00:00 - Telemachus (Guest)
That's the funny part is, is we? Well, first of all, I'd say that I would have never done this on any of my accounts, that I cared about. Right, it was only because it was a kiosk, and I think it's because it's MGM we we this probably jinxed us, but we had the conversation about which casino he was going to go to to redeem the tickets, because we were clearly going to get banned from that casino. So, like, let's make it like one of the crappy ones. Right, that's an mgm property and just bet, come on, let's go. 

00:23 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Welcome to circles off, episode number 152 right here. Part of the hammer betting network and presented by pinnacle sportsbook, we have a great interview coming up for you today. You may have previously seen this man on the program more than a couple of years ago, but before we get into it, I do want to remind you that we are proudly sponsored by pinnacle Sportsbook in business and trusted for the past 25 years. If you're looking for a sportsbook to bet at, I highly recommend betting at Pinnacle Sportsbook. Tons of different betting options available to you, great customer service, great limits. If you're winning better, you're not going to get banned. You're not going to get limited. So bet, bet pinnacle. You must be 19 plus not available in the US and, as always, preach it every week. Please play responsibly. 

01:12
Our guest this week joins us for the second time here on Circles Off. After appearing in episode 48 seems like ages ago, episode 48 he's now a pro, better still, originating college basketball, but potentially a whole lot more. We'll get into that today. You can follow him on twitter at telemicus model. We'll link that down in the description below. Taylor joins us here on circles off taylor how's it going? 

01:37 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
good, good, it's great to be back taylor second time round the order, second time batting. You had a lot changed from last time, right, we've been following you on twitter, obviously part of a you know, a new operation now, so let the people know. What are you doing now? What's different from last time? 

01:54 - Telemachus (Guest)
yeah, so I uh I guess last episode was in march of 2022 um, over that summer I started doing, um, some baseball modeling, attacking SGP stuff. I found a few angles that I attacked and actually wrote an article for Unabated on a flaw that Caesars had for ninth inning money lines, and as part of that they asked me how do you want to be compensated? 

02:20
And I was like I don't want, you know, $200 for writing an article. I don't have a future in, you know, copy editing. But I said I want 15, want $200 for writing an article. I don't have a future in copy editing. But I said I want 15 minutes of Rufus's time Because I'd never met him. I wanted help on a hard statistics problem that I didn't know the answer to. And they agreed and so I pulled Rufus. 

02:40
I got on a 15 minute call with them. I laid out the type of SGP I was attacking. I was like here's my data, give me your, your five minute like approach to how you go about this, um, and you know. Then he then spent like the next hour being like well, here's how I go about it, here's the things I would do. We had a great conversation on it, um, and at the end he's like okay, he's like here's the things I want you to do, and then send me this updated data. And I was like whoa, whoa, whoa. Like we talked about 15 minutes, I don't want to take up a bunch of your time. And not knowing him, I didn't realize that, like, if he finds something he's interested in, he's gonna, you know, be attached to it. 

03:17
And so, you know, we kind of iterated on that for a month or so, and at the end of it, he's like this has been really fun, we work really well together. You should join my group. And I kind of had no idea what that meant. One, I didn't know what his group consisted of. Two, I didn't really know anyone in the industry personally at that point and all I knew were the assholes on Twitter and the guys who run podcasts. 

03:44
So Rufus was like one of the pillars of people who, like bet successfully and he's asked me to be part of his group. So I'm like do you want me to move for you or like beard for you? And he's like no, like join our group. Um, and so that was. You know. We explored that a little bit more and what that would mean. Um, you know, made sure I was gonna be, you know, a true part of the team with, like, made sure I was going to be a true part of the team with risk and profit, not some hourly employee. But after that it was a no-brainer. So I joined Rufus's group, which turns out is me, rufus and his brother, tom, and then one other guy who's kind of like a silent member, and I've been working with them since. We bet college basketball in 2022, 2023. Bet golf after that and then, just finished, another college basketball season. 

04:28 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's actually pretty amazing story what a story and like, instead of just saying, yeah, compensate me a couple hundred bucks for an article, you're like, yeah, I just want this guy's time, which could end up being more valuable risk reward. Um, yeah, that's. That's actually really cool. For those who are new here and they don't know, uh, the Rufus that Taylor's referring to is Rufus Peabody, one of the more successful bettors in the industry. Allegedly, allegedly. 

04:51 - Telemachus (Guest)
I can't say for sure, I can never say for sure. 

04:53 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I can never say for sure. Maybe Taylor can himself, but in that interview that we had with you on Circles Off, episode 48, March 2022, you talked at that time about aspiring to be a pro better. 

05:08
I actually think the title of that that episode is turning 2K into 250K or something like that which was something you said on the episode, but you did say that you were aspiring to be a pro better, now that you've reached that goal, you're working with a larger betting group. Are there any major differences in what an actual pro betting group is versus what your expectation originally was? 

05:33 - Telemachus (Guest)
Sure, yeah, there's a few, and I can really only speak to what our group does, and I think all groups are going to be a little bit different. But kind of the first thing that occurred to me was there's still a number of judgment calls where we don't know the correct answer. Like in my mind as an aspiring vetter, I was like whenever I'd run into a problem, like oh well, like the pros know the answer to this right, and looking back, it's kind of a ridiculous assumption. But the number of times we're like hey, we've got a modeling problem, or like there's a data problem, or like are we going to attack this market? Or just like how are we going to attack this market? Where the, the result is essentially like I don't know, like we're gonna, we're gonna guess, and like go after it. It's just it's much higher than I thought it would be. Um, previously, I think retrospectively, like it makes a ton of sense, like no one has all the answers. Um. The second thing and you guys hammer this a lot is the degree to which your network still matters, and I won't harp on this because you guys talk a lot about it a lot. But before I became a pro, I assumed I need a network so I can get my foot in the door, so that I can do this professionally. But I'll take this route. 

06:42
So I've seen people give Rufus flack. They say like hey, if he's such a good, better like why is he doing podcasts? Why is he spending his time on unabated things like that? Um, I don't think they understand how valuable the network he's built by being like a public figure and like knowing everyone, the number of opportunities that get brought to us, the number of times where we're like we've just lost a major out and Rufus has to tap into his network and be like all right, like it's just, the amount of value in that network is so much higher than you know. The time and money he's lost doing podcasts or the edges he's inadvertently or given away, or given away on purpose, like through unabated like it just it. It doesn't compare. Like your network still matters so much. 

07:30
And I'd say the last thing is the degree to which we can still be irrational about short-term results. You know, we assume that my assumption was, once you become professional like, you're not going to get swayed, you're not going to, you're not going to get rattled, as easy. I couldn't, you know, couldn't be more wrong, just like the stuff we do, I mean my. So when I ended the podcast with you guys, I mentioned that like my bankroll had got up to 250 K. 

07:59
The first, I think, was the third week on the team. We just had an atrocious like week. We lost like 300K that week and it was. It was all in college football and it was like man, this is a big deal, but I'm like it'll get better. Right, it always gets better. You'll become more immune to this and I have become more immune to it. But finished our college basketball season we had 15 winning weeks and three losing weeks. 

08:27
So you'd look back at that and you'd say, like man must have been relatively stress-free, like smooth sailing, and that couldn't be more wrong. Like super stressful the whole time. It doesn't really matter how much you're winning, you're going to focus on losses, like short-term variance. I think we moved you know it doesn't affect just us, it affects me, it affects other people but we moved through probably 15 or 20 people and throughout that span and three people three like professional movers dropped us because we weren't winning enough. Right, and it's like you know, I don't blame them for that at all Like that's that's their choice and like all depends on how they want to spend their time, but like to still have like short-term results, like you know, impact your decision-making. I will always be fighting it, but I don't think it'll ever go away. 

09:11 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Interesting. A couple notes there. So, networking it's always great when guests come on and they talk about stuff that we've been talking about, because it's just like a assertion that what we are saying is like, not stuff that we're making up altogether. So I'm glad to hear you say that because I do think it's invaluable. On the betting side, you have 15 winning weeks in college basketball and three losing weeks. Anyone who might hear that be like, wow, what's the problem? College basketball in three losing weeks. Anyone who might hear that be like, wow, what's the problem? What? What is it in those losing weeks that causes you to lose confidence? 

09:50
Um, I can think of some different scenarios. Um, you know, I've been parts of groups before where you know we might control the market for that sport so we might lose, generate a lot of closing line value, but it's all artificial. We don't know if it's't know if it's real or not, because we're betting back whenever the market's moving against us or whatever. So for me, that's what's always caused me to lose confidence in the past. It's like shit. We just lost two weeks in a row. The closing line value is meaningless. We can't judge this because we're controlling it On your end. What is it about those individual weeks? What's happening there that might cause you to be like ah, I don't know if I actually have something here. 

10:33 - Telemachus (Guest)
Right it's. You know, I kind of use that as a way to say like it was overall a good season. But we started off super hot, like ridiculously hot, for the first two months. And then, you know, I had a few massive, like losing weeks and and you wonder if, if you had, if you had caught onto something that the market hadn't picked up on. Like there was some rule changes in college basketball this year and I think we predicted those well, and so then then the question is has the market caught up to us? And like, was that the only thing that was causing us to win? 

11:07
So then we're evaluating all of our metrics, and then the other thing is that our models are, kind of the nature of the way we work, are not stagnant. So we're changing the model multiple times a week, we're making improvements, we're tweaking the way we either regress to market or factor in other things, and we've had a number of times where we've just done something incorrectly. We've got a bug in the system and it's like, no matter how bad your bug is, you shouldn't lose 70% of your games on a regular basis. Actually, that'd be one hell of a bug. I'd love that bug, but there's just enough uncertainty, where you're like something could be wrong, like and like you said, like we're at the point where CLV doesn't matter to us and so there's no. It's hard to have an external check, to be like, don't worry, we're on the right path. You know, you don't have that safety blanket anymore totally get it. 

12:00 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Totally get it now. Originally, when we had you on the first time around, it was part of like a series of episodes that we wanted to do where we highlighted people that were posting on Betstamp and doing so by not like scamming the system. And we're just out there that we recognize as this person is a winning bettor. And at that time we had you on you're tracking on Betstamp. You were finding a lot of success but, to your own admission, you were betting a lot of early market college basketball totals and, funny enough, once people started to catch wind of you at that time, those totals were flying as soon as you would post them as well. So you were getting that additional boost from other people. But how has that success, that level of success, changed for you having to operate at a larger scale? I assume you're not. You know most of your action. Liquidity is not overnight anymore. 

12:53 - Telemachus (Guest)
Right, yeah, we don't. We don't bet overnights anymore. I think we could probably do some stuff there if we wanted to, but it's just. It's just not worth it. The it's essentially you're trading ROI for volume, right? Like that's the name of the game with. This big question is when do you bet? It's not a linear dial, it's not like one dials up and one dials down. It's like you got to figure out the right point where you can maximize things. 

13:19
I've heard you guys talk a lot about how do you judge someone's success, and I think ROI comes up a lot. But that is if you're trying to control for bankroll, Like. If you're not, your goal is just make as much money as you possibly can, right? So you know, before I joined this group, it was like I need to get five hundred dollars down on the game and, like you know, this year for us it was like how do we get 30k down on a college basketball total? Right, and there's only one way to do that. It's essentially wait for the market to be very mature. Right, like you, we might know that we have some outs that are quiet, that we can get down at um, but you know, we just wait till we know we can get our fill and then attack that and all of our back testing switches from like betting at market open to like betting at. 

14:07
Essentially, you know, once the market has matured, once we see the lines have stabilized, and knowing that if things hold in the past and you know the market doesn't get significantly more efficient in the last few months that like, we should continue to win here, and so we're. You know, every morning when we wake up and identify our bets, we're constantly discussing what do we hit when? Who are we going to move through when? How are we going to attack certain games that we think might move fast? And we're trading a 9.5% ROI from college basketball overnights to, I think this year. On totals for Apple to Apples, we hit like 4.5% ROI, but on volume, that was, you know, 120 times larger. Right, like it's, it's like it's like. You just just gotta and there's nothing more painful than watching value disappear from a board um, and so struggle with that. But, like, once you can get past that, you realize that you just need to wait and then deal with the fact that you're going to be losing a lot more yeah, yeah, I've been saying this. 

15:05 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I've been saying that whenever someone's evaluating who's a better wager, who's a better gambler, who's better, better, they always say, oh, but how many units did you win? What's your ROI? What's your unit size? At the end of the day, you want to know the best of the best is whoever wins the most amount of money. The best of the best is whoever wins the most amount of money, end of story. So I'm very happy you said that and you mentioned something that's crazy is like betting overnight versus betting at post versus betting in the morning. It's exactly what you said. It's trading ROI for volume and there's becomes some sort of breakeven point where it's like, okay, if you can't win, then let's say, you have low edge, you can only beat overnight. You'll have to wait closer and closer to post if you want to get more money. But there will be a break even where it's like, okay, I can't really beat post, so it's best for me to bet at 11 am or 8 am, anything like that. 

15:54 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah. So we did a Q&A a long time ago now where one of the questions was along the lines of who would you rather tail? You know five sharp bettors in some sport who are betting a little bit smaller, or one large betting group from that sport, and me and you, johnny, both answered we'd rather be on the large betting group because we know that they can win at higher limits and whatever. We got roasted for that in the comments. 

16:23
It was incorrect if people Well, I mean listen everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I mean go ahead, taylor. I mean I don't know what your thoughts are on that, but I mean, now that you've worked in this type of setting, has that altered your viewpoint? Or like, how would you answer that question? 

16:38 - Telemachus (Guest)
Yeah, I mean I'd have the same answer, unless, okay, the only way I'd say differently is if, if I could see those five people's models and know that they had been built in very different ways, I'd then be interested to see like what does the ensemble of that output look like? Like I could make an argument that that actually might be a better approach. But I wouldn't bet when they bet like, I'd bet way after they bet, right, um, you know just from a. 

17:00 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
It depends on the size of your bankroll right I believe the was was five sharp bettors betting on the same side of one game. Each of them have a 250K bankroll, or one syndicate with a $50 million bankroll on the other side, which is a very easy question when you phrase it like that. 

17:15 - Telemachus (Guest)
Yeah, it's the syndicate. 

17:16 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yep and people don't realize. Like the five individual bettors, the biggest syndicates will have more than five individual bettors within it as well, like you think of Star Lizard, and like Tony Bloom and having like 40 quants each with their own models and whatever. I don't know the debate there, but we did get flamed for that one. I wanted to bring that one. 

17:41 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
No good, no good, no good, no good. We're going to ask you a few other things, taylor, maybe a little bit off script here. So college basketball seemed like, based on how many winning weeks you had, must have been a good season. But overall, how was it? How was the season? How was the experience? How was it? 

18:00 - Telemachus (Guest)
I mean it's brutal, it's just absolutely brutal. Like the. You know we. We started off really hot, which was nice. It was a nice. So I've had two college basketball seasons now in the group Um and they've gone. They were mere opposites of each other. The first season we did terribly early on, like in January, there was a point where we were negative on the season and like I'm, should I be doing this? Like do I need? 

18:25
to is the dream over like let's be done. Um, and we had just a fantastic run after that and I think rufus had tweeted some stuff about that, but, like I think I think we ended up at like 4.1 percent roi on on totals that season. This season was exactly the opposite. So we started off super hot, like in january we were at like 13 percent roi and and then ended at like four and a half percent roi. Right, so it's like roughly the same season overall. 

18:53
I felt way better at the end of last season than I do right now about our college basketball stuff, even though we had a hard like a higher roi at like higher volume. It's just so. I found it to be so hard to remove myself from like the constant questioning of are we doing things right? Like, are we hitting a bug? Is there a reason we're losing? Like what? Like the? The list of improvements that I want to make to our model is longer now than it was when I joined the team and I'm just constantly looking at that list being like oh that you know we're missing, that. 

19:23
That's why we're losing this week, you know. And so there's there's like the mental aspect of just dealing with winning and losing. And then there is the nature of the grind. Like college basketball season is relentless, you know, starting at November 6th, so whatever. Whenever the tournament starts, like Christmas day is the only day without a, without a college basketball game. So that's every morning. Here's my projections for the day. It takes 10 minutes to spit out my projections. But then you've got injuries. You've got questions like is Tulane playing today and what are they doing? You know, like, are we going to stay away or are we going to bet that? Like let's have that debate there is. And then there's like a college basketball Saturday, like where things go all day. You've got there's. You know there's three of us on the team, right, so, um, tom Rufus's brother's in charge of trading. 

20:14
But like a college basketball Saturday is a two and a half person job, like if you're both working the entire time, if you're both working the entire time. You're both working the entire time, if you're both working the entire time. And so, just like the lack of sleep, the time away from family, you know, has me very thankful that college basketball is not a year-round sport, even though it's incredibly profitable I. 

20:36 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I have to ask you and follow up on that just because of the tone in which you answered the question. So this is very personal, but do you actually enjoy betting on sports? So, or let me like rephrase this in another way If you could make the same income that you did and put in the same amount of time in another field where you were, let's just say, happier, even marginally, would you do that? 

21:01 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That question doesn't make any sense. You're basically saying if you can make the same amount of money and be happier, would you do that? You can't say be happy. You can make the same amount of money doing something else. 

21:12 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Sure, but. But. But okay, fine, we'll. We'll go there because some people the only reason I phrased it that way is some people love the challenge of solving problems and with with sports, that's part of it. Where they would take, they would sacrifice happiness to just to to have that challenge because of the happiness that it could lead to if, then they're not sacrificing happiness it's true, but anyways, you kind of get the gist of what I'm going here. 

21:37 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Do you like betting yes or no? 

21:39 - Telemachus (Guest)
yes, it's okay. I hate betting like I hate modeling man I've got. 

21:43
I like modeling, I right, like so. Like I enjoy board games, like we could, if you want to have a podcast about a board game like I said, boarding, so we'd have that and that's. This is essentially like a board game in real life. So I'm really looking forward to the next six months. Like, for me, it's all going to be about what are the flaws in my model and how do I improve them. And like I come to work every day and I'm I'm just pumped to work on that. Or if we're talking about like um, even during the season, like let's talk about you know, like what is a fake. Like where do we need to be betting today to get the most down? Like that's a puzzle. Like let's solve that puzzle. But like I want it in smaller doses. I want it in like times when I don't have to be like putting my kids down Right, like. So my only complaint like I love the work it's. It's super intellectually stimulating. The hard part is that it's not nine to five. 

22:36 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Right, do you have scheduled hours for the group? 

22:42 - Telemachus (Guest)
We this is a. This is a constant debate within the group, right? Because, like, there's a desire to have scheduled hours, but, when it comes down to it, since there's only three of us, like schedules just get dominated by random things, right? So we've tried to lay out schedules for, like, hey, Tom's covering, you know, after hours. We're all there during business hours, but Tom's covering after hours. Like Mondays, Tom's covering, you know, after hours. We're all there during business hours, but Tom's covering after hours. Like Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, Right. But but like, what happens when Rufus has to do a podcast? Like on his night? Or like my kids are sick? Or like you know, Tom is, you know, in a golf event or something? 

23:21 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Right. What happens during the Peabody Cup when Tom and Rufus are on the course together? 

23:26 - Telemachus (Guest)
Right yeah, you know that's all me right. No, we haven't been able to come up with something where we can stick to a schedule, but we've gotten better at communication around, like who's going to be around. Like the number of times where you know either we're like fielding across or like asking, or need to like react to, like something happening a late breaking move against us. Like the number of times early on where we're like there's just no one around, like to now where we have someone there, usually to answer the question. 

23:58 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So I take it, though, that, even though Tom is like head of trading and you got introduced to the group because of the origination, I take it that you have more responsibilities within the group other than just originating the numbers. 

24:11 - Telemachus (Guest)
Oh, absolutely. So. You know high level roles. Like I'm on basketball, rufus is on golf and football and Tom's on trading. But like I don't have enough knowledge to do basketball better than we could do it together, right, so Rufus helps with that. Like I make a bunch of contributions to the golf model whenever he needs them, and I'm generally our, our tech person when we need tech solutions. And then like to say Tom is head of trading but then give him no one to work under him is just like criminal, right so? 

24:41 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
um, can you be head of trading if you're the only trader? 

24:44 - Telemachus (Guest)
you can, because it's a four person job, right? So like he's just doing the role of four people, and so we're always constantly filling in where we need to, and there have been there were a few times like on a college basketball Saturday where we both work, where all three of us work 6 am till, essentially the game stopped and we look at it and we're like we couldn't have done that without all three of us, right? So we all just kind of fill in as needed. 

25:11 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
From the pure origination standpoint. How often does Rufus venture into basketball and you venture out into golf or football? Does that happen at all? 

25:25 - Telemachus (Guest)
It does only when we're losing. 

25:26 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Do you guys bet any football? 

25:28 - Telemachus (Guest)
Yeah, we still bet college football. We do the Super Bowl really heavily and then some light nfl, like when we have, when we have some intuition on certain things, but not regularly very cool. 

25:44 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I wanted to ask you something here. So rufus is uh, like again, this is all alleged legend stuff here, but rufus is a good as a good. Better, I know you guys allegedly are a very profitable group. When we're looking at college basketball, college football, stuff like that, what kind of ROI are you guys expecting? You don't have to say exactly what you earned last year or whatever, but what rough ROI are you expecting, because I think a lot of people listening to this podcast aren't necessarily familiar with specifically, actually how low the ROI is for these big pro groups and these guys who are actually making much more than a good living. So what do you expect to earn ROI? Wise? Maybe it's different per sport. 

26:23 - Telemachus (Guest)
Well, I'll start by saying this that, like in last week's episode, Rob talked about not having a bed that controls the temperature of your body while you sleep. We've made enough money that I now have one of those. I would strongly endorse getting one of those. 

26:38 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Okay, there we go. I was looking for an endorsement from someone here's a bonus plus CV. 

26:42 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Move of the week. 

26:43 - Telemachus (Guest)
They're also not that expensive. But we so we shoot for 5% ROI, right. Like we want to hit like roughly 55%. That's kind of our baseline. But I think Rufus talked about this in a podcast, maybe in their like end of the year. That's the process podcast where we've had a big focus on volume. 

27:04
Like we've had some doors open where we get a lot more down and have made a conscious decision to lower that. Right, like we'll we'd we'd gladly take three and a half percent at a much larger volume. Like I don't think we'd be comfortable going much lower than that because you know your model's edge is what your model says plus or minus like five percent, right. So I never want to risk going negative. But like I would actually say if we're hitting five percent ROI, we're we're not betting enough or we're betting in too small of a market, right. So we have these debates about do we go after, like a new golf market is over under round score, that you're seeing a lot of places, right it's like do we invest a bunch of time in that to get down? You know, $500 to $2,000 on a golfer each week, you know probably not. So we'll actively avoid going for a market that we think we could return a whole bunch of money on, just because the volume's not there. 

28:05 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Makes sense. I agree with that completely. At the end of the day, like we've talked about this before and you always say a lot of people ask, especially in the Q&A, say, oh, I'm just starting starting, like I want to build my own model, like what sports I go after, like what's the easiest to be? We always say, start with the smaller markets, obviously, but you got to pick which smaller market you want to start with, because some of them you're just literally never going to graduate past a couple hundred bucks. So like that's why we talk about player props. A lot like player props for the major sports are easier to beat and you can actually get down. But, um, maybe golf round score, not as much, but I I feel you there. 

28:39
Like it's tough to put a lot of time into even just the work of actually trading it, embedding and stuff like that, when you know the end of the day, this game. It's very simple in terms of how to make money, which is you need your volume times your roi and that's going to be your expected amount of money that you make at the end of the week. So you can have a 10% edge. But if you're only getting down $100, that's only $10 a click and if you can only do that 10 times a week, then sure you don't say no to $100 if you're just starting. But it's not really worth it at the end of the day to put all that time into it. 

29:12 - Telemachus (Guest)
The one thing I'll add there is it is too easy to become a robot some of the times, so like I'll just to give that specific example, the one time where we'll say like hey, we should actually go after that is if, like Rufus or Tom or I is like, hey, that's a super interesting problem. Like I'm motivated by that problem, I want to work on it and it's something that I see with Rufus and myself and Tom is that sometimes, like the vacation that we need is just like a new interesting problem, right. Like like there's not a vacation, there's not a lot of vacations taken, because we generally enjoy the work and we can recharge ourselves by working on something small like that. And then you know, if we bet it religiously or not, it doesn't really matter. 

29:52 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, totally get it. Um, you mentioned that you guys do super bowl props. I did want to ask you because there was a video that circulated around super bowl time. I can't remember if rufus tweeted it, I I don't remember the details. It was a very short clip of a bunch of guys watching the super bowl in a room it's probably no more than five seconds where a play happened and everyone was super upset and the accompanying caption on the tweet was something along the lines of this play was a half million dollar swing, or were you in the room when that happened? 

30:29 - Telemachus (Guest)
I was not in the room when it happened, but I was doing the same thing in my living room at the time, so it's actually a good story. We, you know, we originate all of our Super Bowl stuff. Rufus and Tom go out to Vegas I generally stay back and that the legal's in my state and not to promote competition. But gamblers did a good podcast, I think, two years ago where they followed Rufus and Tom around and that's a good story. But so Tom is generally is one of our runners. 

31:06
He's carrying around a bunch of money and he'll, you know, he'll be like hey, I'm at circa and this is what I'm seeing on the board, like, give me a list of plays and he'll send us some prices usually. And the day of he's at I want to say it was an MGM casino and sends us a list of prices and we're like well, that one's this price, you're clearly off there. And it was Noah Gray under 13 and a half receiving yards, um, and I don't know if this is well known or not, but but the casino in question had made a mistake. That day, I think, they went to type the, the yes side at minus 130 and they put in minus 1300 and the no side automatically went to like plus 850 and this is in nev Nevada where they would have to honor that ticket for every ticket you had. 

31:56
And to add insult to injury they would take, they were taking really low limits. It was like two hundred dollars a pop and they would only let you bet 10 times before they kicked you off the kiosk. But they never fixed it. And so Tom was a hero and bet that straight for like five hours. So like he just kept texting us being like, how much money do we want on this? Like when do you guys want me to stop? And the answer was like all of it and don't stop, you know like? And so I think I think he got down 50k on. It is what it ended up being, and so it was a 50k loss instead of a 450K win. And I think he actually injured his finger at one point. Like he came back complaining about his hand hurting. 

32:41 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
It took him five hours to get down 50K. He's got to take a lesson from Kanish bro. That should have been in though 25 minutes. 

32:48 - Telemachus (Guest)
No way, man. They just kick you off and there's lines at Super Bowl, so he's waiting in lines to get on kiosks and stuff. And it was the last drive too. 

32:55 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It was the last drive before overtime right. 

32:58 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, that's brutal. He wasn't even on the field. 

33:01 - Telemachus (Guest)
Until that drive I felt like he had one other catch All that work for essentially nothing but that is brutal man. 

33:09 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It's tough, I mean some people might be interested in. So just a few days ago there was situation where, uh, the guy who goes by point sucks on twitter. Um, he's been kind of like angle shooting at circa right, very clearly past posting. Uh, people might be like, how's he doing it? Well, circa is very manual. They're not using third party feeds for some second half line. 

33:32 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Don't tell them now. They're gonna get jammed by everybody. Jeff, we're sorry, buddy, this is raw man, I didn't want to say it. 

33:37 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You shouldn't do this. If the account matters to you is what I'm getting at right and like he's really upset and he's cheesed that he won like 20K there and they're like we don't want your action anymore because he's clearly past posting, which fine, everyone has the right to do that and take their shot. But if the account matters to you and you're going to complain about it afterwards, then don't do it. Don't do the past posting. If the account matters In this situation, I'm sure that you guys probably cannot bet at this spot again, like they must've figured out what was happening there right? 

34:08 - Telemachus (Guest)
Well, that's the funny part, is we? Well, first of all, I'd say that I would have never done this on any of my accounts that I cared about. Right, it was only because it was a kiosk, and I think it's because it's MGM we we this probably jinxed us, but we had the conversation about which casino he was going to go to to redeem the tickets, because we were clearly going to get banned from that casino. So, like, let's make it like one of the crappy ones, right, that's an MGM property, and just bet MGM at other places. But, yeah, like, we're only doing this because it's totally worth getting burned from one casino and it's at a kiosk and they have to honor the ticket. 

34:39 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, To be just to kind of reiterate, we said their last. Last point is if you did this on your regular account, they're avoiding the bet. So like, don't think, if you guys find a crazy air that you're just going to make whatever a million bucks, like they voiding that bet 99 out of 100 on any regulated book on app. It's just in Nevada they're not legally able to void the bets. 

35:02 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
PPH, they're going to probably even free roll that bet. 

35:05 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, PPH, they're free rolling it and some of the legals will free roll it. Some of the regulators will free roll. 

35:08 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That yeah, they'll just wait until it's final before they decide They'll wait, and then afterwards you'll see, this was avoid. 

35:13 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Or even worse, even worse they'll wait, it'll lose, and then it'll lose and it'll win, and then they'll say correct price minus 145. So we're only paying you out at minus 145, not plus 900, or whatever it was. 

35:30 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's a classic move nowadays as well. Sorry, I went a little bit off track there, but I remember that Super Bowl story. I had to ask you about it. You also recently tweeted that as part of your college basketball bet tracking, you classify any bet that flipped from a win to a loss or vice versa as an OT flip and you track your record on OT flips. Lots of people do this for other sports. I do this similarly to like shootouts and hockey, which is, you know, kind of a coin flip. Out of curiosity. Is that purely so that you can measure your luck? Or have you ever given thought to potentially modeling overtime itself, as if it's like a different game? Uh, whether that's going to be incorporated in your pre-game model or maybe like trying to find an edge in live. 

36:22 - Telemachus (Guest)
Just just curious on that yeah, so so the first part of the question I'll take first. This came about for a good reason and, uh, well, I'd say a good rational reason, but I found it had value for irrational reasons. Um, we had, like I mentioned, we had a really strong start to the first two months of college. Well, I'd say a good rational reason, but I found it had value for irrational reasons. We had, like I mentioned, we had a really strong start to the first two months of college basketball season and we were kind of asking ourselves, like, should we be betting more? Right, we're already betting, like a decent amount, but should we be trying to get down as much as we possibly can? And so Rufus came up with the OT flip stuff. 

37:00 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
He also came up with this notion of expected roi based on you know the final score and how much you know. Did you win by 10 points or did you win by one point? And like, what's the expected roi that and how much is rufus's expected roi? For sure 100 gonna be better than his theory, than his actual roi, and I'm there's not even a chirp to rufus, but anyone listening. I hope you guys appreciate that 100 go ahead, taylor. 

37:14 - Telemachus (Guest)
The problem is it always shows lower. On mine it always shows like 2% lower for like 4,000 bets, and so I'm always like Rufus, I don't know what you're doing here, but you're just trying to hurt me, but so yeah. So we basically found that hey, we're doing well on expected ROI, we should up our bet size, and of course that preceded our massive losing streak or massive losing week, and the value I found on it was more in the irrational space. So we have a daily bet tracking sheet, right, it's just all of our positions for the day, and so at the end of the day we can know roughly how much we made or lost. 

37:54
And there's nothing worse than betting like under 140 on a game and then having it regulation end at like 122 in a massively slow game, and then it goes over time and it ends up 142. So I got to go in there and like mark that as a loss and like that's still gives me like so much angst doing that, because it's like I want to convince the spreadsheet that I was right, but you can't see the final score. And so I've actually found there to be like a nice dopamine hit when I can like tick the box which is like, oh no, this was an ot flip, right like just so the spreadsheet knows that it shouldn't laugh at me that it was just like bad luck and and like those little things actually help cope in like the day-to-day, like when you're just like deep in it and you're tired, and you just you actually took some pride, like in how big that number had gotten. It's why I tweeted it out. It's like there's nothing better than winning with bad luck, right Like that's that. That, that feeling is good. 

38:50
It actually got to a point at the end of the season where I'm like hey, we're winning some, some overtime games and our number is not as are, like our massively negative ot flip number is not as negative as it was, and like I'll take the money, but it was a little painful to see that go down yeah, this is not a slight to you guys, but everyone, a lot of people, do this, and rob has done this in the past too with this hockey ot numbers dink, rest in peace dink was the king was the most famous king of complaining about the overtime record. 

39:18
I was going to say this Go ahead, Taylor. I was going to say. I can answer the other half of the question too, unless you want to go on the first part, I got a quick rant. 

39:25 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Has anybody there listening ever seen any person in history put out a tweet or a thing saying my OT luck has been phenomenal this year? I am up 37 units in overtime. You'll never hear anyone tweet that, only the negative I'll go one further. 

39:43 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Taylor said that it's a great feeling when you're winning and having bad luck. Imagine you're losing with a ton of good luck like. Imagine somebody actually tweeting. Like I'm down 24 units on college basketball this year, but I'm 13 and one in overtime. 

40:02 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
And I won six overs in double OT. They can't. They can't Everyone's. Yeah, it's funny, but no one's ever tweeted because no one's ever done the work. No one's ever done the work to think about it, unless you feel you've had a lot of tough losses and you go back and calculate. 

40:16 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I mean, obviously Taylor puts a lot of stock into bet tracking and for me it's just something that you need to know as a bettor am I getting lucky or unlucky? And obviously you can use the closing line. If you're not influencing the closing line, you can generally use that as a very good indicator, but there's times where you're influencing it and you need other metrics that are going to help you keep your sanity in some way or another. So, anyways, I'm just a big proponent of tracking bets. I think it's extremely important and knowing whether or not a hot streak is actually a hot streak or if it's just you know you being lucky or whatever. But continue on, taylor, about modeling OT, if you ever put any thought into that. 

40:59 - Telemachus (Guest)
Right. So let's say there's like a hypothetical situation where you were going to select a random five minutes of a basketball game and you wanted me, or my model, to predict what's going to happen in that five minutes and you would tell me some things about game state and you'd ask me, like, do you want to know if it's OT or not? I'd want to know because I think it would help me predict what's going to happen, but I don't think it's necessarily explanatory, right? So I think I think OT knowing whether it's OT or not is a good proxy for things that are observable, some things that are observable and some things that are not observable. Right, so we could say the state of OT is there's, you know, there's probably more impact from file trouble because people have filed out and like there's going to be more people tired. But those are observable things, right, if I'm tracking the play-by-play well, enough, like I'd rather have those two things directly in my model. 

41:55
But there's some things I can't observe, right. So, like coach tendencies or the notion of pressure, like on shooters or, you know, player behavior or even ref behavior, right, like, like, what do they do during ot, during home games? Right, and so that's where, if I was trying to explain why did this happen, I would not include ot in like my model. If I'm just trying to predict what's going to happen, I'd say, yeah, let's use ot as an input to my model to help predict what's going to happen. Because I do think, as long as I can convince myself I'm not just overfitting that there is something predictive in there. But I don't fundamentally think OT is a different game than the rest of basketball. I reserve the right to be wrong there. 

42:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I don't know. I was just genuinely curious. We did an episode I don't know, it was not even too long ago where me and Johnny talked about NHL overtimes. Because we look at the prices of the overtime to start, and I think as hockey fans we're just like. This doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Why is one team not favored by that much more than the other? But I've done so much work on this and to no avail in terms of beating that market. So at some point you just got to say yeah. 

43:05 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Basketball OTs, especially college basketball. One thing I find a lot of people tweeting about or talking about they don't factor in is like they're they complain about their luck when they're like, oh I, I lost so many totals in overtime. But if you're betting all unders like, you're gonna lose some in overtime. If you're betting like 70 unders on totals, you're gonna lose some in ot. That's just how it goes. And same thing with underdogs. Like when you reset a five minute quarter now five minute period, whatever you want to call it yeah, like the favorite. 

43:32
Now sure they don't go back to their pre-game line. Let's say you had an eight and a half point favorite. They go into ot like start of ot they're, now they're four point faves, three and a half point faves, four and a half point faves, depending on you know situation like if you lose a dog in ot that's's tough because you know you obviously had it there but it's well within the realm of possibility. You had five minutes of the game. Like you're likely going to lose more dogs in OT than more favorites in OT. And people don't factor that in. 

43:58 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It's a lot of things people don't factor in, Johnny. That's the nature of the sports betting industry. Recently, I saw Rufus post something on Twitter in regards to people who are always claiming to have his, like, access to his golf. Now, a lot of people who claim to have access to his golf or maybe potentially your college basketball, probably betting that stuff at worse numbers. However, it's an information game. You said you love market dynamics. How much thought, if any, do you guys put into disguising your action? Like does it bother you at all when there's people who come out of the woodwork and they're like, yeah, I know Rufus's golf stuff. Like do you guys let that get to you? Do you guys think about that internally in terms of altering processes? How do you go about that? 

44:47 - Telemachus (Guest)
Yeah. So it doesn't bother me at all. I actually really enjoy it when I see that. So I think there's like three things here in my mind. So the first is, when you put a bet out in the market, you need to know what impact it's going to have, right? So we want to get 25K down on a game. We can look at all of our outs and we can say, all right, at 10 am we can bet these places and get 5k, and then we're going to wait till I don't know 2 pm and hit these other shops and get the rest of it. But we can only do that if we know that the market isn't going to react to our bet there, if we know that those outs are truly quiet, and that's like a moving problem. Usually accounts that are quiet won't stay quiet forever. People are going to see that those are winning and then do something with them. So I wouldn't call that disguising, but I think it is part of understanding what is going to happen when you put your bet out there. 

45:39
So the second thing is about tendencies. So let's say the college basketball season started and we bet overs in the first four Texas games, right, and kind of, and like bet them hard. If I'm betting at a rec book, I don't really care. If I'm betting at a place like Circa, I'll just pick on Circa. Or like, if we've got a partner who's you know, maybe an adversarial relationship we have with a partner where they like use our information but give us a good bet, I don't want them knowing that we're likely going to be in texas again, right? So let's say the fifth game rolls around and circa opens up higher than everyone else, where the under is actually like neutral ev or a little bit negative ev, like I might go bet it. I might go bet the under there just to be like, hey, you know, you tried to to use our information to your advantage, but but we're going to make it seem like it went the wrong way. 

46:32
Or maybe we'll have a different proxy service hit Circa for us, but we don't want the people in the industry that we respect getting too much insight into our model for things that are continuous throughout the season. But the last thing kind of the thing you mentioned is this notion of when someone gets our stuff right. We've had this happen a few times. We're kind of always running experiments every day. The nice thing about college basketball season being relentless is that every day we can run experiments in the market and we can say, okay, let's just send to these partners today, like see what happens, send them first, under them last. And so there's nothing better than when I can send a bet to either a partner or which we had this season a legal shop, and then see, you know, these three sites over here move and like I sent a five hundred dollar bet in and I see five thousand dollars worth of market movement. Right, because I'm now like a puppet master at that point. Right, like yeah, we're just going to use this to our advantage. 

47:37
And so if anyone wants to advertise that they have our stuff, like that's fantastic, like like I'd love to know about that and I'm going to figure out how you got it and then I'm going to have you move the market for me and you know, we know we, we, we mostly win, but we go through losing streaks and I want anyone who thinks they have our stuff to be wondering, like, if they're losing, like okay, is this a losing streak? Or like have they flipped me and I'm now like pushing things for them Right, like I want? I want that fear because I don't I genuinely don't want someone getting our stuff and getting it the same price as we get it Right, like that's that's a bad thing, but like there's enough that we can do and it's a small enough industry and we have tentacles in enough places that we can. We can generally see when something moves more than it should and figure out why it's happening. 

48:22 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I love that so much. I mean you can. 

48:25 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I don't want to blow up a fake right in your face right now. But for anyone who thinks that Ruvis has given them the biz and shown them the wrong way, if the market bounces back in your face, then yes, likely. If the market moves with you, then you likely have his stuff. Sorry, taylor, but I've got to blow up your fake right now. 

48:42 - Telemachus (Guest)
That's fair. Maybe we'll get into this later, but it'd be fun to have a debate about the efficient market hypothesis. No. 

48:50 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I will say, like it is. It is obviously for you guys, like if you can see stuff's moving, the wrong, like stuff's moving when you're giving it out, then you can easily cut those people off, like that's probably the better solution anyways. There's no, there's no value in that, especially even people who move in this space right now, like this is all in. If you're moving for an originator or anybody or anything like that, and you're not being honest with, like, your exact fills, it's so easy to tell in today's day, like all they need to do is stare at a screen or something like that, or just even and see it. It'll always come back. So I would recommend always being honest, like if you say, hey, I'm getting this amount, then obviously buffer for whatever amount you want. Obviously it's good to return, maybe a straight fill. Sometimes you don't want to have to always be like waiting to calculate to the penny, but give a rough amount and make sure that's roughly accurate. Otherwise it probably will come back to haunt you. 

49:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I honestly love this stuff and I don't know that obviously the the, the people that watching circle, are watching circles off here. 

49:47
There's a pretty wide distribution of people that watch our program, stemming from, like, the sharpest people in the industry to people who find us via YouTube search, who are pure rec bettors, and they just are very interested in this stuff. 

49:59
But the whole betting game market dynamics, as Taylor might call it, is really interesting. Like, the amount of times that this stuff will happen in real life is way more often than you think, where you might send out a play to get filled in 15 spots or whatever, and everyone's telling you like this is not gonna leak on the screen I'm only betting it here but then all of a sudden it does and you have to kind of slowly figure out, okay, who's moving that, who's not being truthful. I mean, it's the nature of the industry, but I actually think that's one of the more fun things about betting is not just like, okay, you know you come up with the model and that's always gonna drive you and have an edge, but I think just the whole ecosystem and the dynamics of actually being able to fill big bets, I find that to be really interesting. 

50:52 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, I agree. I agree, it's again just part of the biz, Just another challenge, like you said, another board game to solve. 

51:00 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's it, taylor. A long time ago you wrote up a Twitter thread about all the things that helped you gain an edge. You mentioned circles often there. Thank you very much for the plug, by the way, when you did that. For people who go back and find it You're not so active on Twitter anymore Totally understandable after interviewing today and hearing you go through your process, you can get into why. If it's more than that, but let's just say you were going to write up a hypothetical Twitter thread today on any sports betting related topic, what would it be? 

51:33 - Telemachus (Guest)
and why, yeah, so, to answer the first part of the question, a little bit like the Venn diagram of like things that are interesting to talk about and like things I'm willing to talk about, like continues to shrink as time goes on and as, as you know, this is more and more like the money I make, um, so that's, that's one big contributor to why I haven't, you know, talked about that. 

51:56
Um, all right, well, I don't post more to twitter. Um, you know, we mentioned the emission market hypothesis. Like I'd love to have a debate with johnny on that, but like I'm not willing to to give any good argument publicly, and I may not not willing to give any good argument publicly, and I may not be willing to give any good argument to Johnny either. Like, like I just don't want him knowing, because he's competition in this space too, right, like that's fair, that's like it's just, it's just where I'm at with this stuff. So, um, you know the, if I had to pick one, I think there's some interesting stuff that I could talk about in like non-traditional correlated parlay markets. Yeah, non-traditional, like correlated parlays. 

52:35 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
His first thing on the thread, by the way, is like the video. Smash that like button right now. Look at all this info we're dropping. Follow circles off, subscribe on YouTube and like the video. But, taylor, what's second on your list? 

52:48 - Telemachus (Guest)
All right off, subscribe on YouTube and like the video, but Taylor, what's second on your list? All right. So what I would if I had to write one up, what I'd probably write about is starting with just how sick I am of people complaining about the college basketball market and not doing anything about it. So, like, yes, I mentioned earlier, it's super frustrating when you see people you know move a line early in the day but in reality, the market, your information, just isn't worth what it used to be worth and I'm sorry about that. But like and it frustrates me too Like I get frustrated by it, but like that's just the nature of it and I think we recognize that as a problem and there's some things that we've tried to do to improve that problem. 

53:24
There's this notion of what we call reverse crossing, where we're essentially buying people out of the market, but I think that's one of the things where I don't mind talking about it. It's like fairly interesting and if more people did it, I think it would help. It would help the ecosystem, right, it would. It would help preserve those lines longer, and that there's a there's some debate to be had there about if it can actually work but, we found some other things. 

53:54 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That that benefits us, that that, I think, helps benefit the market too. Are you going to get into that? What is that? Yeah, reverse. So first of all, there's crossing, um, in the space we've talked about this before it's. It's might be foreign to the casual or rec better because they don't really have a need to, although actually they could for better prices. If you know the idea of of me and Johnny both want to bet NBA game tonight I like one side, johnny likes the other side. There's no real sense in us going to a sports book and each placing the bet at minus 110 when we could just place a friendly bet amongst others. That's the concept of crossing. But you mentioned reverse crossing. I actually haven't heard that term before. If you want to get into it a little bit more, I'm interested to hear about that yeah, so the it all started out with um a guy I respect. 

54:37 - Telemachus (Guest)
Um, we've actually met at bet bash and, and you know, he, if we're betting 20k in a game, he's betting 2k in a game, right, and I was like, hey, like I respect your opinion, I'd love, you know, maybe I could get down for you and like, and I can use your stuff in my model too, right, like I can, I can use your, your, your information to understand if I'm way off, right, and and he came to me and he said, let's do this. And he sent. So the first day, what you do when you generally cross is you compare lists. So he sent us his plays for the day generally crosses, you compare lists. So he sent us his plays for the day. And, um, we, we then said, okay, we disagree on these plays, like I'll fill those for you. And then what I watched happen was and he's got some outs that are quiet, some outs that are loud what I watched happen was all the games we disagreed on stayed still and all the games that we agreed on all moved to half point at the market makers at like 9 am and I'm like, well, that sucks, like that's the exact opposite of what I wanted to happen. So we basically made the decision. We're going to do the opposite, right? So I'm not going to bet at 9 am, but I will fill for him at 9 am. So I'll. I'll give him a 2k position on the games that we agree on. I'll take a negative ev bet on my side to keep him out of the market. 

55:47
And I've talked about this with a few people and they say that, like hey, are you really keeping that information out of the market? Like, if it's, if it's that early in the day, isn't someone else just going to bet it? It's really hard to measure that. Um, I think it had some impact, but I couldn't quantifiably say so. But the the thing that I actually liked more about what we decided to do in this relationship is I said I'll do that for you, but any game that we disagree on or that we even like lean the other way on, you have to bet publicly and as loud as you can, right? 

56:17
So we're giving him early fills, which helps him, and then he's taking the games that are probably his worst place and he's going to bet them at bookmaker and penny and bet online and we'll generally see a half point or a point move, or every once in a while we'll get lucky and catch some steam and it'll move further. 

56:35
And, yeah, some of that's going to get bet back. But in general, like now, we've taken someone who helps contribute to an efficient market and essentially flipped them right. It does mean I've got to fill 2k more. It does mean that I will, you know, sometimes get stuck with a minus ev position for a small amount, but I think that's worth the trade-off. The other thing it does is it's confusing for the sharp books who who do track their players, like this guy who's traditionally been a winner for all this year, probably lost money at their book and wasn't a good predictor of closing line value. So now those accounts are now worth more to him too. Right, and the fact that if we ever stop working together he's going to move the line less is a good thing for me too. 

57:22 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
The game within the game man. 

57:24 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
The game within the game. I will say I don't do any crossing myself. I never have game within the game. I will say I don't do any crossing myself, I've never have. And for anyone who is interested in that, be careful. Obviously, check the the laws for, like your specific state or region where you're in I'm not sure like different countries and stuff like that. Um, and then lastly, is make sure you know who you're working with, right, because could be you know some people, some, some stiffs, other things like that. So if you are gonna do that, make sure you don't go too too much. Start small, uh, check, check the legalities for like specific regions. 

57:52 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, you just want to make sure that you're you're not booking action. That's, that's the real no, no, so avoid that at all costs and we recommend not doing that. Just to make it explicitly clear here. 

58:05 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
What else we got here? I think we're we're to wrap up. Unless you had any other topics you wanted to mention, taylor. If not, we'll get into our final questions. 

58:13 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
No, that's good for me, he did. 

58:16 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, minor minus EV bonus, one Bonus plus EV was the mattress. So, taylor, we'll give your official that was your bonus one official plus EV. Move of the week. 

58:26 - Telemachus (Guest)
All right. So it is to join a book group, and I'm not talking like a sports betting book group, but I'm talking and this is mostly geared towards men out there who I imagine is most of your population, but it is very common. 

58:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Ninety seven percent. Sorry to interrupt you. Ninety seven percent. 

58:43 - Telemachus (Guest)
Yes, it's very common for women to join a book group. We recently moved to a new state and my wife got invited to like five different book groups. So like join them. And so now once a month I've got like got to put the kids to bed, which is, you know, I love my kids, but like it's way less fun than like being out with friends and drinking. And so the first time this happened, me and some other dads joked like hey, we got to start our own book group, kind of like being like of course we wouldn't do that. But on like the fourth time I was like no, we're actually going to start a book group and like I don't, I don't care anything about the books, we're just going to go hang out. And so we picked a book. 

59:21
We went out to a brewery and like had some beers and then like something super interesting happened. It was we actually had like two and a half hours of discussion about this book. That I was not expecting. That was like fantastic discussion. And in one part of it's like yes, we're talking about a book, but then it bleeds into like parenting or like the values you have or all these topics that traditionally it's hard for men who are not like friends for life or relatives to have meaningful discussion about. It became like this fabric to have like a really meaningful discussion, um. And so I found that very surprising and now love my book group because of this, um, and like we get to go out and have beers like on a random monday night, right and and and it's. You know the wife can't really be mad at me for it the game within the game the game within the game. 

01:00:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I don't want to put the kids to sleep, so it's book night tonight and we're gonna have some beers. 

01:00:19 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I was gonna disagree at first, but you, you got me, I came, I think you got me around there. Uh, not that's a, I haven't done it, but power to you. That seems like a solid move. 

01:00:28 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So like great plus EV, by the way, in my opinion, I'll broaden it a little bit because I do like a games night with my friends where we just do board games instead of books. But honestly, it's just really good to see friends and build relationships and talk. Like nowadays, it's so easy to log onto your Telegram or your WhatsApp or your Signal or whatever in chat, but it's just not the same, Like it's. You know, me and Johnny see each other once a week in person to record this pod and we chat on Telegram but, like you know, you don't get the same experiences, so I actually really liked that one. 

01:01:01 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That's one of my favorite- you don't get the same laughs, I'll tell you that much. 

01:01:03 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You definitely don't get the same laughs and the jokes. They just, they just hit better in person I will make this publicly known. 

01:01:09 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'm not a not a big book guy either. 

01:01:11 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I can't read. That's why I had to broaden it. I can never see myself reading a book and discussing it with a group me personally, but I think there's people that can. I only read to gain like a skill. 

01:01:21 - Telemachus (Guest)
That's it there's this thing called audible, though like you can listen to a book well, that's different, though that's completely different. 

01:01:29 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I, I can't, I personally cannot. 

01:01:32 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I personally can, if you listen. 

01:01:33 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I can listen to books. That's fair if you're listening, but reading the book is not. I don't learn, I I don't like it like that. I'm too uh too new school in that sense. 

01:01:41 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
But anyway, obviously there's value to reading. I'm not this, by the way, and I actually love this plus ev. It's just not not for me in in that exact form, but it's a solid one rob or zach, you guys got a plus ev no, you don't put me. I, I, I actually did, but I don't even remember what it is nothing for today I might, I might think of it, but we'll get taylor's minus ev, and then we'll come back I'll. 

01:02:04 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'll bring up another quick plus ev. Uh, it's been said multiple times, but the weather's coming around here in toronto. Everybody, as predicted, so much happier yesterday, today, day before you're walking outside, everyone's happier. No one's gonna, no one's gonna kill you. It's way better still. There's got to be something to this uh warm weather stuff. Anyways, taylor uh back to you for a negative ev move of the week presented by two men in a jersey. 

01:02:31 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
We don't have a sponsor yet. We're still working on that. We're still working on that. 

01:02:36 - Telemachus (Guest)
Okay. So this comes from something I did this weekend and it's a double negative. So I feel bad, but my minus EV of the week is not having a good campfire story to tell. And so it was my son's Cub Scout like camp out this weekend. So he's seven. 

01:02:55
I took my seven and my four-year-old, so we go to this campsite area, like with like 30 kids and 30 adults, and you know we do the daily stuff. We do like, you know, canoe rides and hiking, and like kids running around being idiots. And then you know they start to get tired, so we feed them dinner and they get more tired, so we give them like s'mores, and now we're all sitting in front of a campfire and it's like tradition, right. It's like it essentially turns into open mic night, right, but no one has stories prepared. No, dads do, so the kids just sign up, and so just sign up, and so it's like an hour and a half of like these. You know, kids who are drunk on candy, like getting up and trying to improv campfire stories. And now, granted, they think it's hilarious, but it is very much not hilarious whatsoever. 

01:03:40
And then the one time a dad was like, hey, I've got a story to tell, like all the other dads were like, oh, like, I'm gonna sit up straight, I'm gonna listen to this, I'm excited for this. Not only is it gonna be interesting, but it also means like a kid can't be standing up there for like 15 minutes to like tell a story. And so my takeaway from that is the whole time I'm sitting there thinking like, man, I gotta have a campfire story. I don't have one, and I think this goes way beyond parenting. 

01:04:03
Like I've sat around a lot of campfires in my life and anyone, anyone who has a story to tell, they're always interesting, like spooky or whatever, and that person is then more interesting to me too. Right, it's like oh, you can like this is something that you don't really have expectations that someone's gonna be able to tell a story or not tell a story. So I think everyone should have a good rehearsed story. And so, while I tried to sleep on the ground which I can't do I've been working on my campfire story. Hopefully next time I'll be ready. 

01:04:33 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I'm a big campfire guy. I love a nice campfire, spring or autumn especially, but any time of year really. I'm the guy that if I know I'm going to a campfire, I'm going to load my guitar into my car. 

01:04:46 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
No, wait, wait, don't be that guy. No Negative EV move of the year. 

01:04:50 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I'm not finished yet. I never break it out unless asked, but I always have it on demand. 

01:04:58 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
You know how you're doing a card magic trick. You do a forced card. That's what Rob does with his guitar. I will say A little forced guitar. He's like, like and then he gets it someone else my closest group of friends really enjoys it. Yeah, it's, it's all like 90s alternative guitar at least you're a good. At least you're a good guitarist. At least you're like a good guitarist, you know, like a guy just hacking it up and like playing a bunch of solos and stuff. 

01:05:21 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
No, I pander to the crowd and, uh, sometimes they'll just be like, ah you know, would you know this song? Or whatever I don't. But I'm like I can quickly pull up a tab in like two seconds on my phone and and play it, like so I'm that guy. The stories I've never had a campfire story in my life, never in thought to think of one. But I have been around those incredibly awkward experiences where people are up there and you're just like dude, wrap it up. 

01:05:47
This, this, this needs this, killing the vibe, killing the vibe. So I I completely get that one as well I got a negative ev. 

01:05:54 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Move of the week been uh wanting to put this one out there for a while. Big bone I have to pick. I've been looking into this one. Never been 100 sure, but now I think I'm ready to pull the trigger on this one. It is so negative EV to be rocking clothing with other people's brands that you may or may not support. Now hear me out. You want to rock brands that you support? Great, I'm wearing a Betstamp hoodie. Right now I'm wearing a Pinnacle hat. I support those brands. Go sign up at Pinnacle. Go use Betstamp. Use a player props tool. Use the prop screen. I support those brands. I'm happy to actually put those out there and wear them on my body. 

01:06:33
What I don't get is people you get a free t-shirt at a Jays game says Honda on the front, wearing that around for seven years. You don't even support Honda. You don't even know what they believe in. There's too many guys also buying clothes because of the brands. That many guys also buying clothes because of the brands. That's just extra terrible, like if it's a buddy's company or something like that. All for it. You know you're supporting your buddy wearing his brand. If it's a brand you believe in. You use the product, great. If it's whatever, like wearing a leafs hat and you're a leaf fan, all good. I'm not saying those are unacceptable brands, but we got to stop with these brands that people you don't. You don't know what they stand for. You don't know what they believe in. You're just rocking them around free advertising for nothing on your body, the most precious piece you got and a rent. 

01:07:16 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, how about the people who tattoo stuff on like brands on their body? 

01:07:21 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'm not a big tattoo guy, not a tattoo guy. I Taylor, what do you think? What are you? Rocking right now. 

01:07:26 - Telemachus (Guest)
I feel like you're calling me out. No, this is Salty Turtle. This is Zach White's brewery. 

01:07:32 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
There you go. You're rocking your buddy's brand of his brewery. Completely fine, that's not in there. 

01:07:38 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
We have to get Zach White on the program. I sat next to Zach at the Bet Bash Hall of Fame dinner last year. 

01:07:48 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Guy is a true legend. He he has the super bowl props right. Maybe we'll have him. 

01:07:50 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
He was very disappointed that he had not been invited out to a world putting league mini golf event. He heard about that and he was like I'm your guy, man, I'm your guy, get me out to those zach white. 

01:08:01 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Shout out to zach for sure you got to get him on the super bowl prop special. Yeah, we'll get. We'll get him on and we should get taylor on too. Now, if he's going to give out under $1,300. Plus $800. 

01:08:11 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Get this MGM kiosk here for this one, oh man. 

01:08:15 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
We'll be boosting our record. 

01:08:16 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You know what I mean. We would have previously asked you if you could go back five years and talk to a previous version of yourself. What advice would you give to your former self? 

01:08:31 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I don't know if we're going to retire that question now after the last one. No, you know what? Would you have a different answer than last time? I don't know what you answered last time, but a couple of years has passed. Maybe two years has passed. Is the advice different? 

01:08:36 - Telemachus (Guest)
now it is. It is mostly because I don't want to repeat myself and I haven't listened to every episode. I'm going a little bit further off the wall. But for me it would be don't think at your computer so like. 

01:08:49
There have been so many times where I'm like trying to solve a hard problem, like sitting at my computer Well, it's like a modeling problem or like a market thing and I just sit there and I'm like staring at the computer. I'm like 60 minutes, 90 minutes, no good answer. And like the second I get up, and it's always for a bad reason like got to go to the bathroom or got to go home. I'm like 10 minutes into, or like you know, taking like 100 steps, and I'm like, oh, like that's the answer, like maybe this is just me, and like I've got to move to get my blood flowing or something. But if I could go back, I think I could, you know, save tens to hundreds of hours of just wasted time by like getting up and moving. And so I give that to myself. I don't know if it'll help anyone else, but that's why I'm there. 

01:09:31 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
The best ideas I've ever had have come on the toilet. So I've been away from a computer and I'm not joking. This is not some sort of attempt at comedy. Sometimes it's just a better spot for me to think. I don't know what it is. Man, You're not staring at a screen. 

01:09:47 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, obviously getting up and moving. Why not Check it out, of course? 

01:09:57 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Anyways, everybody this has been episode, whatever number it was. Don't give out a false number. You get roasted in the comments. 

01:10:01 - Telemachus (Guest)
We did that one time, 152. 

01:10:04 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
There you go, this has been episode 152 of the Circles Off podcast here over at the Hammer Betting Network. Thank you very much, Taylor. Round two If you enjoyed the episode, please like and subscribe. Leave a comment down below and I will see you all next week.