00:00 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
This, this I'm getting, I'm getting like this is absurd for me to say I'm getting. You can probably see the hair standing up on my arm right now. I'm getting goosebumps. Come on, let's go. Welcome to Circles Off, episode number 143 right here, part of the Hammer Betting Network and presented by Pinnacle Sportsbook. I'm Rob Pizzola flying solo again this week, but we do have Big Johnny in the studio with me, looking as suave as ever. Pinnacle hat. 

00:26 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Bed stamp shirt 43 zach 43, I don't know, nazem cadre yeah yeah, I, um. 

00:38 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It's kind of embarrassing that I'll even share this story, but but one of my best friends, huge Pittsburgh Steelers fan. I was a big Dallas Cowboys fan growing up in Stelam, which is why I see the Cowboys helmet in front of me over here. But I know Troy Polamalu wore 43 throughout his career and I know that because we often used to debate who the better safety was, troy Polamalu or Roy Williams. Roy Williams, inventor of the horse collar tackle for the Dallas Cowboys, who had a very good couple of years. This was long before I knew anything about football, by the way. I was just like a casual fan, homer Dallas Cowboys fan, and I look back at that debate in hindsight and I'm like what an absolute idiot. I was forever arguing that roy williams is a better safety than troy palomalu. So always remember palomalu 43 as I will. 

01:34
Spicy p yes, pascal siakam yes, that's good, that's good. Who? Uh, oddly enough, mcdonald's did like a commercial with him or like they, they had like some sort of spicy pea, yeah, frosty, something like that uh, yeah, I could try to find it, but I think you're right. 

01:53
Yeah, it was something like that which not well, frosty's not McFlurry or whatever that they brought into play like a week before he got shipped out of town, couldn't have been the worst timing possible. Could not have been any worse than that. 

02:08 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Well, do you remember after? I mean like not everyone's gonna get these, but at least in Canada? You would remember when the Raps were going on that run and they traded everybody. I think like CJ Miles was part of it and they had all those ads of him that were like CJ's PJs and all that stuff and they just kept running even after he got traded and everyone just bought in and was like I'm so happy I get to see all these all the time like why, who cares? 

02:37 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
that's funny. Some of the stuff's funny. The branding is is really funny. Uh, you, you would remember this as well. But when I can't remember which came first, luke's troops or Luke's troops? Do you know what I'm talking about? It was Luke's troops, luke Shen, and then they shipped them out, yep, and because Joffrey Lupo was on the team, yep, luke's troops. Yeah. So if you were ever attend, like a Toronto Maple Leafs game last 10 to 20 years, whenever they would introduce the troop, the over the last 10 to 20 years, whenever they would introduce the troop, the honorary military member in attendance everyone stands up, you know, gives a round of applause, standing ovation. It used to be Luke's troops for Luke Shen. Then they traded them and they're like what are we going to do? They had Joffrey Lupo became Luke's troops. Yeah, very clever. 

03:21
Yeah, the McDonald's one was the swirl, because he did the spin, move and stuff all the time Makes a lot of sense. 

03:28 - Zack Phillips (Other)
But you know what Some of these companies? They just got to throw all the kind of marketing in the world that they can at stuff and put all pig's lipstick on a pig and stuff to make it marketable. But you know a company that doesn't have to do that, rob. 

03:41 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Absolutely does not. That'd be Pnacle sportsbook. Don't have to market themselves, spend millions of dollars on marketing, because everyone already knows that they're the world's sharpest sportsbook and one of the best betting experiences you can have in market. Honest to God, I practice what I preach. And great sportsbook product, great customer service, easy to get money in and out. Not a sportsbook that's ever going to limit you if you're winning bets, not going to log on one day and all of a sudden find one dollar limits or anything like that just overall great experience. So if you're in Canada, make sure you check out Pinnacle Sportsbook. You can use code HAMMER to sign up. You must be 19 plus not available in the US and, as always, please play responsibly. But as we're approaching baseball season coming up right now, you want to bet baseball. You're absolutely insane if you're not doing that with Pinnacle, especially with the VIG that some of these sportsbooks charge you. You'll get great prices there. So make sure you add it to your sportsbook portfolio Before we get into this week and our guest for this week as well. Thank you to everyone who donated to the Troy Hermo GoFundMe. I saw as soon as our episode went live last week within the next hour. There was a bunch of donations. We got him over his goal, so appreciate anyone who donated. You still can donate even though he's reached his goal. We'll drop that in the description below. And everyone who wished Las Vegas Chris well wishes as well in the comments of last week's episode, going through his bout with cancer. That's very much appreciated as well. So thank you to everyone in the community who did that. 

05:14
Next item of note I normally don't like to do this. I'm a horrible salesman. I'm very, very bad at marketing myself, our brand and whatever we're getting decent viewership on and whatever we're getting decent viewership on these shows, we're getting decent listenership. What would really really help me is, if you watch this regularly, just hit that subscribe button. Just hit it. 

05:34
Even if you don't want notifications on for episodes, you can turn them off. It's not invasive at all, but it does help us monetize our channel. So if you watch every single week or if you're new here and you want good sports betting content, I promise you we will deliver good sports betting content, Very educational. This isn't like other YouTube channels where you got some snake oil salesmen selling you stuff that they don't believe just to grow their channels. We stick to truth, real education. Do me a favor smash that subscribe button down below. Help us get up and up and up. It's the only way we grow this and monetize it, and we can do it forever Before we get into our guest. Do you happen to listen to Billy Walters on Joe Rogan? 

06:20 - Zack Phillips (Other)
No, I have not yet I saw all the reviews of it. I'm nervous, based on what I saw from the people that I respect as betters and their reviews, to hear what my friends say who don't necessarily know all the stuff. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, like I'm interested to see what's going to happen when they start listening I'd like to talk to johnny about this. 

06:42 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
When he's back I'm sure he'll have an opinion on it, but I had to break this up into multiple parts so I've seen some people are like oh it's great, billy Walters on Joe Rogan. I like Joe Rogan a lot. Some people might judge me for that. I don't care. I'm just going to be explicitly clear. I've always liked Joe Rogan. I think he's a very good podcaster. I don't agree with everything he says or his beliefs on certain things, but I think he's very entertaining person that puts together a really good podcast. Big Joe Rogan fan, even from the UFC, everything related to him. 

07:12
However, I thought this interview was absolutely terrible, like it was. It was hard. I listened to half hour. I'm like I don't know if I can do this, and part of the reason why is like the subject matter expertise from Joe is just not there. So there's so many times where he could. It's like he wasn't even listening. Some of the times, or a lot of what Billy was saying just went right over his head, right, but it would have been so nice to have someone who, like, understands sports betting, who could have had a conversation and jumped in with, like real, applicable questions at certain times. So I was really disappointed. I finally got through the whole thing and there were some things that just like it's hard to describe but they're just like very trivial things in betting that Joe Rogan thought were like he was mesmerized, like whoa, like like it was. It was a really tough listen. I wanted that to be a lot better than it was. 

08:10
I have some opinions on a lot of the stuff that Billy said and I'm going to just preface all of this really quickly by saying that Billy Walters is a legendary sports better like legendary cream of of the crop. I'm not by any means suggesting I'm even remotely close to the level that Billy Walters was at. I would really like to break down a lot of the stuff that he said because a lot of it's just like counterintuitive to what I would naturally believe. Like let's say that interview was held and it wasn't Billy Walters, it was someone else sharing all those stories that I'd never heard of, didn't know about. I might've left that interview questioning whether or not that person even had an edge in sports betting. It's not a disrespect to him, but like stuff like the Superbowl line was seven points off the Colts Saints Superbowl line, I him. But like stuff like the Super Bowl line was seven points off the Colts Saints Super Bowl line. I smashed it. It was like the biggest bet of my life. I thought it was seven points off, stuff like that, the way that he runs his operation. Anyways, to each their own. He's made a ton of money Greatest bet I've ever known of and I've always ever known of. 

09:22
But I found that really interesting and I would have just loved to like, I mean, for someone to just push back on some of that that had like a little bit more knowledge in the space. So should we do a breakdown of it Maybe at some point, or just certain parts? There's a lot of parts that I timestamped, particularly that I. I'd like to talk to Johnny about it a little bit more, for sure. Yeah, but yeah, it was like a slog to get through. 

09:49
There seemed like times where I was listening to 20 minutes on high speed and I couldn't you were on speed, it just felt so slow and I just kept wanting to jump in over and over and over. But uh, you know, I I've talked with other people about. I talked to G-Stack George about this and he brought up like a great point, which is like this is why scammers like Vegas Dave can manipulate an audience because they can get on a show with a big platform. The host has no betting knowledge whatsoever and they're selling him a big dream. Essentially, it's the same as like certain people who put in their bios like as seen on ESPN or what, as seen on all these things. It's like well, just because you were on there and they had you on as a guest does not validate you in any way, but the average person thinks that it validates them. 

10:49 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Oh, so you're saying that some people in the space who might have that in their bio and say that kind of stuff. Is there a specific example you're thinking of? Who meant bro? No, well, maybe someone named GRP, as seen on. 

11:06 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I mean, the GRP luster is wearing off real quick. Now I don't know if he's trying to source some sort of sponsorship or something like that. It was nice when he's putting out like a few things every now and then. Now it's just there's a lot going on. That's a story for another day. 

11:20
But anyways, just wanted to share my thoughts because it's a talking point and to each their own like this, is completely subjective, right? I watch a movie and I'm not going to have the same opinion as someone else who might watch the same movie. I listen to a certain type of music. Somebody else is not going to have the same opinion, especially on the music that I listen to, like progressive metal and stuff like that. But this one in particular, I don't know just as a better. It left me wanting so much more and I thought there were so many times where the conversation just deviated from what it could have been and there was no real good follow-up questions. 

11:56
Really weird, very interesting that they had Billy Walters on. That's kind of like out of the realm of what I would have expected from Rogan. But oh well, such is life. He's done very, very good interviews in the past before. I just thought that this wasn't one of them. Hopefully this one here on Circles Off this week is one of them. Our guest this week is a professional prop, better specializing in the NBA and a little bit in the NFL as well. You can follow him on Twitter at the Beagle bets, adam now joins us on circles off. Adam, how's it going? 

12:31 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
Going good. Happy to be on here. 

12:33 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, no problem at all. We've gotten a lot of requests for you, which is interesting and I don't mean to diminish in any way, but you have a smaller Twitter following than a lot of people we typically get requests for. I know you recently appeared on the Always Betting pod as well with Pisky and the Godfather, but let's get into it here. Adam, start with your betting background. We ask this to every single one of our guests that's on here. That's a little bit more unknown, but how did you get started in the betting space? 

13:06 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
What's led you to the point that you're at right now. So it started back with internet poker, which was, I think, pretty common for people my age I'm 38 now so it was kind of college was right when the big poker boom was. So I think a lot of people that age started playing, and I'm someone who never really liked school a lot. After high school I took a year off. I ran an eBay business and just buying bulk and reselling. Then I went to school for a year, got bored, moved to San Diego for a year, worked a job out there and then got bored again, went back to school in Boston where I'm from. Right around then my friend was playing poker and winning and he started to get me into it. I played in high school. We all watched rounders and thought we were good at poker but had no idea. But then he started me on cash games. I think I started with about $10, playing like one cent, two cent and I was probably grinded up to about 200, 300 bucks maybe. But I think it was just a little too uh adhd to really stick with like the full ring, small stakes. So I just started playing heads up, sit and goes, I think starting on 20, the 20 buy-ins and honestly, I didn't have the bankroll for that, at least what was in my poker account. It's not something I really necessarily thought I was going to do long term, so I could have easily just busted that and, you know know, not gone back to it. And I think there's a lot of survivorship bias and a lot of APs how they get started, especially if it's not something they necessarily had as a goal but just something they kind of stumbled into. And I guess I just kind of had a good intuition how to play heads up Satan Ghost. Back then this was pre pre solver and everything. So it was really whatever you thought was a good hand, a good way to play a hand, versus whatever they thought was a good way to play a hand, and I just moved up and kept winning. 

14:54
I eventually was, you know, playing regularly at like the highest stakes, which was 5,000, and did very well for quite a couple. For a 2009, I was really having a ton of success. And then 2010 is, I think, right around when people started getting into solvers and playing in a more mathematical way and I wasn't really even aware they were doing that, let alone doing it myself. But I started to just no longer be winning in some of the games that I've been winning in, and I think you just kind of develop an ego from playing, you know, from having a lot of success early. So at first I was just kind of thinking to myself, like you know, these guys are getting lucky, I'm one of the best players, nothing to worry about and it was kind of starting to dawn on me that maybe that I was actually falling behind. 

15:38
And then right around then is, when you know, black friday. So you couldn't keep playing internet poker if you were in the us. So and I was dating my wife at the time obviously not my wife yet and you know she had a job, was a teacher in san diego, and so I didn't really have any interest in leaving the country to keep playing, which was maybe kind of a blessing in disguise, because I really shouldn't have kept playing at those stakes anymore. So I kept playing at uh. So I started playing smaller stakes on some of the sites you could still play on from within the US, and then also during those couple years I've been playing sort of semi-competitive fantasy basketball, just like before Daily Fantasy, but in leagues with other poker players, and so I kind of just had a feeling of, you know, I was used to following sports now and seeing how players were doing every day and kind of having projections for how players would do a little bit. 

16:28
So I think that was kind of what got me interested in sports betting. 

16:34
And I think one big thing coming over from poker was that I understood that you weren't going to just be able to log on and pick the sides you liked and be a winner without really putting any thought into it, because that's how some people would approach poker and obviously they didn't have a lot of success. So I had that background of I didn't really know how to win at sports betting, but I knew that if you didn't put some effort into it you weren't going to win, which I think is maybe a better starting point than some people come into it with. And then from there I guess kind of started small. I was doing Wong teasers, you know easy way to get started. And then my personal favorite is I was tracking in a notebook, like you know a friend George, I was writing down every tip, result and who started with the ball from every go through the play by play, and I would bet on which NBA team would score first, based on whose center was more likely to get the tip off. 

17:25 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm going to interrupt you just really quickly. 

17:29 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
Around what year was this when you were doing that? This was probably 2011 now. So, you know, right when Black Friday hit, yeah, I was still playing some poker, but I was kind of bouncing back and forth and I expanded from there. You know, I started doing some baseball props, football props, and I expanded from there. You know, I started doing some baseball props, football props. I was trying to consume content. So I guess I didn't really have maybe a great filter for what was good content I was listening to, like pregame and that kind of stuff, and I do think that even listening to some stuff that wasn't that sharp was maybe helpful, because you hear an idea and then you think for yourself was that a good idea? Was that not a good idea? So, even if maybe 80 of it wasn't good advice or particularly relevant, it's, I think it did. Just being around content, having stuff to listen to, was maybe helpful in that development. Um, and you know, things were softer back then too, for sure. So you could kind of even though I didn't really have a great idea how I was doing, I was able to win. Maybe not on every market, I was betting, but I was. You know, there was more low hanging fruit, like a player would be ruled out and his teammates lines would stay up on certain sites. So you know, it doesn't take a huge genius to figure out how to bet some of those lines. And I was doing a lot of baseball like live betting, which I had a little bit of success with. But I'd kind of look for angles, like if you had a really good bullpen but maybe you weren't a great team and you got up two runs in like the seventh, I'd bet them minus two because the line would be more shaped on the pregame line. But now they're going to have, say, I think it was the Yankees one year had like three insane relievers. So you know, if they got a, they were maybe to be mispriced and just kind of went from there for a while looking for angles and still playing poker from about 2011 through 2016. And I was winning every year, but I wasn't necessarily making a ton or wasn't necessarily developing that much either, but I was growing some. 

19:18
And then in 2017, I started working with somebody full-time actually for a few years who was just getting out of college and he had a computer science background. So we worked on a few different things, but the big project was. He made a simulation model for baseball which you know it was based on Steamer and this is the StatCast came out. So it's like we were. It was pretty good and we'd be on market for most games, and then the games we were off market, we were probably the ones who were wrong. 

19:51
So you know, some alpha maybe against openers, but it really wasn't as strong as we thought it was and we were both a little bit inexperienced with betting into major markets and maybe overrated sort of how much alpha was in it. But it's still. I think we're probably break even or very small winner on some of the main major market stuff. But it was very helpful too because it was, uh, it was sending out prop lines and back then a lot of prop lines were way softer. So, like you, look at bravado, they had like the hits runs, rbis, as, like you know, you could bet pretty much everyone on there, and so there's a lot more easy stuff back then where you could kind of learn and as you went and still win without being as it. It's harder to do that now because it's just not as much, not as many soft lines yeah, this, this I'm getting, I'm getting. 

20:39 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Like, actually this is absurd for me to say I'm getting. You can probably see the hair standing up on my arm right now. I'm getting goosebumps. There's a lot of overlap between a lot of bettors in the space and their origin story. You're roughly my age. We have the same story, which is the weirdest thing for me. Didn't know what we wanted to do in high school, hated school in the early going, started in poker, made a bunch of money there. Didn't know what we were doing when we started betting but, like found our way into certain edges the nba first score thing, like that edge existed for a long time, which I also used to bet. I went from steamer projections in a simulation model to trying to build it out for stack. Like. The overlap is actually scary right now, adam, like it's, it's, it's like I'm listening to myself tell my own story. 

21:28 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
That's funny, yeah, and we were doing other sports too, and my partner for football, he actually had made a very simple but incredibly effective model just for game props. It literally had the only inputs were spread in total, but it actually found some huge edges, uh like say, total field goals, total, you know, the distance of longest touchdown, and a lot of that stuff was just, you would think, for such a simple model you're not going to find, you're just not going to have a lot of output. But if the edges, if the lines are soft enough, then you know we were probably betting, I would say, 13 or 14 out of 16 games under the longest touchdown and winning 9%, 10% ROI, not every week, but average over a season, and that actually lasted all the way up to the start or to the diminish, but really all the way through, like the 22 season. You could still do that. Finally, lines that used to be 39.5 or 34.5, 32.5, and eventually they catch on. 

22:24
Same thing hits runs, errors in baseball. Because you know baseball changed so that even if, say, there was a similar number of runs, there was more strikeouts, more home runs. So maybe in the past a total of nine used to equal 27 hits, runs, errors on average, and now it's maybe equaling 25. The same thing for about a month you could bet pretty much every game under 10 roi. But again, you know, but it's that simple, it just is not going to last. 

22:54
And all through the but during all this time too, I was kind of betting player props, football and especially, uh, basketball, and that is sort of different than a lot of the other stuff we were betting because it wasn't really formulaic. I was really generating that more through, just not for a model or not through like, but just really looking through the stats and coming up with what I thought the number should be and then comparing it to the line and betting it. And I certainly wasn't as good at it early on but sort of always able to win due to the lines being softer, and then over time it kept getting better at it. So even as the lines got harder, I was able to maintain maybe a similar ROI. 

23:34 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So just to stop you, there were you manually just digging through box scores yourself to assemble numbers on specific players. 

23:42 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
Yeah, I still am to this day. That's how I bet actually, and people don't believe that because I work with certain groups and I'll send out like 50, 60, 70 plays sometimes in a day and they they're not really, they don't really understand how I'm doing that. But I guess it's a lot of experience and a lot of if you do something, if you specialize in something. So if I look at a player's line, I have a rough idea what his line was, you know over the last week or two in all his games. So I'm able to very quickly just sort of decide if I want to bet or if I want to dig a little deeper, if I want to just move on. And two things that I think are maybe a little bit different about me is I'm not afraid to make a bad bet, which might sound funny, but I'm trying to make as much. 

24:27
You know at the end of the day you're going to make as much money as you bet times you're expected ROI. So if you put in more effort to sort of dig into every angle, read every little blurb about a player, like sure you might avoid a bet that you weren't going to make or find a good bet that you were. But if I can get a pretty good sense of whether or not it's a good bet in very little time, then I'm willing to. You know, if you have 60 bets in a day and five of them, or four of them, are, you know, minus a couple percent of our alliance, you know it's fine. They're just kind of a few of your winning bets and you'll still be left with, you know, 50 good bets on the on the ledger. So it's not something that I'd necessarily recommend to someone who's newer and a little bit less confident in what they're doing. But I've been doing NBA props probably since 2011, certainly 2012,. I'm sure I was. 

25:15
A lot of experience. 

25:17 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Your main focus is NBA props and you mentioned you're originating in some form. We'll dig into that a little bit. Is it 100% origination or do you? Do you have any sort of uh top down betting within that, or are you just making your own bets based off what you think's going to happen? 

25:32 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
pretty much entirely making my own bets off what I think is going to happen if I'm going through sites and I happen to notice that one line is kind of off market and maybe I'll throw in a bet that I didn't look at that close just because it's, you know, 20, 25 cents off market, but that's you know, probably one percent or less of what I'm doing, pretty much just what I think the numbers should be versus what they're offering and that's my bet. 

25:54 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
so there's different forms of origination and this interview is starting to remind me of an episode we did with someone called uh China Maniac um towards the end of 2023, where the immediate response on the comments on YouTube were this guy's full of shit. Like there's no way this guy is beating NFL props by digging through box scores manually on a weekly basis and just betting them. And now I've known China for a little bit. I've known people who've worked with him, moved his stuff. Everybody like had testified to me basically of like his success over the years, but people couldn't believe this. 

26:34
I assumed going into this interview, people told me your originator that you had some sort of model you had mentioned previously, built like some sort of Monte Carlo sim with your partner for baseball. What got you outside of like the pure modeling side and more into like I'm just going to manually do all this stuff myself? Was it just because you were having success doing that and you continued going with that process? Just walk me through like the decision making and how you were going to handicap these games. 

27:04 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
Just walk me through, like the decision making and how you are going to handicap these games. So first I just want to say I listened to that China interview and I remember you saying that everybody said he was full of it. And it's funny because I listened to it and I was like, wow, this guy's just like me, like I totally believe what he's doing, because it's what I do. But you know, I guess to a lot of people when they listen to it, you know, they think that's not very practical or they just think it doesn't seem possible to do. So maybe people have the same thought here. But uh, so the reason we did sims for baseball is because it's just a much more linear game. Right, it's much easier to sim out, but basketball it's. You could try to come up with some kind of model. Obviously, I think anything you can think of can, at least in the theory, put into a model, but there's just a lot of intricacy that goes into it that I think is hard to model and I can sort of do without modeling. 

27:51
In terms of predicting, say, play usage, playing time, I guess the simplest answer is that I'm very good at separating out signal from noise. So the line is going to be based on how a player has been performing lately, and just so. A very simple example would be if a player goes two for three from three, three games in a row and he'd been lined at one and a half every game, I'd expect to start seeing the line more, uh, more and more like on the over, let's say, because he's covering the spread three games in a row. But to me, two, two out of three is extremely unsustainable. He's going to average much closer to one out of three. 

28:29
There's very, very little signal in that, while if he went one out of six, three games in a row, there's a good chance the line's going to go down. But to me, shooting six a game, he's bound to start making two's. No other three games is a ton of signal for attempt either, but it's going to be a lot more signal. There's more signal than attempts and certainly a lot more signal in playing time than there is in shooting percentage over a sample of nine or 18 shots, which is almost meaningless, and it's certainly not close to the only thing I'm looking at. But that's one quick example of how you could see the line, maybe why the line's being set a certain way and there's something incorrect about that. 

29:10 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So. So, from my perspective, what you're doing is still a form of modeling. Right Like you, you are just doing like there, there, in reality, could be a way where you automate that and you're able to, to go through, like all these things exist in your head, right Like you have some sort of process where you see something pretty consistently and it could be a light bulb or something that stands out to you, where you're like no, this is not right, this is not a reflection of reality. You could technically do that. There's just some people that are just more comfortable with their own process. 

29:41
I go back and forth with these sometimes as well. Because you build a model, things are automated. It's great, it's a lot of time savings, but you might miss something here or there that you're consistently missing, and when you manually go through this process, there's a cost associated with it in terms of time, but you're more likely, in my opinion, to get it right a lot of times. So I mean like this, what you're describing to me, even though it's not a traditional model in and of itself, where it's like written in Excel or Python, it's still a way of modeling the game. 

30:16 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
For sure. Yeah, I have. Obviously don't want to go into the majority of them, but I have a bunch of things that I look at kind of on the regular that would inform what I think the line is going to be. Another example I'd give is predicting playing time. The teams that have no. 

30:34
The Kings last year essentially had no injuries and they were probably the team I'd find the least props on. Because if you're running out the same eight-man rotation almost every game, it's going to be reasonably similar minutes. But you see people coming in and out of the lineup, the stats will be skewed because of, maybe, games they played with I think China Maniac mentioned this too. Right, but if you have games where you may be played with certain players out of the lineup, it's not going to be. Those stats are not going to be predictive of your stats in the future. Same with minutes too. 

31:05
If you just really have a good sense of the league, if maybe a starting center is out, the backup center in some cases they're going to play 30 plus minutes. In some cases they're just not a player who's really going to play that. Even if they're the starter, they might still only play 25 instead of 18. And so just having a good sense of coaches, players, rotations matchups there's a lot of different components, but rotations matchups, there's, like a lot of you know, a lot of different components, but a lot of that stuff is just you could try to put it into a model, but if you had an input, like if starter is out, then backup plays, you know x, that's like that's not going to be predictive across different players, different positions yeah, absolutely. 

31:40 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Uh, in regards to nba specifically, how often have you had to change your process over the course of the years, if at all, like what you're doing nowadays? If you were to go back to four or five years ago, when you were betting player props for NBA, is it the same day to day? Were you looking at the same things, or has there been more of an evolution in what you do? 

32:03 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
A little bit of both. I would say I'm still doing fundamentally the same type of stuff. But sure you know, nbacom even is a great resource. There's like a lot of stats on there. I try to look at things that are maybe like I used to only really look at, let's say, how many assists somebody was getting would be a main indicator for me, but now they have things like potential assists with, like tracking if you pass the ball to somebody and they shoot, whether or not they make it, they're tracking that, even passes made in the game. So I do look at stats that are more, that are a little bit beyond just the statute betting at. 

32:37
Well, maybe five plus years ago I wasn't doing that as much and I've definitely. One thing to my old partner he didn't build like a model for basketball but he did build like out a database where you could search certain things that weren't necessarily easily publicly available so you could kind of filter through stats, maybe take out certain games and put in you know, only look at certain subsets of games that I might be more predictive. So I definitely have advanced but the same rough idea of just looking, of trying to look at usage, playing time. You know typical rate of how well they're doing in that stat do you find? 

33:12 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
sorry, continue, continue, adam. 

33:14 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
So I'm just gonna say the specific stats that I'm looking at, or the specific things I'm looking at, definitely evolved over time, but I was good. 

33:21 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I was gonna ask you like do you, do you find um nowadays that they're what's what's the right terminology here that maybe there's like a little bit of an information overload, so to speak, where there's almost too much to potentially look at Like we're seeing the evolution of analytics and statistics in every sport. Baseball is a great example. Right Back in the day, there was, you know, steamer projections, zips projections, an aggregate of both which was like depth charts, was like an average of both, and then that was it, and then stat cast came out and became like you know, a lot more to process, and then we, you know, further get down the road of more and more stats, and this kind of happened across every sport. Do you find that there's potentially some benefit in um in just keeping it more simple? 

34:07 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
uh, if you understand what I'm getting at, yeah, I do, and for me, yes, for sure, I do think there's a lot of stuff that people one style you'll see cited on Twitter. A lot is success versus a certain team, and I do consider a matchup. But if you played against a team two years ago, like, say, you last 10 games against that team or something, it's just not going to be a useful stat. There's going to be a lot of turnover. So I do think there's a relative simplicity. Yeah, that you. 

34:39
I guess if you were putting it into a model and you had everything kind of perfectly weighted, you could just say this is a 1% adjustment to it and that could work. But since I'm doing it in my head, there's a lot of stuff that I'm just not going to really look at because it's just not. The signal is going to be too small, it's just not going to be worth the time. And you know I'm not. I'm not necessarily. If it's one thing, if you were just doing five plays a day, try to like maximize your roi or anything, but I'm just going for volume and I know that I can win over a large volume. So it's again, if I can get in more stuff by going a little bit quicker on each prop. That's gonna be a worthwhile trade off there. 

35:16 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I wanna touch on that shortly. I will revisit that in a second. I do just wanna quickly take a step back, because you talked about baseball earlier, building the Monte Carlo simulation with your partner Just out of curiosity. This is again not to diminish you in any way or be offensive, but you talked about lack of schooling for yourself earlier. Right, and it's not like everyone can all of a sudden just turn around and build an effective model for baseball or a Monte Carlo simulation and just turn around and build like an effective model for baseball or a Monte Carlo simulation. Just curious where you acquired the skills to do that. Or even if you did, like some people are just like logic people and they work with a software engineer and the engineer's like I'm going to you know I'll write the code myself. I'll figure this out In your past. In the instance of actually building actual models, where did that knowledge base come from? 

36:09 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
So actually I can't code whatsoever. My partner did all the coding. He was just getting out of college and he messed around a little bit with DFS but he had very little experience with sort of gambling or even less so with advanced analytics than I did in terms of understanding them. But he had all the math and coding background. So I just kind of helped him with what we should put into it. But he did all the coding on that end for sure. I didn't. You know, I don't know how to do anything there. He showed me a few basic tricks to kind of just like update a daily if he was away or something. But yeah, I have no real skill on that end. 

36:44
Obviously's obviously probably a big part of why I've never tried to turn what I'm doing with basketball into a model, because it's beyond my abilities. But yeah, so it was and then. So yeah, a lot of that was just him making that and we sort of both. We'd both be working on the betting. I was doing a lot more on the account-gathering side. I was also betting. We were splitting everything we were doing across a few sports for a few years. So I was doing some more of the other sports he was more focused on baseball. It was part of why I put basketball too. I was never really trying to put that in. I was a philosophy major when I was in college. 

37:21 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
No skills whatsoever. I was a philosophy minor. 

37:24
I can't even tell you how this is. I don't know how this is all happening. You talked about volume and you want to play a lot of volume. Your words, not mine. You said like 60 to 70 props a day. I'm putting the pieces together now and I think you know maybe there's been some overlap between partners we worked with before. I don't want to talk about the specific props that you bet, but for NBA in particular, there might be some stuff related to blocks and steals and all over the props board, right, high volume, typically. We know that betting into those markets leads to a shorter leash, generally speaking, when you're trying to get down on specific props in the NBA, when you're looking to get that volume, have you encountered any issues with scaling? How are you repeatedly able to churn out that much volume over the course of an NBA season? 

38:16 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
I've got to work with a lot of people, is the only right answer. So yeah, accounts do burn out. I do think that's. Maybe one thing that is a little bit of a misconception is that props are very popular now with recreational bettors. So of course, if you're betting and you're winning, you will eventually get kicked off. But if you're betting other markets and getting CRV, you're going to get kicked off too. I mean, yeah, if you can bet, you know, nba at post and get no CRV and win, then you're one of much better better than I am until your counts might last. But you know, if you're betting college basketball at seven in the morning and beating it by four points like that, that account is going to die out too. So I do think all winners run into kind of the same problem to some extent. But yeah, I've worked with people. So I work with some bigger groups who you know. I just send them the prop and they turn in what they get. 

39:04
I've also always had a lot of success working with friends or family where you just you know they make an account and you free all of them a percent and you know, usually people are pretty happy to do that. But yeah, and then I've had a couple of people who they burn through most people, they burn through their accounts and they say like well, that was fun, like no thanks, and they're on their way. But I've had a couple of people who just really want to keep it going. So they've turned into, you know, like hey, I'm going to get my friend's provider and I think I mentioned on Pisky's pod, I think I've had one guy maybe get me 30 providers over the years in addition to some other accounts. So, yeah, you're just always nice hitting up the same people for bet on lines and getting flopped out of there. So they just keep churning, yeah. 

39:46 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It's the nature of the business. If you're winning for people and you get cut off, they'll do what they can. I mean people want to earn more, so I mean that's one of the benefits of actually being a winner in this space. 

39:56 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
Yeah, I know Spanky says like winning is trivial, but the reality is for most people it's not so if you're winning, and consistently winning. But yeah, people are going to try to get your accounts. I mean, over the last couple of years I've been working with a few larger groups, which has been nice A little bit less effort in terms of having to constantly hit up your old friend from college or whatever and get them to open an account. But especially with legalization now a lot of states have legalized over the last three, four years, so volume from about 2021 on is much, much higher than it had been previously. 

40:31 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Now, presumably a lot of what you I'll say what you have built even though you haven't really built it, but presumably a lot of what you do can be extrapolated into like full game projections, right Like if you're betting all these props across the board and you can accurately predict, within some reasonable range, points, assists, rebounds, whatever else might impact the game for players. Presumably that can be taken and you can use that to bet into NBA sides and totals which you can bet a lot more specifically on one specific bet. Any thought like do you do that at all or are you just strictly props-focused? 

41:16 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
Very little. I used to do a little bit more. I've actually cut down to essentially none. I have one friend who sometimes sends me a few stuff and I'll bet what he sends me, but beyond that I really don't bet anything that and so I got. I was thinking about this. I actually think heads up sitting girls with the props of poker right, they, when I was very successful, that it's harder to know how you, you know, stack up in sports betting because it's not like public but poker, there was a website or shark scope. 

41:45 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You could see how people rank them. Yeah, see all those fishes next to the, all those fishes next to the. 

41:51 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
Whoever you were searching up, beautiful you know, one year I had the number one account on shark scope. Uh, now my buddy had the number two and three accounts on two different sites, right behind me with both of them. So it's a maybe a pure victory, but you know, I was one of the most successful people there at Heads Up Sitting Girls and people would say like, oh, why don't you switch to cash? There's more money in it Not that I really care, but more prestige and sure, like, the people who are making the most originating sides I'm sure make more than me and the people who are making the best cash game players are making more than me. But I think you have to kind of find your niche in things. 

42:30
I have a very good understanding of sort of the NBA. I consume a lot of content around it, around players, rotations, and you know, knowing that a center is going to play 25 minutes, or more likely to play 25 minutes than 32 minutes, it's not really going to have any impact on the side in total. Maybe some very, very negligible impact, but there's a massive impact on that player's props and so I think it's a mistake to think that just because you've been very successful at one thing, that you could achieve the same kind of success at something a little bit different. And you know, if you have a very successful defensive lineman, you're going to tell him like you should have played quarterback. That's where the money is, like you know. 

43:11
So I do think, just my knowledge of the space and my intuition, sort of around the league, I do think I could be a winner. But I think it would be very, very difficult for me to have nearly to be the same kind of level. I'm at doing sides and totals without being, you know, more math inclined or more of a model than I am with props and, like I said before, I think specialization is a huge factor for me. So if I'm spending, you know, a couple hours a day working on spreads, maybe I'm creating a little bit of eb for myself, but I just think I can cover a lot more ground on props, where I know I'm a winner, I know I'm successful at that and honestly too, like I know this would like upset john, but I don't want to be a billionaire or anything, right, yeah to use their own. 

43:51
I'm a college dropout. I've made more money than I would have expected to make doing this honestly. I've made, you know, more than enough money to support my lifestyle, that I seek my wife's, you know, able to take time off, work, stay home with the like. So I did not. I do try to scale up. I want to make more money everyone does, I guess, but, like I'm not, the fact that it's maybe a lower ceiling isn't really a deterrent to me. That's fine. I'm not. My life goal isn't to be, you know, have a private jet or live in the hugest mansion or anything. So I I think there's definitely a thing, uh something to sticking with your niche in life and figuring out what you're good at. You don't need to always jump around and chase the next biggest thing. 

44:32 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Those are really well thought out response. I'm curious about a particular scenario. So you are working with a bunch of different groups. Presumably you have a lot of market influence, if that's the case. So people are getting down for you, especially if a lot of it's happening at once, likely going to move the market. We've had on a bunch of prop bettors before. I know some pretty heavy hitters in the props world. I'm curious what you do, and I'm assuming this is a very rare instance. You can tell me if it's not. But what do you do in a situation where the market moves against you and it's not related to to any news or like any breaking news or anything like that? So presumably in that case someone else who you know that's a lot on props, has an opposing opinion. How do you treat those situations? Do you bet more on them? Do you, you know, circle that as like maybe I want to watch out for this player next time? Uh, walk me through what goes through your head in that type of situation it is very rare. 

45:33 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
First of all, um, you know, sometimes I don't. Uh, next year I'm actually looking to bring on somebody in mind. I'm like looking to bring on somebody who because right now it's really gotten to be too much where I'm originating all these props and trying to send them out to people so I'm trying to next year have it so that basically I'm just originating and someone else is sending out everything for me and they can also help. As you're saying, stuff moves. So try to help me be more organized to hit the stuff that doesn't move at first, kind of be a little more systematic and get a little bit more down per prop and maybe just cover a little bit more ground too, if I'm doing less on that end. 

46:09
But so what I'm sending out to people, sometimes there's a lag on when it gets bet and it's very rare that they come back and say like, actually it's a lot better than you sent out. 

46:17
It's either they typically getting the same price or saying, hey, this moves 15 cents, do you still want it? 

46:22
But in those cases I mean, of course it's going to happen to everyone sometimes, and so those cases usually I will circle back to the prop because, as I said, I go kind of quickly, so I'm going to maybe spend a little bit more time on it, really dig a little bit closer, maybe even ask somebody who I know bets props, see if they think anything about it. 

46:40
And if I really can't see a reason my projection was wrong, yeah, I'm happy to go back and bet more and honestly I don't track that separately so I don't know if I'm like how I'm doing on those versus other props. But it's a rare enough instance that if it's a leak it's not hurting me substantially and if it's helping me it's maybe not that substantially that just because it's such a small percent of volume is circling back to stuff that at a better price that it probably doesn't have a huge influence. And so maybe it's a case where you know it's an overconfidence and I'm just missing it, but it's it's just a small enough part that it's not really like dragging down or having a huge impact on my overall result a couple things in that response that I'd I'd like to uh to pick up on, but one of them, um, you mentioned just now that, like that's not something that you track specifically. 

47:29 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Uh, when I heard you on the always betting pod, um, I I got the impression I don't know if you explicitly said it, I was just listening to it on like one and a half times speed but I got the impression that you don't actually track your bets, uh, maybe at all. Is that? Is that true? And, if it is, is there a specific reason for that? 

47:48 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
well, I definitely track the bets, like I have a you know spreadsheet where, like, I'm seeing if I'm winning or losing and I do have what side it's on. But I actually, the very start of the season, I was putting in, like you know, if it was an over or an under or rebounds, and I, just about a weekend, I just scrapped that. And so the reason for that again, is just volume focused. Right, it might not sound like a lot, but I'm putting in 60 bets in a day and then, you know, betting a lot of that same stuff multiple times. It's going to take a certain amount of time and I just don't necessarily know if it's going to add a lot to me. For one thing, I'm worried about splitting results into smaller categories, right. So, like, if you go back and you look at week by week, it's you know one week you're down a ton of money and then the next week you're up twice what you were down the last week and you say, well, like, was there something about the week of February 1st to 7th? It's like no, it's just you know a. So if I have 6% on over assists ROI but 2% on under rebounds, I'm not going to really take some conclusion like okay, I should stop betting under rebounds because of that. 

48:53
I just kind of have a belief that if I'm successfully handicapping, then it's going to carry over and there's going to be some variation on how you do. So it's literally just to save time. Maybe next year when I'm working with someone, it's something I'll spend a little bit more time on, but I'm not. I'm not trying to like optimize, to be the best at this. In a sense, I'm trying to optimize to make the most. So it's not as much about refining my process, it's just betting as much as possible on as many bets as possible, because I know they're going to win over time. So if I'm, if I'm, missing some small amount of optimization in exchange for more volume, I think that's going to be a worthwhile fade off yeah, I mean that's fair enough. 

49:33 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm just curious, like obviously you're doing this pretty regularly. A lot of bets are going in. Do you ever, um, like perceive that you're struggling with a certain type of bet, like are? Are you in tune enough that? Let's say you are and this is an extreme example, let's say you're minus 30 percent roi betting player prop rebounds. Would you be able to pick that up? Just because of like you're handicapping it every day and you're like you know shit, I'm not, I'm never getting results on this bet type. Because if you can do that, then maybe tracking the bets individually is like absolutely not worth it anyways. 

50:10 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
You know, I guess I'm not sure I'd like to think I could, but the results are pretty steady. I mean, yeah, you have a losing week. Obviously you have a couple of losing days. You know most weeks, but really, you know, don't really have losing months, certainly nothing close to a losing season or anything. Really you know, don't really have losing months, certainly nothing close to a losing season or anything. So if I do have, it is possible I'm missing some weeks and there's something. Maybe when I have a little bit more time next year I would be interested in doing a little bit more. 

50:35
But I guess it's kind of like being a hack coder right, if it's not broken, don't fix it. So the process I have has been very successful for me for a long time. So it so, yeah, I do think you know, certainly I will say actually, nfl player props, I was not as successful at those overall and I did track more and I did sort of see some areas that I thought I had leaks. But the impetus for doing that is that the overall success was very it was pop, but very small. So I wasn't satisfied with how I was doing. So I think I had to go kind of refind the process. But I just look at the volume of the NBA times, the ROI, and I'm pleased with how it's going. So it's kind of just keep going if it's working. 

51:19 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Do you have a working theory as to why you weren't having as much success betting NFL props relative to NBA? 

51:27 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
Yeah, I would say just not really as much understanding of the league, not really as deep an understanding of scheme and how teams are going to play, adjust from week to week. 

51:39
I think I had a lot of success with those game props that I was doing with my partner and I had a lot of success doing NBA player props. 

51:52
So I just kind of had a sense like I'm really good at player props and I'm really good at nfl, but really it was good at nba player props and good at nfl game props that my partner had modeled and I mean I was still winning a little and but I think it was just kind of an overconfidence coming from those two things that it wasn't really didn't really understand the game at the same level and I was just gonna say like the way I, the way I handicap is very like matchup based and very like not not very much at base, maybe not as much as someone like pips I've listened to his stuff, but I do think there's like you really need to have an under like a pretty good understanding of the teams and the players in a way that a model that's not necessarily going to have a need uh, I I have to promote pips right now because, honestly, he does such a great job. 

52:33 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I watch a show every day and his audience is criminally underrated. So if you're serious about basketball betting, listen, there's lots of people that are great basketball bettors in the space. Pips is very matchup oriented and he bets a lot of stuff that can kind of keep you under the radar at sportsbooks as well, because it's like parlays and same game parlays, but you can check out. Check out the hammers nba channel. It's called the board nba. Pips is on every single morning for pick and roll with his co-host, jacob gromenia as well, so be sure to check it out if you're at the nba. Uh, it's a really good show. He's very, very knowledgeable in the sport and I mean I would be remiss if I didn't promo him after you brought him up yourself here. 

53:10 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
Yeah his stuff is great. I definitely learned from watching him. I think he probably watches more games than I do. I try to watch when I can, but time's an issue, so I think he watches more and probably has an even better understanding Playoffs I lock into that a lot more because you're going to get less games and the same teams playing over and over, but regular season I'm sure I'm missing some stuff in matchups that he's catching because there's only so much time. 

53:36 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You know what's crazy? I mean, he's based in Croatia as well, so the timing for him is messed up, but he loves the NBA so much that his hours are like the weirdest hours ever, so he can catch as much basketball as possible. He truly has a passion for the game. We'll drop the link in the description below for the board nba, but it's part of the hammer, be sure that you check it out. Uh, you're obviously having a lot of success, adam. Uh, that's very clear. What do you think is your biggest threat right now to losing your edge? 

54:08 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
I don't think it's one thing, I just think it's an evolution of uh, players in the market right to get people just more and more people are gonna get better at it. Um, I think that happens so much faster in poker because poker was a closed system so you could use the same 52 cards every time so you can just run the math, especially in something like heads up, and then you learn how to play and it's just the same thing every time. But it I don't think anyone's going to catch up as quickly in sports because it's dynamic, right. Everything's always. Players change teams every year, players get in and out of injuries, coaches change, so there's not going to be one gotcha where people just build a build some kind of, you know, equivalent of a poker solver. 

54:51
But the reality is, I mean, the market just gets harder. I'm sure that, if I could, my ROI has been reasonably stable over time. But I'm sure that's like two competing lines of the market getting harder and my skills getting better. So it's I'm sure if I could go back with what I know now six years ago, it would certainly be a better ROI than I had then or than I have now. So I just try to evolve, try to stay up to it, but I'm sure that I'm not going to sustain the same level of success I've had the last three, four years. I'm okay with that, right, I learned poker. That was a good lesson very early on. I was like 25 and washed up. So it teaches you that save your money, don't laugh. You know. Save your money, keep trying to improve and accept that. You know at the same time, like you're not going to be as good at something as you are at now and in the future as you are now yep, good advice. 

55:41 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Um, in your experience, um, what would you say are some of the the biggest misconceptions that people have about prop betting, and like how would you say are some of the biggest misconceptions that people have about prop betting, and like how would you address those misconceptions? 

55:53 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
uh, no, everyone's right. They're not worth your time. Don't bet them, stay away from them. Absolutely not. We're not. Um, I think that once you know, someone like spanky will say that, like you know, props are just a courtesy like, and I think that's how it was in the past, but that's not the reality at all now. I think something like half the handle of some of these sites are props, including same-game parlays. So I think one misconception that I touched on a little bit is that it's going to get you picked off instantly and some sites points bet yeah, shepard would have kicked you off in a day. 

56:26 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
And he's going to take extreme pride in kicking you off too and make me extremely frustrated. 

56:33 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
yes, but there's a lot of sites right where they'll let you gamble for a while and if you're winning then they'll kick you off. But I mean, it's the same. If you're winning Because, say, you're getting CRV and winning at other sports, they're going to kick you off. And, especially as an American, if you're betting Polish soccer and crushing the clothes, I think that's going to get you flagged a lot faster than if you're betting NFL props, especially because, yeah, some of the softest lines are going to be on opens. But, unlike full games, I do think I can look through an NBA game of clothes that I haven't looked at yet and absolutely find multiple edges. I know Johnny's touched on that, actually, before saying that the closes are pretty sharp and they're certainly sharp and open. But I do think he's kind of incorrect that if you really know what you're doing, that you can't look at late in the day and find a lot of edges still. So if you're betting props an hour before the game, I don't think that's necessarily the most toxic for an account versus a lot of other stuff you could be betting. That's also winning. And another thing, too, is just like a lot of people get into betting right, they're not coders. They don't want to bet on like Russian ping pong or Polish soccer, right, they want to bet on the sports they like they grew up liking the ones on tv. So it's a chance to props. 

57:50
I think, on opportunity, that you can win just from kind of a good combination of logic and deep knowledge of the sport that you're watching in a way that maybe doesn't apply like, but if you're a huge nfl fan, you watch all the games. You're not going to have success betting spreads just off of that. But I think you can apply more basic reasoning and understanding to props and winning. I think that's like I kind of recommend it to people for that reason too. It's fun, right. Like why do people bet? Like you know, dopamine rush is one, but you know they like sports, they like buying to. Like the reason they play fantasy, right, the lead. You know tons of articles and some home league. They're paying $20 for the season for it. It's fun. They want to make predictions, like to see those predictions validated. I think props are an opportunity for people without a combat a coding background to actually be able to find winning best. 

58:42 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, well said. Your Twitter profile says husband, dad to two humans and two dogs. Um, what you've described in your process seems very labor intensive and time intensive. How do you balance your commitments as a sports better, uh, with your responsibilities as a husband and a father? I mean, even just setting up this interview, you told me like I got to get the kids out the house to their grandmother's house and whatever. Like I mean, I'm sure there's a way that you pull it off, but are you able to just like turn it off, like that step away from a computer at a certain time, or is it just like kind of like a negotiation with the wife of like this is my life, this is what I do? Just walk me through that a little bit. I mean, to each their own, but I'm curious about your personal experience. 

59:30 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
Yeah, it's definitely a balance and definitely something that was a big shift becoming. You know, my kids are two and four, so for a lot of the time I was doing this, it wasn't, you know, a consideration. Obviously, it's very different now. But so what I mentioned my wife we don't work from home. I mean, we're stay at home mom right now. So that's you know. Obviously it's more time and I work from home and actually I have a very good ability to focus. So I actually have my desk set up in like a common area. So it's pretty, it's pretty hectic, but I can actually focus and still be like, which I enjoy. It's a trade-off, like, yeah, maybe a little bit less productive, but I get to be around my kids and, you know, family a lot of the time and if they need something I can help them and they they play together pretty well. So a lot of times you're just kind of refereeing a little bit more than anything and and yeah, you know I used to when I was before I had kids, I would wake up and, just like you know, 30 seconds after I woke up I was at my desk. Now, you know, get up, try to get them some breakfast, you know, get them out to preschool, get them to bed. So definitely you miss. Of course you miss opportunities. But you, I don't bet baseball at all anymore. 

01:00:39
Partly the edges were diminishing and partly I just wanted to have some time off. So, from, you know, nba finals and basically to the NFL, I'm not betting at all. I bet a little FIBA this year. That was pretty soft, but for the most part, you know, I'm taking pretty much the whole summer off and I got a few months just totally off, which is nice. And yeah, got a few months just totally off, which is nice. And yeah, I mean it's a balance. It's busy but at the same time, you know, you know you just have to make do. There's no, there's no shortcut answer there, like there's no, yeah, I miss. You know I miss out the last time with the kids and a little less time working, but there's only so many hours in the day. 

01:01:13 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Just try to balance it the best you can yeah, listen, I don't want to come across as like a complete asshole here, but I'm in the same age as you. I've chosen in my life not to have children. I don't experience this problem. I have my, uh, my nephew, who's my godson, and whenever he's around, even like to spend three or four hours with him, I'll do that, no problem. Love, love the kid, but like I cannot be working at the same time, so for for you to be able to balance that, I I think that's pretty impressive. Uh, and I was just generally curious because, yeah, it's a process. I mean when, when you have a manual process and you're going through that on a day to day and there's all sorts of of different things that that come into the equation. I'm sure it could be a challenge, but it sounds like you, uh, you certainly have it figured out, figured out, so congrats on that. 

01:01:56 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
I will say just one thing I'm still working on. That's hard is just kind of mentally turning it off right. So, like ideally, you know, you finish betting for the day or for that amount of time like you would really want to just refocus. It is tough, like you know, your mind's really you spend, you know, a few hours just digging into NBA straight and then all of a sudden you know they want to go build a puzzle and yeah, it's a little hard sometimes to just kind of instantly switch, like switch your mindset back to what you would, you know, to something totally different. But it's a work in progress and you know we're all growing, we're all learning. 

01:02:31 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Do you sweat the games over the course of the night, like are you constantly checking score? I mean, I'm sure when you have 60, 70 bets it's got a way on you, knowing that that's going on in the background. Are you able to like even get away from that at all? Or are you checking over the course of a night? 

01:02:47 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
yes and no. Um, you're on the east coast now. Um, I was in san diego for about 12 years. We moved back to be closer to like family, especially my wife's. We're like right down the street from where my wife grew up. So, uh and so well. 

01:03:00
The kids are. The kids go to bed not that long after the game start, so I try to not really be sweating while they're still up. Um, can't say I'm perfect on that, but you know I try to try to. Just, you know, look away, uh, and honestly, sometimes having so many bets is easier to not sweat because you honestly can't even keep track of how you're doing. Sometimes I'll scroll my phone and I think I'm buried and I'm having a good day and vice versa, because you don't even remember I do a lot of parlays these days. 

01:03:28
Sometimes you think you're doing well but you've gotten, you know you got eight, two leg parlays and you're eight and eight and you lost all eight parlays. And then other times you know you just turns out like your six biggest plays of the day all hit, even though you had a lot of losers. So, honestly, sometimes when there's so many games, it's a little bit easier to not sweat or not worry about it than if I just had like one primetime NFL game going on and I know I've got four or five main plays that I'm focused on. It's actually I actually find that really more addictive in a way. But the NBA is so hectic. I'm kind of just like I can step away and come back in a few hours and see how I'm doing Nice when the kids go to bed, probably sweating a little more try to watch a little or check my phone a little more, but you know I used to sweat even worse. 

01:04:11
So I mean it's fun, right, Like a lot of people gamble who don't even have an edge. 

01:04:16 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
There is an entertainment value associated with it, for sure. As long as you're betting responsibly for the people out there, even if you don't have an edge, of course, you can have a lot of fun even if you're losing better over the long run. Last week we had Joey Knish on. I asked him for his plus EV and minus EV moves of the week. He had no idea what I was talking about. Hopefully you do here, Adam. I don't know if you came prepared for this week, but I'm looking for one thing that's plus EV and it could be anything in life, it doesn't have to be sports betting One thing that's minus EV. The floor is yours. 

01:04:49 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
Plus EV. I also have a paid ad read for a local smoothie chain, just like Kanish. What was he doing, man? 

01:04:57 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
That was what he came up with. People don't even realize we pre-record these shows too. He had so much time Like we put him on the net and we're like you take your time, and that's what he came up with. Yeah. 

01:05:07 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
No, okay, so Fuzzy V. Actually I'd say this is especially for people who are professionals, or maybe people who just have a job where they work from home at their computer, is. Try to find some outside interests that are just outside your house, social and have nothing to do with what you're doing for a job. Actually, when I was in San Diego for I believe, about 10 years, I coached high school track and cross country and sometimes it was, you know, sometimes it could be like you're like, oh, I'm, you know, missing out on all these hours of work. And that's money. I'm not getting paid anything to do this, but I think at the end of the day it keeps you a lot more focused. 

01:05:44
I think it adds a lot of value to your life to just, you know you go out to practice for an hour and a half a year, especially in San Diego. The weather's so nice, you're outside, working out with the kids sometimes and just doing something. They have no idea. Most of them didn't know what I did for a job. They don't know what plus EV or ROI means, like, because it's just, it's addictive, right? It's very easy to get sucked into this life and have it become like your full your hobby, your job, your everything. So I think that leads to a lot of burnout or just maybe not being happy overall. So I mean obviously coaching, that enough. Everyone you're playing sports, join a club, start a band, whatever. Just try to do something that's nothing to do with this. 

01:06:22 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I think it's gonna both help you with your longevity and your mental health, which, pretty in both of those, can be challenged sometimes in this space yep, I love, I love that one, um, and I've taken that advice personally myself and I have a much different outlook on uh, not only outlook on life, but just made me healthier as a person for doing that. So I think that's a really solid piece of advice. Minus EV move of the week. 

01:06:47 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
I didn't follow my own advice. But don't live somewhere cold. I grew up in Boston and I live in New York now, but I lived in San diego for about 10, 11 years and that it was the best. I just love being like. I'm not a gym person, I don't really like being gym, I don't really like lifting weights which you look at me, it's not hard to guess but I love, I love running. I, you know, did that in high school. I love just putting my headphones on, going shooting hoops, walking my dogs, and I definitely found like it was just like a huge quality of boost on of life boost to be somewhere where you didn't need to own a winter coat and I know people have different family situations or work situations. That's obviously why I moved. But if you have flexibility, I just love living somewhere warm. I'd recommend at least giving it a shot. If you're from cold weather, you don't have to be in the cold. You have choices. 

01:07:37 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I mean that advice is heard loud and clear. Unfortunately, toronto is all I've ever known, so it's like the thought of going somewhere else. I don't want to say that it's scary. Um, maybe causes like some anxiety maybe, but I, I you just get used to it after a while. I think I mean, zach, do you get used to the toronto cold? Yeah, I mean I'm used to it after a while, I think I mean, zach, do you get used? 

01:07:58 - Zack Phillips (Other)
to the Toronto cold. Yeah, I mean, I'm used to it. At this point I don't even notice. Like. The other thing, too is I had people say to me like oh, it was a really cold day today, like it was so cold. I'm like it wasn't that cold, like what are we talking about? It was like minus 10. I'm like it Of relatively, but it's definitely cold. 

01:08:16 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yes, that's minus 10 Celsius, which for our American friends is 14 Fahrenheit. But you know what, honestly though, I am saying that because we've had a very mild winter this year, had like three days where it snowed. I had to shovel the driveway maybe one time, so not that bad. I'm sure if it was a worse winter I would be right on board with what Adam is saying right now. 

01:08:38 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
Yeah, I was a worse winter. I would be right on board with what Adam is saying right now. I mean, everything's a trade-off. I think you know my kids growing up in your family is more important to us than you know the warm weather, but I quite enjoyed it for the time I was there. 

01:08:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I don't have a minus EV of the week, but I'm just. This really bothered me right before we went on air today, and maybe it's just like a call out of the week. You could probably guess the establishment. I won't show their logo on screen, but me and Zach ordered, you know, some combos and we got these diet Cokes or whatever, and they gave us straws but the lid has nowhere to actually put a straw in, like I was just jamming a straw trying to find the spot for 30 seconds before I realized that there's no straw here. Like this is fine, just don't put the straw in the bag if I actually cannot put the straw in the top of the thing. 

01:09:32
I was there like an idiot slamming into you. I don't know what's with these cups and anyways, that really sent me for no reason. This tells you the kind of human being I am. Sent me for a real spin before the show today. Uh, closing question adam, if you could go back five years and talk to a previous version of yourself, what advice would you give to your former self? 

01:09:54 - The Beagle Bets (Guest)
well, I wish you could go back even more than five years, but I think even five would help. I touched on this a little bit, but so I think the difference A lot of people who get into betting they didn't necessarily get in because they knew they were going to be successful, they got into it because they liked betting. And I definitely think you can be addicted. Even if you're winning better, you don't suffer the same consequences of losing money. But in terms of being reliant on that dopamine rush, I definitely think there's probably times that you think, well, if I go out, then I'm costing myself this much EV because I could have been betting. But I think maybe that's the logical part of your brain trying to frame it that way, when in reality maybe it's just an addiction, that you just really want to be on your computer betting because it's fun and it's addictive. 

01:10:44
And I think there's some stuff like you know, kind of maybe live life to the fullest, a little bit more at times and you make a little less. 

01:10:50
So be it, but it's uh, I think you just always have that mindset like you're winning, so like it's healthy to keep. 

01:10:57
You know, do it as much as you want, but I don't necessarily think that's always the case and I think I would have just tried to be a little bit more balanced than I was. I mean, the coaching helped, like I mentioned, but I think there's a lot of. There's definitely some stuff that just you know, maybe was a little more reluctant to travel or just take some time and really enjoy life a little bit, because it the theoretical. You know, one of the huge benefits of this job is a huge increase in freedom from a normal job, a normal work schedule, and I think a lot of people, myself included, don't enjoy that freedom because you get addicted to trying to bet as much as you can, spread the games and so try to actually, you know, try to actually go back and use the freedom that you theoretically have, but you create your own, your own kind of trap, even if you don't have a boss telling you you have to work, if you're telling yourself you have to work yeah, absolutely. 

01:11:43 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
His name is Adam. You can follow him on Twitter at the Beagle Bets. Before you follow him on Twitter, make sure you smash that like button down below. Make sure you're subbed here. Then head out over to Twitter, give him a follow. He deserves more people following him for his opinions and his acumen in sports betting. And, of course, we're back with a brand new episode next week right here on the Circles Off channel. So if you want to just set those bell notifications, you'll get alerted whenever a new episode drops. You can watch it right in real time, and we do read the comments every single week. So make sure you drop some comments down below. This has been circles off episode number 143 right here on the hammer betting network presented by pinnacle sportsbook. We'll catch everyone next week.