00:00 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Wait, so you call Taylor Swift mother. 

00:02 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
No, no, no, I'm not Not that level. 

00:04 - Zack Phillips (Other)
I feel like. 

00:04 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I'm like one of the very few just like level-headed Taylor Swift fans. Like I listen to her, I think she's good, but like I look at these people at a concert and it's like they're seeing Jesus. For like, come back to life. 

00:16 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Come on, let's go. Welcome to Circles Off, episode number 128. Powered by Pinnacle sportsbook, part of the hammer betting network, I am rob pazola, today joined in studio by familiar face. A lot of people, uh, enjoyed an episode we did with kirk evans a few weeks back on the state of nba analytics. Wanted to continue that conversation a little bit today. How's it going? 

00:41 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
doing well, thanks. Thanks for having me Quick turnaround. 

00:44 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Quick turnaround? Yes, listen, I mean. Sometimes we adapt to what the people like and what they don't like. Honestly, though, when people don't like something, I tend to do more of it as well. So like and don't like, it doesn't seem to make a difference. Episode number 128. Are you a jerseys guy? 

01:04 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I'm like an embarrassing level bad at knowing jersey numbers, so, like I, I'll pull out nothing. 

01:11 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You say a number, nothing comes to my head if johnny was here, he would have immediately went with ty domi and he would have called him a leafs legend, which he probably could be considered a leafs legend because he fought so many times and people like respect that horrible player. I think he's a Leafs legend. 

01:27 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Leafs legend, I totally agree. Leafs legend like if someone sees Ty Domi on the street, they know him. They're going up asking for an autograph it's more than like Mikhail Grabovsky yes, okay, fair enough. 

01:37 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Leafs legend Adrian Peterson for me is the one that stands out who, uh, I always hated that they called him AD because his nickname was all day, all day, adrian Peterson, but like AP is his initial. So anytime I heard AD it was just really awkward and confusing for me. I don't know why that bothered me for so long, but it all. Every time I heard AD I cringed a little bit inside. I, I don't. I can't explain why. It just really it was like nails on a chalkboard for me. 

02:06 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Sack I just assumed it was like eight. Like honestly, I don't even know. That doesn't make sense all day, I knew like I know that that was what it was, but I didn't really put together that. I don't know that one's a bad one, that's tough I don't remember a. 

02:23 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I don't remember ad. I agree with you, though that's a dumb nickname for a guy with initials ap. Yeah, I don't know that one's a bad one. That's tough. I don't remember AD. I agree with you, though that's a dumb nickname for a guy with initials AP. 

02:31 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I don't remember him being all day. No, it was AD, ad. Ad was the. Maybe I'm misremembering. 

02:35 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
No, I think you're right. 

02:35 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Like Roger Clemens and Andy Pettit in the steroids. I misremember type of situation, but uh, no, I think it was ad ad ad. Marshall falk when I was growing up was a 28. Warwick dunn was a 28. Um buster posey, I think, was wearing 28 at home plate when he got absolutely destroyed and changed the game of baseball forever. I got that that list side sidebar. I don't think that players should be given the green light to just destroy a catcher at home plate Like that never made any sense to me. As the catcher, you're just going to stand there and take a concussion while a guy tries to run you over, but they should at least be able to go through the catcher if they're trying to get to the plate. 

03:21 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I think there needs to be a better rule than what it is now, because it does feel like now the catcher has a massive advantage. Baseball's the least physical game and then randomly every now and then a catcher would just get absolutely destroyed. So I think it's better now, but I don't think we found the perfect medium. 

03:40 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So the problem for me is that I think the rules as they are now are too confusing to like the average layman. I'm at a Jays game earlier this year and there's a play at the plate and it ends up going to review because the Jays challenge and there's my entire section. No one has any idea. They're like oh, he blocked the plate, oh, he got there too early, he got there too late. You can do that. You can't do that like. You just need to really dumb it down sometimes or simplify it. I should say to the point where, like, casuals can understand it. Yeah and, and you know it's too, it's too like, it's too convoluted. There's so many rules in sports that are too convoluted, but that one makes no sense to me. 

04:18 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Well, that's because it has like the. Was he being carried into the path? Was he already? 

04:22 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
already in the path? Was the ball coming in the? Path and it's like, holy fuck, how does anybody know I'm the dum-dum you're talking about here? Like I don't watch much baseball, I'll get into it when the Jays are like in the playoffs. But like, if I saw blocking the plate rule, I would have no idea if it was safe or not. 

04:41 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I still don't, I not, I still don't. I'm the guy at the game that's like frantically googling like mlb rules, trying to explain it to be like, no, it's good, it's good or whatever, and then then it turns out to not be good and they're like, oh, way to go, rules expert or what I'm like I don't, I honestly don't have any idea. I have no idea, but that one is one that, uh, I really struggle with. Are there any other hockey players that are 28s? 

05:02 - Zack Phillips (Other)
uh, closure is the main one that I can think of right now. He plays for Ottawa, so we're not going to talk about him anymore Not really any. Off the top of my head, there's no one else 28's a rough number, man, nba-wise. 

05:16 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I already don't know a lot of NBA player numbers, but 28,. There's nothing that immediately comes to mind. Like no star players were at 28. 

05:26 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
That at least I'd be able to get. Yeah, I feel like we might be missing someone, almost certainly. 

05:29 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, there's the first five comments on this video this week are gonna be like you're an idiot. This it's gonna be like a, the most famous nba player, best athlete to war 20, ronaldo war 28. For like what he does. He doesn't he wear seven. For like what he does he doesn't he wear seven? 

05:48 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
yeah, yeah, I thought I don't know about this ranker website. Ap, sorry, ad ad. Okay, we're off to a good start because I'm happy not knowing any of these. Yeah, posey, there we go falk. 

05:57 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
okay, got him curtis martin. Curtis martin, one of the most underrated running backs of all time. Fred taylor up as well. These are running backs from my youth, nolan Arnauto. We don't have any hockey players here. Chris Johnson oh, steve Duchesne, steve Duchesne, as a former colleague of mine used to call him, steve Duchesne. 

06:16 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Wow, yikes. Yeah, 28's a rough number. Yeah, it's rough. This is not great rough. 

06:24 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
This is not great. I think we got a lot of the the big ones here work done as well. We got a lot of the big ones. Oh, david justice, david justice. 

06:28 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Yeah, honestly, great name, great sports name, for sure, justice yeah, justice but, I think those are the big ones yes and when we're talking about the big ones, rob, we're talking about pinnacle sportsbook. 

06:43 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Of course, if you don't know already, we talk about Pinnacle on every single show. They are a proud sponsor here of Circles Off, but I've been betting with Pinnacle for a long time. And listen, there's gonna be some topics of conversation later on in this show talking about limiting bettors and stuff like that. Pinnacle's not gonna limit you. It's one of the beautiful things about betting at a sharp sportsbook. They treat every single player the same way. So bet smart, bet Pinnacle, your trusted sportsbook for the past 25 years. And, as always, if you do sign up to Pinnacle in Canada, use code HAMMER. It goes a long way in supporting us here on Circles Off and at the Hammer Betting Network. You must be 19 plus and, as always, please play responsibly. Before Must be 19 plus and, as always, please play responsibly. 

07:26
Before we talk, a little bit of analytics. Continue our conversation from last time. I want to remind people as well I think I used the word criminal last time when I brought this up, but it is criminal what our view to like ratio is on this show. It's pathetic, honestly, take two seconds. Smash that like button down below. If you're listening in audio form, please rate and review five stars Again, we want people to find this content. We want people to find it. So if you can just take two seconds, it goes a long way. Alright, last time we talked was a few weeks ago, prior to the NBA season. Anything that stands out to you immediately. That like has happened, because you know, at the start of seasons they can always be finicky. Nfl scoring was way down. We've had stuff with major league baseball where they changed the ball like. Imagine that, like anything with nba that people need to take note of right off the out of the gate here um, the biggest one I would say is scoring is just. 

08:24 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
It's still going up. I thought at some point, kind of like you mentioned nfl. We find like an equilibrium. Maybe would start going the other way. Scoring is just completely insane in the nba. The coaches cannot figure it out on the defensive end. Like the players are just too good. You watch nba games. Players are too good at basketball. Like they are so dynamic from three they're obviously like best athletes in the world. Scoring just continues to go out now there was years ago. 

08:52 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Obviously we saw like the golden state warriors. It was the shift like get rid of the mid-range twos. Basically you're taking threes or you're driving the basket. Is there anything fundamentally different now, or is it just like? Actually? 

09:07 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I guess maybe it's a product of all the players now practicing this stuff a lot more yeah, well, I just think they continue to optimize offense more, like there were still some meat on the bone for like mid-range, just optimal, like shooting depth paces up a little bit this year. Some teams are flying um I wouldn't say it's so much fundamental just like kind of incremental improvements, incremental improvements, and then the players have just kind of keep getting better and better. So yeah, I don't know if it's like one thing, it's not, like teams are shooting three pointers more. I think offensive rebound rate might be up a little bit. That was something that coaches were talking about a lot in the preseason but it's not like it's so high up from this point last year, more so. 

09:49 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I thought at some point we'd start seeing that decline back and it doesn't look like it's going to be this season how much of it has to do with the fact that, like it's still early in the year, so you don't get you know, every star player or veteran resting earlier in the year Are we talking about? Scoring is up relative to the same period a year ago. 

10:08 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, so actually in the NBA scoring typically starts down, so pace starts up, but shooting is worse early in the year. So yeah, relative to this time last year, scoring's a little bit up. It's nothing so crazy, but we're definitely not hitting a decline. Has that impacted your betting at all in the early going? 

10:24 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Not so much a little bit up. It's nothing so crazy, but we're definitely not hitting a decline. 

10:29 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Has that impacted your betting at all in the early going? Not so much. I would say we're pretty prepared for it and we're pretty on top of things. So it's not like I'm hammering overs. I would say overs, unders, pretty 50-50 still. But there have been times where we've been like our numbers make the under good. But let's hold off. 

10:45 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So maybe a poorly phrased question by me, but I guess what are you seeing in the market? Because you know I talk about that example in baseball. I've talked about this a couple of times and it's the easy one to go to because there's like obviously fundamental change in the game balls being juiced or like changing the balls and scoring is down. But what I noticed in the baseball seasons a lot of time was you could blindly bet like every under or every over across the league for the first three to four weeks of the season and make a killing. Like the market was actually very slow to react to those changes. With the NBA, are you seeing higher totals generally this year? 

11:22 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
yeah, I would say totals are definitely up from this time last year. But it's not like juice ball MLB, it's pretty. It's not a dramatic difference. Like I think from two years ago to last year scoring was up like seven points a game, something crazy like that. I don't think we're trending to that, but we're definitely not trending the other way. So no, definitely wouldn't advise like blind betting overs anything like that. But maybe being a day or two where the market was a little bit behind, because it there are weird like portions of the nba season where, like the first few games pace is really fast and then it tails off a little bit and then you got to kind of find the time where that like shooting hits its stride. So like maybe a couple games, but nothing like it's not. Like I've been, I think probably 50, 50 between if I've been on an under or another got it all right. 

12:13 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So no, no substantial or like fundamental, uh, major changes that are impacting the betting market. Now, um, on the circles off channel, here I do some educational videos. They're catered towards more of a recreational audience, sometimes rec plus. Probably people who are very nuanced in sports betting will watch those and be like I already know this stuff. So that let me preface this by saying that I wanted to do a video on the usage of NBA analytics and like what specifically, what metrics better should be focused on, and this video dropped on Tuesday of this week. But I don't bet a lot of NBA. I used to, but the big metrics when I was betting were like RPM, bpm, box score plus, minus, like stuff. That basketball reference had an ESPN metric as well, and I noticed that things have changed substantially in the span of five years. 

13:17
What was very interesting to me was I reached out to pretty much everyone that I know or communicate with frequently that originates NBA and has success betting their models. I was like, okay, what do you look at regularly? What are you accounting for? And the answers I got in response were so different from one another where certain people stand by like one specific metric, darko which I had never heard of epm. Uh, some people you know one was just a very basic like listen, you just got to be very good at projecting pace and then offensive and defensive efficiency and you're going to be fine. And if you can do this at a player level, you're going to be great. 

13:59
But I'm wondering I don't want you to like give away the secrets or anything like that, but I'm curious as to like how deep you go into this. Are they all a piece of a puzzle for you? Is there a specific metric that you stand by specifically? Just kind of talk me through this and I can pick up on some of this, but for me, like it's just crazy to me. I focus on NFL, I focus on NHL. Most people are looking at the exact same shit for the most part, with the exception of maybe some private data that you can acquire, nba publicly, the. The feeling I get is like it's all over the place yeah, I think that's fair. 

14:38 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I would say on um so pace offensive, and I feel like that's kind of a cop-out answer like obviously you need pace offensive rating, defensive rating. Like I feel like that's kind of a cop-out answer, like obviously you need pace offensive rating, defensive rating Right, that's someone who didn't want to give away too much info. 

14:49
You need to know who's going to score more, right. But yeah, on a player level, you're probably going to want to use a rate-adjusted plus-minus. I use like dunks and threes EPM for sure. So I would say, if you're betting the NBA, you need to have a good feel of how valuable every player is. To some extent, Like, it's hard to build on a team model because, or it's hard to only operate on a team like basis because there are going to be so many games where players are out, and then how do you adjust if you don't have player level data, right? So, yeah, you're probably going to want to look at, you know, some sort of rate adjusted plus minus. 

15:23
Darko, I use Dunks in 3's EPM I use for sure. And then on a team level, personally I like building my kind of perspective on teams through four factors. You know it's not like any advanced stat by any means, but I find it's really good to kind of be able to compartmentalize each stat and think you know, okay, how's the team built, are they going to be good at, you know, offensive rebounding, are they going to be good at defensive rebounding? And you can kind of build your player level stuff towards four factors and see you know, okay, their team X is going to be really good in this, really bad in this. How does that rate out how important is each four factor Right? So that's typically stuff I'm looking at. 

16:02 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Now, how much are you concerned with the stylistic matchup of teams when they play one another? Because this is a conversation and I always bring it back to stuff that I know because this is easier for me to formulate my ideas and like speak on this. But with NFL, there are people who just literally put together like power ratings of teams and they say, okay, here's what I think home field advantage is worse. This team x place teams y. This should be the number on the game. 

16:32
I don't believe in that at all, because I think you're not capturing, like potentially, how the strength of one team could work against a weakness of another, and I think you're missing out when you do stuff like that. Now there are people who stand behind that and have success to each their own. There's a million ways to bet on sports, but I would figure with NBA that especially. I don't watch a ton of NBA, but when I do, I notice sometimes like holy shit, this team plays insanely fast and and this other team can just cannot present, like prevent, any sort of transition offense or anything like that. How much of that is a factor for you, or do you think that maybe it's overblown in some capacity? 

17:08 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
yeah, like I would say I'm probably on the other side of of your argument. I'm mostly betting. You know my power ratings and where, especially in the playoffs, it'll get to the point where, yeah, you need to factor and match up a lot. Right, but there are so many nba games, just even on a time factor, to also be incorporating. You know, how do these teams match up? 

17:30
It's certainly something I'll look at, but I will say that the bets that I find like, let's say, I bet a four and it moves the wrong way to, let's say, four and a half, um, I would say most of the time I can think back and be like, okay, yeah, I probably missed a match up here, because you know, if you're betting the NBA, you're really trying to get a lot of volume. So just adding multiple hours to every day being like all right, let's go through this matchup. How does player X match up with player Y? It would just add a lot of time to our process. But you've got to look at the main main guys. You know if you're placing a bet, I think the pacers and sixers are playing today like joel destroys the pacers. They don't really have enough size. You know things like that you do need to look at. But mostly I'm kind of betting my, my power ratings and where I make the number yeah, I. 

18:19 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I think it's interesting the fact that, like you you mentioned, when the market's moving against you, oftentimes you'll find that it's because of a specific matchup. I think that's like case in point as to why I think it's probably valuable is that you know that there's someone with influential money out there that's willing to bet these types of things. Now, with everything, I think you got to take like everything with a grain of salt. I do think that there's people who like just specifically look at one aspect of a game and be like, oh, this team has a very good pass rush and this team has a bad offensive line, they're going to get killed, and they've just like honing in on that one aspect and forget about everything else. But I mean subjectively, I just you've played we talked about this in the episode right, you've played sports and so forth about this in in the episode. 

19:05 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Right, you've played sports and so, yeah, not at a high level. Yeah, I'll bring it back to last episode. A lot of my friends were dying of laughter because you mentioned that I played basketball a bunch of times on the pod did you not say that, or did I know you? I think you took it out of nowhere. 

19:16 - Zack Phillips (Other)
I do not remember saying it, you can look back we gotta pull up the tape. 

19:20 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
We'll pull up the tape like I play basketball, but but you would watch me play basketball and be like, oh yeah, I suck at basketball. I'm definitely not much of a basketball player and a lot of my friends were like, oh, I didn't know you were a pro basketball player. It's like Rob and I play basketball. 

19:35 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I play college basketball. I play solid defense now in my Tuesday night men's league and whatever that's like me, I try hard out there. I'm a fake. Fake try hard, oh yeah. Yeah, like I make it seem like I'm trying a lot harder than I am. 

19:52 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I'm a good communicator out there, but like I'm the guy that's like not fighting through screens and calling for the switch like a little bit of lazy defending, but it's very tactical yeah no, I think I fall in a similar boat of, like I, I am trying hard, like I'll go hard, to win a game, but the last thing I want to do is get injured out there. So, like I'm a terrible rebounder, if someone's coming at me full like down the lane, like I'm faking at them but making sure I'm not touching them, last thing I want is a sprained ankle or, like you know, a hurt elbow. 

20:20
I have no interest in that. 

20:22 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm with you. I'm not going to be that guy. That's like running a mile back down the court to try to prevent, like a transition layup that the guy's going to hit 99% of the time, like what are we doing here? But even in it's maybe it's actually definitely not apples to apples, but even in, like men's league basketball right, I know, if we play a specific team, I'm going to get like this little baseline jumper. Pretty regularly I'm like, oh, this is a money matchup for me. Like amazing, like they're not gonna defend. 

20:54
There's some teams that play zone or whatever and you're like this is just a great. Like you go into that game like we're gonna, we're gonna kill it offensively tonight. And then there's other times you play a team and you're like even before the game, you're like we have no hope against this team. And it's very different in the NBA because there's way more parity. Everyone is like a really good, skilled athlete. But I have to imagine that there's some guys that are like fuck, we can really push the ball against this team and we're going to have a lot of success. 

21:20 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, I definitely agree. I would say props. If you're not focusing on the matchup in props, then you're probably not winning betting props. You need the matchup in props. 

21:33
But I would say a good example of kind of what you said, of you can look at it the wrong way Raptors' team the last few years when they didn't have a center. I feel like most people would look at a Joel matchup and think, oh, joel's going to kill these guys didn't have a center. I feel like most people would look at you know a joel matchup, yep, and think, oh, like joel's gonna kill these guys, yep, but the raptors speed really hurt joel and they were able to send double teams essentially every time and I don't have the numbers in my head, but I'm pretty confident the raptors played them quite well. Um, over the past couple seasons in the playoffs it got a little less so when they matched up. But I think you can add a lot of your own biases when you're trying to add in that matchup. But I certainly think if you want a better NBA, thinking matchups is good. It's just also a challenge. 

22:16 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Well, so we have an NBA division of the Hammer called the Board and one of our main personalities there talent is Pips Vedran Eričich, croatian guy, and he by no means is like the biggest nba better in the world in fact he's very like specifically focuses on props and a lot of same game parlays. 

22:36
the first time I ever came across pips's account, it looked to me like a scam twitter account, like doing collaborations with other content creators and like this amount of likes and I'll give out picks, which is a way to generate engagement in the space nowadays. 

22:51
But now I watch the content every single day and the breakdowns of the same game parlays are very rooted, always in just like one aspect of the game that he thinks he's picked up well on. 

23:02
So I can't us like. As a specific example, maybe a couple of weeks ago there was a same game parlay involving a Bucks game and it was rooted around the fact that when Giannis gets the ball, this opposing coach will always send a double team on it. For sure it's going to happen, he's going to get double team. So it was like I'm taking Giannis under on points, I'm taking Giannis under on points, I'm taking a couple other players on the court over on three pointers, and it was all centered around this like one you know thing that he felt was not being accounted for in that line and honestly, I've been betting pretty much everything this guy's been given out and these are like some four to one, five to ones, and this is not to promo the board or pick and roll or anything but like it makes a lot of sense to me that he's able to hone in on something and then just build this entire theory around that. 

23:52 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, no, I think it's an awesome way to bet props, especially like if you can bet same game parlays and win. That's like essentially the best, in my opinion, the best way to win in betting right now. Because I've bet into accounts on same game parlays. They are accepting the bets faster than any other bet I've ever placed. Like I had a winning account. Um, that was like semi-restricted. Every bet was going to trader. 

24:19
Yep, started putting same game parlays that I thought were plus ev and definitely won on the account. After like 2xing the account, all my bets were now not going to trader got it just because I was putting in sgp. So, yeah, winning sgps just as an aside, I think is is really an incredible way to win money in betting right now. But, that being said, I think that that's a really good way to do it, thinking of, like, in the sgp algo, yep, they're probably not factoring in what the other team's coaching decision is. So I think that's a really good way to attack props. I think it's a bit different with sides and totals, certainly something you could factor in, but not something that I I dramatically look at for most bets I'm placing got it yeah, I think, uh, the episode we did with Shipper as well. 

25:06 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
he talked a little bit about this in terms of, like, his betting habits with SGPs, and it's very nuanced because it involves you have to have a knowledge of the sport For sure. 

25:17
Like you know, I hear Pips break down the games and he's very in tune with how certain coaches will play, their styles, what teams will do when they're leading, when they're trailing, and you know that's not something somebody can just pick up and learn overnight. But I think if you do have a very, you know solid foundation in a specific sport and you can pinpoint one thing that you think is extremely likely to happen thing that you think is extremely likely to happen that's obviously way more likely than than the algorithm is taking into account and then just build around that scenario, you can end up with all it's. It's very similar to the people who are making a ton of money with dfs correlations in the early going. Right, it's like okay, I'm in the millionaire maker, I'm gonna play dac prescott as my quarterback. Well, guess what? I need to play two of his receivers as well, because that's got to be the case For sure I will caution, though. 

26:09 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
It's a hard game, well one. If you're betting spreads, totals, you can pretty much know if you're good or not based on how much closing you're getting, unless you're like really really good. Even in props, like you can kind of tell if the market's going against you you're probably not that good market's going with you. Sgps are really hard because you can have the right idea, like you can think oh, these two players are negatively correlated, but the book won't know that, and the book might not know that, but they're just pricing it off at such crappy odds anyway that it's still gonna be negative. So you need to be able to know the sport, but you also need to be able to at least find a way to find a reasonable price, that you can look at the price and think, okay, even if these are negatively correlated, they're not pricing in a negative correlation, so it's still not worth a bet, even if your thought process is really accurate yeah, I think you. 

27:03 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I don't bet a lot of sgp, so I'm speaking a little bit out of my ass here, just generally speaking, but if I were to do this process myself, I think you got to think probabilistically, just like anything else in sports betting, right? So if you think there's a 60 chance that yannis is going to go under his points total and you want to bet some other stuff, I would probably assign some probabilities to them before looking at the odds, or at least converting the odds to a probability and saying you know it has to. This makes sense, instead of just piling on backing that theory. 

27:33 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I for sure agree with you. But the reason that the SGPs are so hard to price is because you need a price in the correlation right Like they're not independent events. So that's kind of. 

27:43
The whole edge is that you know yannis is 60, but when yannis goes over you know malik beasley's gonna hit two, threes you know, if you're saying yannis assists versus, there are a lot of times where I think a player's under threes and over points is a good play. Yeah, and hypothetically you would think that a book should price that like, should give you a really good price for that right. Those are clearly negatively correlated, right, but like books kind of just will give you the normal odds and even if that is a good thought, that you could have a guy who you like they're under threes and over points if you, you know, put an sgp and they just give you fair odds yeah yeah, exactly, just bet them both straight, Like they probably even are somewhat negatively correlated but I probably think they're less negatively correlated than a book should be pricing them in. 

28:32
But you've got to also be able to recognize okay, the book isn't pricing it in and the SGP prices get much more complicated than, like you know, if you're parlaying two games you can just kind of multiply the odds together and find what the fair price should be. 

28:45 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Totally understand that. Um, for those that want to check out pips nba, he is on the board nba channel. There's a daily show called pick and roll. Every single weekday morning, 11 30 am eastern time. He's usually giving out two to three bats. A lot of times same game, parlays a lot of time player props. But check that out, it's on the the board. Check that out on YouTube. We'll drop the link in the description below. And Kirk does appear on the board once a week as well for the Board NBA podcast. So you check that out. That's more of a higher high level show looking at the league as a whole. Fundamental differences on a weekly basis. I watched last week. Didn't know probably half the stuff you were talking about. 

29:27
Got to do what I can to support. Got to do what I can to support. I want to talk a little bit about defense in modeling, because we pay a lot of attention to offense in every single sport. Defensively, I talked about, you know, offense in general. Looking at different metrics, I feel like there's like a wider range of what people can look at on defense. There's some people who I talk to are like we have, we have no idea what we're doing when it comes to accurately pricing defense or how to incorporate that. Where do we go with defensive metrics going forwards? Basically, like there's been sort of an evolutionary shift across major sports in trying to quantify them. But I see a lot of stuff, as I'm sure that you might, when you're looking at maybe a defensive metric that says, hey, this guy's like a top five defender in the league, and you're like, uh, you know, like no, and I get that with nfl, I get that with nhl like are we close to the point of being able to quantify defense? 

30:27 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
uh, I'm certainly not close okay, um well I would say in the nba quantifying centers, defense it is a lot easier. Like rim protection stats are much more predictive. Like this, the process of identifying you know what a good stat is is similar. You know you want a stat that's predictive goes year by year. Like you know stats probably bad if it's projecting you know a player fourth, best defensive player in the league, and then the next year they're like 200th. Yeah, they probably didn't get that dramatically worse. 

30:56
On d your the numbers are probably just pretty noisy. 

30:59
But wing player d stats are a lot of either like proxy stats where it's like how good was player X while they were on the court, or you know those one-on-one metrics of like how did players shoot when they were defended by this and, and those stats can be really noisy. So I wouldn't say the stats are bad. Like our APM models you know, factor in defense and like even for wing defenders like alex caruso drew holiday, like those guys are coming up like typically top five defenders. Yep, so they're not horrible, but they're definitely not. So our apm models on the offensive side you can factor in. It's a lot of box score stats plus you know um-off stats versus on defense, really the only defensive box score stats you have are steals and blocks and those can be really easy to misinterpret, so it's definitely a way more challenging thing to get right, but yeah, we're getting there. But especially wing defense Trying to rank out the 50th best wing defender in the league versus the 25th using those stats that's really challenging. 

32:09 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I think the big thing for me when I've tried to do this in sports is how much do other teammates also affect an individual's defensive impact? Right, like you used to work in hockey analytics, right, if you have a defenseman, if your defense partner is a major liability defensively, that's going to weigh for sure. And now you can have relative stats and and that's important to look at as well but a lot of people just look at the general rate stats a lot of times and that's what gets filtered to the top here. So I imagine the exact same thing happens in basketball. You get a rotation where you're playing six minutes with one of the worst defenders on your team. It's probably going to have some sort of impact on how your defensive numbers look. 

32:46 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
For sure, and there's selection bias right Of like, if you're playing, if you know in the NHL, if this is the you know Morgan Riley really bad defensive player but good offensive player they're probably going to want to pair that player with their best defensive defenseman, which is going to bring down those stats. You know, also, in basketball and hockey I would say as well, there's a lot of players who are on the same rotation for a lot of the time. You know, like if two players are kind of tied together, it's really hard to use relative stats if you know they're playing 95% of their minutes together. It can happen in hockey as well. If you're on a line pairing with someone you know for two straight seasons, it's hard to kind of peel back those stats. 

33:25 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I get it. Yeah, defense is tough. It's tough to quantify. I do feel, though, that it's a lot easier for the masses to quantify offense. Someone who can get the breakthrough on defense is going to have like a very, a very large edge in these markets, because there's so many ways to do it. And, uh again, like talking to people I know about quantifying offense in the nba, you get a lot of the same answers. When you get to defense, it's like you know all over the place for sure for sure. 

34:00 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, I would say, on a player level, on offense you can really hone in. On defense you can focus probably a bit more on the team level. Obviously, you need no player value. I would say, especially big men. Big men really drive a lot of defense, especially in the regular season in the NBA. Also, I'm trying to pull up the saying I heard recently that I thought was really good the eye test is better than analytics, but analytics watches every game. 

34:29 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yep. 

34:30 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I think that's really true for defense. Like, if you can really watch every game of a player on D, you'll really get a good feel of how good they are. But it's just impossible to get to that level of watching every player, every game, every possession. 

34:44 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Eye test can also be very tricky sorry, it has to be caveat with. 

34:49 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
You need to be an expert of the sport right and and be able to to remove your biases, which you know those are all really hard things to do, for sure yeah, I mean, it's challenging you. 

35:01 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You don't always get these things to match up. I'll get your thoughts on this. But last time I was really betting NBA seriously was maybe five to six years ago and I talked about BPM, rpm being big metrics at that time and I used to get into this argument all the time with my friends because Jay Crowder was statistically at the numbers. Everyone was looking at the best small forward in the league and I'm watching him. Like you know, jay Crowder, he's not even like, he's not even involved on like 80% of the plays, can't really dribble, he can't do. This is not possible. And like the numbers say it, the numbers say it. So like, what do you do in those situations? Because I'm sure right now you know you mentioned you look at epm a lot. I'm sure there's like some things that you just vehemently disagree with. You're like there's no, this, this doesn't make any sense. Do you? Do you have like an override at some point? 

35:56 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
yeah, for sure you you gotta be, because you know the way I think about it is any. You know if, if epm was the answer, then you should just be able to, you know, have an epm model based on dunks and threes and be able to beat the market. You know, if you try doing that, you know, just literally aggregated epm data and built a model, you would get absolutely destroyed by the market. So obviously there are things beyond epm that you have to build in if you're going to win, because if you just built an aggregated EPM model, you would get destroyed by the market. So for sure you need an override. 

36:29
I think the best example is Jokic defense. That's kind of the Drake Crowder right now. Every year Jokic defensive metrics in the all-in-ones have him as the best defender in the league, and also the on-offs for Jokic are also really strong, just like raw on offs. So I like to think about it as it's probably some signal. But you also kind of want to think about okay, why are the numbers producing that result? Right, you know, jokic gets a lot of steals, gets a lot of. He actually doesn't get that many blocks, but he gets a lot of steals for a center they also have typically had really bad defensive centers behind them. So the models looking at it obviously model like personified yep is looking at it, as you know yokich comes off and they're way worse on d, no matter who's behind them, but they kind of just so happen to have deandre jordan and thomas bryant as their backup centers. So I definitely think you need to. If you're going to win betting, you need to be able to kind of override that, those numbers. 

37:27 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I think that's one of the like. It's a challenge, right, when you build a model that's very successful and generally is winning at a lot of things, and then you have like one or two things with certain players that just don't seem right. I'm always betting against this team. I'm always. It's hard to convince yourself that it's wrong, necessarily. 

37:52
I remember years ago seven or eight years ago first started modeling baseball, posting publicly to Twitter numbers every day and all I was doing was using steamers projections. They were doing forward-looking projections every day and all I was doing was using steamers projections. They were they were doing forward looking projections and you could just plug those into a a properly like a monte carlos. It was before the time that they actually had the individual like home run rates and strikeout rates or whatever. It was just like base eras for and whatever you know numbers for for batters against lefties and righties and you could just plug that in and you'd actually have like. For me, betting overnights or early in the morning before limits went up could have success getting good closing line value. Generally. Things were going to move towards that projection system at the time but there was probably like five pitchers every year where you would bet against them in every single start or on them in every single start. 

38:42
Dan heron was a guy that I'll never forget. I was like always betting against dan heron and then you're like this projection is just wrong, like I. Maybe it's something about him specifically, where you know steamers doing these four, looking projections or looking at certain metrics and saying, okay, this is predictive, going forwards and it works for 99 of players. But then there's just like these outliers and you, you know if I, if I'm just playing these outliers, that's going to be like 40 of my volume for the year and it's I fundamentally believe this is wrong. The market would still move that way, but I'd consistently lose those bets. So now I'm in the boat of like, well, I'm getting clv, someone else is seeing the same thing but I believe this is wrong. I'm constantly losing and that's like the really challenging thing about being a better sometimes, in my opinion. 

39:33 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, well, the getting CLV part would be tough. Like, typically if I'm getting CLV I'm leaving it unless something like really drastic is happening. But in terms of just modeling in general, like you got to be able to look at your model and say, okay, well, what's potentially missing? Yeah, okay, well, if this is losing every time, maybe that falls into the you know, potentially missing category. Like in baseball, I feel like from eight years ago to now, if you look at what came in between, there's so much data that's been filled in in that time. You know you probably were just missing that, like some of that data yep, very likely. 

40:10 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Do you think we've over shifted with any metrics? I'll give an example of what. So when I first started modeling hockey, this is this is in a game, team level shots, not individual player level, it was just this team gets a lot of shots are very highly correlated to goals. Right makes sense. And then I was maybe one of the first people that really started to get into core c and fenwick. For those that don't know, core c is just also accounts for shots that miss the net. Um, fenwick also accounts for shots that have been blocked by a defender, and that was like the next wave and I was having a lot of success Doing that and people slowly caught up to that. 

40:55
And then we saw this expected goals movement In hockey. And this is where things have really Taken off In a weird direction for me, because Expected goals is not going to. Technically, shots is always going to be same because there's like an official scoring for shots, corsi and Fenwick. You might get a few like off here and there. All the expected goals models that are public are very different. There is a private expected goals model by a company called sports logic that sells directly to the teams. That is also substantially different because they're accounting for more information passes before the shots that are happening. But what I found is, as soon as, like, expected goals became a thing in hockey, we've got like almost the market has gone too far now where everyone's like, oh, this team is like killing it and expected goals or whatever, and it's it's like the. The market just always moves towards those teams regardless. Do you see that in basketball in any situation or and honestly with minor hockey league experience and analytics as well like this is a flawed metric, that, oh, that people are? 

42:06 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
just like staking everything on yeah, like I wouldn't say I see the nba market move towards you know a certain metric more than I would think is appropriate. But I think there are a lot of like good parallels to basketball too. I think a massive problem in analytics is that people will be like oh well, you know, we won three, two in expected goals, we should have won right, and that's end of conversation. I think nba good comparisons are like oh, this player's terrible because when they're off the team is really good and when they're on the team's really bad. But it's like okay, it's being 10 games, like that can be a ton of noise, it can be three point luck. So I think a problem in kind of every analytics movement is people go oh here's, you know what the analytics say, which is literally my least favorite expression. 

42:54 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I hate, that so much man, I hate it. So it's the worst, as if two different like and you know analytics people cannot arrive at different conclusions it's like everything just analytics is like a sentient being go for it in the n. 

43:05 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
It's like everything just goes down the line. Analytics is like a sentient being. Analytics says go for it in the NFL. It's like, well, no, that the model that you're using says go for it. 

43:12 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You know, that's completely different. 

43:13 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
So I think the big problem is kind of people use it as a stopping point. You know people will look at Darko and be like, oh okay. Well, like, look at these two players on a chart, obviously better. It's like okay, obviously you need to look at it as a factor in your decision making. But it's not everything. Expected goals like. You can think of so many reasons why expected goals can be wrong, like the side-to-side movement is the perfect example I for years. 

43:42 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It was the carolina hurricane before the hurricanes are. 

43:45
The are a really good team now, but prior to that everyone would just be so fixated. Carolina every year is like top three in expected goals and they can't score. And then you watch Carolina's games and they're just like, yeah, there's a lot of chances in tight. It's where the goalie's in perfect position to save. Like you know, people jamming it at the side of the net and in front of the net, like there's no cross ice passes. The goalie is is face on for everything. So you use expected goals. Doesn't take into account the goalie position for one like expected goal on an open net. Let's say you don't know, it's an open net. 

44:22
Goalie went out behind the net yeah, yeah you know, he gave away the pass to a guy in front and and the guy put it into an open net. Well, all the public models think that there was a goalie in the net there, yeah, and it shows it as like something that distinctly different than it actually was. There's like there's just it's an imperfect metric, but now it's viewed as the be-all and end-all and not. What really frustrates me, too, is is how it's used in analysis, as if this is all sports too. Right, we all look at metrics. We think we're all. I'm. I'm very guilty of this as well, for sure, by the way, I'm very guilty. But it's like, oh, they got to take this guy off the power play, they got to do this. It's like, well, that team has very much more sophisticated numbers to work with. That's not to say that they can't make mistakes, but you would know, you would know a lot about this well, well, I just I find that the other side of this also wildly frustrating. 

45:17 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I think both sides are just get it totally wrong, because nothing that pissed me off more or very little. Maybe the analytics say the only one of like teams coming out and say, oh, our data says differently, yeah, because it's such a crutch and it's so easy for these teams, they'll hide behind that sport logic data, yeah, and be like oh well, the sport logic expected goals says different, right, you know? I remember, like nikita zaitsev on the leafs, yeah, they were like oh well, well, our internal stuff says differently, right, like does it? Or are you just? 

45:48 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
using it as a crutch so it's. 

45:51 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I can see both sides and I just think the the public side use it too much as a stopping point of like, okay, this is the end of the conversation. Yeah, and the teams use it too much as oh, we've got all this internal data like you, you don't even know anything like like they act like. The internal data is like so much better, which I think probably is true in, like, baseball, yeah, but in hockey I'm not as convinced it's better. 

46:17 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, the the sport logic stuff is definitely better, but I'm wary when you know a player is coming out as horrible in the public, spacing stuff, that they have internals that, oh, this is actually a good player, yeah I think there's a lot to a lot of this has to do nowadays with a lot of the public facing models as well that are out there, and there are some very good websites in the space that are very useful if you're looking for data, if you're, you know, looking for live in-game projections, expected goals in real time, and they're very highly trafficked. But now, all of a sudden, a lot of those highly trafficked sites are putting out like win probabilities on games that are vastly different from market numbers. And it's scary because, like people just bet that stuff blindly. Like evolving hockey is an amazing site, very useful. 

47:10
I I use evolving hockey for a lot of data. I think it's very accurate. They do a good job with the upkeep, keep and whatever. But some people reference like these goals above replacement, like the wins above replacement, like it's the be all and end all and it's like dude, like you can't honestly believe that this defenseman is the most valuable in the league. Like there's obviously just just it does not pass the sniff test right 100. 

47:34 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Like, if you can't beat a market with a subset of numbers which, like you're essentially never going to be able to with a public facing model, yeah, well, then there's more out there. You know, if they're worse at predicting who's going to win, then markets are, then there's more out there. You know, if they're worse at predicting who's going to win than markets are, then there's obviously more out there. So you shouldn't use it as a stopping point. You can use it as a factor, yeah, but it shouldn't be, you know. 

47:57 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Oh well, like, look at this chart, this player's way better and and I think that's where the analytics sometimes gets like a really bad rap for sure, where some people will look at just like an analytic site and they'll nitpick and you you can always find like certain situations where a player shouldn't be there or like a projection looks really wrong. But yeah, I, I just I've noticed in particular the hockey market's evolution that it is just so far towards expected goals now that it it's like. You know, honestly, if you wanted to blindly bet maybe this isn't so true this year, but last year if you just wanted to take the pinnacle openers and just blindly bet that, without any model or whatever based off expected goals for the year, you will close well, interesting, it just moves that way. But there's so many like pdo, like I. 

48:47
I know brian king is the inventor of a pdo metric. Brian king is um alberta based guy. I've interacted with him on twitter before. Huge baltimore ravens fan pdo. I don't even remember why it's called pdo. It doesn't stand for anything. Trying to remember what it was, it's essentially like a luck measure in hockey. 

49:05
But it's super basic dude. It's it's shooting percentage plus save percentage for a team and the general theory is that over time it's gonna, it should converge to one yeah, but like what happens, you have austin matthews or you know, star goalie is henrik lundqvist every year for the. 

49:21 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Everyone is shitting on the rangers. 

49:24 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Rangers are so lucky they're pdo. Like this. It's like dude, they have the greatest goalie, who's obviously always going to have a higher than average save percentage, and like. That kind of stuff was always drove me crazy. It's like a very imperfect metric and there could be some signal for certain teams. But if you go back, like some teams are always going to have high shooting percentages because they have guess what better shooters or they generate better shots, some teams are always going to have low. So like and this is like just an example of a metric that I hear referenced all the time and in some cases it can be useful for sure it's like this team has a very high pdo. They're going to come back down to earth. 

50:07
If you compare it to previous seasons numbers and say, yeah, you know what? Guess what? Nothing's fundamentally changed. It's the same goalie, same shooters. But oftentimes people use it like as if it's just like this be all end, all the luck is going to change, luck's going to run out for this team and they just go on runs. And the rangers for like the last couple years, are great examples of that. Expected goals, poor PDO, high guess what? They have Igor Shustergin, amazing goalie. You might think that maybe they'll get outplayed in a lot of games and they can still win the game, and it's like people are just dismissing the goaltending aspect of the game. 

50:41
Yeah, it's like they get. They get run over every game. Okay, you know, they have amazing goalie in that. 

50:46 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
What do you want me to tell you? 100%, and I think it's kind of like the antithesis of like real analytics to be like, okay, here are the numbers, like we're done now, like you kind of always want to be learning more and advancing stuff, especially, you know, pdo. You look at it as metric. You're like, okay, yeah, there are a million things that can be wrong with this metric. So I agree, there's probably a lot of signal, especially in PDO early season. But at the same time, if you're using it as a be all, end all, there are just way too many flaws. 

51:17 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yes, I mean there's lots of things I can get to and I think we overdo it Sometimes. There was like a study years ago that even strength metrics for hockey are much more predictive than you know. Power play there's a lot more noise and penalty gives a lot, which is true. That doesn't mean that you cannot glean something from how a team is on the power play like this. You know again, easy to point these out after the fact, but I do bet this stuff as well. Edmonton Oilers last year had a historically high power play percentage. Their 5v5 numbers were not the greatest. 

51:50
People wanted to fade this team all the time. They're so lucky they need the power plays to win Guess what people. Power plays happen in games. They're going to score like 35% of the time on these. That has an impact on the game that you have to account for. I think people just get like fixated now on like the next hot new thing. There'll be something new that comes that's not expected goals. There'll be something new in NBA that's not EPM. In the NFL it's currently like EPA and success rate and they're starting to pick up. And there's always going to be new metrics as our way to quantify the game and measure. The game, you know, gets better with technology, but when that new thing comes, comes, at least what I've noticed is fuck, the market grabs it and like especially early market people betting early and they just run with it like it's the be all, end all. And I actually think that creates an opportunity a lot of times when limits go up in some of these sports to to fade yeah, I think that's fair. 

52:44 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I think that you know, for any of those things you kind of want to regress it like the oilers power play, like yeah, they probably weren't as good as you know the best power play ever. But if you're regressing them to an average power play, you're going to be way more wrong than even just assuming that their power play is the best ever agreed. 

53:00 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Agreed, all right, kirk evans. In studio, we haven't done a uh. Tweets that trigger us. In a very long time, I've gotten a lot of messages hey Rob, what happened to that segment? What's going on? Used to really enjoy this. I mean, there's a lot of tweets that trigger me that have built up over time and I just kind of thought to myself yeah, what happened? Why did we stop doing that? So we're going to get back into it. It here. No one is safe on tweets that trigger us, including friends of the program for this week, and let's get right into it, zach I don't know what we're yelling about. 

53:37 - Zack Phillips (Other)
I've never seen you mad I get paved. 

53:39 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Why are you in such a bad mood? What do you care? 

53:42 - Zack Phillips (Other)
it's only game. Why you have to be mad all right, let's start it here. 

53:47 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Feel free to chime in kirk at any time. By the way, uh, big d sports better, sure, if you have to put big d in your profile, I mean you might be overcompensating, I don't know, I feel like it's an appropriate name for this tweet. Yes. 

54:05 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
The Twitter name and tweet fit perfectly together here. 

54:10 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Bam. I wiped out a lot of sins with a whale bet on the Raiders. My normal bet unit is $110. I made two bets totaling $1,258 on the Raiders and turned a four and six day into a winner. I've never been so happy as when they batted down that last Hail Mary so 10 times a regular bet. There's some screenshots that accompany this as well. This is not something to be proud about. I can get the emotion. We've been there. I don't know if you've been there. Certainly no one is immune to chasing losses. As a sports bettor, you got to try to bet within your limits. I really preach bankroll management. It's very important, but sometimes it's just like poker. No poker player is immune to going on tilt. There are emotions at play. Try not to do it for one. 

55:06 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
But also especially try not to do it for one, but also especially try not to share it if it happens after the fact. Yeah, like if you're, if you're betting a hundred dollars and then you're so upset that you've lost that you're now betting 10x or a little more than 10x the unit size, you probably should stop betting for a bit, like take some time off, make sure that you're okay with you. Know he was going to be three and six on a day. Three and six days are going to happen a lot, especially no offense to big d here, but I doubt he's a a winner. So you're going to lose pretty often. If you know you're finding you're losing and then you're 10xing your unit size, probably should take some time off sports betting I mean definitely not a winner, because he didn't even get good numbers. 

55:49 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I think he just opened the sports books that he had, but as uh, as grp wins would say big d after a four and six day, which, if you're only betting 110 dollars, by the way, he lost 220 bucks, yeah not bad, but but the fact that he had to 10x his unit size makes me think that he was set210. 

56:08 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
He was pretty tilted about. 

56:10 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Or that maybe he bet some money line favorites and it was a lot more Fair. Fair Right, because this is a classic. I'm trying to make all my money back. Yes, not I'm trying to end up with a winning day. So maybe there was some stuff in there, but, as GRP wins would say, big D, you lost your mojo. You lost your mojo. Just stop betting. You don't know what you're doing. 

56:32
You don't know what you're doing. Take a step back, take the week off and, honestly, don't do that every time you lose a bet. But if you're in a tilted mode it's very likely you have lost your mojo and maybe you should just take a step back and calm down a little bit. Big D sports better, all right, pisky. Pisky, positivo Friend of the program Appeared here on Circles Off. People were a big fan of the episode. Still gets a lot of playback. Thank you very much, pisky. All right, couldn't take the BS anymore. Paid out my BetRivers account. I assume that means that he like cashed out. 

57:10 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, that's what I think, yeah. 

57:12 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Another criminal enterprise that severely limited my bets on all markets. Dot dot, dot in caps when I was down. This will be the Ontario Sportsbook of the Week on this week's installment of the Always Bet pod, which you can listen to and I suggest that you check out, here's why this rattles me. I'm so done with the limiting conversations I'm. I'm actually really done with it. I think that this either serves like one of two purposes. It's like one. Look at me, I'm a good better, I got shut down. I mean, that's really the only purpose it serves, really, because this ain't doing anything yeah, no, like that's kind of bet rivers doing their job, even they piskeys. 

57:56 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I don't know you personally, but I'm pretty sure you're you're winning better. You know, you're probably betting these numbers at bet rivers for a reason. They were probably bad and they did their job and and were able to identify that he was probably a winner. Like, if you want to not get limited, there are places that won't limit you. You're probably betting at BetRivers because those are bad numbers. Like I don't think that makes them a criminal enterprise. It's just kind of them doing what they do. 

58:20 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Kirk doing my job for me. Of course you can bet at Pinnacle in Ontario, where they will not limit you. I love Pisky. You can bet at Pinnacle in Ontario, where they will not limit you. I love Pisky. I love like. Hitman does this a lot. I tell him all the time. I'm like dude, you're just, you're just it's. It's the same circle. Jerk of people retweeting this like, yeah, okay, we're all winning. Batters like this is what we have to deal with. This is the landscape. I understand the frustration. Believe me, I get it. I've been in this exact same spot before Many times and this is not like a pat on the back. Oh, look at Robbie gets like. You just have to have a pulse and like half a brain when it comes to sports betting to get limited. Honestly, if you line shop, you do, you know certain things you're almost exclusively going to get limited in some capacity. But this is getting us nowhere. 

59:03
I agree nowhere, I agree. It's, it's, it's. It was this one that was like the trigger point for me, but it's, it's just a little bit over the top with the complaining now. 

59:12 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, like I would say, there is a time where you could tweet out complaining about a book limiting you, if it's something like completely egregious. If you're a 50, better and you get limited, yeah, you know to me tweet about that. Yes, because that's pretty crazy if they're starting to limit. You know players playing under a hundred dollars, but I bet you pisky was playing thousands of dollars into plus ev bet. Yeah, the trader saw to cross their screen, said yeah, okay, this one closed, this one closed, this one closed and then they limited them. That's what they're supposed to do. 

59:41 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
The one thing I will say and not everyone can do this, but, like, try to get to a point there's different styles of betting. If you're a top-down bettor, whatever you do, what you can and part of what you're going to have to do is like constantly replenish accounts and whatever. But if you're a bottom-up bettor, like you said, there's spots where you can bet and you can bet not whatever you want, but fair limits. Make it a priority to be able to beat those books in the long run and you're gonna be laughing, it's not, it's it's hard, extremely hard. I'm not saying like this difficult, but that's what the end goal should be. Then you don't have to worry about the limiting component of it. 

01:00:19
Now, the only thing that upset me more than that tweet was actually one of the responses to this tweet by julian skyfish at the Food Snob Frog, who I've interacted with many times before via DMs. Imagine the skills to be down at a Canby book was the reply to this. I take very big issue with this because some of these books are now limiting on like three bets, four bets, five bets. I'm sorry, you can make a handful of plus EV bets and still be down at a book and get limited. So, like you know, then Sprott's better comes in here and it turns into like a little bit of a thing that's very unfair. 

01:01:03 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, I totally agree. Like if you're betting five bets into an account, the odds that it's a losing account is probably like 45%, something along those lines. Yes, maybe a little less. So that's going to happen all the time. 

01:01:15 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Sure Could be the shittiest book in the world. You can place a bet at a way off market price and you can lose and you can get limited. So a little bit upsetting there. Imagine the skills to be doubted. So a little bit upsetting there. 

01:01:27 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Imagine the skills to be down at a Canby book. 

01:01:30 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You know you're in a bad spot when there's a tweet that triggers us and then the reply triggers even more. There's actually like we can go ways with this, but there's like accounts that trigger us now DMs that trigger us. There's all sorts like just random, there's too much that's going on. All right, max Newberry here here. I don't know who max newberry is. Uh, I don't believe I follow him. 

01:01:52
Handicapper at wage okay well, now it's gonna look like I'm picking on people. I'm not. Again, this is not about the people. I just saw this tweet and, as a hockey better, I almost like fell off my chair. Nhl projections go to 11 and four overall. Last night, nhl projections improved to 54 and 36 overall for all NHL totals. Season is young, but hopefully we can keep things rolling. I'm not. I don't have an issue with that. 

01:02:22
It's the accompanying sheet that shows a full night of NHL. Here are the column headers Teams line, which is the market line, which, by the way, does not account for any VIG. It's just 6.5, 7, 6 for these totals, no VIG included. Some of these games were like 6.5 over minus 130. So we're just taking the line as if there was no VIG attached to it. Then the Newberry line, which is what his total is on the game, his projected total, the line difference, the delta between the two and then whether or not it was a play, and the play column is color-coded green and red, depending on whether he won the play or not. It was a play and the play column is color coded green and red, depending on whether he won the play or not. 

01:03:11
Now, do not do stuff like this. Do not take a raw like median total and just compare it to the actual. This is getting no one anywhere. I'm all for people trying to come up with their own numbers. I'd actually highly suggest doing this. So, honestly, max as much as it's going to sound like I'm I'm crapping on you here, which I kind of am I applaud honestly trying to come up with something. Not enough people actually do stuff like this anymore, but you cannot use this. This is not telling you anything. 

01:03:49
Here's something that my people might not know. You would obviously know this, kirk, but if a line is six and a half flat in a hockey game and your projected total for that game is 6.55, that's not an overplay, it's an underplay, that's an underplay. This is the way distributions work in sports. First and foremost, if you are ever betting hockey, you have to do this probabilistically. If your total is six and a half, the juice on the over is minus 120, juice on the under is plus 100. Convert those to probabilities. The same thing when you're creating your own total on the game, you have to do this probabilistically. Don't do it like this. And definitely, if you are going to do it like this, don't victory lap it after an 11 and four night, where some of these are not even like edges okay, I don't want, I don't want to go through this whole thing, but like actually, some of these are mislabeled as an underplay, that should be an overplay, or vice versa. 

01:04:53 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I'll say a couple things. So one yeah, obviously mean median. We all learned it in school. That's kind of the reason you're betting an under on a 6.5. The only defense I'll have for this is we don't know if he's projecting goals or projecting a line. 

01:05:09
Yeah, and I would say that's different, because good point if you project 6.53 as the line, you're probably not betting the over unless you literally have the greatest model right in the history of the world. But if he's projecting that's what he would make the line yep then that does make sense. But if he's projecting 6.53 goals, then obviously betting the over doesn't make sense and obviously not having any of the juice to inform us doesn't make much sense. But that would be my defense for him. 

01:05:36 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
First and foremost, when you're creating a model, when anyone out there is creating a model or betting a model and they want to test this, you actually have to know what is a real edge Like. That's plain and simple. First and foremost, you have to know what a real edge is and you actually have to be able to test it properly. If you're not doing that, then there's no point. These are not like. Again, if, if these are his totals that he's projecting, some of these are not actually that line of the, the third one, the line in the game where it's seven and he's projecting 7.12 and he gives himself a check Mark for the over seven, that's actually an under seven. 

01:06:14 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, no for sure. 

01:06:15 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yes. 

01:06:15 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
And also he. He has a 6.53 that he plays over 6.5, but then a 5.51 that he doesn't play the over. So it's only if he's 0.02 away from the line. But that would be my only defense that if he's making what he thinks the books should be booking the price at, that's a different story than if he's projecting the goals. 

01:06:38 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yes, Positive, rob again. Max, nothing personal, applaud you for trying. Just can't do stuff like that. That next, no friends are off limits today. Matt perrault, who I know well back from the days where I used to do stuff with odd shark and meet up with him in vegas um, well liked within the betting community. A lot of mutual friends of mine at sports talk matt on twitter. This one sent me into like, like I was in another solar system when I read this. Live betting hockey is so fun when the algo is wrong. Vegas was down two to one with 12 minutes to play. Money line was plus 300. It's a one goal game. Nice way to end the night. 

01:07:23
Check mark now actually I never saw this first response from Joey Isaacs here, which is if algo is wrong, why would you tweet it? 

01:07:32 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Wait, you didn't see this. 

01:07:33 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I didn't see the full thread. I only saw this tweet. Did you see it? 

01:07:37 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Kirk, I see this tweet, but no, I don't think I've read the whole thread. 

01:07:40 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Oh guys, we could go on a journey down this one. 

01:07:42 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I see there's some responses. I bet it hit and then tweeted. You know, in-game algos were built for soccer, oh no. 

01:07:49 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Oh, I did see this. 

01:07:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I did see this For soccer, not hockey. They aren't Okay. I don't want to get into like a full breakdown of this entire thread, which I'm sure I can do, but this original tweet here. 

01:08:02 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Okay, first, joey Isaac's point is very well wealthy. If you have an edge on a live algorithm, do not share it. It's a, it's a money pet. It would be take them so long to adjust, assuming it's in like that plus 300 was super widely available. Yes, it would be hard to identify that you have that edge. You could bet it wherever you want. Yes, yeah, it would be. It would be a uh a thing. I would not tweet for sure now. 

01:08:35 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Furthermore, this is like a results based analysis. I'm not the be all end all when it comes to hockey. I've bet it successfully for many years. I'm not the be-all end-all when it comes to hockey. I've bet it successfully for many years. I'm not the be-all end-all. However, this is a very fair price on this game. Typically where you're going to find there are edges in live markets. They're few and far between, but you can often find edges in live markets by finding stuff that's not priced in to the. 

01:09:08
There's nothing that fundamentally changed about this game. I think it was it vegas philly. Do you remember this game, zach? Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure vegas philly or whatever. There's nothing that fundamentally changed about this game, where you can act on it right away and find a good price. And what when I say that? I'll share an example of something that used to happen? Still actually happens to some extent, but is not large, not large enough to really like beat at scale. 

01:09:35
But when teams in the nhl pivoted to pulling their goalies earlier, believe it or not, there were several months where this was not factored into the algorithm. I believe that the algorithm for these games was saying ah, if it's like a two goal lead in this game. We would expect a goalie pull at this. There was teams like the Minnesota Wild that started pulling their goalie with like eight minutes left in the game, colorado Avalanche with Patrick Waugh or whatever. Six, seven minutes left and you could actually bet the favorite minus one and a half and the over in the game on prices, where the live algo did not actually account for that Massive edge. I'm willing to share it now because it really doesn't exist anymore. There's still some weird wonky stuff around end game situations. A lot of books just protect themselves by taking the number off the board inside the last five minutes. Nowadays is what you see. Instead of just trying to fix the algorithm or like have some sort of flag of the goalies out, they just said fuck it, take it off the board. 

01:10:43
But the algorithms, when like nothing fundamentally changes, are almost certainly not wrong with the amount of volume that's being pumped into them on a daily basis. And what's even more triggering about this one is that this exact same situation happened in the very next game. Vegas was up to one, oh sorry, down to three two2 to the Chicago Blackhawks in the very next game. Same money line, odds, very similar, the exact same point of the game. Vegas lost that game. Now they tied it and they lost in overtime. But they lost regardless, and overtime does count, when you know, matter towards this type of bet. So I was not. 

01:11:25
It took me a while to get over this. I, like Matt, this is not a personal thing in any way, but I can assure you that these live betting algorithms are not wrong unless something fundamentally changes, like all of a sudden. Carter Hart, philadelphia's goalie gets hurt in the game. He's out. The money line price is not changing. Okay, you got yourself an edge. Yeah, yeah, exactly Like I don't bet live that much. Heart. Philadelphia's goalie gets hurt in the game. He's out. The money line price is not changing. Okay, you got yourself an edge, yeah yeah, exactly like. 

01:11:51 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I don't bet live that much, but kind of exactly what you're describing it of, like if a fundamental game state changes, that's kind of when I'll start looking into a live. You know, a massive weather change, an e-bug comes in, yep, stuff like that. That's kind of easy to pick off because that's hard for an algorithm, yes, to factor in. But yeah, exactly if it's 2-1 with 12 minutes left, it would be very unlikely. The algo was wrong and if it was, don't tweet about it in play. 

01:12:16 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Markets are imperfect. I was doing a monday night football watch along this week and james cook fumbles for the bills on his first carry of the game and is running off the field and immediately I'm saying on the live stream, as are a lot of people that are in the chat over on forward progress uh to, to bet Latavius Murray overs. He's the backup running back, the likelihood he'll see more time happens, especially in game props, like for sure, that that's just not, that's just not factored in. Like it is not plain and simple and you probably cash the latavius murray over, I think in that quarter, if not anything. So all this stuff can be gamed in some way with the right opportunity. But when it's just a standard hockey game we have such a huge sample, we know what the money line price price was pre-game where these two teams are relative to each other, no one gets hurt. Like nothing's changed here, nothing. So just be very, very careful when you're using like a confirmation bias because of like one plus 300 bet that wins for sure. 

01:13:19
All right, everyone's favorite. Darren revell my guy, honestly revell, I still can't believe he showed up to bet. Bash Darren Revell my guy, honestly, revell, I still can't believe he showed up to Bet Bash and was a part of that panel. When's the footage coming out? We'll have to ask Spanky. I honestly don't know. But credit to the guy for showing up. 

01:13:41 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Wait, wait, wait. Did you guys see, before we go into actual serious stuff? Did you see what he tweeted out? Someone passed away the other day and then he put out the memorabilia that he had. 

01:13:51 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
That's his thing, though. He loves doing that. He loves his memorabilia. It was the coach. 

01:13:56 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Oh yeah it was a knight, yes, and he put out a memorabilia of the fine that he was issued for assaulting a police officer in Brazil or something. 

01:14:08 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
And Ravel said said I own the fine he loves his listen to each their own man. I owned pokemon cards for years. Like that was a big magic. The gathering cards I was a big collector of those. He can collect whatever the hell memorabilia he wants to and tweets about it. It's his own account. 

01:14:25
Uh, I appreciate him unblocking me so I could see stuff like this though uh, revel says the texans, a three-point favorite against tampa bay, go up by two, kneel down on a two-point attempt for a chance to cover 60 of the money at bed. Mgm was on the texan side. I hate tweets like this because, like there's I know he's not directly saying it it's the implication. It's the implication people who watch it's always sunny would know. It's the implication of what he's talking about. It. 

01:14:56
The way that this tweet is crafted makes it seem like there is something nefarious going on in this game. Like god forbid they, they kneel by two. Bet mgm needed the texans like. First of all, like the kicker for the texans was injured in this game. I don't know if people realize that they were having a one of their defensive running back. Yeah, running backup, running back was kicking for them. 

01:15:23
When you go up to, if you're going to kick the extra point in this situation you don't need to because there's such little time left. But if that gets blocked and somehow returned the other way, it's worth two points for the opposing team. It's the only scenario where they can basically give up the lead in this game. It's very reasonable. Maybe something about this being a reasonable thing for the, you know. Kneel down on a two-point attempt so that the bucks can't tie the game in what is like an optimal move might make it seem a little bit more kosher. But god, like this, one didn't get a lot, it got 152. How does this guy get no interaction? Man? It's got 59 likes, 11 retweets, but 152 000 views. I guess it's just his followers. 

01:16:05 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
He's got like 2 million followers, oh geez. Yeah, I think if you just took out the 60% of the money, then the tweet's fine. But yeah, the problem with this one too is the kneel down is just like obviously the right decision. 

01:16:17 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yes. 

01:16:18 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Very clearly, of course. Why would they ever not do that? 

01:16:23 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
From Darren's point of view, there's probably actually nothing like. He actually probably didn't think in his head that there's anything wrong about this For sure, right? He just tweeted it as reporting on facts texans three point favorite fact they go up by two. They kneel down on two point. That's a fact. 60 of the money was on the texans. That's a fact. Like it's informational, it's there for engagement but it reads for sure by anyone as like what the fuck is going on here game is rigged, this and that. 

01:16:59
Like you know, look at this response. I was on tampa bay. That doesn't mean anything, I'm just reading into it, but, like you know, you know it's like people start to think about this stuff. People start to think Anyways, definitely not the worst thing Ravel has ever done, but that one sent me for a loop. Shane Trail At Shane Trail, have we done this? Looks familiar. I think we've done this on tweets that trigger us before, not this particular tweet. 

01:17:29
Maybe this person, I don't know, maybe it's withdraw early. Withdraw, withdraw early from your 401k, take the 10% penalty and unload it all on Tyrese Maxey to win the most improved player award plus 120 via DK. Okay, I obviously know this is a joke, right For sure, as does any nuance better. He's not literally telling you to go withdraw from your 401k, take a 10% penalty. Like nuanced bettors know, this is a joke. 

01:18:09
The problem is and where I take issue with this is that this space is full of non-nuanced bettors and people who've just taken up betting in recent years. I think back to when I was 16 and first started betting 17, 18. Recent years, I think back to when I was 16 and first started betting 17, 18. If I had read something like this, I'm not actually going to go withdraw from my 401k, but I'm probably going to unload on tyree snacks, especially if I, if I think highly of shane, I'm going to go and unload on this and bed and uncomfortable. So I think this is very irresponsible. I have no issues with people. I don't mind touts. I don't like people. I don't mind people promoting themselves. As long as it's honest and transparent, I get it. Just gotta be very careful with the words nowadays. 

01:18:57 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, I also think there's an assumption of like people are gonna get it yes, but a lot of people don't. And are going to get it yes, but a lot of people don't, and a lot of people do like dumb things. It's a pretty like rough space sports betting where people lose a ton of money yes, people get addicted. So like, if you're towing the line, just don't, just kind of get away from that. 

01:19:16 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I think it's just yeah, just choose your words wisely is all I'm getting at. I have no issues with recommending a bet, honestly, even saying you really like the bet, it's fine, whatever, but don't get to a situation where someone can misconstrue this as like being a lock, basically because the rec better actually does like believe in these types of things. So it seems very harmless. And, again, a lot of people reading it probably wouldn't even think twice about it and be like, yeah, you know what I'll go bet Maxie, play some our normal size bet. But I can assure you that there will be people that have read this message that unloaded and played an uncomfortable amount of money because of this one particular tweet Tyrese, maxie plus 120. Good bet or not? 

01:20:04 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
No, I wouldn't bet a guy at plus 120 this early, especially there are other good contenders. He's been awesome and the price honestly might even be a bit better than this at this point, but definitely would not take, you know, whatever that is 45 expected. Probably he could get hurt. 

01:20:23 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Well, that's what I'm gonna say. It's 45.5 percent. What's the probability of like a player missing significant time in an nba season and also, if you miss 17 games, you can't, you're not eligible. 

01:20:34 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
You're not eligible this year. I'm like 95. Sure that's true for most improved as well. So, yeah, just a plus 120. And there are other like very legitimate contenders for this award, so I'm not laying plus 120 on on tyree's maxi all right, that's it for tweets that trigger us this week. 

01:20:54 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I have a feeling this segment will be a regular again at some point I should be I forgot how much I just I I I'm reliving the like for people that don't know the process on these. I I'm reliving the like for people that don't know the process on these. Basically, a lot of these get sent to me. I don't follow a lot of these people and they get DM'd either to the circles off account or to me directly at Rapa Zola on Twitter. You can continue doing that. Some of them go into the comments on previous YouTube videos, which we see, but basically anytime I see something that makes me unstable in real time on Twitter, I do make a note of it and then we we revisit them and I got a a submission. 

01:21:32 - Zack Phillips (Other)
If we want to go on the positive side, we just did tweets that trigger I got a submission. We won't play it here now Cause I don't have it, the access to it, but if you haven't, GRP wins Twitter. The video in the McDonald's that's tweet of like 2023 for me. So far the thought that went into that. Can you explain? It a little bit more for people that don't know. So GRP loses his. I think he lost Seattle minus six. 

01:21:58 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
He did, I was also on that, yeah, so then he goes to Two sharks. 

01:22:03 - Zack Phillips (Other)
So then he goes to McDonald's and effectively the video is that now he has to eat at McDonald's because he's lost his Seattle minus six bet, Lost his mojo Lost his mojo. And then he keeps saying how terrible the meal is and just eating it on camera and saying how bad the meal is. That's my tweet of the month. 

01:22:26 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
It's really the year of GRP. He's popping off. What were the odds on? Him appearing on Spanky's podcast. That had to be someone's cashing in a 100-to-1 ticket there. 

01:22:37 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Well, you know what If you corner the comeback player of the year market like him? He? 

01:22:42 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
does hold the best positions in the country. 

01:22:44 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I have the exact same position as him, him, and I always see him tweeting about it and I'm like you know what me and you, me and you, and I'm very nervous about josh dobbs at this point too. 

01:22:53 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I mean I, I, I almost feel like this is a little bit early, but I I kind of feel there's only one or two books that we're offering. Kyler murray guy came back from ACL injury mid-season. Aaron Rodgers has a chance to come back. Position's going to go to him. Hamlin played on Monday Night Football. Had a solo tackle last night Even though he was the 12th man on the field, the penalty that cost him the game he's now played. 

01:23:20
So it's going to be tough. It's going to be tough to beat a guy that died on the field and is playing the following year For sure, that's that. But we will do more of this going forwards. I didn't come prepared with the plus EV and minus EV this week, but, zach, you got anything good. 

01:23:35 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Yeah, so minus. 

01:23:37 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
EV Big bomb bangers. Oh oh, I was accidentally. You accidentally hit the switch there. 

01:23:46 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Min accidentally hit the switch there. Yeah, um minus ev would be getting a new suit, which I did last year and then, immediately after deciding that you're going to take a serious approach to fitness and eating, um, last year I was like 150 pounds when I got the suit, got it like tailored and everything had to go to an event on friday night. Didn't think about it at all. I now weigh 165 pounds and like, yeah, that's just not not great. Uh, it worked out, it was okay, but I was, uh, it was tight, yeah and that was no split in the pants when you got home, though. 

01:24:16 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
No, thank god. Like so you live. 

01:24:18 - Zack Phillips (Other)
You have to tell the town, yeah but it was just like I spent the money, got it done, got the new suit, got it tailored, yeah, and then immediately, like a month, two months later, it was like yeah, I'm all in on fitness and eating and I have taken it seriously for a year now. But with that comes results and it's negative towards my suit. 

01:24:35 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It's true, it's very plus EV to remain at the same body weight consistently. You don't realize when you have to just throw out a bunch of clothes and get a new wardrobe or anything like that. It's tough. I lost 20 pounds when I got diagnosed with diabetes in like two months Miserable. 

01:24:54 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, I'm definitely a guy who's a fluctuated weight. I used to be a pretty big guy, so I feel that as well. You know the clothes, you know the clothes, you know your comfort back. 

01:25:04 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You know certain brands that just fit for you. Like I had certain brands, just three or four, where you just go and you're like yeah, whatever I buy from you is gonna fit on my shoulders well, and then you lose that and you just, anyways, I'm not saying don't better yourself and like lose weight if you're you went the better way though. Yes, weighed if you went the better way though. 

01:25:23 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah you know, at least you didn't like let yourself go, yeah, well, yeah, there's that, yes yeah, uh, I do have positive ev. 

01:25:30 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Um this one. I feel like maybe there's some debate so you guys can give your thoughts on it, but for me it's ordering clothes online and then just returning the stuff that you don't want, rather than going to the store to try the shit on. I think like, as guys, for the most part you probably don't want to spend as much time in the store like trying things on anyways, so I needed, uh, some new pants, ordered a bunch of different styles and pairs and sizes. They all came, tried them on, kept the ones I wanted, went back with all the ones I was taking back, dropped them off, got all the money back done. That was like the biggest plus EV move I could have made. 

01:26:05 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Couldn't agree more. I think once you again, once you find the brands that work for you and fit like. If I go to H&M and try on their clothes, for some reason they don't fit my body. I can't explain why. Whatever I go to certain other brands in Canada RW and Co whatever they fit really nice I think this shirt's probably from there or whatever they fit, they work well for me. So now I know that it works, I'm just ordering online. I'll do you one better, man. I don't even try them on, I just take them out of the bags, I throw them in the laundry. I know they're going to fit Like. I'm not even going to waste five minutes of my time trying on the clothes. 

01:26:39 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, I think you need to be the right person because I'm ordering clothes online, think you need to be the right person because I'm ordering clothes online. If it comes wrong, I just know I'm not returning that. Yeah, no chance. So if I were like I guess you did it pretty deliberately where you were like I need to return it, yes, but I feel like I would get like the three pants that didn't fit me and then forget about it and then the return policies. So you know, a month and it's been six, so you gotta, you gotta be locked in on it. But I definitely agree that that's plus EV. 

01:27:03 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Yeah, that was a good point, though, because I did do it intentionally and was like I'm ordering too much of this. I know some of these are not going to work. I'm going to be in a spot where there's going to be a bunch that have to go back. 

01:27:14 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yes, good point. All right, you got any. 

01:27:16 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, so my plus EV I'm going. Okay, I mention it on Twitter all the time. I love a good steel man. 

01:27:24
So if you're unfamiliar with what a steel man is, an argument is is essentially arguing the best side of the opposing argument that you're in. So I find so many people nowadays just kind of speak in half truth and only argue their side and at this point, like if I listen to someone and they're just kind of only talking about their side and make it seem like it's so obvious, I just kind of dismiss it. But steel manning one, if you, if I watch you and you have steel man, the other sides of an argument, really well, but you still believe your side is more correct, yep, I'll put so much more credence into your argument and then also for me when I'm looking at anything and oh, I think something's like this you know, I think Tyrese Maxey is good value at plus 120. Okay, well, steelman, the other side, maybe Alperin Shangoon's a good bet. You know, argue the other side of what you think to make sure that your kind of thought process is appropriate and there's not anything you're missing. 

01:28:25 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Or that you cover all bases. And you can go back after the fact and say, well, I didn't say, for sure that my side was correct. 

01:28:32 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I also argued this right. 

01:28:35 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You provide the documents. All right, I like that Minus. 

01:28:37 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
EV Minus EV is like shitting on people for liking things. 

01:28:42 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I feel like this is super common. Like Johnny shitting on zach for having stickers on his laptop, he likes stickers man yeah exactly. Let the guy like his stickers. 

01:28:51 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
Yeah, exactly, you like stickers. That's cool. Who cares like what? It's such a weird thing of like people like things and then people find like a lot of like I don't know what it is like happiness, joy for for shitting on it like who cares if? If you know you like dude whatever your pokemon cards, I know if you have pokemon cards, that's cool. 

01:29:12 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Support people who like agreed everybody, as long as it's like within the law and like there's a certain you draw the line at some points where some people might be into stuff that's not like you know, I don't want to get to those, but like the thing I see nowadays is like the football fans that just like hate the people that listen to Taylor Swift. 

01:29:30 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
It's like dude, why do you care? This is exactly where I got this point from. Why do you care? 

01:29:34 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Like I don't listen to Taylor Swift. I, you know we've established I can maybe name like two or three of her songs. I've probably we heard like a handful Sorry Diggs to break your heart, but like who cares if people? 

01:29:46 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
for sure. I'm actually kind of pissed that Diggs cornered the market of Taylor Swift fan sports. Better, right, I'm a big Taylor Swift guy. Yeah, she's great. Sure, why do people you know, like she's on the screen for like two seconds? We're like she's running the NFL. Who cares? 

01:30:06 - Zack Phillips (Other)
It's two seconds and we're like she's running the nfl, who cares? It's so over the top, man, I'm with you. Well, the other thing is like why are why are people like mad that these people are now involved in the nfl, that swifties are in the nfl? You think they're sitting there on sunday morning like? 

01:30:14 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I'm not fucking watching the nfl today because the swifties are watching. I know they're watching in some other location. I hate this now, if you're a bet, if you're a better, it's all more dead money coming to this space, man, exactly. 

01:30:26 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Bring all the Swifty betters into the market. Of course that's only going to help the Sharps. No, I honestly don't care. I never got this. I'm not a judgmental person and that's just who I am. But yeah, do whatever the hell you want, man. Some people go over the top with this shit. 

01:30:44 - Zack Phillips (Other)
It's really wait. Can you call uh taylor swift mother? No, no, I'm not. 

01:30:48 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I feel like I'm like one of the very few, just like level-headed taylor swift fans. Like I listen to her, I think she's good, but like I look at these people at a concert and it's like they're seeing jesus for like, come back to life. 

01:31:00 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Like wearing diapers have you never been enough, like enough of a fanboy. For anything, though, there's gotta be something you were, like, super passionate about like sports I guess like, like I've definitely freaked out. Yeah, you know, over over a few, like you met vince carter and you couldn't speak, or something like that. No, I don't know. 

01:31:16 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
I don't know about that, but like I'll watch you know the leafs in the playoffs and like break things if things go bad. 

01:31:23 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Got it All right, we'll have to do watch along with them, yeah we'll have to do Leafs watch. 

01:31:29 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Nobody can see me watch a Leafs game it cannot happen Moreto made people watch me. Yeah, that's tough. I do like really weird quirky shit when it gets to the playoffs where, like, I have to be in the same spot where they won. You know when things are not going well, I pet my dog. I feel like that's somehow changing things yeah, yeah, like I I feel just better when when I've pet him and he's happy and I feel like that's gonna just bring up the spirits. 

01:32:00 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
The vibes are high so I do weird stuff like I've got a weird one. I I get ripped apart for this. I like my superstition is I always have to finish a song like I can't. I think it's bad luck if I stop the song in the middle. I gotta get to the end of it. I uh and and massive pet peeve when people are just like always switching songs out of part dude, I cannot handle that sometimes I'm like in the summer we're at the cottage. 

01:32:25 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
A bunch of friends were on the lake songs playing. After like a minute somebody skips. It's like dude just let it play, man, let it play. I don't listen to uh individual songs, I listen to full albums oh really I. 

01:32:41
It's very weird, but I cannot. Even if I'm going to listen to music at my desk over the course of the day, if I'm only going to be there for 10 minutes, I will not put on music because I feel like albums are like an experience that I have to listen to. Even if I start an album, I listen to 20 minutes. If I get in the car and start driving, I'm picking up from the same spot that I left you look at it like a TV episode. 

01:33:05
Yeah, I don't do like the Spotify playlists. Sometimes I do, but it's very rare. I just pick an album, start it and finish it. It's crazy. 

01:33:16 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
That is interesting. 

01:33:17 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I've never heard that I have a sickness. 

01:33:20 - Kirk Evans (Guest)
No, I can't judge it out of my negative EP. It's true, it I can't judge it out, my negative. 

01:33:22 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It's true, it's true, all right. Thank you very much, kirk, for joining. If you do want more of Kirk Evans stuff, check out the board part of the hammer betting network. Make sure that you subscribe to that channel for a bunch of good stuff. Of course, subscribe here on circles off. Make sure you smash that like button down below. And, as always, we've you know we appreciate all the feedback. We do read all the comments. Whether you like something, hate something, let us know. We do like to get the audience involved. One last thing we did pick a winner for our Halloween contest. It was a costume that made me a little bit uncomfortable, but we're going to award it anyways. This one is the one. Alright, artur Dominguez, this one is the one, all right. 

01:34:06
All right, artur Dominguez, you're getting a BetStamp swag bag. We'll reach out to you through DMs or actually, you reach out to us through DMs. I want to know that you're at least still listening to this stuff before I award you with any stuff. Reach out to us through DMs here on Circles Off and we will get you your swag bag, and hopefully we never have to see this picture again. Made me a little bit uncomfortable. This has been another episode of circles off, number 128. Thank you for tuning in. We'll catch everyone next week. Peace, thank you.