00:00 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
On this week's episode of Circles Off, we're joined by a very special guest. Jeff Ma of the Bet the Process podcast will join us to discuss a bunch of things, including his coming up in the blackjack space, how that translated into sports betting, the current state of Twitter, data-driven decision-making, tons of stuff. All that and more. This week's episode of Circles Off starts now. Come on, let's go. This week's episode of Circles Off starts now. Come on, let's go. Welcome to Circles Off, episode number 110, right here on the Hammer Betting Network. Before I introduce my co-host we preach honesty, transparency, integrity big brand values for us here at the Hammer Betting Network. 

00:39
We do have a guest on today that we pre-recorded an interview with before. There were some technical difficulties with that interview. We're trying to bring you as close to 100% of it as possible. Mishmash of a bunch of different stuff. You'll notice our guests is wearing different clothes throughout the interview as well. We think we got it down, but apologies for the inconvenience. Should be as close to a perfect representation of that interview as possible, but things happen in the recording business. We had some sort of power surge that basically blew up our computer twice. 

01:12 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
But the audio should be good. That's all that's important. 

01:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Audio is good if you're listening on audio Rob Pizzola, joined by Johnny from BetStamp Number 10. 

01:20 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Today is also producer Zach's birthday, which, as Rob just mentioned, what a brutal birthday. But happy 25th to Zach Zach Phil Hammer, betting Network's own Respect brother. Sorry you got to do extra work to edit this podcast. 

01:36 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Not only is it a brutal birthday because of the recording issues, but there was actually something else that was celebrated in the office today, which was, uh, a friend's, an employee's friend getting engaged, which was nothing, which is a nothing which we all did a shot for I didn't, I did not, I was not there. I would have not let this happen zach's birthday did not have a celebratory shot, poor guy number 10. 

02:00 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
We've got first off absolute. I always say leafs legend. This guy's not even really a leafs legend, gary volk, just a leaf back in the day, gary volk. We've got first off absolute. I always say leafs legend. This guy's not even really a leafs legend, gary volk, just a back in the day, gary volk. We've also got a big soccer number. As rob knows you, you got to list out all the guys. A ton of soccer players. 

02:14 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Well, I mean 10. 10 is like the number that you're. The best player wears number 10 in soccer leo messi, 10 pele maradona, zinedine Zidane, ronaldinho, my boy, francesco Totti, who once spit in someone's face wasn't a very kind actor. 

02:31 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
We forget about that stuff. Behind the plate we had the man whose stance mirrored a metronome, gary Sheffield. And who else did we have Number 10. 

02:40 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It's gotta be a couple other legends. I mean mean, I'm not gonna call this guy a legend, I would actually call him the opposite of a legend. But eli manning wore number 10. Eli manning hall of fame debate. I've had it probably about three dozen times in my life, so I'm not going to get into this one more time. But eli manning that guy ends up in the hall of pro football hall of fame. It's an absolute abomination, a joke. They should burn that building to the ground. Eli Manning was never, ever an elite quarterback. For most of his career he wasn't even above average quarterback. There's no way Eli Manning belongs in the Hall of Fame. Deandre Hopkins, Tyreek Hill these guys were number 10. Someday they'll probably be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame because guess what? They're elite players at the top of their game. Eli Manning as much as I like him post-football, he's a pretty funny guy I never would have expected that His play on the field does not dictate Hall of Fame. 

03:38 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
And speaking of Hall of Fame. 

03:41 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Hall of Fame sportsbook right here in Ontario. I love what you did there. It's a very nice segue. Pinnacle is the world's sharpest sports book available to bettors in ontario. Find out what pro bettors have known for decades. Pinnacle is where the best bettors play. You must be 19 plus, of course. Please play responsibly. Cannot preach that enough. Not available to bettors in the United States. I mentioned our guest, our aforementioned guest. 

04:11 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
And with that, let's start the process. 

04:13 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
We now welcome in this week's guest here on Circles Off. He's the former VP of Microsoft for startups. He's the ex-VP of analytics for Twitter as well, and he's the co-host of the Bet the Process podcast, which we highly encourage that you check out. Follow him on Twitter as well, and he's the co-host of the bet the process podcast, which we highly encourage that you check out. Follow him on Twitter as well at Jeff Ma. Jeff Ma steps up and in on circles off. How's it going, jeff? 

04:34 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
It's great, thanks for having me a lot of formers, which I think means I can't hold a job, so that's, that's tough. But whatever. 

04:40 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Well, that's not it's not necessarily a bad thing. I was told this a long time ago. I think if you're trying to maximize your like career earnings and stuff like that, you want to actually be jumping from job to job and not consistently hold something down. You might know more about that than me I'm not a business expert or anything like that but that's what I was once told a long time ago. 

05:02 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Well, I think there's a lot to be said and there's there's a book that I talk about a lot called range, which is by David Epstein, and it's all about specialized versus generalized learning. It's sort of like the tiger woods versus Roger Federer story, where tiger's dad had him play golf, and only golf, from a really young age, and Roger Federer's mom was the opposite, basically had him do lots of things besides tennis until a certain age. And I'm a big fan of generalized learning, and one of the ways you get generalized learning is to go and do a lot of different things in your career. I think I did it mostly because I had no idea what I could do or wanted to do and I didn't have a very linear path and I just got lucky, I think, in that I got a lot of opportunities to learn a lot of different things, and so, yeah, no, I'm a big fan of one of the things I've noticed when I was at Microsoft you kind of noticed it that there's a lot more people at Microsoft that spend many, many years there, because for a long time, compared to Silicon Valley, there weren't a lot of opportunities to jump around, whereas in Silicon Valley, if you're somewhere for more than four years. 

06:07
It's it's it's pretty, it's pretty unique, right. People move a lot, and so you do notice it in that I think the transfer of knowledge from one company to the next is really important, right, like because, ultimately, you want to work with you know, like people talk about diversity and diversity goals. Like one of the most important reasons for diversity in a team is that you want to have people that think differently, that have different backgrounds, that attack problems differently, and that's like one of the biggest reasons for diversity. It's not just about you know doing the right thing or affirmative action. It's about bringing in people with diverse backgrounds to solve diverse problems. 

06:46 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Absolutely. It's really interesting and well put. Jeff, I'm very familiar with you. I've been on your podcast several times, met you in person, obviously. But there's gonna be a lot of people listening and watching this that aren't as familiar with you and your personal background and your story and how particularly you got involved in the sports betting space and I know you've been through a ton. So I'm going to ask you to just kind of like boil it down but what was kind of your first experience in sports betting and give us a little bit of that personal background that led to it yeah, I mean I, um, I graduated from MIT, um, and was doing sort of like the beginnings of the blackjack stuff. 

07:25 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
So I think some of you guys have seen the movie 21. I read the book Bring Down the House, like that's my origin story, right, I started playing blackjack as a card counter and really in my senior year at MIT and so when I was and I kind of mentioned this really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, I was supposed to go to medical school, like meeting. My parents really wanted me to go. I was a mechanical engineering degree major at MIT, graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering that I've never used in my life, um, but also had medical school applications out and was uh, had took the MCATs and then, right before my senior year, I was basically like I don't want to go to medical school, I don't want to go to more years of school, I don't want to be a doctor, and so my senior year was kind of an exploration of what I wanted to do and, you know, at the same time I was like learning this blackjack stuff and so there was this natural, you know, draw at that time. So I graduated from college in 1994, there was a natural draw to go towards either consulting or banking or finance right, and finance was a natural thing for me, especially like in those days there was a lot of people going into trading and they were going on to floor trading and options trading, because options trading was all about probability and all about using data to modeling. It was early days of modeling. Options were all priced on volatility and all priced on basic math. 

09:01
Jeff Yass, who was the Susquehanna trader that we had on on bet the process but also was a huge sports better. There's a natural parallel between the two of them, and when I went to Chicago, I was on the Chicago board of options exchange right on the floor trading. All of the people down there sports bet and all of the people down there were were were degenerates in many ways. And so one of the first down there sports bet and all the people down there were were were degenerates in many ways. And so one of the first experiences I ever had was just it was incredible we, they, they would um offer these futures on ncaa basketball, where the team that won was worth, I think, $64. 

09:44
The team, every other team was worth zero, and that you would trade teams based on a very simple market of 64 versus zero. And I was doing this when I was, you know, 21 years old when I graduated, trading college basketball teams back and forth on a you know unregulated on, you know there was no clearing house or anything like that, but you were like trading with other traders and other clerks. I was a clerk, I wasn't a full time trader, other clerks on there and that's sort of what got me into it. And then a couple of my friends, you know, at that time had bookies and so they you know they were, they were probably the gateway into sports betting. 

10:29 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
All right, so now, evolution as a sports better um, we asked this, every single person. But what, what? What are you predominantly wagering on nowadays? Um, so walk us through what you started with Um. You said you graduated in 1994, quite a ways ago. But walk through the evolution as a sports better for you and how you would classify, classify yourself as a better nowadays, because we interview a lot of people. Some of them consider themselves sharp, some are semi sharp, some just say that they're rec betters and they like to bet. How do you classify yourself as a better and what do you predominantly wager on nowadays? 

10:57 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Yeah, I mean I've gone through kind of an evolution, sort of I. I think there was a time where I was very recreational. There have been times when I've been very sharp and you know, for me, because it's never like people ask me, aren't, aren't you a professional? And I'm not, because I have a job, like I don't, I would never call myself the same as, as you know, a rufus, because rufus is, you know, r Rufus, if he doesn't win, is going to. He doesn't have nothing to fall back on, right, so, um, I, um, I, I wouldn't. I would say that I'm now I, I certainly enjoy the recreational piece of it, right, like watching a game where there is no edge, um, but I do have a fair amount of you know, old school, like I want an edge and everything like I. You know, like if I lose something where I knew that I didn't have an edge going forward, it does, it does sort of like drive me crazy. And you know, like things that there's markets, I think, that are still somewhat beatable. I don't personally really originate much myself. I work with people these days to do stuff and if I have someone or talk to someone that I think has a reasonable approach or reasonable, you know, model. I'm certainly open to like helping work with them on, you know, getting down or improving what they're doing. 

12:24
So you know college football tucking halves, those types of things, college basketball things that are. You know NFL, it's kind of hard to not bet on NFL at some level. Nba did not do very much at all. Haven't done much there recently at all. Baseball dabbled in it a little this year again, um, and you know baseball is a challenging thing to bet on. It's like one of the. If you bet high volume baseball, the very the, the, the um ups and downs throughout a season can kill you. It's. It's a pretty tough one to bet on and sort of have revisited that this year for the first time in in many years, um, so it's been an interesting experience to go through yeah, so before we get on to, we want to ask you a little bit more about like the data analytics and stuff like that and how you got up. 

13:16 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
But 21 is honestly one of my favorite movies and a lot of my friends it's their favorite movie as well, so I was wondering if we can ask you some questions about the story and the origins. I feel like we buried the lead here. We have Jeff Ma, of course. Mit Blackjack team. 

13:31
So for those of you who don't know the movie. This is a film I guess I'll pull up when it came out, but this is a film with Kevin Spacey. We still say that I think, so Kevin Spacey came out in 2008. What it's about is a team of people at MIT who essentially and again, this is the movie, so we're going to verify that this is the real life story as well, but they and I've watched this movie at least 10 times they form a team to go to Vegas, travel to Vegas from MIT and beat Blackjack and count cards and statistically bet and stake wagers and then beat basically beat Vegas for what appears to be in the movie hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. And then, near the end, they do get caught in the movie, takes into the back room, gets beat up a little, but it ends up working out. Guy ends up getting the mechanical engineering scholarship and the movie's a phenomenal movie. You highly recommend it, so I have to glad to. 

14:30
On the on the youtube video, we'll have to put a spoiler alert up put a spoiler alert up, but for those of you who don't know, jeff is not only part of the team, he is actually. The main character in the movie is based on jeff. So what we have to ask you is, first off, how true is the movie versus real life? That's what I got to know, first and foremost. 

14:50 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
You know it's funny because people ask that a lot right, and the movie was based on a book. The book was called Bringing Down the House. It was written by Ben Meserich. The origin story of all of that is in 2001,. 

15:02
I approached Ben, who was a friend at the time. I mean written six books, but it's fair to say his career was kind of in the shitter and he was contemplating not being a writer anymore, had business school applications out, and I approached him. I said hey, ben, I got an idea for your next book. And he says what is it? I said well, me and my buddies from it. We use math to beat the casinos and we go to vegas and win lots of. He's kind of like you know what, dude, I don't think anyone wants to read a book about a bunch of MIT nerds. And then we took him with us to Vegas, like I don't know, a couple months later and he was like oh my God, this is so cool, we should write a book about this. And so we pitched his publisher, and his publisher was actually similarly skeptical of the idea, and so we didn't listen to her and we she gave Ben a small advance to write this book and Ben and I went through this process of him doing research during the day and then me telling him stories for three to four hours at each night for I don't know a few weeks, and we produced Bring Down the House. So Bring Down the House and this gets to your story was probably about 75% true. He took a lot of the stories that I told him and weave them into a narrative, weave them into a thing with a plot, but did a lot of what is this sort of new style that he created which is called narrative in his mind, called narrative non-fiction. So ben has a really strong ability to take a true story and create like sensationalism around the right parts. And you know he did a fair amount of research on his own to find other stories from other car counters, other people that he could make part of this bringing down the house story. 

16:48
Now, the movie was an adaptation of the book but actually was the first writer, and this is some inside baseball stuff. The first writer was about a guy by the name of peter steinfeld and peter um, sorry, peter steinfeld, which is the comedian steinfeld steinfeld and Peter, sorry, peter Steinfeld, which is the comedian Steinfeld, peter Steinfeld. Yeah, there we go. So Peter Steinfeld and Peter had written a couple of movies before and Peter like took a real you know, he really went after the story and he went and spent time with us in Vegas and spent time with us in Boston and wrote a screenplay that unfortunately probably would never have gotten made because it was almost too accurate to the actual story. It was probably more accurate than the book itself. And then they hired a guy named Alan Loeb and Alan was a recovering gambling addict, but he was also the guy that wrote Wolf of Wall Street. He'd written, he'd written a lot and he turned it into the movie that is 21. 

17:50
And so 21 is much more accessible as a movie because it follows some of the very basic, like you know, movie acts like act one, act two, act three kind of thing you know, and a lot of the sort of quote unquote plot you know and a lot of the sort of quote-unquote plot you know and storyline behind 21. It's not necessarily true. Like you know, when I went in to see the premiere of the movie, my dad was with me and I told my dad I said, hey, I got two pieces of bad news for you before we go in the movie and I said he says what I said. Well, in the movie I'm white and you're dead, so because my dad is, was alive and he's still alive at the time at now. But you know, in the movie I'm white and you're dead, so because my dad is, was alive and he's still alive at the time at now. 

18:27
But you know, in the movie I'm from this like home, where you know, my dad passed away and you know, kind of like it's not like a broken home, but like there's this idea that like because because who would believe that someone from a good chinese-american family, taught all the right values, would get lost in this gambling ring, right, um, but but a lot of the things that they do in the movie, like around card counting and around, um, you know, the team play and those types of things, those are true, um, the idea of like backrooming, that's pretty true, although there wasn't like this notion that like they would beat you up and like that kind of thing. Like they you know Lawrence Fishburne's character was based on this this detective from the Griffin detective agency, and you know he, they wouldn't. I never got physically threatened, right, but you guys have seen me, I'm yoked, so they wouldn't bother. You know trying to. 

19:20 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So was there no, was there no love story amongst the team? 

19:26 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Not, not really, I mean the. The Kate Bosworth character is based on um, a woman who is a super smart woman but like there was no, there had, there was no romantic interest. She was married to someone else on the team. Um, I had no, you know, love altercation with her, anything like that. 

19:43
There were obviously like some really cool like you know relationship things that developed in Vegas and there's some of that in the book. 

19:51
You know, one of the sort of like you know things is that I dated a Rams cheerleader for a little while. This is when the Rams were, um, you know, first, first in LA before the St Louis move, before they went back to LA anyway. So you know, the, those were the kind of things that they that happened and there was, like you know, one of the themes of the book and one of the themes of the movie I think that's probably true and probably um more interesting in some respects than some of the things they talk about in the movie, because it's kind of nuanced was just what this sort of Vegas lifestyle did for my like psyche and personality, meaning like, all of a sudden in Vegas I was this like rock star that people wanted to be around and, like you know, I'm throwing money around and like I have this gregarious personality, whereas like at the core I'm this like mit nerd right, who you know is like, is, like you know, worried to talk to women at a bar or something like that. That, that idea of that juxtaposition between, or dichotomy between those two worlds is, was a very interesting thing. 

21:00 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I think that we went through that's highlighted both in the book and the movie, but people probably don't catch quite as much of how like origin formative story it was for me so in the, in the movie, the last scene is essentially he get the main character, your character gets the scholarship, because the whole movie he'd been searching for a life experience and then he finally has it with this. So my question to you, as a person who lived it, is what's like the main takeaway, the main thing you learned from the whole MIT? Blackjack, vegas extravaganza, the main thing? 

21:33 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
God, that's a really hard question. I mean, ultimately, I think the thing that was most important to me was about was the teamwork and the camaraderie aspect. I really enjoyed, um, being part of a team that would go to Vegas and win. Like I always joke that, like, back in those days, the flight out to Vegas was like this oh, is this complete, you know, debaucherous, loud, everyone's happy, people are drinking, and then the flight home from Vegas, it's like everyone's somber and quiet and whatnot. Well, we were some of the few people that would come back on that Vegas flight and be happy because we'd won and we, you know, triumphed and, um, you know, I think a lot about the camaraderie of that and, um, I mean, it was very, it's very formative for me because it was happening, like when I was basically 21, to say 27 or eight in those years were so, um, they were so formative, and so for me, like, I do think a lot about the people that I was you know, I don't really talk to any of the people that I was involved with that in and people always ask me, like, what are those guys all up to? 

22:38
What did? We all went our separate ways, um, and I think I've matured a lot as a human being since then and I think like I was pretty immature back then and so, yeah, the question I don't know, like I don't know what the learning learning is? I mean, I think the learning is probably that you can learn a lot in life from any experience that you do and there's probably no cookie cutter. You know, I was brought up in a very cookie cutter way, like I. You know, now that I have kids, I think a lot about how I was raised and how I was like guided to to, you know, study and to math and to value academics and to value specifically, like the the in classroom part of academics. But you know, I think I learned probably more from that blackjack experience about so many pieces of my career now that I leverage, and so there's just lots of ways, there's lots of paths that you can go to to learn. 

23:35 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Out of curiosity, jeff, when you're talking about sports betting, you're talking about how there is, like this recreational part of you that just wants to sit down and watch a game and have some money on it or have some sort of rooting interest. You started in blackjack. You're card counting. I I'm just making the assumption that you can basically not play blackjack anywhere. Now you can tell me if I'm wrong on that, but is there a part of you that would ever be able to sit down and play blackjack recreationally if you could, where you can just turn off your brain and just actually play the game for the fun of the game and the you know, the blood flowing, so to speak? Or is that? Are you an incapable? Incapable of doing that at this point? 

24:21 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
it's, it's hard to play blackjack with for me, like, so I really can't play blackjack at any appreciable scale. Like we were just went to band of dunes and there's a casino and band of dunes it's like the Coos Bay casino or something like that and it's like casino and RV park. It's like a pretty interesting place. But they had a blackjack game and my buddies all sat down to play and I sat down. You know, first I didn't sit down and then I was like kind of looking around and I'm like, yeah, what's the harm? And I sat down and played and you know it was a beatable game. A lot of games these days aren't beatable, meaning like they pay blackjack six to five or they, you know, and I can still count, right. So I sat down and I was like counting and I was like telling them, you know, trying to tell them when, but they don't care right, they're just degenerates trying to play blackjack and they don't need me telling them what to do. Yeah, no, I definitely. It was still counting cards and I think if the blackjack game wasn't beatable, I wouldn't have sat down and played, like, and it's funny because I would go play craps, which I know has no, I have no advantage in, but for some reason, like the knowledge of playing Blackjack, where I know that like I'm, I'm, you know, don't? It's weird. 

25:35
And so you know, I've had some funny like Simeon Rice, who's like a guy I've gotten to know he'll come to town to vegas every once in a while. I've played blackjack with him because he always wants to play blackjack with me. So I'll go sit at a table with our, at aria, with him and play blackjack. And it's like there's occasional people like that that are like fun for me to go play with. They'll say like, oh, come play with me somewhere and I'll, but I'll just bet like quarters and like you know, like no one's gonna care if I'm betting quarters and it it does, it's like boring to me, right? So like I'd rather go lose a bunch of money playing craps and whatever than then, you know, and for some reason it's just really gambling, whereas blackjack always seems just like a job to me. Still, yeah, that's interesting. 

26:13 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I mean I don't. The reason I asked that question is because I've heard commentary from other sports bettors in the space I'm not going to give names or anything like that private conversations of people who at one point or another had a really large edge betting on sports and now they don't have that edge and they just cannot bet on sports in the in I in in a way that is like meaningful to them. 

26:37 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
They've lost all interest in sports altogether was never about the sports, it was about the betting and I was just curious about the game of blackjack for you, and that's sort sort of the reason that it's, it's, it's, it's, it's similar and I never thought about it like that and because, like when you do that edge and it's gone, like you don't you know again, like, yeah, interesting, I never thought about that. 

26:58 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I want to shift into a little bit of data analytics. So when I did the the intro for you, obviously if someone were to look at your resume from top to bottom, you're very much known for your use of data analytics. You've been very vocal about it data driven decision making over the years. But then we, you know, we've had side conversations, jeff, we've done the Calcutta auctions together, where sometimes you kind of just say things like you know I'm kind of going with intuition here, or you know my own judgment. How do you go about balancing the use of analytics with your human judgment when you're making decisions? And this can apply to business, it can apply to sports betting, can apply to anything, but how do you find that you're able to balance the two? 

27:43 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, I don't really I don't I'm not sure which conversations you're you're talking about in terms of the Calcutta or anything like that, like, but I very seldom way, if I have data available to me in a model that I believe in, we'll, we'll use intuition over a model or data Like. I'm always going to be leaning towards um, towards the data and analytics side if it's available to me and I believe in it. Like in all the calcuttas and the golf calcuttas, there's a model and the other calcuttas we've done. I've always, I've always had a model right. I've always had something that I like leaned in on that I believe would give me an edge over the people that I was competing against. I don't think I would go into and I know I haven't like there's been times where there's been, you know, potentially opportunities to be in Calcutta's without a model and I haven't wanted to do them. So, in terms of intuition and the role intuition plays, I think, in startups which I've done you know four of it's challenging to be truly data-driven because you don't have a lot of data when you're, when you're starting off in a company like and so, ultimately, to make better decisions in life and and we had we just recorded about the process and we had Elihu on and we were talking about, you know, when he was a lawyer and just the way that he would actually like calculate probabilities around, you know, like for insurance companies and things like that around, like different outcomes or different verdicts and expected value and whatnot. Like I love thinking in that way because it gives you a framework to make decisions. 

29:21
Making decisions is hard, right, and I think that the reality is that the reason making decisions is hard is because, one, we don't have frameworks and two, because we're emotional, right as human beings, and we are prone to cognitive biases which drive us to make bad decisions. 

29:35
You know we talk all about, like recency bias or things like that in gambling. You know we all that gamble with analytics take advantage of cognitive biases. Right, like there was a time back in the day it was as simple as you know, betting against the team that got blown out the week before in football and you would probably have a small edge because people would overreact to what had just happened recently. Right, obviously it's not that simple anymore, but there's still residual amounts of that right, like teams getting blown out on a Monday night or whatnot, or teams that are like really underperforming, but maybe like they're, they're underlying underperforming by a results, like like point standpoint, but their underlying metrics are maybe better than what, what they've seen, you know, and so, yeah, I mean I will always be on the data and analytics side in terms of decision-making, if I can be. 

30:27 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You think it's healthy at all, though, to question it. So I mean, you're co-host with Rufus, right, and I've done some shows with you guys and during football season mainly where Rufus might give out numbers, and I might question those numbers and and say you know, how do you think that that uh is possibly correct? And his answer is, like you know, I back tested this model for years and I use it and I've had success with it. I think there's obviously I'm on the other side of things, right, I'm a very data driven person, but I question a lot of the outputs a lot. I don't know if that's actually a healthy practice or not and if I would rather be better off just sitting back and saying, no, you know what. 

31:06
This is the model, it's been successful. I'm just going to fire on this, this, this and this, but I feel like there's there's part of me that just can't do that, and I don't know if it's just a you know personal characteristics or traits or anything like that, or whether it's actually healthy to constantly be questioning outputs that might not necessarily look correct to you, and I'm just curious of what your take is on that, if you think that that's like a healthy thing to do, generally speaking, or if you think betters would just be better off, you know, building out their models and just flat out trusting the outputs, as long as there's some sort of proven measurements via error metrics, roi in the past that indicate that this is likely going to lead to success. 

31:56 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
I mean it's the most difficult question in all of data analytics and modeling specifically is like, how much should you question a model? How stationary, or stability, or stationary over time, like the idea that models that things change, right, and data changes. And so ultimately, we talked about this again today on the podcast a little bit, just because the idea of questioning how quickly do you question your model if it's, you know, producing and we had this exact discussion honestly, and so I mean I think it's really healthy to continue to always question your model in good times and in bad times, because ultimately, you want to understand. You know, like, we're not. So blackjack, right, there's a continuum here. Right, Blackjack is a game that's completely closed. 

32:56
It's a game that's stable over time, it's stationary, it's all of that right, Meaning, like the game, if the rules change, you know if they're dealing out of a different kind of deck of cards. You know if they're dealing out of a different kind of deck of cards. You know, right, there's no subjectivity to what the dealer says or does. The players at the table Don't matter. The other players at the table don't matter. Sorry to all of you guys that believe they do, but they don't matter. 

33:22 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I'm glad you said that, by the way, jeff. Yeah, are you sure Are? 

33:25 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
you sure, jeff, but yeah, but so. 

33:29 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
So, even though in Blackjack, what's interesting is there was a casino in Chicago or just outside of Chicago, in Elgin Illinois. It was called the Grand Victoria and when I was living out in Chicago it was a casino that had just opened, right. So what's interesting is I don't think people will remember this, but essentially when we started playing Blackjack, there were probably casinos in two States. We were done playing blackjack. There was casinos in like 30 some States. You know it was, it was crazy. And the Elgin grand Victoria casino, um, they had this incredible game for us. They basically had this like flat layout of just, I want to say like 40, 50 blackjack tables, all with $2,000 maximums and you know which is like reasonable for for an all with like five to $10 minimums. And you know it was a place that there were tons of people always standing around, so we could all stand around and blend in and we could go and play there. And they took the action, meaning, like someone betting two thousand dollars did not freak them out. 

34:34
And the first month, few months, they were open. We played there a ton and we got creamed. And we got creamed to the point where we were like huh, what's going on here, and we even questioned blackjack, and so we went on there and just did some random sampling and counting of shoes without playing, where we were essentially just making sure that enough of these shoes ended at zero which they kind of should, if you're card counting. We basically looked at what the distribution, we did a hand test of all of these and we found that it was normal and we kept playing there and eventually started to cream them. But the reality is like you should be constantly checking things. 

35:17
Now, in that case, we weren't testing a model. We were testing to make sure they weren't quote, quote cheating. Honestly is what we were. What we were worried like maybe they had taken some tens out of the deck or anything like that, um, and really like we were being paranoid. There was no reason that that would have. Like these are people. They're not casinos are not doing this. In the in the mid 90s, they weren't doing this. Like late 90s, they weren't doing this. 

35:38 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I don't think you're like wait, I'm supposed to be beating you. How could you be beating us? And then you had to check the third sheet? No, it makes sense. Question for you, jeff. Actually this is one that I've been asked and don't know how to answer correctly. If you are playing let's say you're counting blackjack right now if you have like all five seats at the table under your like, whether it's you or four buddies, would that make a difference at all to the game? 

36:04 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
no, I mean not really but depending on what you were doing. 

36:07
Right, if you're just straight card counting, the only time it would matter is you could kind of play a bit more optimally at the end of a shoe because, um, really like the right, the right, like most positive ev thing to do against a dealer is to play kind of heads up, like, because you have the ability to change, you know. 

36:29
And then you want to kind of like spread when you need, when, like the table maximum, like if you're playing with someone else there, you want to play two hands to like decrease the variance. So there's like this uh, push and pull between being able to change your bet as many times as you get more information and actually like trying to minimize the amount of variance you have. Um, so no, but if you were doing other things like cuts or shuffle tracking or things that are more advanced games where you need to actually control which cards go where, like, and you have an ability to do that, then certainly having all the seats of the tables is the same way to do it. So, um, but just standard card counting or what people are doing, no, it doesn't really matter. 

37:11 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So, if your standard card counting though, you would want the the the furthest like the last hand at the table, though, so you get more information. 

37:17 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
No, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. All right, fair enough, that's just on the margin, yeah All right, so did you want to ask about Twitter? 

37:25 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Are we going to go into About Twitter, are we? 

37:26 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
going to go into. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about it. I mean, it's very current affairs and you know as someone in your case, jeff, who is very heavily involved VP of a section of the company. When you see what's going on with Twitter nowadays, first of all, I'm making the assumption that most people feel that the product has gone downhill. 

37:46
Yeah, you can't ask a loaded question Because, well, I feel like the product has gone downhill. And ask a loaded question because, well, I feel like the product has gone downhill and I think the general consensus is that way. But that might be my inner community. But what do you think of the current state of Twitter overall, jeff? And if you, if it has gone downhill in your eyes as someone who such was so heavily involved in the company, do you like take that personally? Do you feel some sense of pain with that? Um, I mean, I, I still have a really good friend that works there and he's he's pretty high up. 

38:09 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Do you feel some sense of pain with that? I mean, I still have a really good friend that works there and he's pretty high up there and so I actually was just talking to him yesterday a little bit about it. Their numbers are better than ever. So if the product is going downhill, it's definitely not being reflected right now in their usage numbers. Um, the the actual um product experience for me has gotten better with the for you stuff. Personally, like not to get too like, the for you tab is really interesting to me because it's made me discover it's created a new experience for me. 

38:47
I think there's a lot of noise there now because there's people that you don't follow that all of a sudden appear in your, in your, in your for you. But I spent so much time on Twitter that I don't mind the self filtering of the product. I think the Elon stuff is tough because you know he has a style that is, um, that's tough to deal with and it's tough to embrace. Like, one of the things that was amazing about working at Twitter was just the people and the culture. There was really an incredible culture and that's one of the reasons that made it so special. But I used to joke that working at Twitter was like working at like, one of the largest nonprofits in the world, because you're sort of working on Jack's gift to the world. And the idea that you're sort of working on Jack's gift to the world and you know the idea that you know you're monetized, like. 

39:34
There were too many people working at Twitter, right, when I sold my company to Twitter, alex Rudder, who was the VP and this is like a fascinatingly funny story now he was running all of engineering at twitter and he had 1600 engineers working for him and he said to me he goes, jeff, we have 1600 engineers. Spacex has 1600 engineers. Spacex is landing shit on the moon. We're a messaging app, right, and this is in 2015, right, so this was like an incredible precursor to what was to come. 

40:09
Um, but, yeah, I mean, I think Twitter had too many people working there, it was bloated and I think Twitter needed to innovate more. But, at the core, twitter is an incredible phenomenon, right, and for me personally, like I haven't even looked at threads, like I don't really have any interest to go over threads, and I have invested a lot in Twitter and like the people in Twitter and like, um, yeah, I guess I just I don't, I don't. I think there's a lot of noise right now and I I think you know threads maybe is an existential threat to Twitter, but there's been lots of existential threats to Twitter since I've been there and since I was there and since in the last 15 years, and maybe this is the biggest one. But, like, ultimately for me, like I still have a great twitter experience, I haven't noticed anything that's changed that much. It's a little bit noisier than it used to be yeah. 

40:58 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So like it's interesting hearing jeff's perspective on that, because for me, like the for you tab is the bane of my existence. 

41:06
You can just use the following no for sure, but sometimes twitter will do an update where it like resets it back to the for you tab. I don't know if that's intentional or if it's a bug, but, like, I will just get part. Most of the stuff in my life that I don't want to see is filtered to me in the for you tab, because it's in the gambling twitter space that I find to be like a toxic culture. Now, maybe je Jeff doesn't consume a lot of gambling Twitter or he does and enjoys that, but for me, like, it's intentionally feeding me stuff that I'm trying to avoid. That's why I love the following tab. It's because it's like this is my curated list of people. I want to see people that I care about. But it's a matter of perspective, right? Because even when I publicly tweeted, maybe two months ago about how I hate the for you tab and it was very mixed reaction to that as well. So for some people it works and some people it doesn't. 

41:58
But you know, I will say as much as I have personally stated I think the product has gone downhill. I don't spend as much time on Twitter as I used to, but I still spend a lot of time on Twitter and, like, I personally created a threads account this week. You know, just checking it out and within a day I was like I have no longevity or interest in using threads like absolutely none, and was back to Twitter. So there's something sticky about it, for sure none. And was back to Twitter. So there's something sticky about it, for sure. 

42:31
And maybe it's just like. Maybe it's just the thought of having to rebuild us, you know, a brand, or like my own social profile, which I've built over the course of 10 years on a new platform is like too overwhelming that I'll never do it. But I don't know. There, there is something sticky to there. And and honestly, as a sports better and you can attest to this, johnny I'm so heavily reliant on Twitter news and stuff for news and I don't know if there's like a world where that's ever going to change, because it's it's it's exactly. What you need is a better in real time. It's essentially just a real time, curated newsfeed, and who's going to do that better for sports bettors? I don't know that it can be done better. 

43:12 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Just an fyi. I think twitter got significantly better since uh, I guess the elon took it over like by. In my opinion, significantly better. Also recommended for you, rob, would be I used to get bad stuff in my for you feed which was like I didn't want to see, but like, if you actually give the thing info, it will improve. So, if you like, whenever you see something you don't want, instead of just scrolling past it, literally click on it and mute it and then or block that account and then you won't get stuff like that and it'll subcon, like whatever, not subconsciously, it's an algorithm. The algorithm will just update and then you'll have a better feed. 

43:45 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
This is jeff's laughing here, because we're kind of talking, I think. Well, do you agree, jeff, or are you? 

43:51 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
So I mean, I think the thing with Twitter is that there's still, just like, a lot of really good people there, really smart people that understand how to build products, and every decision they make is data-driven. It's all around experiments and if they're putting this for you tab out there, there's a reason for it, right Ultimately. And so you know the original question around do I like pull for Twitter and does it like worry me, what's happening? I just think Twitter's a phenomenon that'll be around forever. I don't ever really worry about it. I worry about the people a little bit there, just because they're such good people, and the people that are still there. It's at this point it's almost like Stockholm syndrome, like I don't, I don't really like you know they're there and they're enjoying it and for whatever reason they're enjoying. I mean, they work. I don't. These guys work around. Guys and girls work around the clock. They work so hard. 

44:47
There's a buddy that I um, that's there, that's you know. Uh, he's like a plus one handicap. He's awesome. I used to golf with him every once in a while. I'm gonna golf with him in probably nine months because he's he's just works as he works so much and so and he loves it cause he gets a lot of time, you know, with Elon and whatnot, and and uh, I know I think Elon is a very interesting person to spend time with. I mean, regardless of sort of what you think about him, he's had some level of success in life and he's probably got some things that you can learn from. 

45:19 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Speaking of working so much, you guys are at like a million episodes now of bet the process, which kudos to you for one, because we are an episode one 10 here, and me and Johnny had this conversation on air last week about how we got to like 80 episodes and it was like what are we going to do going forwards, and then we kind of crafted this plan of attack. 

45:42
I want to talk about bet the process because a lot of people do listen to it, but I get a lot of people who for some reason I guess because we, we interact, Jeff they think that I like know you really well and talk to you regularly, but they always ask me, as if I'm going to answer on your behalf, why does, why does Jeff do bet the process? Like, what's the motivation for the podcast? They don't have sponsors. You guys have talked openly on air about how it's kind of like a sunk cost where you just you know you're putting your own money into getting it produced and I don't know the answer to that. So for the people out there, what's the motivation for doing that the process for you? 

46:20 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Yeah, I mean I think it's changed a little bit over time. And it's just funny that we're having this conversation, because I think this football season the first real season that we're going to think about how to monetize it. But when we, when we first started it, you know I have been relevant in sports media in my life. Right, I was on ESPN for two years doing sports center, um, I've. I've was on Fox business for a while, like I've. I've been an on air, I've done, you know, I do Tony Kornheiser every week and that kind of thing Like um, and I'm not. I was never good on television Like I. I will. I will say that, I will say I will own that, that I wasn't good. And could I have gotten good? I could have probably gotten better, cause I sucked, but yeah, I could have gotten better. Um, but was it ever something that I was going to love? I'm not sure. 

47:08
And so, as I was kind of like leaving that world of relevancy or like irrelevant, I mean like I don't want to overplay how relevant what I was, but I mean it was there was a. There was a time where you could find my content on different platforms as I was leaving that world. Like I had an agent who was trying to book me on different things, and a lot of the things that he was trying to book me on I just wasn't that interested in, you know, and not really worth the time. And I was like, well, I like doing podcasts and how do I like kind of remain relevant and have some kind of a platform? And so I really just decided that I wanted to do a podcast, and Rufus and I didn't even know each other that well at the time, but I like asked him if he wanted to do the podcast with me. And you know, when we started, I think we were very, you know, rufus used to be very anti-tout. Now he's a tout. So it's not like it's things have changed over time, just kidding. 

48:04
No, I mean, like when we started, we definitely felt like there was a need and an opportunity to elevate the conversation around sports betting. I mean, I think you guys have thought the same thing and there's, you know, since we did this, which was five or six years ago, I think, at least six or seven years ago, there was really bad sports betting content and so ultimately, we were trying to raise and as part of that, ultimately we made a pledge to each other that we weren't going to just take. You know, the low hanging fruit would be to take sports book sponsorship right, but the minute you do that, it like changes your ability to be genuine and organic around the content you produce. And I think neither Rufus and I needed, you know, an additional few thousand dollars a month or whatever it would have been, and so we really wanted to focus on the content and how good the content was. 

48:54
And we've gone through a lot of iterations. I mean I think there've been episodes of the episodes that we've done that have been amazing that I would put up against any piece of sports betting content out there, and we've done ones that are terrible. We've done ones where, like you know, people used to yell at me and Rufus for yelling at each other and, like I've gone back and listened to some of them sucked. It was like painful to listen to, right, and so you kind of take feedback and I think part of it is like growing and right now the reason I do it is I like, I like producing the content. 

49:24
It takes it takes a fair amount of work, cause I great, but he doesn't have a lot of time for it, and every once in a while, rufus leans in, like this week. Having Elihu on was his idea. We produce great stuff, but he he doesn't have the time often to do that. Um, and so now we're just trying to produce really good content, and I do think we will try to monetize it this fall, because there's lots of opportunities to do that in the right way now, whereas I didn't think there was before, and we have more than seven listeners that's a spoiler alert and we have a good group of people that listen to it, and I think it's a very interesting demographic. We have people that I think are very knowledgeable in this space, and we actually have people that listen that don't even sports bet, which is crazy to me. They just like and enjoy the process, to hear the process of how we think or how we make decisions. 

50:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
When you get to the point of having produced as many episodes of you have as you had, how do you keep things fresh? I mean, like, how much prep goes into a bet? The process do you got? Do you and Rufus chat over the course of the week? Do you just show up for an episode and do it? I'm just very curious in terms of your style of content creation and whether you know some people are very meticulous in that they literally plan every minute of their show, top to bottom. I want to touch on this. I want to touch on this how much is spontaneous for you versus planned? 

50:52 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
it varies a lot. It varies a lot on who the guest is. It varies a lot on how much time either of us has during the week. I there have been times where we've had what I would consider to be important guests where I've wanted to really nail the interview and and I will have questions in a script and a whole thing. Um, I do think I have like a pretty good skill of being able to ask questions and and take a take a interview in a certain direction and so, you know, I I do feel relatively good flying off the cuff and and, honestly, a lot of times it's how familiar I am with the subject matter, like today we had Ella who on and I told Rufus I'm like, can you put the script together, can you put the high level together? And he did, he put a bunch of questions down that we started with and then we got into it and it flowed really well. 

51:41
But yeah, I mean, I think again, like another thing we're thinking about doing for football season is trying to create more structure around what we do, create segments that I'm sure you guys think about this that can be sent out on social and things like that. We did that whole segment last year. That I think is really good, but we'll take a lot of time to do called that the process where we actually look at you know, some other person and what they they did. Like you know, simmons is the perfect example. Like, I listened to Simmons's podcast all the time but, like some of the process that he goes through in terms of understanding betting is is crazy, right, it's crazy how sort of like misguided it is in terms of how he thinks about things and so, um, yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's sort of like, uh, it's a labor of love to definitely, it's definitely like a passion project that we do around around it. Um, I, I think again, like there is a way that we could probably monetize it in really interesting ways. I think we probably influence an interesting segment of the market that we could probably activate for a brand or for a company. We haven't figured out what that is yet, but and we're we're also like, I think one of the things that we find interesting, and I'm sure you guys think about this, is the community that you create around your podcast, right, this whole joke that we have around seven listeners and things like that. 

52:55
You know people will come up to me in random situations and tell me I'm one of the seven, like my painter for my house came up to me and told me he's one of the seven and it just it's just like it's awesome to hear and it's awesome to like. You know, my, my wife happened to be around when she he was talking to me about this and she's like, oh wow, someone actually does listen to your podcast. That's great. You think he'll give us a bargain on our, on our, uh, our house painting and so, um, you know there is, there is a lot of um, I do the Tony Kornheiser podcast Now. 

53:25
I do it during the football season. I give picks and the other two people that give picks are James Carville and Chuck Todd. We're both political guys and a monkey Sorry, there's another and they, they. But one of the things that's crazy about that one too, is there's a huge community around it where people will come up to me and say La Chisere, which is like this kind of thing that they talk about on Tony Kornheiser's thing. So I really, I think I really respect and and really enjoy this idea of like a micro community that you create around the content you create and around who you. I think it shows, um, that you've built something and and maybe those things aren't worth a lot of money, which is which is a bummer at times, but also you know they're. They're worth more than money in some respects, because they're they're kind of like very organic and they're not. There aren't a lot of real things like that that develop over time. 

54:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
In terms of the listenership. Um, I think you you may disagree, but I think your audience skews more towards the sharper, semi-sharp community. Um, are there thoughts on your end about potentially opening the podcast up to a wider audience, or are you just content with having, I mean, you know, the smaller sub subsection of betters? We wrestle with that a lot, obviously with our own podcast as well, because I think you know we can appeal to 1% of betters, but we would like to open up the educational components, especially to more novices. Do you guys wrestle with that same issue? 

54:56 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Yes and no. I don't think either of us wants to do a mainstream betting podcast, but I think what we would be interested in doing is a mainstream podcast on decision-making or on process as being important. Podcast on decision-making or on process as being important, like this year. We've had, you know, we had Maria Maria Ho on, who is, you know, a poker expert, not a sports betting expert. We had Alison Levine on, who has nothing to do with sports betting. She, like summited Mount, led the first all women's summit to Mount Everest. 

55:25
You know, we we've had people on we were going to have we'll have Pablo Torre on pretty soon. We had Evan Walsh on, who you know was is a EVP at the NBA talking about and I thought the Evan episode honestly was one of the most fascinating ones we've done recently where he talked a lot about like the you know the the play in game. He's. He'll come back on to talk about this in-season tournament, but he's like the guy that's figuring out all this stuff out and the idea of sitting around and thinking about, you know, game structures and incentives around the NBA. So I guess I get more excited when I hear people say that they listen to the podcast but don't really sports bet and are just kind of interested in hearing the process of how we do things. 

56:06
But like it's tough because we're not. I don't think we target our content intentionally. We don't target our content particularly well because what may be really interesting to that person sometimes we'll just nerd out on like specific sports betting stuff that's probably not going to be interesting in that person at all. Like I have a friend that's a huge golfer and he loves it when we talk about golf and the high level process of sports betting. Then when we get into the nitty-gritty of like, like probably the times when we have you on and you're like going into x's and o's and things like that that are really interesting for nfl people, it's probably not as interesting for that general person that's like trying to learn more about process thinking and whatnot for sure. 

56:44 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Um, in terms of advice, we get this a lot of people asking us questions, but I'm very curious for you. There's a lot of aspiring podcast hosts out there, people who want to create content, whether that's topics that are related to sports betting, potentially analytics, data-driven decision-making it could be any subject really, what advice would you give to an aspiring podcast host who's passionate about a subject and kind of just wants to communicate that to people? 

57:12 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, I think I think it's about caring about the content right and not caring about the business aspects of things or like your demographic, like it's sort of the opposite of how I would tell anyone to do anything in business right. In business, I'm super analytically driven. I'm super like understand your customer, understand what you need from the customer. I think podcasts are personal at some level and you need to understand, like what is, what is your voice or your platform that you want to talk about and like just go after that. Now, hopefully there's a cross section between that and an actual demographic of listeners that want to listen to what you said. 

57:52
Um, but you know, like again, again, if you go back to Rufus and I, it really is around like process driven thinking and and and like. For us now it's somewhat about our, our relationship right, and about how we've grown as as like friends and whatnot, and so that's the kind of stuff we're interested in. Like Rufus is like a you know he's like a little brother to me and like, but like everyone's like, you're so mean to him at times and I'm like I don't know if I guess if I had a little brother, I'd probably be mean to him also, like I watched my oldest son, james, with this little brother, charlie, and he's really mean to him. But then I'll say things like this morning I'm like let's go get bagels. And he's like let's wait for Charlie to wake up so Charlie can come with us. 

58:29 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So it's like, uh, as someone who knows you or have gotten to know you over the years, jeff, I mean that I you have like some of those same characters. It's like a hard outer shell I don't know how to describe it. Really, I think you're a one-of-a-kind person, but kind of the best way I can put it is um, probably like my first experiences with you were at I think it would have been mit sloan sports analytics conference, where you were a moderator and I would be sitting in the room. I'm like I've never seen a moderator ask questions like this to people on panels. Now, typically speaking, you go to a sports any conference. Like 99% of the time you're going to get a moderator just kind of throwing law balls to the panelists and they're there to promote whatever they're doing. Kind of throwing law balls to the panelists and they're there to promote whatever they're doing. 

59:22
And you were there and like people would give answers and you challenged them on that, which was very refreshing for me. That was what made me want to introduce myself to you in the first place and be like I really like this guy in the sense that he's just not here to you know, put on a show. He's going to ask the tough questions that need to be asked. You know, put put on a show, he's going to ask the tough questions that need to be asked. But then I got to know you more and you you do have like a softer side to you. 

59:45
I do want to particularly dig into those, those panels, though, and like the moderation aspect, because is that uncomfortable for you at all? Like you're, you're meeting with these people, probably talking about what the content is going to be over the course of that hour of the discussion and like what the talking points are going to be, and then you're up there and I don't I don't want to use grilling because it's not the right word You're allowing people to answer for themselves, You're just asking questions, but it's done in a manner that is atypical of what those panels typically are. Just walk me through that, Like if that's natural to you. If you do feel a level of discomfort in doing that, I'm just genuinely curious. 

01:00:25 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
I think I have a responsibility to every person in that audience who paid quite a bit of money to go, and to the people that are watching on a live stream to try to get as good a content as possible, Right, and these panels where everyone agrees or everyone says their soundbite, they're very well rehearsed, Like you could just watch that on YouTube or you could just read a marketing message, and so, for me, I'm just trying to be, you know, trying to produce interesting content and try to ask real questions. I think it's interesting because as I've evolved in my life and my career and needed to think a little bit more about being mindful of the people in my life, that I piss off. Right, it's, it's, it's harder, right, Like I just don't think I'd be a good as good a moderator now as I was 15 years ago when I didn't have kids or I didn't have a like. I didn't have any. There wasn't, there was less like I gave less of a shit than I do now, and I probably give more of a shit now than I used to. 

01:01:34
And so when you ask, is it uncomfortable at the? You know, when I had her, Alibaba and Matt Holt on, and you know, that's the, that's the, that's the whole one that everyone remembers, where Matt Holt was clearly like really uncomfortable, and her Alibaba, I mean that's. Or you know, when I, Sharon Otterman, was on from William Hill and I, I challenged her. And you know when I, Sharon Otterman, was on from William Hill and I challenged her, and you know, I, I think in a lot of those cases I'm going easy on these people, which is funny because I feel like I'm restraining myself. But I do think, as long as I am being fair not being a jerk, like asking fair questions I don't have any problem with that. I think I'm being myself and I'm being fair. I would much rather be that way than swallow my tongue and be a shill for some corporate sponsorship or whatnot. And there's probably a reason why I wasn't moderating either sports betting panel this year at Sloan. 

01:02:35 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So, jeff, recently, rob and I've been giving out some positive EV and some negative EV moves of the week. All right, now these can be anything in life, doesn't need to be sports betting specific, doesn't need to even be gambling related. Okay, so what we wanted to ask you, as someone who has definitely made some EV moves in their lifetime give us your EV move of the week your lifetime. 

01:03:01 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Give us your ev move of the week. My ev move of the week, my ev move the week, would be to tell anyone that is thinking about betting on sports not to really that's a positive ev that's the positive. 

01:03:09 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, I mean if you think about. 

01:03:10 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
If you think about, like the world that we've made ourselves into, where we obsess about things that no one else cares about, that we go through these ups and downs like anyone that's bet on sports at any kind of level has had a somewhat level of depression from it at some moment. Right, it's definitely caused a negative mood swing, it's and if you haven't, I'm incredibly impressed. But I've had great positive ones and it's brought me certainly a lot of enjoyment. But if I could go back in time to the moment I first decided to bet on a game and go back and just tell myself not to, I probably think I would tell myself not to. I think that would be my positive EV move for the rest of my life is to be one of those people that like, just like sports for the sheer enjoyment of watching a game with nothing on it. Now, would that be possible for me? Probably not, but if I could somehow decouple myself from that, I think that would be positive EV. 

01:04:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I think this would make for a very interesting case study, because we we know from like industry studies that the vast majority of bettors are going to lose in the long run and the vast majority of bettors know some might be delusional, but some know that they've lost. And I bet you, if you, you ask them like you know, would you go back in time and recover the money that you've lost? But you know you ask them like you know, would you go back in time and recover the money that you've lost? But you know you're never betting on sports? I would imagine that the vast majority of them say no way. Like I've had way too many great experiences from just betting on sports. It's a sunk cost. That's my belief. 

01:04:52 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Maybe you feel free to disagree with me, jeff, but I think the majority of people would say no, I would rather not have this money back because of that experience and I want to keep betting on sports. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think it's definitely been something that's taken a lot of my time mind share and you know again, like, as you go into this world where you have kids and things like that, you know the, the, the, the time that you could be spending doing other things besides, and the problem is I like to sweat games. Right, that's like the ultimate, like someone like rufus doesn't really sweat games like I do. 

01:05:24
I sweat games, you know, and I like perversely enjoy it, but I know how much of a time it wastes. So again there's this whole like protect myself from myself thing that really is, is is at the core of this well, I also think so. 

01:05:38 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
There's definitely some validity to the whole. You ruin the game for yourself because now, when you don't have money on it, it's not necessarily a fun sweat, as you mentioned, jeff. But with that being said, I feel like when you're younger, before you start betting, you watch the games for fun. Then you start betting and now you watch them because you have money on the game. But it's no guarantee that if you didn't have money on the games, you would be as big a sports fan as you are right now or there, because there's so many people who just lose interest like yeah, I used to like watching hockey and basketball whenever I watched, every week I played fantasy maybe, and then they have kids and then just forget about it. So there's no guarantee that you would still be like a sports fanatic right now, just watching the, the game sweat free. That's the other thing I've always considered. 

01:06:20 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Yeah, I mean the last few years where I didn't really do much baseball or anything like that. The summer was definitely like empty and I didn't like pay attention to baseball and I didn't even like know a ton of baseball players and there was like a little bit of feeling of emptiness. But like at the core, now that I'm back in it, I'm not even sure if it's like again you go back to this net positive or negative in the world, like it's, it's, it's a. I think you should go do that little case study, rob, and figure it out. 

01:06:48 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So, jeff, do you have a negative EV move of the week? 

01:06:52 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
A negative EV move Like what would be? What would I tell people to do that was negative. 

01:06:58 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
No, no, no, no. So like this is like something that I'll give you. Mine from last week was like giving somebody a gift card instead of cash for a gift, because it's you lose the flexibility. 

01:07:07 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So that's like a negative EV move of the week mine was paying for fireworks like actually putting your own money down to purchase fireworks. When there's so many fireworks that are accessible publicly, it could be anything Jess. 

01:07:22 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Yeah, I think a negative EV move is like and people who have kids will understand this it's caring a lot about what your kids eat, meaning like you put a lot of meticulous care into cooking them something, or you go out and buy something that's exciting for them, only to have them not want it, not eat it and tell you they want to eat something else. Like the kids thing you know, spending a lot of time trying to figure out, like, what kids want to eat, which I will always do Again, like I am the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different outcome. I will continue to do it Cause, like I love it when my kids like, really, really like something and get into it from a food perspective, but consistently trying to do it and care about it is a pretty negative EV move. 

01:08:09 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
All right, that's a good one that we've never heard before. That's awesome. 

01:08:12 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I don't have kids so I'm I don't plan to, so I won't experience that, but I can see how that would be particularly frustrating. 

01:08:21 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Absolutely All right. And then, jeff, we've got one final question for you, but before we ask it, I just want to let everybody know Jeff obviously hosts Bet the Process with Rufus Peabody. You can find that show, I guess, on Spotify, itunes, all streaming platforms. He's got a great episode that should be out at the time of this release with Elihu, who's a great mind in the sports betting space as well. So if you want to check out one from this week, head over to Bet the Process on any channel and check it out. Also, rob's been on there multiple times. If you want to just search Pazola, go back. He's been on a bunch of episodes as well. Maybe one day I'll come on. I got a message, rufus. Still so net last question for you, jeff, if you could go back five years time so this is only five years what's a piece of advice that you would give your current self? 

01:09:15 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
oh, I don't know how serious we want to get here serious we want to get serious. 

01:09:20 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
You want to get really serious, right. So where were you five years ago? Were you? Were you um with microsoft? 

01:09:27 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
five years ago no, I wasn't five, that was pre-microsoft. So five years ago I was probably. You know, I I think there is, and this is like there are a couple of things that I would think about one, um, I think one of the things that in my life that I've always I have vices. I have vices that I love, like sports betting is a vice to some degree and, uh, drinking is a vice to some degree and drinking is a vice to some degree. Eating is a vice to some degree, like I do. Whenever you do something in in sort of like you know, you know whenever you do something like too much, like it's bad Right and like so you know, I think there's probably a little bit of like moderation conversations I would have with myself about different pieces of this stuff. 

01:10:19
Um, but I think ultimately the biggest thing, which is kind of the saddest thing about life, is that there is like part of you that needs to learn how to assimilate right, how to assimilate in whatever situation you're in. So I've had, I think, in the five years I've probably had like three-ish jobs in that time, like one was I was doing consulting for the CEO of AT&T One. I was at like a small startup in the hotel revenue management space and the other was at Microsoft, and I think you know, and also obviously I've had I do a lot of stuff besides my jobs and I think what I've had to learn to do in life is to like I have a very you know, rob, rob and I talked about this. I have this like or we talked about this like I have this part of like myself that just that doesn't give a shit, a shit that just says what I want to say and is organic. I guess sometimes maybe I should give more of a shit and I should probably think a little bit more situations in your life than, um, you would if you just always decided not to give a shit. Now, part of my being is not giving a shit, right. So, like there's only so much of that I can do before I like literally like numb myself down and become like a different person than I am. 

01:11:54
But I do think there's a lot of the unfortunate part of the world which is that you know this is like like history kind of tells you like it's better to just, you know, succeed, uh, you know, uh, sorry, fail unconventional, fail conventionally than it does to succeed unconventionally Right, and that's obviously like part of the analytics lesson and the self-preservation of like coaches and why people don't go for it on fork down as much. But unfortunately, like that's somewhat of the life lesson and I guess, I guess, maybe really and this is like a terrible, meandering answer, so I apologize for it, but it's really just pick your spots and I think in life like I probably need to learn when to pick my spots better and ultimately, like you can't always be running on 11. You got to sometimes be like running on five and like running with everyone else and then pick your spots when you want to go to 11. 

01:12:50
I think that's solid advice, and by the way it wasn't, Isn't it kind of? 

01:12:55 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
depressing. Well, that doesn't mean that it can't be good advice. 

01:12:59 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I got to go home and think about that. 

01:13:00 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Those are not mutually exclusive things. 

01:13:05 - Jeff Ma (Guest)
Yeah, I think the other thing too that I would tell myself, by the way, is to play more golf, because golf is like this incredible thing that you do for yourself, but it's also incredible as a way to really uh connect with old friends, like I did this golf trip to band and I do all these like Vegas trips and like historically it's been like super fun and like you know whatever, but I'm too old for that now. And we did this band and trip and I just thought it was like the best hang. I went to a hoopie in Georgia and did this golf trip there. It was such a great hang and on the quality of life perspective and the quality of the trip and the quality of the hang, it's much more of a positive EV than than like a guy's Vegas trip, which I never thought I'd say in my life, and I believe that you know what I actually? 

01:13:53 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
agree with that completely. I agree with that completely. 

01:13:55 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
All right, this has been episode 110 of the Circles Off sports betting podcast here on the Hammer Betting Network. Thank you, jeff. Thank you Rob. Happy birthday Zach. See you all next week.