00:00 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
On this week's episode of Circles Off, we are joined by a fascinating guest. His name is Antonino De Rosa. He started as a Magic Cards professional player, went to a sportsbook trader, now bets professionally. His story is insane. Lots of great stuff on this week's episode. Stay tuned. Circles Off starts now. Come on, let's go. Welcome to Circles Off, episode number 127, right here on the Circles Off YouTube channel, part of the Hammer Betting Network powered by Pinnacle Sportsbook. I am Rob Pizzola, joined by Johnny from BetSale. 

00:30 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'm back Two-week break Yep, Nice to be back Rob Yep. Couple of banger episodes in between Nice tag you got there. Thank you very much, sir. 127. 127, all right, so 27. All right. So this guy was a player in the NHL that was growing up. I'm going to just name him Alexei Kovalev. 

00:48 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, how do you remember a Kovalev 27? 

00:50 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I was going to say Kovalev, so Kovalev was just the type of player where he wasn't that good. But then some games you'd watch him. You'd be like this guy's incredible. 

01:07 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
But then you look at the end of the year he wasn't that good. He was all right. He just had some moments. Man a power plays against the leafs. This guy must have scored a million goals in his career. I'm just floored that you started with alex kovalev and not leafs legend daryl sitler. 

01:15 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Daryl sitler okay, obviously also frank mahovelich frank mahovelich, there's 227 hung in the rafters there, daryaryl Sittler 10-point game. Listen, he did score 10 points at the time. I would urge everybody, if you ever want to make an argument of today's hockey versus back in the day, go watch Daryl Sittler's 10-point game. Let's just say he wouldn't have scored 10 points if I was playing in net and I am not a goalie, I am a forward. Yeah, I'll leave it at that. You guys want you? Oh, johnny, you're, you're. You can't be right, you can't be serious about it. Go watch the clip. You go watch it. You. 

01:51 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Let me know if yourself comment we've actually put this clip in a show description before, but we might as well put it in there again. It's actually hilarious not not to do. It's a feat. It's definitely a feat to accumulate that many points, but when the goalie is not even standing in the middle of the net on like half of the shots, or is so far out that it creates an angle that he might as well not be in the net, it's actually hysterical. 

02:15 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Also, I will provide a hot take. I do think that record will be broken. Most people think that's an untouchable record. I think it will be broken. 

02:23 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
All right. 

02:27 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Maybe not right away, but scoring is gonna just like have a boost in one year and there's gonna be like a 12 goal game and a buddy's gonna pop 11 points. It's probably gonna be someone not even that good like sam gagne got eight points. 

02:37 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, it could be. It could just be like a random night where somebody does it. There's a lot of good 27s in baseball. Mike trout wears 27. Giancarlo Stanton wears 27. But I will never forget number 27. Used to patrol the outfield Back in the day in the Rogers Center, or Sky Dome at the time, or Rogers Center or whatever it was. 

02:59
I'll tell you who it was, because I would buy season tickets first row behind the visiting team bullpen. This was an outfielder on the Jays, not on the Jays, oh okay, but I used to buy visiting tickets behind the bullpen, first row. I used to chirp Jonathan Papelbon in the bullpen all the time. I used to give it back to the fans. It was amazing, great experience. When the Red Sox were in town I used to get those tickets. 

03:22
Trott Nixon was the outfielder there, chirping him nonstop. He'd turn around, he'd give you the finger and the glove. He's hiding it a little bit, great stuff. But one guy I chirped for entirety that never, ever reacted was Vladimir Guerrero Sr. Wow, 27 in the outfielder, in outfield. I would always go see their games whenever they were in town, just ripping vlad, like I was the obnoxious, like I'm a young kid drinking a lot at games, completely obnoxious, loud. And then finally one guy just comes up to me. He's like hey, you know, this guy doesn't understand any English, right? I'm like, oh, you know what Makes a lot of sense, because in between, a lot of times, like in between pitching changes or whatever the right fielder will come over to the bullpen and he'll just chat it up with the guys that are in the bullpen, which is I'm standing right over it. So I'm like fuck you, vlad, you stink. I'm going on like guys, never reacting to anything. One guy's like, yeah, you should probably pick another guy to to chirp. He doesn't, doesn't speak any english. 

04:31 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'm like, yeah, it's, I mean man, they should have thrown you out. They should speaking of who wouldn't throw you out I love what you did there. 

04:38 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Pinnacle sportsbook will not throw you out because they are the world's sharpest sportsbook and they accept all players. They don't limit you, they don't ban you, they take your action. It's a huge benefit to have, if you're in Ontario, bet smart, bet Pinnacle, your trusted sportsbook for the past 25 years, and use code HAMMER when signing up, as it does help support Circles Off and the Hammer Betting Network. Code HAMMER you must be 19 plus circles off and the hammer betting network. Code hammer you must be 19 plus. Available in ontario, not available in the us. Please play responsibly. And we're going to talk more about pinnacle on the show because our next guest used to be a trader there. 

05:14
We now welcome in our guest this week on circles off. You can follow him on twitter at derosa underscore antonino. You haven't figured it out, he's an Antonino De Rosa. His Twitter profile says sports trader and NBA enthusiast. I think reducing him to just that would be doing him a massive disservice, because he has a very interesting past. You might have heard him on Be Better Betters with Spanky before. We want to get into some of his background and a lot more on this week's episode of Circles Off. Antonino, thanks for joining us wait. 

05:44 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Hold up antonino, the fellow paisano paisano. 

05:47 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
We have to say that, as well, we have three italians here, and then producer zach, who's about as uh as white as it gets with that mustache thanks, uh thanks for having me guys. 

05:57 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
I'm a big fan of, uh, you guys's work, so it's nice to be here appreciate that. 

06:01 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
We didn't pay him to say that either. We didn't pay him to say that, which is nice. Uh, antonino, at first, uh, I didn't know much about you. We've we've interacted on twitter before through dms, just like over the years, randomly, but I I did listen to your episode of be better, betters on um, we know, with spanky, and I was fascinated by your background, not just the sports betting space, but where it started. I grew up, I was heavily into Magic, the Gathering, pokemon as well, like other trading card games, and I didn't know this at first. But you started on the Magic the Gathering scene doing like actual professional tournaments and stuff like that, before getting into everything else from the sports betting world. So, walk me it. You're an italian guy, you come over to the us. How did this all start for you? And then how did you transition from magic to sports betting? 

06:57 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
all right, I'll try not to be too long, but uh, uh it. My fascination with cards started as a young kid used to play scopa and briskola with my grandma. 

07:05
Oh there you go play some tristana as well yeah as well, uh, but then, uh, you know my my elementary years, I would watch my parents stay at poker night and I would just sit behind my mom and my dad watching these old people play and I was like, man, these guys are terrible. Uh, so I would. I was always fascinated with card games. In high school I got into Magic via some friends and, yeah, I started playing local tournaments and then when you win those, you get invited to bigger tournaments all across the world, basically, and I was on their pro scene for about six, seven years. End of high school, through college, you know, got to travel the world a ton. It was really fun. There was not that much money, you know, in it. I think my biggest score was 25k, but for a 19 year old, that was pretty good. Uh and uh, yeah, I got to be go to japan a bunch of times. I got to go to europe a bunch of times. 

08:02 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It was really fun just to interrupt you really quickly with the magic stuff out of curiosity was your original allure to it the actual game itself, or was it the cards as like a collectible? Because, uh, for for me, I first started as a collectibles guy before years, before I even started playing the game. And then, once I played the game, I was like, oh, this is, this is really to be honest, I could care less about the lore. 

08:25 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
I didn't care that a goblin did this and an elf did that, or a dragon. You know, dragon has to spit fire. Whatever it is. Uh, my lore was that it's just literally a card game that you got to use your brain versus other people and try to outwit them. Uh, magic is uh. I always tell people it's a mixture between poker and chess. Uh, it's not. You know, the best player doesn't always win, because in chess that's what it does and uh, there is still some luck element of the of the deck. But there's a lot of strategy, not only while you're playing but also leading up to the tournament, because you have thousands and thousands of cards and you have to choose your 60 card deck to go and take to the tournament and it takes a lot of preparation, thinking about what other people will do. So I always enjoyed that aspect of it. 

09:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So a lot of game theory involved just trying to predict who your competitors are going to put in their decks and planning against all that just like sports betting anthony, are you good at poker and chess? 

09:25 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
you mentioned those two uh, chess, I never got into it. Uh, I'm not a big fan. I did play poker, uh, right out of college. In about in 2003. I did a year where I was grinding sitting ghosts, uh, but I basically stopped once I got my first real job and the first real job being all right. 

09:44
so my first real job and the first real job being All right. So my first real job was I don't know if you guys ever collected baseball cards I worked for a company called Upper Deck. I worked there for three years. They had a division where we make card games for kids, so I worked a bit on Yu-Gi-Oh. We used to have this card game called Versus System, which is with superheroes. I don't know if you guys ever played world of warcraft, the video game. They also had a trading card game that we did. So I worked there for a few years as a game designer that's awesome, rob and I were just talking about it. 

10:14 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
My generation was, uh, the yugioh cards did you? Did you name the cards or what? 

10:20 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
uh no, like our most job there, konami would make the cards. We would have to to make them because they make them for Japanese people. We would have to localize the cards. So Japan has this really weird, I don't know. Give you an example In Japan the best shows are little kid finds out he has superpowers, kills his mom and his dad, then goes to do evil things in america. You know, a little kid finds out he has superpowers and goes after the bad guys that killed his dad and his mom. So like we had to grab a lot of this japanese stuff to make it so where the european and the american kids were actually like it fair enough, rob and I were just talking before. 

11:03 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
You asked me if I played magic. I said I was more yugioh. We're talking about some of the names, so maybe you were translating them. I know that the main yugioh cards you have. They're pretty simple, you know. It's like red eyes, black dragon, blue eyes, white dragon. They're pretty solid. So maybe you're on the translating team moving them from uh, japanese to english. 

11:23 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
No, I was just localizing it. And then, uh, one day it all changed. I got a phone call from pinnacle, um, and they asked me if I would want to go work there. And, um, you know, and be a sports trader for their company. I thought it was a joke. I kind of hung up the phone. Um, you know, they're like you want to come to curacao? I'm like where is that? You know, my mother was like hey, if you go and work for this company, please don't go knock on people's doors if they owe them money. 

11:52
You know all these, all these horror stories that you might hear, but, uh, anyways, yeah, uh, during 2007, I think it's when pinnacle stopped all, stopped giving uh, american customers, so they kept all the american customers out. And the story is basically there used to be a magic player, used to be pinnacle for millions of dollars and, uh, pinnacle hired him and said listen, you can't bet with us anymore. How about we still give you what you're winning every year and you just help us understand why you're beating us? So this very autistic guy, super smart but very you know geniuses, who are thinking about to save the world instead of, like you know, brushing their teeth and having social interactions. Uh, he went over there and the very first thing he says the reason why I be all you guys is because the people behind the computer are not that smart. And the guy looked at them the owner of Pinnacle and he said where do we find people as smart as you? And he crackled and he says no one is as smart as me. But there's this game called Magic the Gathering. The people who are good at it, they're critical thinkers and they understand game theory. You should look into that. So the pinnacle owners, what they did is they grabbed the magic the gathering, like world rankings, and they literally started calling the top guys one after the other. 

13:19
I was like at the time the seventh or eighth person that got that phone call and they hired about 40 of us and we all went to this island and it was awesome. You know, because we were all young, none of us really understood the job. I didn't even know what a sports bet was really. I didn't know what an over and under was. I didn't know anything. I remember the very first day they put me in front of the computer and they said you're gonna trade this soccer game live and I kept putting half a goal favorites instead of quarter goal favorites, because I didn't understand that there was a difference. Uh and uh, yeah they, uh. It was nice because we had this camaraderie. Like we all try to get each other to be better, we always would ask each other for help and we kind of all grew together to you know what pinnacle is today? 

14:12 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
that's honestly an amazing story because, thinking about the evolution in the betting space and where we're at in 2023 now, I think the obvious solution for any sports book for the vast majority of sports books we're just getting beat by a player is going to be like, yeah, we don't want the action anymore and we're just not going to keep going down the line and just cut people off. And this is like an innovative way to to continue forward as a sports book, but do it in a manner that's like untraditional. It's very, it's very high risk right for a sports book to go out of their way and be like, yeah, forget about the existing guys who've traded sports forever. We, we're going to bring in like these critical thinkers, game theory guys and reinvent the wheel. And, like you know, it's only 16 years ago, but it it almost feels like it's a hundred years ago when you tell that story. 

14:59 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Yeah, it's. Uh, it was amazing because they had trust in us and, uh, you know we've repaid them with a lot of hard work. But it was amazing because they were one of those companies that the only thing they knew was American sports at the time. So, once they get to lose all their Americans, they had to do something to, you know, to make it. So, you know, we started offering tons of soccer and we started offering a bunch of tennis. Eventually, esports, which blew up. 

15:27
Esports basically comes from magic players. Uh, we would sit around watching, you know, league of legends on youtube while working and we're like let's offer some lines and then all these people will start betting. And we were like, whoa, people like to bet this? Uh and uh, you know, sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and, uh, you know they did it and pinnacle is a great company. They didn't fire any of the guys that were already there. Um, you know, they gave them other jobs or you know we work with them. You know, elbow by elbow kind of thing. But at after a few years, all the magic players were all the managers of, you know, of all the different sports. Um, at the end, a magic player was actually head of the sports book marco blume. I don't know if you guys ever heard of him, Very familiar with Marco yeah, yeah. 

16:13
And then they also went into different roles. We started an R&D team, they started a math team, some of them started programming, so they kind of infiltrated themselves all throughout the company. 

16:26 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
When you got that call from Pinnacle, did you already have a family like wife and kids or anything? 

16:32 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
No, I just had bought a house in San Diego and I was like, should I do this? And so they flew me to Curacao for a couple of days and I realized it was a real island and a real job. And then I was like, you know what, if I'm not going to do something like this when I'm this, I'm young, when am I ever going to do it? So I just took a leap of faith and went with it, where I also there was other stuff, you know, with upper deck. You know it wasn't. It was a good company, but it wasn't all that great. And then I'm like, man, video games are going to take over card games, which they did, uh. So I don't see too much of a green pastures here at Upper Deck. So that's why I did it. 

17:13 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, interesting. Where did you go after so the pinnacle thing happens? Did you then go to other sports books? I know now and I want to eventually get to it that you're betting significantly and ever since we did the Simon Hunter episode, I like I hate throwing out the word syndicate, but I think you're synonymous with with running a betting syndicate now. So it's. 

17:35 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Yeah, syndicate is just a funny word. I don't really know what it means, but yeah, we run a betting group and I can explain more what we do. I, when I left Pinnacle, I didn't work for a little bit, but then I had the opportunity to go work for planet tech. 

17:51 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Oh, yeah, sure with. 

17:51 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Adam, adam Bjorn, yeah, so they basically run the odds for back Chris, which is another big, you know, sportsbook. They, I had the opportunity. They asked me, since my wife was Filipino. They, they wanted to open a Filipino office where they would have a trading floor there, while costa rica was sleeping, you know, for somebody to run their sports book. So I went there and I basically did that. 

18:19
Uh, it was this me and this australian guy. We went there, we started this, uh, this office about 60 traders, which I think is still currently going strong, and they have an office there and they get to. You know, I don't know if you guys how much you guys follow, but Betchris, back in the day, even five, six years ago or 10 years ago, they didn't offer all the tennis leagues, all the soccer leagues, all the basketball that is an NBA, and now they offer everything and a lot of that has to do with Adam or division to start an office in the Philippines, to have 24 hour coverage, to be able to take bets on all this other stuff that people do want to bet. 

18:56 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, that's interesting, was it? Was it Manila based in? 

18:59 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Philippines, or, yeah, it was right in Manila, in the town, in a little city called BGC, which is right next to it's Metro Manila, but it's called BGCC had you been out to Manila beforehand before starting that? 

19:11
I did in 2010. Pinnacle sent me there for about a year because they also open an office there and at the time we were opening, we wanted our live traders to be in Manila because it was a good, really good, time zone. You know the games NBA the game starts at 7 am there. So, yeah, so me and a couple of the Pinnacle guys, we flew over to Manila and we trained and we opened this other office there as well for them. 

19:40 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I had been out to Manila once before when I was consulting for some sportsbooks as well. And for an Italian, I mean, I'm not an Italian guy, I'm an Italian-Canadian guy, my parents as well. And for an italian, I mean, I'm not an italian guy, I'm an italian canadian guy, my parents are born in italy, I'm born here, but it was very much a culture shock for me, especially the driving man. I don't know. It's just like crazy. How like people is you? You drive in north america and you got lanes and people not there, they're not there. 

20:02
It's just everyone's just out on the road and you know you look over the person that it's. It's crazy. 

20:07 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Create different, yeah manila is really nice. The people are super nice, everyone's always friendly and smile on their face. You know it's got their downside being a third world country, but uh, but it's nice to the the people who work there. They're hard workers and, uh, any company that wants to open something over there, I recommend it because the people are really good workers. 

20:28 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Are you still involved with Planet Tech at all? 

20:31 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
I am. So I was in Manila for about four years. I decided I have little kids now I wanted them to grow up back in the States. So when I told Adam and Planet Tech that I was leaving Manila, of course they didn't want me to be involved with trading anymore because I work, I'm in America. So I currently I am consulting for them. I work for the R&D and math team, so basically they have a big team that makes sports modeling tools for traders, you know, like tools that help you profile customers and tools to give you live lines and all that type of stuff. And basically I kind of work as a bridge between. They make the tool, I test it first, then I give it to the traders, the traders test it, they tell me how they want to fix it, then I go back to them and that's kind of what I do in a consulting kind of way with them. 

21:25 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Very nice. So you said you're going to get more into the actual betting group that you're running right now. 

21:31 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
All right. So it all started with at Pinnacle. By the time I left, I was a NBA live trader. We used to trade when we started NBA live there. We would do it by hand, no model. We had a rinky-dinky spreadsheet that barely worked, but it was mostly by hand. So when I left Pinnacle, while I was working at Pinnacle, I never made a wager in my life. I know it might be hard for people to believe that, but it's the truth. And when I left Pinnacle, I'm like man, there's so many inefficiencies in the market, let's see if I can find a way to bet these. 

22:03
And something hit me While I was working at Pinnacle. I always thought that if you had a way, like a winning wager, it would be easy to bet. But, as we all know, that's not really the case. It's harder almost to get money down than to actually have a winning wager. Uh. 

22:18
So I hooked up with uh fellow ex magic players, two guys from canada, uh and uh I. I knew that this my partner was involved in sports betting because he would post things on Facebook sometimes. So I reached out to him and said, hey, what are you doing, sports betting? And he explained to me that he had a bunch of, uh, you know, off market accounts like PPHs and Buckeye skins and whatever else. I didn't even know those existed while it was at Pinnacle, to be honest. And uh, and and uh, he gives them out to people who bet. So we started betting basketball live and, uh, it was going real well. And uh, slowly but surely, they kept bringing us more accounts to people and more accounts and more accounts. And uh, yeah, uh, after a while we realized that we were only betting basketball live inside these accounts. And uh, we were like, why don't we find people to bet the other sports that we are might not be good at betting? 

23:16
So what we do now is we run, I don't know, a group let's call it where we originate a lot of our own stuff but we bet a lot for other people. Um, you know, I hear hear Rob says he works. I bet that. I've bet Rob's bets many times. I think we work with the same people. 

23:36
So, you know, we give our accounts to a group to bet American sports. We bet our own basketball live, we bet some of our own tennis and our own soccer and we also bet tennis and soccer for other people when you know we're no good if you're looking for top price really, because, as we all know, pphs and Buckeyes are not that. We help groups that can maximize their liquidity to be able to get down as much money as possible. So they come to us and, yeah, and we try to do that for them. So a lot of people will ask us you know, can you bet this tennis guy? Here's the price. And we try to bet as much as we can and then give them their share and we keep a little bit for ourselves as how it works for the business of course, if you had to estimate antonino, um, what percentage of that split is you betting your own stuff versus moving on behalf of other people? 

24:30 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
What would you say that? That? 

24:31 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
is? I think it's about 60, 40 our stuff. We bet a lot of basketball live. We just don't only bet the NBA, we also bet, you know, a lot of EuroLeague and Italian basketball, wnba, college basketball. I mean, there's just tons of basketball. 

24:47 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Are those leagues even available on the PPH? 

24:49 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
skins they are. They have this thing called. Once it becomes live it goes into this thing where it's called dynamic lines or something. There's all kinds of that stuff. 

25:02
Not bad, yeah, yeah. So we bet a lot of that and you know, obviously we grab the low-income fruits when you know Pinnacle is at six and these other websites are seven and a half and a live basketball game. We bet that. But we also have a model that tells us what the line should be and you know, whenever there's a discrepancy you tend to bet. And then, as we grew, now we have actually shoprunners all over Italy and France that actually bet a lot of our pregame stuff too. So we're growing, as you know. It's so hard to get money down, as we all know, so you kind of have to evolve a bit and you know, try. 

25:41 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So I didn't put this on the run sheet beforehand. I hope I don't catch you off guard with this question, but I think it's important. Can you beat Pinnacle in NBA Live? 

25:49 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Yes. 

25:50 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
How easily. 

25:52 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Not that easy, okay. So here's the thing. I don't even think that my model is better than Pinnacle's. Maybe it is a little bit, but they have the VIG, so it has to be better by a lot, right, but I don't know if you guys ever watch these basketball games. The lines are constantly moving, right, like any bet, really, that goes into pinnacle will move the line, and most of the times we find value, um, most of the times we find value is when you know we're opposing the public, uh, and that's basically with all of our life. We bet baseball live as well and basketball live, and those are the times you find the most value. 

26:36
Um, another thing that, um, people don't realize in live there's so many different opportunities. Right, like in pregame, there's some number. It will move throughout the day, maybe once or twice a big move, and then you have, you know, you can reset, like, hey, can I make another bet? But in live, every single time out, every single dead ball, you might have an opportunity to bet, and while the game is going on, pinnacle is taking bets on one side, side a or side b. By the time it gets to that, time out, like there, that's that that number might be value, because they've taken so many bets from the last timeout that every time a bet moves, take a bet. The line does move. But in the perfect world I would not even want a bet pinnacle, and I would not even want a bet bet Chris, because those companies are smart enough to actually reverse engineers their bets and then you don't actually ever get value anymore. So we try not to bet those places. We bet them sometimes, but we try not to bet them for that reason. 

27:37 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Interesting. 

27:38 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Very interesting. Well, that definitely makes sense. When you were on the other side of the counter there working at Pinnacle you know again, don't give out any info, but you mentioned NBA live trading how many people were kind of like you betting and could actually win on live? 

27:52 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
betting. There was a few you know very small percentage, but there was one specific better that was actually crushing us. And and then one day, pinnacle, that smart guy that shakes that I told you about earlier. At the beginning he said, I know what I'm gonna do. And he went and grabbed that guy's every single wager he's ever made. He matched it to the game state data. So the game situation of every single bet, you know what, with the score, with the ball, whatever. And they created a model to basically reverse engineers what this guy was doing. 

28:28 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
And did they? 

28:28 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
successfully do that. They successfully did it Like obviously the guy still was winning, but you know, instead of holding 5%, it went down to 2% and a lot less value and a lot of the trader's job. Once we had that model was can we post a line where, where this guy does not actually bet, and then if that guy didn't bet, it was a success, you know? 

28:54 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
like measuring your success on whether or not you're actually taking action from that guy yeah, because when the guy didn't bet, you knew the line was okay. 

29:02 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Because if the line wasn't okay you would have bet that's crazy, that's pretty funny. 

29:06 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
But you hear from antonino himself, like the people who message in the q a and are like, oh, rob, why don't you post like all of your nhl bets somewhere? It's bad enough when you're already betting into a book because you're every bet that you make with the book is giving them information. Now imagine you put every bet you make. People are always like, oh, why do all these pros are looking for cloud or you know, we can't tell that they're a pro. You're never gonna be able to, because no pro wants to post their bets publicly. As soon as you do that and you give someone an entire history of what you're betting, it's actually not that hard for people to start to figure things out. 

29:36 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Yeah, and also with sports betting in general. A lot of times you will find value on the same team for a couple of weeks in a row, Like you don't want, like we had this I heard you. I'm only going to say things that I hear you guys have talked about in the past. One time you talked about this group in Panama was banning baseball in one of your shows, and those guys were really, really good and our job as a trader I was trading baseball at the time was to try and figure out which pitcher they would bet on and against. So like those are things that smart traders are actually doing. They don't just show up at their desk and move the lines when bets are coming in. They're actually trying to predict. Okay, we have these three or four good customers. You know where are they going to come, most likely today, based on their previous bets. 

30:26 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's being proactive rather than reactive. 

30:30 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Yeah, and a lot of it is the reason why I enjoy trading so much is like a game. You're trying to predict what other people are doing. You know you're battling with the person, so like you're deciding how much you're going to let him bet. You know, like to tell you guys another story. There used to be a guy who used to bet NBA was he's. In the past he's won millions and millions, but over the end he got so greedy that whenever time you gave him the same price, he would always re-bet it. But what he didn't realize is the reason why I was giving him the same price is because I had information that that one bet that he's making is not as good as his other ones. So the time I'm giving him the same price, over and over, he's betting four or five units, and the times that his bet is actually really good, he's never getting a second bet. 

31:20
So this guy went from being one of the best sports bettors in the world to being broke and it's kind of like a game and I feel that as betting too. When I'm betting. To me it's kind of like a game and that's what it's, you know, and I feel that as betting too. When I'm betting, it's to me, it's a game. The traders are putting their opinionated line, especially live. They're putting their opinionated live based on the action they're getting, and now I get to decide if I want to bet it or not. 

31:41 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I love that story honestly Just because myself as a bettor. There's no worse feeling in the world than clicking a max bet on a sharp sight and seeing the line just come right back in your face or not move at all you gotta jam it again. 

31:54 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Buddy for me, I never jam it. 

31:55 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I never jam it again, not, and you should not like. But some people are just there's like an arrogance about them. They're like, oh, you want to serve me the same line, sure, like I'm gonna hit it harder and but um, no, that's, that's a great story. I'm curious, antonino. I mean, if you never got a call from pinnacle out of the blue because you're a magic player, do you think you would have ever found your way to sports betting? 

32:16 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
no, zero chance. I would have stuck and like maybe I would be working for like some studio as a game designer somewhere. Um, you know, I got a finance degree in college and very quickly I realized I didn't really want a normal corporate life. So game design felt that was really fun. So I think I would still be doing something like that. 

32:37 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
How long ago, did like in terms of timeline, did you make the jump to the like? Professional sports betting group. 

32:46 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
About five, six years ago where I can can say that you know we're betting a lot of games and a lot of volume. So yeah, about five, six years ago is my guess. 

32:55 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So the reason I asked that is because the sports betting landscape for, like the world of sports betting, it's constantly changing right due to uh regulations, technology, uh, availability of data, you know, like college basketball, ken Palm like changed the world for a while. Then it became, you know, this mass thing and now, all of a sudden, no one has an edge using Ken Palm. So I'm curious, your operation five years ago, relative to where it's at now, would you say it's substantially different, or have you guys been able to? 

33:28 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Way different. We had to get to get a bot created. You know, as one of the simple things, you know, and even now, like a lot of these PPH world, that they're putting freezes in the accounts and delays. So you know, I remember when they started putting captures when you're trying to make a bet and then you have to get created a bot that beats the captcha. Uh, I'm like I never understood. I'm a sports book that wants to make it hard for people to bet. I don't understand. Why would I ever want? 

33:56
sometimes we have to put a caption while betting life, which is insane well, they want to make it hard for you to bet antonino not for everyone else yeah, but even if if I am like just some normal guy, I don't want to do a captcha that you know, pick the bicycles or whatever, before I get to make you never get those right. 

34:13 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You never get those right on those, pick all the crosswalks, it's like is this a? Crosswalk is this is barely going on to the next one. 

34:20 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I fill them up real quick and I I'm always like damn, like are you kidding me? And then you just go to the next one and then second try, like I got to be careful, I don't want to miss this capture, I don't want to fail the second try. 

34:30 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
But then even geolocation, for instance. It's a big one where before we, you know, we could get a lot of Bet365 accounts created and stuff like that. Now we can't really beat the geolocation. Yeah, you kind of do have to evolve with the times and the data as well. You know if, if, every year, you know you have to get the buy data if you want to keep your model up to standards, and you know it's just I don't know it's just part of the job, I guess. 

35:04 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I get it. I mean, there's even on the data side of things. Sometimes you have to buy data just to figure out whether or not it's even worthwhile before, and that can be a pretty big sunk cost at some point random question that I gotta ask here. 

35:16 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
All right, do you know anyone that has ever beat online casino? Not like bonuses and stuff like that, like actually finding found an online casino. 

35:26 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
No, not a pinnacle, okay not a pinnacle and not a planet tech, but no fair. 

35:33 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Hey, fair enough, I, I think. I think that there's a french group out there that has had some casino success in the past online not in, not online online, but specific games with specific providers, where they find something that's broken with the game and then I met a guy, uh, at bet bash two years ago. 

35:55 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Uh, he works for swan data, white swan bernard on data, and he was claiming that they could be casino games yeah and they wanted. They wanted our accounts to try to bet casino games or whatever, but we never really hooked up with them. 

36:10 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, fascinating. 

36:12 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's the same group that I've heard of that could potentially beat casino games. Whether or not it's true I don't know, but if they're looking for accounts for casino, there's probably a decent chance that they can do it. 

36:23 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Yeah. 

36:25 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That's awesome. So you came into sports betting. You mentioned without or sorry. So you came into sports betting, you mentioned without or sorry. You came into the job at pinnacle without actually having place to bet and I assume you weren't actually a fan of any of these sports. Is that correct? 

36:39 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
yeah, not a fan. I liked soccer when, like italy, would play, like you know, the national teams uh and I get. 

36:45 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Oh what. What kind of timing were we on here? 

36:47 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
uh, del piero gatuso, you know, luces cannavaro but roberto baggio, maybe when I was much younger, but uh, but yeah, uh, but I got, I got really into sports pretty fast. Um, you know, at pinnacle they would have like a fantasy baseball league and fantasy basketball league and fantasy nfl league, and I never played any fantasy. I was like this is kind of fun, uh. So I got into it pretty good. Uh, the NBA now, or any basketball in general, I just love to watch. I'll even watch preseason or WNBA. 

37:18 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Uh, I think it's a really fun game to watch so what I was going to ask was are you, do you think it was actually a positive for you not knowing sports prior to, or a negative, yeah, a total positive. 

37:30 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
And uh, there was uh, pinnacle actually did this on purpose. They said you're italian, we don't want you to work in soccer, we want you to work in american sports. And then they grabbed the americans and they put those guys into soccer. They actually did it on purpose. They didn't want any people to have any biases. 

37:47
Um and uh, you know, sometimes I hear like people that come here, you know, I have a lot of respect for you, know, circa, but one of the traders came on your show and was like, yeah, I come in in the morning and I felt he was telling the story, that he was using his opinions on how he was like moving the lines, and I actually think that's personally bad trading Customers that you have who are betting especially if you're not kicking out winners you're paying them to tell you what the line should be. If you're smart enough to know what the line should be, you make a lot more money betting than actually working at these places. So there was never a time that I would use any of my opinions in any of the trading. The customers tell you a story and you just listen to it. 

38:33 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So it's all numbers based. We had on this topic of the customers and not limiting winners, I know, did you listen to an episode that we released? 

38:43 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
a few weeks ago it was number 121. 

38:46 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, With the shipper, ship the justice, the points bet. Trader former. 

38:50 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Yeah, I listened to that one. 

38:52 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Okay. So for anyone who hasn't listened to that on the broadcast, after you're done with this episode, I would urge you to go back and listen. It was a great one. So Shipper is a former, I think, head of trading at points bet, and he did talk in detail about what principles they use in practices to actually limit players and profile players who are going to win and essentially boot them out, limited to pennies. Antonino was a trader over at pinnacle, where you know friends of the show, sponsor the show, been there before they don't kick out winners. Okay, so, antonino, what I gotta ask you then is, in comparison to that episode, what are some things that he may have mention that you, you guys, would actually use for a benefit and keep that player around? 

39:32 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Yeah, I mean what these the well okay. So it's a little complex because I don't know taxes and licensing fees, there's all these hidden costs running a sports book in America that I don't really understand. But in the end the gist of it is if you take sharp action, you know they're telling you a story. If you have three sharp guys betting all the same side within the VIG, you know you can probably be pretty safe and move the line a decent amount and get bets on the other side and if you have enough volume on the way back you're actually going to be more profitable for the company than if you didn't have that information. So at Pinnacle they have very small hold right Minus 105 on both sides at least that's what it was when I worked there and a lot of the good traders were holding more than the VIG and the reason why they were holding more of of the big was not because of cash out buns and because of same game parlays and whatever else. It's because we were using that information from the bettors to actually decide how much money we wanted at risk for the company and at what prices. Um, you know, it was not this thing like take a bet, move the line and hopefully you get a bet on the other side. No, it was like all right, I took a bet at minus 107 and minus 109 from a sharp guy. Get 10 times that at plus 106 on the other side and or even plus 107, right, and and that's what we used to do all day long and that's the way you can make more money. 

41:05
Now I'm assuming if I'm fan duel and I would have the trading people that work at pinnacle, they would be way more profitable running a book like that than the the way they currently are. But at pinnacle you will not find 2 000 props on every game and you will not find a million other things that these sports books have. And it's because you cannot run a sports book where you don't kick out winners if you have that big of a menu, unless you hired a million people. So that's kind of the two differences, but but yeah, I. What I don't understand is how can their technology not allow them to give people a one dollar bet on their shitty props and then let people bet real amount of money on their normal stuff? That's the part I don't understand. Why are these sports books so technology in depth? 

41:55 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
but also why they have to limit to one dollar instead of 50 dollars or something like that. Just take the 50 dollar bet and use the information. I mean, that's kind of what shipper was alluding to in that interview as well, and I will say the book that he was, you know, running before they did limit me, it wasn't to, you know, a dollar, which is a basic slap in the face, but what? 

42:14
that points bet also just we talked about on the episode but but you know, I I thought that was a really good interview with shipper. I think he's very forthcoming. There's like a lot of information to be gleaned from that. But being completely honest, I kind of got a very bad taste from the amount of pride and joy and I get it like that was his job. His full-time job was to run the trading team and do it in as a successful a manner for the company. But the amount of pride and joy he took in, like booting winning betters, it just bothered me like it really rubs me the wrong way. So, as someone, antonino that used to trade for a sharp book, do you like, do you look down on the recreational sportsbook model? When you hear stuff like that does, does it bug you at all or do you just water the bridge? 

43:03 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Well, like Chipper himself might not have, like I don't look down on him because he's just doing what you know his company's telling him to do, but like if I worked at points but I could say, hey guys, this information, like I look down to him as in you know, how does he not want that challenge to be able to see sharp bets and make the company more money? You know, and that's you know. The same question goes to FanDuel and DraftKings. If I was a trader there I'd be pissed. I'm like, I'm smart enough, like we want this information. We're going to make tons of money because of this information. 

43:39
But you know, until they get there technologically, I don't think, like you know, it's always going to be like this. Like a lot of these sportsbooks don't even have an auto mover, so sometimes raz releases a play and they'll get hit. I don't know by how many times. Pinnacle will only get hit once at that number. Same thing with back risk. So you know, once, you need an auto mover, you need smart people buying, you know the thing and you need the ability to give people different limits on different markets do you think you can do it? 

44:08 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
so you mentioned if you had were trading for fanduel. Okay, so if you were trading for fanduel and actually I'll back this up let's say you own fanduel. All right, I know it's owned by Flutter big company, whatever. Let's say you own, just. 

44:21 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
FanDuel, I would allow winners. 

44:24 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Do you think you'd make more money than? 

44:27 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
the current company, yeah 100%. 

44:29 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Even if you offered the rest of the menu. 

44:32 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
No, that I'm not sure about, so you would take off the rest of the menu. 

44:35 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
See, this is the challenge. 

44:37 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
I would take off the rest of the menu. See, this is the challenge. I would take off, or have technology that would help me limit the exposure on the rest of the menu. 

44:46 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So if they take off the rest of the menu, then there goes their business model, because the majority of the players they have there are playing there for the SGPs, for the props, for the first touchdown scores and to have fun with that. So that's the other thing. 

44:55 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
But there has to be a hybrid way. Honestly, there is in the offshore space, right, not to the same extent, but BetOnline is kind of like the in-between They'll take a big bet, they'll give you a decent size bet on a prop with PropBuilder. It's not crazy. I'm not suggesting they're given, but it's kind of that in-between and they're I mean in the offshore space doing fairly well. They seem to still have market share, even with the regulation across north america. Right, it's not like this hasn't been tried and this fate failed miserably either. Like that's what. That's what bothers me about the space. 

45:31 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Right, it's one extreme or another you think you could trade anthony, so you think you can trade like a prop market, for example, like you could, could do all the NBA props for the day. How many people would you need on the trading team to turn a profit on those? 

45:43 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Probably two to three, always on. 

45:47 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Two to three guys always on, so three guys always on trading just NBA player props, every prop. 

45:53 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Yeah, they have to be on top of the news. They have to understand how you know, one player bringing out affects all the others. Yeah, three people, I think would be enough. 

46:04 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So it just doesn't make sense why they wouldn't hire three people to be always on and just fix up all these markets and have such a better book. 

46:11 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I couldn't tell you. I know what I would do if I ran a book and it's just not there right now. It's like try to serve all the markets. Why would you not want to? 

46:21 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
well, if antonino was saying like, oh, we would need at least one player per one, one trader per game for just the props, then I'd be like that seems like a lot of power. That's needed a lot of hr if it's. If you can do one, one guy can do. So that means some nights when there's two, two games on for nba. 

46:38 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
One guy, yeah that's one guy, I can probably do it. It's crazy like, uh, a pinnacle. Just to give you an idea, on a saturday of college football, you know that we had three guys on. We used to do all the first halves, all the first quarters, all the game and all the second halves and then live another team. Uh, the live was a different team, so you know you, I think, I think three, four guys is plenty, even on really big cards. 

47:02 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That's super fascinating from my end to actually see, because you really don't understand how much that pinnacle could like. I mean, most people won't understand this, what I'm saying on the pod right now. But the fact that there is an auto mover, like Antonino was saying it, limits you from just getting absolutely mashed. And in that, because there's an auto mover and you can take games off the board and you're actually moving your price accordingly based on the profiles like I've never traded for a book but you can make money booking sharps. It can be done and it's been done for years with multiple different things. So the fact that the people now taking the largest bets are not doing that, it's crazy there's, uh, two things I also want to specify. 

47:48 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
One is I think fan duel would be profitable, but a place I have no clue how many bets points bets gets or bet fred or any of these other smaller books. I don't know if they would be profitable taking sharps, because you have to have enough playback yes enough volume that's a really good point. 

48:06 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Like the, the bigger north american books fan duel draft kings like they're getting a ton of volume. There's enough to offset the a lot of the sharp action some of these smaller books they don't have enough, they're they're. You know they're taking like 10k and handle a day. 

48:20 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
It's like you know, one bet put them under I I heard something like win bet is taking like three, four hundred thousand across all their sports per day. You know, with that amount of volume you you can't go do anything with that. Yeah might as well be a better at that point and then uh, and then the other thing I want to say is even sharp books, you know, just to be clear, they still they don't limit you, but they still kind of limit you if you're doing something funky. 

48:49 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
What do you mean by that? 

48:50 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
So you know, let's say you're, there's tons of people out there just always trying to, you know, get one ahead of the sports book. There's people that are betting faster feed. If a sharp sports book realizes you're betting only when you know a goal gets past, posted or a home run gets hit, your account will get limited in a way of lots of delay. So when you're trying to make a wager it spins a lot. Uh, if you are a customer who only bets itf tennis and never bets any major market stuff and you're crushing it, you're probably going to get limited in those markets. So even they don't limit players, they say. But I've seen it, they do limit players sometimes, but only people that in my opinion, working from that side, they kind of deserve it. 

49:38 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, you know that's the rules of you're essentially violating the past posting for sure past posting or like court siding? Yeah, is you know? What are you going to do, like you know what you're getting into when you're placing those bets, anthony? 

49:50 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
how many screens you have, how many monitors when I worked a pinnacle, we would have six big ones. And how about now? Is it better? Now is a better F3. 

50:02 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Wow, so it's 50%, 50% of the amount of screens, from bulky to better Put these stats up. 

50:11 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
But yeah, I know that people get upset. They're like why every time I make a wager I get a little spinning wheel every time in live and all this stuff. Those things like we should stop being mad at them. It's because they're only there to like. Because there's so many bad apples out there, they're ruining it for everybody else. 

50:33 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It's a form of protection. I mean, I totally understand that. I just don't, I don't like, like. There's one thing if you get the spinning circle and then, whatever someone reviews, the bad takes. It's another thing If you get the spinning circle when you play and they move the line. 

50:52 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
And then you're rejected. 

50:54 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, exactly, or even worse they move the line and give you the worst odds. 

51:10 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
They give you the bet at the worst odds. Yeah, exactly, but I've never seen that at Pinnacle or Planet Tech. And so at those two sportsbooks, no one's ever rejecting your bet because they just reject it if the line has changed. They don't pick and choose when they accept it, they don't free roll either. Yeah, they don't do any of that. 

51:32 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
As someone who went from the trading world to the sports betting world and betting, I do want to ask you about wagering at high stakes and how that affects your emotions. Basically, if you're going from being purely a trader to now all of a sudden betting this stuff out and obviously betting a lot, because that's the intention is to make a lot of money how do you handle yourself in like the inevitable losing streaks or or these pressure situations, Because that's gotta be tough, like for someone who's experienced that as a better for for decades or whatever. You just get used to it, but when you're making that plunge I'm I'm assuming that's like a crazy experience. 

52:14 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
So it's super tough. Uh, I, you know my background in general. You know when I even when I play magic, I would play some I leverage matches, you know, at the time only five $6,000, but it was a lot of money for me. So I kind of learned that pretty fast. At Pinnacle, believe it or not, every single trader, they care so much about their stats, like how much money you win the company or lose the company, even though affects their bottom line, so little, you know like. So sometimes, like if I would lose three, four hundred thousand dollars in a game that I was trading, I would go home so angry, even though it was none of my money and it didn't matter at all. Uh, so it took time, obviously to you know, to get over that. But uh, you know, as a better, you know you do go in losing streaks, you do lose a lot of money. 

53:03
There's definitely nights where I, you know, we as a group, swing maybe six digits and uh and uh, you know the thing that matters is you look at things that matters. You know family, kids, you go for a walk, you try, you try to, you know, decompress. What sucks about our job is where sports is better is we don't have too many people that we can relate to. So if I lose, let's say, twenty thousand dollars in the game, I can't go to my cousin who I hang out with and tell him about it yeah, because like he can't even relate to that. He's like are you crazy betting twenty thousand dollars on a game? You know, like even my wife, crazy betting $20,000 on a game. Even my wife, she understands that I gamble for a lot, but even she can't really relate to what's going on. So that's the part that's really tough. You got to find other people that you can relate this stuff with. 

53:51 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I totally get that. It is very difficult, it's very challenging when your friend group around you. They just don't get it. Or there's still a negative stigma on betting too. So when you tell somebody yeah, you know, I lost 10k on this game, they're like are you crazy like you're betting like they're. 

54:08 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Like that's vacation for the year yeah, it's like yeah they start relating it to real money, which it is which it should be viewed as. 

54:14 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
But I know it's tough, uh, really funny. Just just I can really resonate with your story about the pinnacle traders going home unhappy, like I'm in the content space now. Right, we obviously do this podcast, but I give out picks publicly. 

54:29
I sweat those games so much harder sometimes they'll be such a small bet because sometimes I'll give out a pick early in the week and we bet it but we can't get the full fill at that time in the week and I'll bet something on Friday where there's much higher limits and, like the Friday bets are bigger bets but I gave out one publicly and I could have a winning week like a very good winning week but lose a public bet and it eats away at me because obviously there's perception and reality and people only see what you give out publicly. 

55:05 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Uh, that that really struck with me, like resonated with me actually, yeah, I, I promise rob is a big winner for people who have doubts. Don't worry, appreciate that wow, how much. 

55:15 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
How much you pay you for that yeah, zero, zero but don't check. 

55:19 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Don't check my crypto wallet records or anything. 

55:22 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
I don't know. I don't really know Rob very well, but I suspect that he's a big winner because I suspect I see lots of his bets. 

55:29 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, so this came up in the last Q&A we did. But someone asked oh, rob, what percentage of your bets go through the legal, regulated, regulated markets? I'm like I have no idea, because I send out an order to get filled. I have no idea who it's going to. The guys who are saying, yeah, I can get you this bet, are probably passing it off to four or five different people a lot of the times when you're talking about you know which, like I don't know. 

55:53 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
The other day there was a london game and you, on twitter, says wouldn't be a london game if I didn't bet on it, like you were rooting. I forget which team it was, but uh baltimore against tennessee was the yeah but? But? Whenever you're rooting for something publicly, I'm always rooting for those same bets because they're in my accounts. So you know, there we go. 

56:13 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
This, this is a small world, of course, closing the circle. Um, I went through our Twitter DMs from years ago and you sent me a message two years ago saying hey, rob, did BetStamp ever consider tracking, instead of the closing line of the game, the line about 15 to 20 minutes before the game starts, or game, yeah, game starts, instead of the line right at the game start? Walk me through that and why you think that that might be more valuable. 

56:41 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
So, just so everybody knows, when I bet basketball I'm betting a model that I'm telling a closing line to it. That's like my form of truth. I personally, for my model, I use the closing line 15 minutes before the actual game starts. 

56:58 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
You think there's manipulation after. Is this the reason? 

57:01 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
No, my belief is that there's a lot of traders who, in that last 15 minutes because I've seen it with my own eyes there's a lot of traders that use those 15 minutes to fix all the mistakes they've done throughout the day. So they will move the game in ways they normally wouldn't move it, based on their position and based on mistakes they had made earlier of the day. So I personally think that the closing line is maybe more effective 15 to 30 minutes before the game begins than actually begins. Also, there's times where right at post, a big, big whale comes in and does a max wager on pinnacle. 

57:40
The line will move $0.06 or $0.05, whatever it is and that really requires. Also, if the trader wants to sell that position, he's going to move it more aggressively at the end because he has less time of taking a bet on the other side. So maybe if you would have gotten that bet an hour ago, maybe you barely move it. But now, because there's only three or four minutes left, I'm going to move it more because I actually want to sell this bet off Because, for whatever reason, the guy bet the same side that I liked or whatever, and it's yeah, you just have to be careful with that. 

58:16 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So has anyone ever done that? 

58:17 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
that uh analysis there I, I have, I have for the hockey market and this is I. I've went back and forth on dms with antonino, but I believe that the hockey number is more efficient half an hour before games start than the actual closing price. Log locks was better. When I ran this. For how long sample? A very large I? I also think so. My belief was the whales side of thing, um, and max whale 10 unit. 

58:46
Well, so I noticed this in hockey one season where you know, I'm messaging my movers, I'm like what the what the hell is going on? Do you know who's betting these games? And they're like, no, we, we don't know, we don't know what's going on here, but it's the same. It was the same teams every night that were getting bet. It was, um, I don't know, tampa bay lightning, new york islanders, whatever. And I'm like what the hell is going on where it's the same teams for half a season that are moving like 20 cents right before post. 

59:16
Like what's going on here and what I determined? This is a working theory in my head, but they were all always moving on the russian goalies. Okay, whoever was a russian goalie, whatever, this was like three or four years ago, all the russian goalies. And I convinced myself there's like a russian whale out there that's just betting the russian goalies every game. And we would literally not even bet those games in the morning if we had an edge on the opposite side, because we knew we were going to get a better price right at post on those games. So, like we learned it. 

59:53 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
But sorry, antonino, to cut you off, I just experienced that myself, which is why I found it extremely interesting when you messaged me that At Pinnacle we did analysis on a huge sample on most American sports and the close was more efficient 15, 20 minutes before than at close. And something people need to understand is you're a trader trading some sport. You have a directive from your boss. He's telling you, please don't risk more than three times the max wager on any game. Right, if you have that directive and you're not a trader that wants to stick up for himself and cares that much, you're going to follow that directive. Now there's traders like Antoniotonio de rosa who ignored those directives but then. But then there's traders there's no upside right. When you win a lot, nobody comes knocking on your door and say great job, buddy, you won us a lot of money. When you lose, you'll get the phone call why did you lose so much? So you know it's a lot of times people just doing things to keep their bosses happy, even even though it's the wrong move. Interesting. 

01:01:01 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Well, at the end of the day, I respect that though, because from a company directive, they've probably put those rules in place as just like a protection. So if you're an employee, I completely understand, like you're not going to want to do that, and even though you may think it's a negative EV bet that you're taking for you, for the house, it's overall positive EV for you because you're not getting a phone call if you fuck up. So I don't see how we can even blame these guys. 

01:01:26 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Yeah, we had this directive at Pinnacle, like when I worked there. It was, you know, unless there's a really strong reason to have a bigger than 3x position in your max bet, you know, on any game you, you know, don't do it, and I always kind of just did what I felt was right, as long as I could explain why I was doing something, you know, and, uh, I I never really got in trouble. Sometimes they would ask me why I did what I did and I would explain it, but as long as you're, you know, winning and they see that you're trying to, you know you were not getting in trouble or anything, but you do have those type of directives. 

01:01:57 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
When you say 3x position on max bet let's say max bet on penny is 20k, for example yeah, and let's say so. This would be. You can't take more than a net losing position of 60 on either side. Correct Net losing. 

01:02:14 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Yeah, 60,000 of net, losing more than that. 

01:02:16 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
What about if it was like a big dog? 

01:02:21 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Oh, no, dog, oh no, no, no, no, like they use, they use base amount. 

01:02:23 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Okay, so you couldn't take more than a than a 3x net losing position on base yeah and uh. 

01:02:28 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
But you know, if I had five sharps on one side and no sharps on the other side, if that three became six, nobody cared. Fair enough, fair enough, that's awesome. 

01:02:38 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Were you still at pinnacle in 2017? Yes, I left in 2018 okay I want to ask you about mayweather mcgregor. It's just just if you have any, not because I was still consulting for a book at that time. There was an absurd amount of money on McGregor in that fight at the books, to the point where there was like basically needed to get approval from the board of directors to say we're comfortable with this amount of risk. So when you talk about like the three X scenario, in those scenarios. 

01:03:13 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Obviously they risked a lot more. And but you do have to, you know, if'm the boxing guy I will go talk to my boss, say this is opportunity to make tons of money. Let's, you know, be more. You know, let's be, let's risk more. Or like, for instance, I don't know remember when trump won the election, that was probably one of the biggest losing day for every sports book in the world and a lot of sportsbooks lost way more than that 3x, uh, because there was not a price, that people were not betting trump. So you know, I'm pretty sure that that event and when the patri, the patriots, came back in the super bowl against the falcons, uh, in live, those were the two biggest losing events for sports books in recent history yeah, those are. 

01:03:59 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Those are some tough ones. Listen, I'm, I'm not scared, I'm well, I'm. I live my life very openly. I lost a lot of money on hillary hillary clinton. I thought there's no way donald trump is gonna win presidency. 

01:04:10 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'll never bet politics I had a big bet on uh minus 800, no overtime in that super bowl and when that went to ot I was like fuck this, I'm never doing this again. Like I can't believe it was the first super bowl, that it was the only super bowl to ever go to ot, yeah, and I'm like, no, that's it, I'm done with this. I can't believe it at 28-3. 

01:04:30 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
oh god, the hillary thing, the hillary trump thing is something that makes me think about it. Now it's a lot of times you're in a sports book and you're with very like thinking individuals, so none of us thought that there would be any chance that Hillary could lose. And then you know you're on social media but you only follow your Facebook friends and people that kind of think like you, right, yeah so, and they're all thinking like no way you know Hillary loses. So we had all this group thing together but we didn't realize there's like a big portion of the population that do nothing like us and they're big fans of trump, you know, but that never crossed our mind. 

01:05:07 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You know I also have an. I'll present an alternate theory as well. I think there's a lot of people who think more right wing but don't want to publicly admit that they do so. A lot of the polling that happens around election and whatever people just don't want, like there's there's some sort of stigma associated with some right-wing politics. I'm very like neutral in my political beliefs. Right, like if it makes sense to me and it's a left-wing thing, sure, if it's right. But that to me was like I'm in hindsight, it's just like idiotic that I would do something like that. Like just completely idiotic. But that was my takeaway from that. It's just like, yeah, all the run up to everything was, yeah, ok, clinton's going to win in a landslide, hillary's going to win, trump has no chance. But there are so many people out there that maybe even tweeted that they would like not support Trump that definitely voted for Trump. 

01:05:57
Antonino, you've been very gracious with your time today, really appreciate everything. As someone who listens to circles off and has listened to episodes in the past, you probably know what we're getting to here with the final couple questions. But for those who are new here, we do ask uh, same couple questions at the end for every single guest. So we'll start with our plus ev, minus ev. It doesn't have to be related to sports betting. It can be, if you want, totally up to you. 

01:06:22 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
I got good ones. I've been thinking about it. 

01:06:23 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Okay, I love this. Plus EV, minus EV, sure Go for it All right. 

01:06:28 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
So for minus EV, I have two little kids. Going out to restaurants is a no-no. Every time I do it I always think that it's going to be okay. You make your. Your meal is miserable. You, your neighbor's meal is miserable. The waitress is not happy. So if you have little kids, just take out food and don't eat at the restaurant I don't have kids. 

01:06:53 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I'm gonna come off as like a real asshole here, but I hate going to like a restaurant and there's like a kid crying in the corner like you're not going to the right restaurants, buddy well, even even some upscale. Sometimes people don't get sitters like they. Just they just think it's going applebees. I have no problem with that. Whatever I'm a, you know. 

01:07:12 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
You know where I like to die if you're going to the keg and you're seeing and you're, yeah, it's tough, it happens, it's tough. 

01:07:18 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
All right, next one. 

01:07:20 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Plus EV. I recommend people spend their money on experiences and non-material things. Most of my best memories are doing fun things and exciting things and new things and not buying the fancy new shiny toy. So I try to live my life like that a bit. 

01:07:40 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Okay, Anthony, you know, if you could go back five years and talk to a previous version of yourself, what advice would you give to your former self? 

01:07:47 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Take a leap and trust people. I think that I learned working in this business that most people are actually yeah, there is a lot of scumbags, but most people are actually are not scumbags. So, taking leap of faiths and trusting in people until they screw you, you live a better, stress-free life and you'll be pleasantly surprised. 

01:08:14 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I like that answer. I just only laugh at it because I think if you were to pull every guest in circles off history and be like what percentage of bettors do you think are scumbags and scumbags is very loosely defined. The range of answers you're going to get there is extremely wide. 

01:08:31 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, but some people consider like this guy's a scumbag because he like steam chased a thing, a game on injury news and then he does that like. And some people think a guy's a scumbag is a guy who stiffed his friends. 

01:08:43 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
A hundred thousand there's all sorts of levels of scumbags as well. Well, like g stack, george who's? Uh, george sylphides, who does stuff for 90 degrees here on the circles off channel. He's the type of guy that's gonna. You know, he bets against the lakers and lebron james goes down with a knee injury. He's gonna be fist pumping like. To me that's a scumbag move, right if I bet against the chiefs and mahomes gets hurt, tears his acl like I don't want. 

01:09:07 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I don't want that to happen for me to win my bet I'm the guy going to live at the raiders as soon as mahomes gets injured I'm not selling but it's is a thing you know. 

01:09:17 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
For me, that's not my immediate reaction. So there's level of scumbag, there's level of scumbag. 

01:09:22 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
Yeah, my thing was more like you know partnering with people and you know trusting in people. We get stiffed a lot, eh, but we've also find, for every person that stiff us, we find 10 people that will never stiff us. 

01:09:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So, taking that, that, you know that trust is a good way to live your life, I think did you catch? Did you catch that, johnny? We get stiffed a lot. 

01:09:44 - Antonino De Rosa (Guest)
A came on a program with two canadian hosts and tried to mix in some canadian talk right at the end that's more italian it is. 

01:09:52 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It's a, very it's a combo both yeah, talking with your hands we didn't see your hands for a whole lot of this and antonino uh. For of you who don't follow him on Twitter, do so At DeRosa underscore Antonino on Twitter. Appreciate your time. Thank you very much for joining us. If you did enjoy this episode here on Circles Off, make sure you smash that like button down below. If you're not subscribed, click that subscribe button. We do great interviews like this. Me and Johnny do Q&As. I also do some educational content. There's tons here on Circles Off. Appreciate everyone who supports us Until next time. This has been another episode of Circles Off. Everyone, enjoy your week. We'll catch you next one. Thanks for watching.