
but Ray Allen hit that three pointer against the Sanitary
Spurs and the finals of the NBA Finals Miami. So
the last three minutes of the game, the Spurs were winning,
and the Spurs were winning the whole last three minutes
of the game, and I was trading NBA live. I
was trading that game live, and there was not a
price that I could post on the website where people
would not bet my end. So the math model would say, okay,
Miami needs to be minus two hundred. I sorry, plus
two hundred. I would post plus one fifty and bets
would come in. Then in the very next minute, the
model would say Miami needs to be plus two fifty
and I would post plus one seventy five and bets
would all come in. And as every bet would come in,
I would keep moving the line. It would get lower
and lower and lower. There was not a price that
you could post in that moment that people would not
bet Miami heat. That was the days of Lebron, James
win Wade and Chris Bosh And to lose that game,
I think I lost almost two million dollars in that
live game. And I remember I remember like I thought
I had traded it perfectly. I'm getting great prices, a
bunch of money. But at the end, you know, I
did get that phone call, what did you lose so much?
And it was basically trying to explain to them the
only way I would have not lost this much money
is just not to post the That was the only solution, right,
But I was. I remember I was in Italy at
the time, working from home, and that three pointer from
reality goes in and I'm just staring at a wall
by myself at six in the morning, you know, and gamblers.
I'm sure you guys feel the same. It's hard for
us to talk to our family members or our friends
there aren't gamblers because they can't relate, right. But you know,
I could tell you so many Beadby stories, but maybe
that will be for a new podcast.
Speaker 3: Okay, So you didn't last at Pinnacle forever. When did
you leave and why?
Speaker 2: The reason I left in two thousand, between the end
of twenty seventeen maybe yeah, twenty seventeen. I left mostly
because I wanted to learn new skills and I wanted
to do something that still in the gambling, but I
was just trading the NBA and the NBA only, And
when I tried to do other things within Pinnacle, I
was getting a lot of pushback. They wanted me to
stay there, mostly because I was doing a good job,
is my guest. Or maybe they didn't think I would
be good at anything else. I'm not really sure. So
when I tried to get different jobs within Pinnacle and
I always got denied, I decided it was time to go.
And the place I went next was plant Tech, which
is its the b to b that actually powers Beckris.
So with Adam Bjorn, Yeah, with Adam Burn. So I
was there for a couple of years only. So at Pinnacle,
there was a moment during Pinnacle that I went to
the Philippines and open up an office in the Philippines
for Pinnacle. And when I went to plan at Tech,
they asked me, can you do the same for us?
So I went for a couple of years in the
Philippines and opened up a trading floor higher traders. And
I don't know, if you know, your listeners may or
may not know. Before this happened in two thousand and
early twenty eighteen, you know, Beckris didn't offer international basketball
or all the soccer games or in tennis, you know,
in the middle of the night. Now they do, and
it's you know, I would like to say that maybe
I had something to do with that.
Speaker 1: Wow, Oh, how is your responsibilities at plant Tech different
than what you were doing at.
Speaker 2: I was less in the box, as I call it.
I was mostly teaching people instead of trading. I was
mostly managing and and there was and there was a
lot of There was a lot of you know, you're
doing so many different things, and I like that I
got to work with third party, third party providers and
learn about how some of that stuff works. I got
to trade a bunch of different sports that I might
have traded early in my Pinnacle career, but I haven't
traded in so long. And uh, you know, I got
to relearn how to trade soccer live and tennis live
and all these other things. So that was really fun.
And that's that's the biggest difference.
Speaker 5: And and so then what when what was the transition
from working for the sports books too against Yeah? All right,
So so the way I started betting was mostly because
I a Pinnacle. We used to do NBA live and
we used to do it by hand basically. Okay, later
on models came and spreadsheets and YadA, YadA, YadA, but
at the beginning it was mostly by hand. And I
felt that there was a lot of things that the
markets were not pricing correctly based on so many games
that I traded over the years. So while I was
still a plan attack, I reached out to somebodies of
mine who were you know, people like people that gathered
accounts and you know, give them out to sharp betters.
And I said, listen, guys, I think I have an
opportunity that we can bet. So we started with only
NBA second halfs at first, but I said, we can
bet NBA live. I think there's a pretty big leak
out there that we can try to exploit. So me
and two other guys we got together and every night
after I was done working, we would get together and
we would bet on the NBA. So we did this
for about a year, and we kept winning and winning,
and as you win in this PPH world, people are
more eager to give you even more and more.
Speaker 2: Accounts, so so we kept growing that way. We were
trying not to hit Pinnacle or hit plan Attack. Well
I was working at planettech That's why I didn't want
to hit them. But some of the Shark supports books,
if you have an edge, you actually don't want to
bet there because they're really good at reverse engineering it.
So so we basically just never bet at any of
those places. We only bet at PPHS and like you know,
places like Better five or you know, fandel and Drafting
didners Is at the time, but as some of the
places there were not as sharp, and and then as
you know, we kept doing better better. By the second year,
we had so many PPH accounts that we decided that
it was time to try to either give them out
to other sharp betters or to start betting other things
because you have all this liquidity and nothing to bet
like that would not be you know why.
Speaker 4: And you weren't losing the accounts. They weren't shutting them down.
Speaker 2: Of course, they were shutting them down, you know. So
they were shutting them down, you know. But but the
the people that were bringing them to us, they kept
hustling to get more and more and more. So currently
for the last few years, we currently have two hundred
to four hundred PPH accounts at all times, always always active.
So the way we grew into more and more betting
was mostly because we had all these accounts and we
didn't have other other than NBA Live. We didn't have
anything else to put in them. So some with my
sportsbook contacts, because I knew all the best betters in
the world because I see their bets when I worked
Finnacle and when I worked at Plan Attack, so I
reached out to some and said, hey, listen, you know,
we can maybe help you get down and things like that. So,
you know, to this day now I have seventeen employees
to partners, and we bet all day long on all
the sports. Some of our bet a lot of our
our bets, and some are other people's.
Speaker 3: Bet Did your experience being a bookie off shore help
what you're doing today other than giving you contact with
some people?
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is is a lot of times you
know what sportsbooks are pricing right or not pricing right right.
And I'll give an example. You know, this is something
that this is something that we currently bet, but I
don't think anybody's going to I don't think anybody's going to,
you know, steal it from us. So so most sharp
betters in soccer, as an example, they nobody ever bets
the draw. Okay, they either bet a team to win
or the other team to win, or them on the
Asian handicap. I don't know how much you guys know
about the Asian handicap, but it's basically a spread that's
closest to fifty to fifty and that's what people bet.
So nobody knows sharp. I've never seen a sharp better
bet the draw. So then you ask yourself, is like,
is nobody betting the draw? Right?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 2: Because is it hard to quantify? Or because most people,
if they want to draw, they're just gonna bet on
the underdog. Now, if the sports books don't have any
information on people betting the draw, all right, their line
is less sharp. Right. So now one of the things
we bet is soccer draws, where I know nobody else bets,
and it's mostly because they're a little bit hard to
quantify and be the sportsbooks soccer draw price isn't very
good because they don't have anything other than bets on
the favorite or the underdog saying what that price should be.
But in soccer there's this weird thing that certain leagues
are more likely to draw than others. So you have
to be able to quantify that too. So there's things
like that that you learn. Another thing I learned as
sports books that this is this is rampant. Everybody knows
about this. You get to see out people manipulate the markets.
The biggest groups manipulate, star lizards manipulates, like everybody manipulates. Right,
we might be I'm not saying, I'm not claiming we're big,
but we might be one of the fews that don't write.
And so if you can identify when people manipulate, and
you can quantify roughly, you don't even have to be exact.
You can quantify the game, what the price should maybe be,
and you can see how people manipulate, which I've learned
only working at plan Attech. You know, then sometimes you
can make assumptions on this market is being manipulated by somebody.
I don't know who it is. Maybe I should just
take the other side. You know, there's there's a lot
of things that you learn as sportsbooks, you know, that
can give you, you know, an advantage betting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I you know, I've always said that my experience
working in the casino was invaluable for or becoming playing
on the other side. I mean, it's just so helpful
to know what's going on. Also, I would assume you
learned a lot about I mean, I understand Pinnacle didn't
back people off, but you know, still you must have
learned a lot about what the books look for in
terms of limiting players or whatever.
Speaker 2: Of course, like you know, do you you know there's
things like you know, obviously we all know that sportsbooks
have technology technology that can see your mac address on
your computer or on your phone. So every time you
get into account, you have to change your device you know,
I learned very quickly that if I was going to
have a beard make me an account, it shouldn't be
a girl's name, because sportsbooks, once they see the girls name,
they know, you know, there is things that you do learn,
you know, and yeah.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I I was talking to a bookmaker in Ireland and
we were talking about whether they use a browser or
a phone, and and I don't know if it's the
same in the United States, but there he said, ninety
five percent of people bet on a phone, and of
the five percent that use a browser, ninety five percent
of them are sharp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was it was a big tell to yeah,
to use the phone. Most most most recreational betters, they're
betting from their phone, you know, when they're on the
on the metro or in the bathroom or whatever.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Most people are, you know, using the computer. Maybe they're
not professional, maybe they are, but they're definitely price sensitive
because they probably are looking at multiple sites, you know,
at the same time. And you know, there's a there's
a there's a big sports book in Asia called sing Bat.
I don't know if you guys ever heard of it.
They're they're actually the biggest sportsbook in the world then,
but nobody knows. Uh. They basically have all the gray
market from China and UH and their accounts. If you
use your if you use your phone, they cull you
pretty sorry. If you use the web browser, they call
you pretty fast. But if you use your phone, you
actually last a long time.
Speaker 1: You went a little bit fast when you said you
don't use girls' names, because when it's a girl's names,
the casino does something. So I miss what your point was.
Speaker 2: No, So so when when a new account comes in,
UH at a sportsbook, if your name is a girl's name,
they know that. Most of the time is either the
husband using the wife's name or some sharcked recycling names.
But eventually girls' names have to come up. There's not
many sports betting girls. Maybe there's sports betting slot players
and there's sports betting. Uh, there's girls who play blackjack.
But in the sports betting industry, do you guys know
many girls that bet? I can only think of a few.
So whenever you have a you're trying to beer into
a place with using a girl's name, that is giving
like alarm belts to the sports book. So at Pinnacle,
whenever a girl would sign up, we would put her
at a higher auto mover than when a boys signed up.
You know, an automover is just a machine that moves
the line when you bet, so instead of maybe twenty percent,
they got forty percent whatever.
Speaker 4: So when you were working for Pinnacle and plant Tech,
how how did they go about I mean, how how
long at leash did somebody get before they would identify
them as a sharp player or what was what was
the process of identifying sharp play?
Speaker 2: So the way we used to do it is a
lot of times you can tell, like if the trader's
paying attention, you can identify sharp better in three bets.
Oh look, this guy bet me a minus six, and
two seconds later the whole market moved, right, So that's
that's an easy tell. Usually usually about around forty or
fifty bets. The automation that they have where you can
look up at an account and it tells you if
you're beating the closing line, you know by how much.
That's usually you know, if you have forty or fifty
wagers where you're constantly beating the closing line, you know,
that's that's a good tell, right, because to beat the
closing line if I bet minus one ten and the
line closes minus one fifteen, I didn't beat anything, you know,
like I have to be able to overcome the vig
before I actually beat something. So so you know, just
some people I always see, Oh, I bet the line
minus one ten and then moved to minus one sixteen.
I beat the closing line. No, you didn't even beat
the viig. You know you're still paying you know you're
still paying vig on on that bet. But the you know,
they have programs that catch stuff pretty fast, or at
least run a report pretty fast. But the best way
to catch them is just a trader just watch them.
Imagine imagine working at a place where you have Venezuelan customers,
not that I you know Venezuelan customers. The only time
you see them betting is about two seconds before a goal.
You can assume that they have a faster feed somehow, right,
So you know, the huan the human eye does a lot.
But they also have great reporting and great tools to
try to catch people. And the reason why they would
do this is not to kick anybody out. A plan
at Tech or Pinnacle is to put more settings intoir
accounts as in as in maybe this person needs an
extra few seconds delay. Maybe this person he is a
higher auto moover. You know they're they're trying to be fair.
They just don't want to be stolen from sure, which
you know it's it's a conversation. You know that we
can go on. I'm I'm known for for always being
on the side of the sports book, so you know,
maybe that does not vibe much with advantage play, but
I always feel that it's okay to beat a sportsbook.
You just want to do it fairly.
Speaker 1: We're running out of time. But before the show, a
man named Scott, a friend of Richard's in mine, came
up and you said, you have a good Scott story.
Speaker 2: I love Scott. He's the nicest guy, no like you.
Richard said that he asked Scott if he had any
good Antennino stories, and Scott said, I can't tell them
on air, but I want to tell kind of a
funny story. Scott really loves bat Bash, and this past
last bat Bash, he created a secret meeting at five
in the morning. I don't know if you guys heard
about this. He created a secret meeting at five in
the morning when a guy was going to and The
reason why he chose five in the morning is because
because the thing that happens happens at eight in the
morning in the East coast, so it needed to be
five o'clock and in Las Vegas. And there was a
guy who claimed that he could he could see all
of the sharpest group who was betting baseball bets before
they would actually hit the market. So there was this
guy on his computer. You know, he had a cool
projector in the back, and you know, he had his
spank odds up and he was explaining, like, you know,
how we could tell when a game was about to move.
And I found it interesting. Scott invited me without knowing
the group that this guy was trying to predict was
my group. So I said, I would love to go
to this meeting. Can I get an invite? So me
and one of my partners went, and we've wanted to
see if this guy actually like because you have to
play a lot of cat and mouse. Like let's say
you want to get down on a game. You can't
always bet the same sports book first, because if you
bet the same film first first, there's tons of people
just always watching the screen. They'll know, they'll know and
then tomorrow when you try to hit that book first,
they'll steal your liquidity elsewhere before you can get it right.
So we wanted to learn. So we went there and
our employees were working on the East coast betting and
me and my partner were in Vegas watching this guy
and the guy missed them all right, and that Scott
was so furious because the guy that wasn't able to
catch any of them, you know, And that's basically he
got so mad because he got all and he kept
apologizing to me. He said, sorry for waking you up
and making you come to this, and I kept saying, no, man,
it's okay. I'm just glad the guy didn't catch any
And then I told him that the group he was
trying to catch ours, which is kind of fun.
Speaker 3: And it's been a pleasure talking to you.
Speaker 2: You are you wait? You know what?
Speaker 3: I just I just have a.
Speaker 4: Couple of more questions. Maybe one is you mentioned that
you have young kids. What are you uh? What are
you trying to instill in them?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: Are you teaching them anything about gambling or how that
provides life lessons?
Speaker 2: So so I I have a four or five year
old and a seventeen year old. So the seventeen year
old I am teaching him how to play cards, taught
the magic. I tried to teach them how to think probabilistically,
because most people always think like I think, it's either
going to happen or not happen. I am trying to
with my son. I at this moment where I'm not
sure if I want to teach him gambling, because so
at first I wasn't going to teach him. But then
you're in Florida. We have hard rock as a monopoly
on gambling, and Hard Rocky playing keeps playing these commercials
that keeps playing these commercials. And there's Post Malone, who's
just a rapper. I think he's in the jacuzzi with
his phone and he's making bets and he keeps winning,
and he says, see, so easy, the only thing you
need is a phone being binging I win. So my
son one day says, your job is so easy. You
can even win from a jacuzzi on your phone. So so,
so what I did to him, what I did for him,
I made him a phantom account. I said, okay, you
bet here, you have one hundred dollars better way, and
after you lose it all, you come back and then
I'll teach you how to win. So and the only
reason why I did it is because, you know, because
the commercials are like giving a bad you know, like
a bad idea what sports setting is like. But no,
I do plan to teach them some kind of gambling
or playing cards or something. I think magic was the
best thing that's ever happened to me. And even if
you don't decide to be a gambler, being around people
like us, it's so good because there's just so many
like opportunities in life that can come out of nowhere,
because because you know so many unique people.
Speaker 4: Well and just understanding expected value and and like you said,
thinking probabilistically. And yeah, it's such such great value in
learning about that.
Speaker 2: Stand made me read that. You probably you guys probably
read this book already. But have you guys ever read
Fools by Randomness?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Stam made me read it, and I was
My mind was blown after I read it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: One other question, favorite restaurant in Las Vegas that is
not in a casino.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's a bad question for me because I
normally only eat a casinos. There's an Italian Place in
downtown Vegas, Chicago, Joe's Chicago, Joe's.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But normally, to be honest, when I go to Vegas,
I just stay in the casino. Is that Is that
a bad move to eat in the casinos? Yeah, not
if you're camped. But I mean, there's just there's so
many great restaurants in Vegas that are not in the casinos.
That and I'm always looking for new places. Got them? Yeah,
usually uh usually it's always so hot there, so I'm
just like, I'm I mean here, you know, but I
can definitely see like eating ours is eating us side.
It's not nearly as expensive as eating the casinos, right
can be? Oh no, yeah, not not even but cool,
all right, Bob, take us out, Thank you, Anthony, thank
you Richard. Go out and hit lots of royal flushes, everybody.
Speaker 3: Good day.
Speaker 1: Free audio post production by alphonic dot Com