00:00 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
On this week's episode of Circles Off, we are joined by a great guest goes by the alias of China. Started as a pro poker player, evolved into a pro sports bettor over the last few years. We're going to pick his brain on his approach to betting and how he's built up to where he is nowadays. All that and more. Circles Off starts now. Let's go. Welcome to circles off, episode number 112, right here on the hammer betting network, presented by pinnacle sportsbook rob isola, joined by johnny from betstamp. How goes it? Start of the? 

00:36 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
week. Yeah, that's it really. That's all I can say. It's a busy week. 

00:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
yeah, it's been a. It's been a bit pretty busy for me hectic rolling into football season here, bet bash in a few weeks, got another World Putting League event on deck coming up as well, where I'm going to try to make amends. Can't announce it just yet, but I'm going to try to make amends. Let's hope so, buddy, you're going to. 

00:56
It's been pathetic. We also didn't catch a lot of flack for the Tesla stuff last week, which was nice. You like the Tesla stuff last week, which was nice? You did get some heat, though A little bit of heat. 

01:05
Yeah, I got one guy that's been going after me pretty hard, parlay Tom. He's pulled the professional move of blocking me first, but still somehow replying to every single one of my tweets. Don't know how he's accomplished it. Another first for gambling Twitter. Don't know how they do it all the time. Or gambling X, I should say Gambling X. That's right, you ever going to call it X? 

01:30 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Like, yeah, if that sticks, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. 

01:34 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
But did you see? Facebook and Meta have the rights to X as social platforms and Microsoft has it for finances and investments or something. So it's like I mean, it's always going to be Twitter to me. Man, it's always going to be Twitter to me. Can't force me to change it. 

01:51 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Well, we'll see. I don't really think it does anything. 

01:54 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It really doesn't matter. In fact, we're talking about it, so it kind of does matter, in the sense that the rebrand is somewhat working. 

02:06 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, but if you ask like straight up, like 95 of the world they don't even know what that is, they don't even know yet it's true, so it's true episode number 112. 

02:13 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
If you ask 95 of the world to name a number, 12 easily gonna be tb12. You think so. Not 95 of the world, but I would say 95% of NFL fans. You ask them to name a 12, they would easily get. 

02:29 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Brady or Rodgers Packers fans will give Rodgers yeah. 

02:32 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Brady or Rodgers, though I mean there's a million of them. Terry Bradshaw used to wear 12. Our old studio we had the jerseys up on the wall. Andrew Luck was a 12. 

02:41 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Is 12 the best QB number? Well, 12 is the best number because a bull has the most. It definitely has the most, actually, does it? No, it's not. It's got the most Super Bowls in the modern day, that's for sure. 

02:51 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yes, and the most Super Bowl losses, probably to. Jim Kelly wore 12. I remember when I was a kid, when I became a Cowboys fan, they were beating the Bills pretty much every. Bills were failing miserably in the Superbowl's four straight losses. But yeah, I would say 12 is like a a banger quarterback number Definitely has way more than any other number. 

03:09 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah. 

03:09 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
For Superbowl, without a doubt, I mean, and even, like compared to other sports, trying to think of 12s for hockey, 12. 

03:18 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Not that big a number? Yeah, game law, jerome McGinley, jerome McGinley. 

03:21 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Jerome McGinley. Peter Bondra wore 12. Not bad Another guy, I only would remember that because of video games Always the guys you got to trade for right away. Talk about Pavel Bure a few weeks ago. Peter Bondra is another guy you want that shot on your team in the video games Used to trade for him right away. 99 shooting attribute Absolute banger. 

03:41 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
John Stockton, the shortest of shorts Used to wear number 12 back for the utah jazz. Wow, top jersey numbers with most super bowl titles. Jersey number 12 18 super bowls. Yeah, go down one second jersey, number 16, with seven bowls. Wow, so 12 wow mont. Montana. Who is that? Len Dawson? I can't really read that. 

04:06 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yes, Jim Plunkett. 

04:07 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Jim Plunkett. Three bowls, two bowls. Yeah, two bowls there, these guys preceded us. 

04:12 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
These are the type Now I'm addicted to like Wow Jersey number seven Five titles Big Ben, with two of them Elway, and Disman, how's your football history? Have you been doing this crossover stuff? 

04:23 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
No, no, I don't. I, I don't have the, I don't. I don't love it that much. I'm addicted, but I suck it's harder than expected. 

04:30 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I should be so much for the amount I've followed sports in my life. I should be so much better at this stuff. But it's hard when you put me under pressure to come up with something. I just go blank. Like it's. Eric eager has been posting like his crossover answers and I'm like, oh my god, like how does this guy remember this stuff? 

04:48 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
he's got like kickers, olindo mare and stuff like the hockey one is harder than expected, and that's like the sport that I grew up watching and knew a lot of players. It's honestly harder than expected it it is fun. 

04:59 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I like these like stupid games that they're coming out with like. When wordle came out, I was kind of like addicted to wordle for a bit. Then it got. I went to like octordle or whatever to make it harder. Then there was this thing called like. It never picked up, but it was called. I can't even pronounce. It's like bet dole, b-e-t-d-l-e I think, and it was just like guess the betting lines for that day. But it was like off mark, like off the stuff, this person to win in straight sets and tennis and whatever. And that was fun for a while. But now I'm addicted to this crossover stuff. It's killing my productivity, absolutely killing my productivity. 

05:38
Today we have a very special guest. We're gonna get to him in one second, but a reminder as always, circles Off powered by pinnacle sports book. Pinnacle is the world's sharpest sports book available to bettors in ontario. Find out what professional bettors have known for decades. Pinnacle is where the best bettors play, must be 19 plus, not available to those in the us and, of course, always, please play responsibly. We're now joined by our guest for this week. He goes by at Chinamaniac on Twitter, slash X, whatever you want to call it. Now he had a decade of playing professional poker before turning into a pro. Better, china now joins us on Circles Off. How's it going? Going excellent, how about you guys Doing well, doing well, doing well. Uh, leading up to football season always exciting time of year, I think, for both me and johnny, but we want to learn a little bit more about you, china, as does the audience. So, as we do with every starters. 

06:35 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
What about the handle? 

06:37 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
we didn't even yeah, I guess sure, yeah why'd you pick that twitter handle? 

06:41 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
the twitter handle. Okay. So we used to play a lot of live poker back in the early 2000s and we and I have a friend. His name is tim lee and, uh, we used to call him, uh, his nickname was bruce lee the chinaman. So when I went to pick a screen name on poker stars, I tried to pick the chinaman, because asians some as Asians gambled pretty hard and I thought that would get me a lot of action. So that handle was gone, so I just added the IAC at the end and it did get me a lot of action over the years. 

07:17 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
There you go. They just thought you were a degenerate at that time. Yeah, I yeah, I mean listen whatever you can to get additional action, uh. So china, give us some of your personal background, uh, and specifically as a sports betting podcast, so how you got involved in the sports betting space, coming from poker originally? 

07:35 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
okay, well, even pre-poker, um. I grew up um in the suburb about 20 minutes north of boston, belrica mass, and I had an older brother who's three years older than me and him and the crew that he ran with were pretty hard gamblers, whether it be poker games, dog tracks, all that stuff. So I was around that growing up, gravitated towards it. I loved numbers, loved figuring things out, and I started betting with bookies when I was in eighth, ninth grade, betting NBA three-team teases, which are horrible, and you know, all the way up to the late nineties betting lightning bets, action points used to bet a lot of those bets, action points used to bet a lot of those and I was an agent for a little while. So you know I was, you know I was around a lot of bookies growing up and then, you know, eventually there was no gravy there I transitioned into poker and I played a decade of pro poker. 

08:48 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So so you start in your early career, obviously growing up eighth, ninth grade betting. I mean I started pretty early myself, but that's even like to another level. You said you became an agent at some point. For most people that's, you know, their get started on some sort of path of making money when they become an agent. Were you just essentially losing that money back and betting at that time? 

09:11 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Yeah, I had a lot of very big upswings and some big downswings. So, yeah, I mean I would get commission sometimes, but oftentimes, like back then, I was known as a pretty hard partier and you know, I'd get to the point where I was calling in like action point bets, lightning bets for like 500, 1000 a point on recorded lines, not knowing how much I won or lost on monday. And yeah, I lost a lot of it back back then, had to go on payment plans, like a lot of degenerates didn't do or you know, or when they first start gambling, they just you know, you just don't know any better right. 

09:41 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So now you shift into poker. Typically speaking, you would have to have some sort of bankroll to start poker in the first place. So how does that come about? 

09:51 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
So I used to work in a lot of kitchens in my 20s and even into my early 30s. So when I started playing poker I didn't even really have a bankroll. Like I'm like the complete opposite of most of the guys that come on this podcast and some of the other podcasts with you know, really sharp bettors, like I don't have that Ivy league degree in that stuff. So with uh, with poker, I actually took a hundred dollar loan from somebody that I knew online and I just ran it up. I got to a certain point I started losing a lot back playing six max and ring limit hold them and somebody gave me the advice to play heads up. Try that. I tried heads up and it worked out very well. I just found bad players and I played them for 10 years and the rest is history. 

10:40 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Were you actually skilled at poker, like, did you consider yourself a good player? Was it more so finding those opponents that you knew you could beat? 

10:48 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
I was better than average, but I was playing the stakes that I was playing. The rate was so hard to overcome that if I had continued down that path and not switched to heads up, maybe I'd go broke, and I'm working back in the kitchen right now. So it was more finding the, the low-hanging fruit. I think that's always the most important thing to do was this um mainly online or or in-person games? 

11:14 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
all online so so leveraging softwares like shark scope and stuff like that to find yes, weaker players. 

11:21 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
I used to use a site called poker table ratings where you could look up, yes, weaker players. I used to use a site called Poker Table Ratings where you could look up any player. It would give you their statistics and if they were at a certain level, I would just play them. If they weren't, I would just sit out, and the secret sauce was that was it. You know, you just seven or eight out of 10 guys you would just play, you'd beat their brains in. Another one would join. The market was so liquid back then that you could make 50 60 000 a year playing like three, six limit, hold them heads up online. So for me it was a dream come true. I you know I'm not working in a kitchen anymore and now I'm playing poker as a profession yeah, I mean, I think, uh, I I share a lot of the same experience with you. 

12:01 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I think that was like, uh, a lot of people have grown up in sports betting at least like the younger generation, and I'm kind of like outdating myself here or whatever but they don't have those poker experiences. That was like the poker edge that you could find when you weren't even a good poker player back in the day, because the market was so saturated with all these new players that were coming into the space that just thought they were good because they watched Chris Moneymaker play the World Series of Poker, they watched Rounders or something like that and thought they could play. But there were these tracking softwares that were just compiling all histories of these players and you could easily find who was good and who was bad and just avoid the good players and it was, frankly, an easy way to make money at that time. I'm curious, china. So you know you're playing, you're doing this, like when does that stop? When does it? 

12:51
You do you come to the realization of, like I need to do something else? Um, did you? Did you think the edge was gone? I'm just curious. What led to the next transition? 

13:00 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
all right. So I got fortunate from like 2014, 2015 till about 2017. I got to play the same guy heads up online every single, just about every night, five, six days a week. So that dried up after a couple of years and my my next move was going to be transitioning to live poker because Encore Casino was opening in Boston. But those games didn't turn out to be so good. And around 2015, 2016, that's when I just started handicapping just on a whim and it just worked out pretty well. 

13:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So my first interaction with you was several years ago on Twitter, just via DMs, where you had reached out to me and we got to chatting a little bit and you talked about not in great detail, but you transitioning from the world of poker to sports betting and it's a direct quote from a DM that you sent me back in the day. But you said that you hopped directly into originating with success directly into originating with success, and that's very uncommon for most bettors. I would say, like most bettors pick up sports betting, think they know what they're doing and they learn the hard way and that's not everyone, but that's that's the case for most of them. What do you think it was about you where you were immediately able to find success? 

14:25 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
okay, well, before the poker, I was a degenerate gambler so I kind of knew what not to do from now being successful in a different form of gambling. So I knew that I wasn't going to go in and try and figure out who's going to cover the Lakers or the Knicks tonight. So one Saturday afternoon I was just sitting at my computer. I had no poker action going on. I opened up I believe it was Bovada at the time and I just started looking through the Saturday player props for the college football games and I just started looking at the numbers, looking through box scores, and it was week one or week two of the season and I just said to myself I I'm like these just look way too high, like this, this just looks way too high. So I was betting majority unders and I probably got banned from four or five sports books in the first 30 to 60 days and I was just like well, maybe this is something that I can pursue a little bit further. 

15:23
So that's pretty much how it went. I mean back then and it's not like this anymore but back then you open up the quarterback's touchdowns for the week. It used to be touchdowns and interceptions. Every guy would be listed at four and a half and you know I would look back at the previous year's data on the same quarterback. They're in the same system and 11 out of the 12 games they're going under four and a half. I mean, if that stuff doesn't exist now, but that's kind of the stuff that catapulted me to get a decent bankroll, stay in the game and try and find more stuff. 

16:00 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Why do you think those edges survived for so long? I mean, like you say that, like it doesn't exist. Now it doesn't. 

16:19 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
I mean, I guess the market is way more liquid now and there's more bettors in the space, but you would. You would imagine that there would have been enough people at some point in time that would have caught on to something like that, but I think back then it wasn't as mainstream. There were sharp groups, but I think a lot of the sharp groups that were probably betting PPHs at a large scale back then aren't going to be focusing on that stuff, because I think a lot of the main markets were probably pretty easy to beat for a sophisticated group back then. So it was the same way with NFL props back then. I mean anybody that was betting props in 2016,. And then you look at them now. It's night and day where the numbers were and how much sharper the books have gotten. They're still beatable, but you know, or all the markets they've all gotten tougher. So you know. 

17:01 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So, aside from just eyeballing numbers in the early going, sure did you have any other applicable skills in any way, whether that was technical skills, modeling abilities or was this just like completely starting from scratch? 

17:18 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
essentially, starting from scratch. Zero technical skills, no building models, more just using common, just looking at game logs and seeing that this just looks off I mean it was. I can give you a couple other examples, like a couple of years ago even, you know, I think, nba playoffs maybe it was in the bubble like LeBron James triple doubles they're listing that at no, at minus 150. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the number. You know he maybe he gets one one every 15 games. So it was more just common sense stuff and just trying to find edges like that. And then you know you take an edge like that and then maybe you go a little smaller, smaller, smaller, and then you find a point where you kind of have your baseline of what's plus EV and what's not plus EV. That's just the way that. That's how I do it Fair enough. 

18:14 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I mean, everyone has their own different ways of betting on sports and I think with the people that we've interviewed over the course of a few years now here on Circles Off, we've pretty much seen that and how different people approach different things. So I'm curious, because you know, in my opinion and you can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, chyna, like to me, that can only take you so far, because you're not gonna eyeball stuff in major markets. I mean, maybe you can and maybe you're having success that way, but I would say that the vast majority of people can't eyeball stuff in major markets and find big edges there. Talk about your evolution through being a successful sports bettor. Did you start to hook up with different partners? Did you start to bet other markets? How did you get to where you are now? 

19:04 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Okay, so that's pretty easy. I got, you know, I started online. I got kicked out of off a lot of those books and then I started sending feelers around from people that I grew up with about getting PPH accounts. So just started getting PPH accounts and some of my friends would get them for me. I'd get kicked off. Then they would say, hey, I can't believe you're doing this good on these. Nobody wins at sports betting. I can get you five more accounts, I can get you 10 more accounts. So then just networking through people that I grew up with, yeah, it was pretty easy to get accounts and you know I would just, I just kept rolling with it. 

19:45 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
And scaling that up and up and up because, obviously so, you're still in the Boston area at this time. Sure, are you expanding out into other cities? Are you meeting other contacts in other spaces? I mean, what you're describing is I'm not, by the way, I don't mean to come off as aggressive or questioning everything, it's just it's very challenging to do that, as a lot of people can attest to just to constantly cycle accounts in the same city over and over. So I'm just curious how you continue to maintain that for for years okay, so local accounts when those go dry, you got to remember. 

20:15 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Now I'm playing online poker for 10 years so I have, you know, if I open up my telegram or my skype, I have, you know, 100, 150 contacts in there. I can just go there, go through there, talk to other shock poker players, see if they want to get involved. And that's worked a lot. And then you know, as the expansion of you know, the legal, legal betting, you know like people now just come to me and they, they want to get involved. 

20:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So yeah, I, I get it, I get it. I mean in terms of yeah, I get it, I get it. I mean in terms of, again, don't want to come across as harsh, so this is now. I want to dive a little bit deeper into like, what you're doing now, right and again, it's a lot of people who watch this after the fact will dig into it and be there, and this will their words, not mine. It's impossible that someone can keep winning this way just by, like, eyeballing numbers. You know their opinion against, especially like some of these props markets. Now, you mentioned LeBron James number when he was in the bubble. Some of these are juice to shit, right, in terms of like where they were, even three or four years ago. Is there any? Is there anything else? Is there any sort of top down where you're just, you know, comparing numbers from book to book? Is it working with other originators who are potentially, you know, providing you with numbers betting other people's stuff, what, what betting other people's stuff, what? 

21:48 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
what is there something else in the mix? Zero top down, zero projections, zero, anything like that. I talk with one guy who I I feel is very sharp. That kind of has a similar process to me and it's more digging through the box scores Football, week to week. More often than not you have the same lineups playing every week. So if you throw a number out there for an NFL game and I go through the box scores, I think that I can come up with a way to break that down better, maybe better than some people that like someone like Rufus who has a dream machine that just spits the numbers out. You know you have to adjust it, all that stuff with those dream machines I don't have that I don't have that luxury, I don't have those skills. 

22:35
So my skill is more digging in looking at the data of what's actually happened, looking at, uh, defenses that players are going to be going against, and just kind of get a gauge for whether it's going to go over or under, and more often than not it's the under so we've we've kind of heard this before. 

22:53 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
We interviewed Eddie Walls back in the day, probably about a year ago now, where he described a similar approach, where it's not mathematical in any way but it's based off of analysis. And what you're describing what it's funny because you say it's based off of analysis and what you're describing what it's funny because you say it's like dissimilar to what Rufus does, but it's. It's actually kind of the same. It's just that he has like more of an automated, technical way of doing things and applying logic. And essentially you're doing the same thing. You're you're siphoning through data and kind of applying your own logic to it. 

23:25 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Sure, and I think it's easy. It's easier to do in NFL, or you know, or in football because, like I said, the NBA there's lineup changes all the time. You know the injuries guy steps into the starting lineup, even if guys get like a number two receiver gets hurt. In football it typically isn't going to switch how much the number one guy is going to do, or the three guys isn't necessarily going to take over all the two stuff. It's more of just. I think the main thing is like Past performance usually is a good gauge on future performance, especially in a sport like the NFL. 

24:03 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Okay, china. So would you say that your edge, then, is your ability, I guess, to take this data and, like, apply logic to it better than others in the space. 

24:13 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Correct. Yeah, I mean to break it down into like something a little bit simpler. I'll give you an example here. So 49ers Chiefs Super Bowl Mahomes opens at whatever 340, 345. He's got a 19-game sample. I can't remember what it was, but let's just say it was something along the lines of he's going under 15 times, he's going over four times. So you take stuff like that. You don't need a model to. You don't need like the perfect model to know that betting the under, there is going to be the play got it. 

24:52 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
You're talking like mahomes passing yards. 

24:54 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
For that example, mahomes passing yards correct and stuff like that exists week to week in the NFL and it's easy to get down a lot of money on, you know, any type of NFL prop because some of these books are taking large amounts. And back in like I think it was 2021, there was one of the bigger US books that transitioned from one piece of software to another piece of software. That transitioned from one piece of software to another piece of software and when they did that, they were taking $5,000 a prop on that stuff every week. So you know, there you go. 

25:28 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, definitely recall what you're talking about there and definitely made a lot of sense to kind of attack those markets during that time. Question for you on the actual work involved, like kind of what you're doing, so do you use any like tools or any software to actually go back and check it out, or is it more like a manual work where you're looking back and saying, okay, these are all the props, let me go check the espn game log or whatever? Like what are you using to actually do this stuff? That's kind of what I do to figure it out. 

25:55 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
So I'll react to what the market, whatever the market, gets put out there and then I will just dig in. 

26:03
You know I'll use the espn player game logs. Um, you know, nflreferencecom, I'll go back find the stuff that I need. Go through, you know, maybe I'll I'll discount certain information that I feel like you know it might not be applicable to the particular prop and I can kind of pick and choose what I need to use to kind of make the window smaller and smaller to target whether the guy is going to go over or under in a certain game. So to expand on that a little bit like this is, it seems, common sense, but oftentimes when books put out numbers they're not going to. You know they're going to use let's just say they use the average for a player on any player prop. Well, what if they played the Legion of Boom in their prime twice that year? Well, I can basically eliminate those two game logs when you know guys are doing nothing against them and kind of pick and choose the data that I need to use for a particular prop. 

27:03 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Got it. That actually makes it. That actually makes a lot of sense. So essentially, what you're doing is manually adjusting for historical events that you feel are not important, based on, just like, your experience with the NFL and fandom and you know knowledge of the sport. 

27:17 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Correct, I'm just trying to figure out where the books made mistakes on setting the lines. To reference someone else, it's like what Captain Jack says all the time there's so much stuff that they put out there they can't put it all out perfect. There's just too much stuff to defend and you just need to find the markets that are beatable and just pound them over and over again and then scale your bets higher because you know that you're going to have lower variance when you're attacking stuff that you're expecting to win 60, 65% of the time. 

27:51 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, are you betting with these props? So, for example, nfl, as you're mentioning would this be something you want to bet, like earlier in the week, then Like as soon as it opens, or how are you going about that? Some stuff. 

28:02 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Yeah, Some stuff that I just think is a big mistake. You know, I'll take it early if I don't think somebody else is going to pounce on it and maybe they don't see what I see. Maybe I'll wait till later in the week and I can. You know, I can bet it on like PPHs and then maybe attack like brick and mortar places, If you know if I think it's going to be around. Sometimes that doesn't work out, but sometimes it does, Because sometimes, if I don't take it, somebody else is going to take it. 

28:32
So you know it's very dependent on the situation. 

28:35 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Totally get that. I find this very interesting China, because obviously different strokes for different folks. But this is interesting to me in the sense that, in a way, you're flying blind, because you compared yourself to what Rufus does in running a model is the ability to process all this data. But to backtest it for on previous years and say, okay, if I ran this model in 2020 or 2021, this would have been my ROI, this would have been my closing line value and whatever. 

29:11
And it's not to diminish in any way, by the way, because, again, people have things that work for them, but you're very reliant on basically betting your stuff out in order to see if it has an edge over time. Right, there's no way for you to go back and see that. And I'm like where this is leading to is more of like personality, traits and characteristics, because you come from a poker background and so do I People don't really know that, but I do and I found that like a lot of my characteristics from poker bled over into sports betting. I'm curious if you were like more of a riskier type of player, aggressive type of player, and that kind of led to this approach of sports betting, or if you think that I'm just like reaching here. 

29:53 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
I think you're reaching there and I don't think it's as applicable when it pertains to player props. I think if you're going over point spreads, halves, quarters, all that stuff, previous years data's, in fact, testing is probably a lot more important when it comes to player props in a big market like the NFL. 

30:11 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I think it has more to do with what has happened, what has happened so far that season, or if you can look back and see, maybe you can get a gauge on some stuff that happened the prior season, but I just don't think that it's um, I don't think that's a good comparison well, I I think there's a lot of credence to what you do, because I I can think of a particular example where I, I personally, and and again, this is just guesswork, because I don't, I don't know what every single person in the market is accounting for, but a few years ago the cleveland browns played three games in horrible, horrible weather that year, um, where, like baker mayfield, couldn't even actually pass a ball there was like five raiders. 

30:53
There was a raiders one at home was like 10-6. The three inclement weather games I think one was the eagles and if someone was to just use all the data available to them for that season, they would be completely off on brown's numbers going forwards. But by manually removing those from a data set or saying like these are not applicable because this wasn't actual, real football, I I personally, was able to gain an edge on them down the stretch relative to market. So I do think that there's something there and I'm very like. This discussion and this approach has me very interested because I've gone down the path that you've gone down before in terms of just like applying logic to betting. I fared horribly in doing that. So I think there's something about the way you do things and your characteristics that leads to success where most people cannot do this and have success, and I'm curious what you think that possibly could be. 

31:52 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Uh, it's just, it's. It's a lot of tedious work. It's removing, um. You know, I like somebody said to me um, I think this was at the Bethaprocess meetup in Boston this winter. Someone there said to me like this is similar to what Allen Boston does, the way you do this, and it's something like that. But it's more just. You know, you go through the data and you see what you see and you just need to know what you need to use and what you don't need to use, and I think that that's a good example. Like those games you could kind of completely wipe out if you were capping games and then trying to include those in the game logs. But I don't think that sportsbooks were accounting for that. You know, they're just going to spit out the average. So, like I said, it's just hard to defend every corner of the turf interesting I I think there is some merit to that. 

32:45
For sure 100 are you betting year-round right now no, um, I've tried going year-round and I've tried putting the pedal to the metal. Um, after the super bowl, but right now it it's basically just September till the Super Bowl and then, I feel, from Super Bowl until kickoff the following year. It's just not a good time to bet. I think if you're betting sharp stuff, it sticks out more. If you're betting with, you know PPHs, most people that are most of their customers are losing in those months. And if you know PPHs, most people that are most of their customers are losing in those months. And if you win, you're, you're going to stick out like a sore thumb. 

33:25
So you're either going to get kicked off or you're not going to get paid, or and it's the same thing with, like, the legal books. You know you, it's just easier to blend in and camouflage during the football season and the NBA season when it's all you know, it's all going everywhere, when they have so much to take on. So the you know, the six months when it's off time, I'll hand accounts off. If people, if guys who feed me accounts want action in there, then you know, maybe I'll have somebody bet the accounts on stuff that I don't bet. 

33:59 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's where I was kind of going with it. So your football season is predominantly your bread and butter September to Super Bowl. Then you got all these accounts that you've collected that are potentially idle for the rest of the year. So are you working with other partners on stuff? Do you give out accounts to other people in the off season? Do you have you have a way to earn while you're, while football season is is not going on? 

34:25 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Hundred percent. Like I have a lot of partners. You know those guys you guys have had on that I've reached out to, that I've partnered up with and yeah, like I'll give people, if people can beat accounts and markets that I can't and there's accounts that I can't use, then you've got to do something with them. So it's, you know that's where the networking part comes in Meet smart people, meet people that you think are winning. You see how they do and if they they win and they crush, like you think they're going to crush from hearing them come on a podcast like this, then you know you just roll with that and you know I kind of break it down to any partners who feed me accounts that you know I don't think it's a great idea to be betting those six months, because just more trouble happens in the football offseason than it's worth for the stress. 

35:16 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Specific examples of that. What do you mean specifically by that? 

35:20 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Okay, I think after the super bowl. I'll give you an example. I had a guy who was giving me accounts. I got kicked off. There gives me a few accounts, 100k credit line, no problem. Somebody tells me he saw it as a rock. And then, you know you, you pay them 10 000 and you, you win 25 the next week. And, um, you know. Then they just tell you you know the, you know what the pphs say. They'll say you cheated, you know you used a robot or whatever. The bot? 

35:52
yeah, use the bot and then you just you don't get the money. And you know, like I said, like maybe that stuff maybe during football season that will go more unnoticed than it is going to the, you know the the middle or towards the end of the ncaa basketball season or whatever you know. 

36:11 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So yeah, yep, absolutely, and that's why we do have pinnacle sports as one of the sponsors here on circles off, because you do not have to deal with the headache of that and you don't have to deal with the headache of that and you don't have to deal with getting limited as well. So if you're in Ontario and you're 19 plus, check out Pinnacle in terms of the best betting limits in the province and being able to get down China. I want to go through like a day or week in the life of you during football season. So let's break it down. We got football season um random week of the year, week seven sunday games just happened. Are you doing anything on sunday night in terms of openers for the next week, or is this like just strictly prop action that you're focusing on throughout the week here? 

36:53 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
yeah, I'm not doing anything with that. I don't cap sides, don't cap totals, I just wait. So the market starts spitting out player props on whatever it is they're getting earlier in the week. Now, every year, tuesday, wednesday, markets open and then I just kind of react to it and try and bet stuff in the proper order of where I don't want to move certain numbers and just kind of snowballs throughout the week until I have a lot of the stuff in, I think, as time's gone on, which is pretty good by the time Friday rolls around, I usually have most everything I need to get down by Friday, which kind of frees the weekend up a little bit more. 

37:34
So I don't know, that's been good with a lot of the legal books. 

37:38 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
What does the liquidity look like for you early in the week, like on a Tuesday for props? 

37:43 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
It all depends on how many partners, how many partners you have. You know, if you have enough partners, you can get a good amount done. 

37:52 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Fair enough. I won't ask for specifics because it's not my place to, but I'm just curious. Maybe you know a little bit better than me John're more of of nfl props guy, but uh, all right, uh, shift focus here really quickly. Um, we've done a few more than a few episodes, uh, on the value of closing line value in the space and it's a very divisive topic. Now you're a prop better and again the arguments I have with people a lot of times are very different. It's like you can't compare closing line value on major market NFL to you know second division lacrosse that our producer Zach bets. So I'm interested for you what metrics or indicators like would you prioritize when you're assessing the value of a sports bet? Do you think closing line value is valuable in the market that you're betting into? 

38:46 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
I'd say for props, I mean a little, some, a little bit, but oftentimes the stuff that I'm betting I'm just moving the market, so the market moves and if nobody, you know, plays back the other, then it's probably something that's pretty good. But I don't even really look at that too. I mean, sometimes I'll get in fights with guys on the screen, I'll push it one way, they'll push it back, and we'll just keep going back and forth and then there's a war until I feel like stopping or until they feel like stopping. But as far as like sides and totals, clv, for that I used to think it was the end all be all. 

39:30
But you know, after listening to a lot of these podcasts and hearing, like some of the top brains that have been in this world like Haral Bob, I think, when he was on Spanky's podcast you know he's betting NBA stuff five minutes before a game, no CLV, and he's just crushing the market. You know, I think Rufus started doing college basketball last year and I'm not sure there was a lot of CLV there. He crushed the market. So I think there's certain guys out there that can destroy the markets without the CLV, and you know, and they can just bet it anytime they want and not move the screen. Those cases are fewer and farther between, but they exist. 

40:02 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
When you're getting in those battles back and forth, moving with someone, are you typically coming out ahead on those exchanges or behind? 

40:08 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Yes, yes, 100%, I enjoy them. I enjoy it because I'll go look at what am I missing here? I mean, sometimes I'll miss something. That's blatantly obvious. I missed a piece of news and you take, you take a bath on something. But I would guess, when I get in those tussles, that I'm probably yeah, I'm probably winning them right around the clip, that I'd be beating other props. You know, I think that that's really fun. That's almost like, uh, it's almost like a duel, it's almost like a poker match, like a heads-up poker match. It's like, hey, all right, well, I'll go more. You want to go more than? 

40:43 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
whatever. Yeah, you got to pay a little bit extra into the book there too except you don't always know who's pushing it back the other way. 

40:49 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
In poker, you know who your opponent is and when you're betting into a I mean, you probably have a general idea in a lot of instances of like okay, and as do I in the markets that I'm betting in. I know when somebody's opposite me, but I guess that would be the difference between the two. 

41:07 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Yeah, sometimes you know, if, like, certain touts release, like you know, release certain plays, then a lot of their followers, or maybe even them if they're betting the stuff and I'll know who it is and then it's just like, all right, let's go to war and see what. 

41:23 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
You ever bet super high minuses like minus 800, minus 1,000? Love them yes. 

41:30 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
I didn't bet a lot of that stuff until the first real big Super Bowl prop sheet that I put together, I think, was the Rams-Patriots Super Bowl, and I started digging into those numbers and just some of the stuff. It was just insane. And just some of the stuff was. It was just insane, like you're betting stuff that's like minus 600, 700, 800, 1500, minus 2000,. Uh, no, kickoff return, punt return, td and uh, it's kind of funny, if you like. I broke down a lot of the math on that stuff just to see how it would equate to how often a typical player prop that I bet would win and oftentimes a lot of it would equal, be equal to the value of an 80% winning player prop. That just crushes. 

42:14 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
For some of those. So when you, when you're betting a player prop season, what's like an exception, what's like a good ROI for you that you'd be happy with in the season? 

42:23 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
I actually don't even really calculate ROI. I look at I just more look at it as Cash in the bank. Well, cash in the bank, like I actually made a comment to someone on Twitter about that I think Ravel was pimping, like you know, keeping track of your bets and this and that and I said you can just use your bank account and just I mean, how many wires do you have coming in, how much cash do you have going in, how much cash you have going in? That's an indicator and I think once you hit like a certain point and you know what you're doing and the process is pretty much the same well, you're betting then it's, you know, like the, the r. I don't even really look at that stuff anymore. I just know the first couple of thousand bets that I cracked probably won somewhere like 63 percent, something like that. So, whatever that would come out to lane minus 110, 115, 120, 125, like whatever roi, that is that's what it is interesting now. 

43:18 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You said you love um laying long odds sure in the in. You know, johnny asked, I think, minus 800, minus 1000. Uh, this is a topic that's also come up on Circles Off. Before, right around the Super Bowl, I advocated for no field goal to hit the upright at like minus 567 or something like that at pinnacle. And obviously a kick did hit the upright in that game and I took some heavy backlash Off the top of your head. Are there examples of um big losses that you've had in laying super long odds like that? 

43:52 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
that one I lost this past year too. I I had a pretty big bet on that. I posted the ticket on twitter too. Um, that that one there was really sick. I had a lot on that one. Uh, somebody, somebody, actually uh, broke. Somebody broke down the. Uh the math on how often that happens. 

44:09 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I couldn't find the data. It was an absurdly good bet, it was also missed. 

44:15 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
If you hit the upright and make it, the bet was still good. It was missed X, p or field goal. 

44:20 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I can't even think I shouldn't even ask the question because I'm actually going to throw up just thinking about it. But yeah, it was an absurdly good bet, based off of the actual probabilities. 

44:30 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
You know, I'll tell you what. I had an absurd amount of money on the Super Bowl this past year. 

44:35 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Are we talking seven figures or more? 

44:38 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Yes, I had. This was by far the biggest. I just went nonstop just bet it, bet it, bet it, just pounding everything. I wound up with a big position on the game. And you know, going back, like I said, to that pats ram super bowl, I probably was returning like 25 overall on every on, on a lot of that stuff, on all these carnival bets. You know a lot of a lot of the player props when they're open them at high numbers. But uh, yeah, I had a. I had a big position on that game, watching the game at my brother's house and uh, I told them I had that bet before it happened and when that hit the upright, like I had like four people like jumping on me, how much did you have? 

45:17
on it how much, and I'm just like a lot I need to sit down yeah, like to calm down here. Like you know, was it a profitable super bowl overall? No, it was not. This year I probably broke, even maybe lost, I don't know maybe like 10 000 20 000, something like that, some lunch money yeah just kidding a little bit it was. 

45:39
Yeah, it could have went a lot worse. The way that game started there was. I think I had um another bad one from that game. I think it was hurts rushing touchdowns. Maybe he wouldn't score two under two and a half. It was something like that it was a Hertz TD under I forget what it was or something like, or I forget what it was, but that lost like pretty easily. A lot of stuff happened in this super bowl that hasn't happened in the prior I don't know five years or whatever. 

46:07 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So no good, yeah, what. What does your volume look like in in a super bowl week? Just out of curiosity, like roughly how many bets? 

46:16 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
All right, I would say 20 to 40, somewhere in there. Not too many, I think. A lot of guys that you know to mention Rufus again, guys that are running models, that are printing out whatever numbers they need to use they're probably getting a lot more bets in and from him talking about it on podcasts and stuff like that, a lot more than what I'm getting. You know, I'm just picking the 20 to 30, 40 best plays that I can find and maybe I'll tail. You know, like you guys have your prop show and if you know I think something's pretty sharp, maybe I'll tail it and you know, did you tail my prop at the Super Bowl? 

46:55 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
What? 

46:56 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
was your prop at this. It was from, it was. 

46:58 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Miles Sanders. Under one and a half catches he got a clean zero. 

47:03 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
I think I played that anyways, all right, good to hear. Yeah, I was on the same side. It looked like he was going to get ghosted. Yeah. 

47:11 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
He did. He actually, he fumbled it early. Right, he fumbled it early, yeah. 

47:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, it was a tough one. I came across a forum post about you, so a little bit of background on on China here. Detective Rob, over here We've gotten a lot of requests to have you on, so we often ask people for requests for guests who they'd like to see on the show, and of course you can do that. Just comment right below. We read every comment. Sometimes we get rattled by the comments, but it's all in good fun. But if you do have a guest to request, put it down below. But we've got a lot of requests for you. 

47:51
China I followed up with some people just to verify your state in the game and make sure that it wasn't bringing on anybody, because one of the first posts when I searched you was on pokerfraudalertcom and I'm like oh, here we go. Maybe a fraud better here, or something like that. Now, the post had nothing to do with you being a fraud. It was about you posting to your Twitter or now X account, looking to gather accounts, and the poker community just absolutely started blasting you for this about it being like an ethical issue. I'm curious, like if that bothered you at all, because obviously these are your peers or were at some point or another and honestly, like what? What is it with the poker community where they think that this, that account gathering is, is so unethical? 

48:36 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
I think it just has to do with a lot of like people in poker that multi-account to play the especially online poker, because you really can't do it live. But you know multi-account put, you know two accounts at the same table and you know it's, it's cheating or they'll. You know they'll create a new username so people don't know who they are, so they can be deceptive, use tendencies against them and I just think that was more of not a troll post, but somebody that just isn't informed with the similarities and differences in poker and sports betting, like multi-accounting sports sports bets. I mean, come on, um I. There's no correlation between the two. 

49:21 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah looks like a fundamental misunderstanding of how the sports betting space actually works relative to the, to the poker space. I mean, that's obviously a no-no. In poker you don't put two guys at the same table guys or girls or whatever or multi-account, that's like considered one of the worst things you can do where? 

49:38 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
where do you think the uh, where do you think your future lies here as a, as a sports, better? Are you going to continue to scale up like you have been over the past couple of years? 

49:46 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
um, I do not. I mean I'm pretty comfortable where I'm at right now. Like, um, like where I'm at now, if I could just sustain what I've been doing for the past three to four years, then I'd want to ride it out as long as I can. I have no idea what's going to come next, because poker kind of came out of nowhere. That lasted 10 years. You just never know when the edges are going to dry up. 

50:10
I mean, you know some of these legal sports books. You know, I've heard, you know, through the grapevine from some people that rub elbows with some of the bigger guys there that they could be dropping limits on a lot of stuff, that they're taking decent amounts on to, you know, a hundred dollars or whatever, and you know, or they could just get sharper. Maybe maybe ai gets involved and they put sharper lines out. Um, you know, I I don't know, but I'm just gonna ride it out as long as I can oh, I can't wait for those ai generated betting lines yeah I know there's already some sites that are are marketing this stuff out there. 

50:44 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Like I, I won't suggest people. I'm big in the AI scene in terms of like trying to better my life or make my life more efficient, so a lot of things that I used to do that were like manual tasks. I actually trust AI to do them now, but the AI sports betting has shit show written all over it. 

51:02 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Okay, I actually do believe you. Can you? You like AI to beat sports betting right now Pretty easily. But I'll preface this by saying it's not the magical thing that everyone thinks it is. It's not like, oh, you just type in, hey, give me all the winning picks. In chat, gpt, and it tells you like yeah, bet the Ravens, Browns, like, parlay all these seven, and you're good, like that's not how it is. 

51:25
But, um, like, of course you, you could use I to ai to beat betting right now, because it's just like a faster data processor than the human mind can and, realistically, a lot of stuff that I guess you're doing right now. If you do think like that wins, for example, which historically for you it has and you know we hope will continue to win in the future, like when you're looking for those trends and things like that, if you could train a bot or call it AI, call it a bot whatever to actually go through and just pick out all the spots you want and then you can train it with the key things to look for being like, yeah, avoid this game versus this, avoid this, avoid anything out of this range, it will be able to give you the picks that you want, that you're training it to. You'll have to supervise it after. It's not like you could just connect it and print infinite money, but uh, I do think there's a way to use ai in sports betting I think like I would have a way. 

52:17 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
I think I I could do that and program, and I wouldn't be able to program it, but I would know what to tell somebody to have it do to make it profitable. I just I don't have the technical skills to do that. 

52:29 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
But that's exactly what I'm saying. So you know how you just told me earlier in the podcast. You're like, yeah, I basically just go look back at ESPN and like, and look at all these things, and I don't know exactly what you're looking at. But let's say you could just tell someone or a bot hey, go back and look for all these things and like, let this pops up. You can then get 20 of those scenarios and you'll double check them all and maybe 18 of 20 are right. There you go. 

52:51
You just automated your process and you saved a lot of time that you might be able to spend on something else. So I do feel like there's a place for it as a better. What I was laughing at on the betting side was for the bookmaking side of AI generated lines. Is that you see so many? Um, like I? I just I could envision a scenario in which, like, a major bookmaker will say, like we now have AI generated betting, like odds and people going nuts and thinking like, wow, never going to beat this book, but in reality, it's just like a simple algorithm that they've had in the past. 

53:22
Like that's all I'm saying. People are using it a lot for marketing. Now yeah. 

53:25 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I mean, listen, ai is is has positively impacted my life and um China like as much as uh, you know we do very different things. It's actually really not that different at all. Like I don't. I don't have technical skills. I'm not a computer programmer, I never was. My strength in betting on sports has always been being able to look at data sets and, like, apply logic to them as well. I just happened to stumble upon people who could program that for me. It's like okay, rob, write out the logic and we'll build the model. But you know, it's not all that dissimilar at all. I'm curious. You know one last thing before we get to some final questions here your Twitter profile Is that a picture of your son? 

54:08
You have a son. That's my son, bradley. Yes, so I mean you're a little bit older than me, obviously based off of the picture. But talk to a lot of people who I mean. A lot of these conversations come up off air, sometimes not necessarily in the interviews, where people talk about striking a balance between their professional betting and their personal life and their family life. I'm curious what that looks like for you, especially during football season. Is it like this? So again, I hate to always bring it back to me, but I do like to share examples of my life. So my wife knows during football season I'm going to be working 68 to 80 hours a week. Don't bother me on sundays there's a monday night and thursday night football game that I'll be live betting and it's just like this agreement that we have and we do things over the course of the rest of the year. Curious how you balance the two, um, especially having a son as well, sure it's? 

55:05 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
uh, at first. He's four now, so at first it was um, it's pretty easy, I could just work from home. But once he started moving it became very difficult, so I had to get an office. So you know, you got the office, I can get away. It's just kind of a rule, rule of thumb in my house that september or even mid-august till super bowl Bowl, I'm not going to be around as much, and then from Super Bowl until September I just spend a ton of time with my kid, which is great. That's just the way it is. 

55:41 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yep, I mean, you got to maintain a balance somehow For everyone. It's about balancing the yearn with, obviously, the responsibilities in their in their daily life as well. Uh, we introduced a segment about a month back plus ev, minus ev where myself, johnny and our producer zach kind of give our uh, you know things that came up over the course of the week, but some plus ev and minus ev moves. So I want to throw it over to you. China doesn't have to be related to sports betting. It could be anything in life, totally up to you, but one thing that you think is plus ev in life and one thing that you, one thing that you think is minus ev in life all right. 

56:17 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Yeah, I thought this over a little bit and I think, um, I'm actually going to use it on, uh, a gambling topic, because, um, as we know, bet bash is coming up and sure it's going to be plus EV. Maybe you meet a lot of people, your life could get changed, you meet new partners. That's great. But on the flip side, what could happen, what could be minus EV with something like that, when you put a lot of people, especially gamblers, in one place, there could be you know, there could be some grifters in there, people looking to take advantage, people that are looking to free roll you, and it happens in every form of gambling. 

56:56
So I just want to put a message out there that, yeah, be careful with who you're dealing with, ask for references. Uh, look back. I mean, if you guys I don't know if you guys have heard, but there was a young poker player who just went from like one to no limit and now he's playing the highest stakes on all these live streams and he got in some kind of deal where he lent a guy 450K last week. Now, had he asked around, you know, maybe that doesn't happen. So I'm just while your life may get changed and it probably will in some aspects. Just be very careful and don't be afraid to ask people that may be more knowledgeable than you, or ask people for references. 

57:37 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I think that's good advice. That is actually some great advice. 

57:40 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Generally speaking, I didn't hear about that poker story. I did see that that Scammer Find website pop up in the last week, which I found hilarious. It's like betters posting about other scammers in the space, but honestly, uh, there's a place for it. 

57:54 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Um, hold up on. Add to that as well, like, so I've talked about this multiple times, but reputation is also everything. So you got to realize, like, keep in mind who you're dealing with. Stuff like that. Like if if you owe a debt, pay it. If you're owed a debt, you can expect to collect it. But if you're the one who's like slow, paying people all the time and doing all this stuff, it's probably going to come back to you. It's probably going to, at some point, negatively impact you, because someone's going to mention oh yeah, guy wasn't the best, this guy wasn't the best, this person wasn't the best. So, literally, treat others the way you want to be treated. Couldn't, can't, couldn't say anything truer. Um, but yeah, like, make sure you are doing the good stuff as well. 

58:31 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Before you, you know, criticize others. 100, and that applies to life on top of sports betting as well. Uh, finally, chinamaniac. If you could go back five years and talk to a previous version of yourself wait, are you want? 

58:41 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
are you going to give out a positive ev or just, or a negative, or was that? Was that it? 

58:46 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
it was both combined, I mean it's going to be positive EV because you're probably, you know, maybe you meet a lot of good partners you, you learn some new stuff that's going to help you. But you know, on the flip side sometimes that comes with some minus EV. So do your homework and just know who you're dealing with so you don't get in. You know you don't get in any trouble and you know you just want to get references as much as you can. 

59:09 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, grifters is, by the way, a very underutilized word. 

59:13 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
I don't even use that that much, but it just. 

59:17 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
All right, so you've listened to the podcast before. I guess Rob is about to ask you. We'll get into it. You could go back five years, just a measly five years ago. What is some advice that you'd give your previous self five years? 

59:28 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
just a measly five years ago. What is some advice that you'd give your previous self? Five years ago I had a prop bet where I had to lose. I think I had to lose a hundred pounds in a year. And I lost a hundred pounds I, but I put some of the weight back on, not all of it, but you know, I think I put on maybe like 30 or 40 pounds, but Love it how you called that a prop bet. 

59:48
Yeah, I did, I had, I had, I think I 40 pounds, but love it, or you called that a prop bet, yeah, I did, I had, I had, I think I don't know, I might have had like 20 000 on or something like that, with who? 

59:54
another poker um I I had with a bunch of poker players. Uh, you know the if the there's, uh, there's actually a thread on the poker fraud alert site where I, you know, I was just trying to book action on it and, um, I wound up winning that bet. I put some of the weight back on. But this is also like a message to like younger guys out there. Like I'm 46 now, as you get older, it's harder to keep the weight off. So I'd tell myself, like, just keep churning and, uh, staying as great as the the best shape that you can. And you know just, the older you get, the harder it gets. So work at it now so you don't have to. You know, battle as hard when you get into your mid forties. 

01:00:32 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I think that's great advice. Resonates with me. Certainly will resonate with Johnny, who strives to be the healthiest man, not only on the planet but in the universe. As he mentioned to me off air before we recorded today, his name is China. You can follow him on Twitter at China Maniac or follow him on X at China Maniac. Appreciate you joining us today, china. It's been a blast chatting with you. 

01:00:55 - Chinamaniac (Guest)
Thanks for having me. I really, really enjoyed it. 

01:00:58 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
This has been episode number 112 of Circles Off. If you did enjoy the interview today, make sure you smash that like button. If you're not subscribed yet, I don't know what you're waiting for reiterate that like button hit the subscribe button. Turn on notifications. Do everything that you can to help us out. We'll be back next week with episode number 113. 

01:01:16 - Regards From Italy (Guest)
Peace out everyone yeah, I'm gonna take pizza to the san james town. I'm gonna gamble till I lose it all. I'm gonna take Pizzola to the San James Town. I'm gonna gamble till I lose it all, fuck those Yankees, bastards. 

01:01:36
Pizzola, what is your profession? It's a swing and a miss. It's a swing and a miss. It's a swing and a miss. Go strong or go home. Fuck them. There is no tomorrow. Cheers from Italy.