00:00 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
horse might have a bad trip. Like you said earlier, it falls out of the gate like jockey makes a bad decision, jockey drops the whip like. I think there's even more extreme ones where, like you know, on a rare occasion a horse will like jump the rail or something like that welcome to circles off episode number 153 right here, part of the hammer betting network and presented by pinnacle sportsbook. 

00:23 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I am Rob Pizzola. Fake Johnny in studio with me today, just for the support that I need after another Toronto team disappoints in the playoffs. Zach. 

00:40 - Zack Phillips (Other)
I don't even know what to say. Rob, like the most predictable thing ever Down 3-1. When that happened, I wanted it to be over. I wanted the paint. I just ripped the band-aid off. Let's get it done. We all knew, everyone in Toronto knew this is going 7. It's going to be a tight one and then, of course, overtime for just the maximum amount of paint, and that scumbag, joey Knish as well. Go Leafs, go guarantee the hell was that. 

01:05 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I mean, he's a bigger mush than Bookett Trent. Trent actually had the Bruins game seven and won the bet. Beat Joey Knish. I might be a mush myself. This is, I was in Vegas actually for the game seven loss. I watched it at Circa. I had also watched a game seven loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the same exact booth at Circa, so maybe it's on me and I should have done something different. I don't know. 

01:37 - Zack Phillips (Other)
I, at least, was looking and trying to make sure I was getting the best of the number on Boston. Pretty much every game in the series, a lot of the information that was coming out and what we've seen out of toronto all year. We've just seen numbers fly throughout the day towards the leafs. Yep, get some good numbers on the bruins, emotional hedge a little bit so end up on top there. I don't know, do you do that at all in the playoffs? 

02:00 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
oh, I do and I did. I actually cashed Boston in exactly seven games. I got the best price on the planet in doing so, and I got that at Pinnacle Sportsbook and that's not an exaggeration. It was definitely the best price on the planet and that's why you should check out Pinnacle Sportsbook yourself. Find out what pro bettors have known for the past 25 years. Pinnacle's where the best bettors play. Again, I practice what I preach Line shopping's extremely important If you want to win on like a big payout or something. Just take the time, open up a Pinnacle account. Use code HAMMER when doing so. I promise you won't regret it. Much better prices than other sports out there. So BetSmart BetPinnacle you must be 19 plus not available in the US. And SmartBet Pinnacle you must be 19 plus Not available in the US. And, as always, as always, please play responsibly. 

02:47
I'm going to get into a different type of interview today. In episode number 150, we had Scott on Vegas Horse Pools. We didn't really talk a lot about horse racing, even though he kind of bets horse racing. We talked more about his life and his story. I thought it was great. I couldn't stop listening to him tell his stories. You should definitely check out that episode if you haven't already. But this is the first time we're actually going to venture deep into horse racing with a professional horse racing better. Our guest this week on Circles Off gave up his full-time job back in the summer of 2021 to pursue betting full-time. He creates prediction models focused mostly on horse racing, but also sports as well. You can follow him on twitter at dennycaps1. We'll link his twitter down in the description below. Dennis montoro joins us on circles off today. Dennis, how's it going? 

03:39 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
good thanks for having me. It only took 150 episodes to have a horse player on, so I appreciate it, thanks. 

03:47 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, so Johnny's not here today and he's not a horse racing guy. I grew up betting horse racing, but I'm also not a horse racing guy, so we're going to rely on your expertise today to go through it, because this could be very hit or miss for me overall, based off my horse racing knowledge. But let's start with your backstory, Dennis. Basically, just let us know how you got involved in the betting space. 

04:11 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Sure, I grew up on Long Island to a family of bettors. My father, my uncle, my grandma were big NFL bettors. They introduced NFL gambling to me as a young child, also horse racing. I grew up pretty close to Belmont Park and remember going there as a kid and like, while all the other kids were running around like I see, more focused on like the horses and analyzing like the tote board and definitely wasn't like your normal kid going to a racetrack. So, you know, went to college, got hooked on poker, like right before moneymaker started grinding, sit and goes and you know, just just did not like that life at all. You know I ended up in in college and grad school studied finance but took some statistics courses along the way and I started kind of putting connecting the dots between prediction models and how to apply them in prediction markets. So that kind of led me to betting MLB, probably about 10 years ago. I think that's kind of how you and I first met each other. I think we kind of quickly realized we were both kind of like doing something very similar and we started trading some numbers, did that for a few years, did some other types of sports betting as well, like NBA second halves, also had a stint as a card counter for a while. 

05:36
I was living in Vegas. I lived in Vegas for 15 years previously and most of my sports betting was in Vegas. Did some card counting? Most of my sports betting was in Vegas, did some card counting. Eventually landed with horses and I primarily found horses or refound horses through tournaments, not your traditional power mutual type betting, but there's horse racing tournaments that are similar to a poker tournament where you know contestants start with the same bankroll, same score and whoever ends with the highest score wins. So uh, and ultimately that led to I had some success in the tournaments and ultimately that led me to, uh, a full-time better primarily with horses. 

06:15 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I do some sports betting as well. Yeah, it's really interesting. I actually did go back through our dms on twitter and they they did go back to like 2013. I have no recollection of any of that stuff, but there was this like huge history of us trading MLB numbers which I completely forgot even happened. But yeah, we can get into sports a little bit later on as well. It's an interesting story. I'm curious when did you realize that full-time betting was a realistic option for you? Like, what did you take into consideration when you decided to make the switch from having a professional career into betting your full-time living? 

06:50 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Yeah, so you know, as I kind of alluded to earlier, I was introduced to gambling very young and I kind of was obsessed with it and I kind of it was like a dream job of mine always to kind of figure out how to do it full-time. But to really answer your question, there's a story that really ultimately led to it. But I think there's there needs to be some sort of proof of concept, right that I had a pretty good corporate career and to leave it, I really wanted to be able to sustain an income at the same level or even or even greater. So there needs to be some sort of proof of concept. And I started kind of seeing that with horses specifically, like right, I guess like early 2021 or late 2020. But there was a big moment this is a pretty cool story, in my opinion in 2020. 

07:40
Obviously, covid's going on Wasn't much to bet on. There's only a few racetracks. A lot of offshore books were offering brand new markets, it seemed at the time, and I stumbled upon a really, really bizarre market where I can get actually a lot of money down. I won't name the sports book or the sports books that were offering this and this was a live edge for me until basically a few weeks ago, so I'm comfortable talking about it now. But, um, for for four months during covid, from like april to august of 2020, uh, I was slamming the madden simulation markets that were being offered and, um, you know, it's just like you versus some sort of trader at this offshore book, where I just felt like I knew more and what I was doing, what the really nerdy part of me was doing, was building a prediction model to figure out how these games were actually being played out and not to confuse anybody. 

08:40
This isn't esports. This is a CPU versus CPU simulation. Confuse anybody. This isn't esports. This is a cpu versus cpu simulation. And I was collecting my own data, I was running my own simulations in the background and you look, you know I learned a lot about this, this game, and you know what drove. You know team a to be better than team b, like everyone knows about like each player is, you know they're how they're rated in a video game. 

09:04
But you know, certain players have like special abilities. Like bobby wagner would force like four fumbles in a game sometimes, so like he was worth like a touchdown, you know, to the sprint. So, like you know, it was, you know, to make a long story short there, like I recruited a bunch of friends, like we opened up a bunch of accounts and we just kind of went crazy betting for four months, which made coven amazing, because we just, you know, hung out and watched these simulations all day while, uh, you know no one, everyone got furloughed from the jobs and stuff like that. So it was a. It was just more like proof of concept of like I can create this edge out of thin air. And I felt confident at the time that you, you know, I had horses, I had some sports stuff that I was doing as well, but I feel I felt confident that I could, that I could go down the line and find these edges that might not exist to the normal person today and really take advantage of it. 

09:57 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So yeah, that's a really interesting story. So I know exactly what shop you're talking about and I know the trader, who's a close personal friend of mine, that would have actually been running those simulations at that time and he actually listens to this program. So he's going to probably hear about this for the first time and he would have been fully aware that people could beat this by the methods that you're talking about right now. But at that time there was such an appetite just to bet on new things and bet on anything. You would not believe what the total handle was on some of those madden events with people watching. If you were in the live streams you could see the chats going. There was always like I don't want to say always, but there was a lot of random glitchy plays in madden um. I remember like a game where dac prescott ran and took a 99 yard safety from a. Yeah, yeah, you ran backwards. 

10:50
I was watching that right, and then people would complain to be like, oh, this is fixed and whatever it wasn't. The traders would be sweating. They're like, ah, what are we gonna do now? Like we have to refund bets. No one's gonna believe this is real, but yeah, it was just a sheer. One person said that we're going to offer this market. He started running his own PlayStation simulations. I think they were running multiple PlayStations, but even then, if someone was running more than them, it would be like they'd have a more efficient model than what it was spitting out. And it's funny. You were actually collecting the data and using it. 

11:22 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Oh, I got deep into the game, like they would have the playbook posted in the game and see like the tendencies of like run versus pass. And you know, my model was really simple, just like purely based in Excel. I put something together so fast because I just felt like this market was going to be so soft. Sorry to your friend, but like yeah, if we weren't like like the largest bettors, I'd be shocked. Uh, because at the time you could bet in bitcoin as well, which was just amazing. And, um, you know, we just took full advantage of that edge for for four months until there was like a black tuesday kind of thing where all of our accounts got shut down at once yeah it. 

11:59 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Uh. I don't think he would find that offensive at all. He knew what it was and it was just to drum up some betting interest and mission accomplished. But of course you hang some soft lines and sharps are going to get a hold of them and bet them in some capacity. But that's a great story. I remember betting all that stuff as well. That was a good time. I never quite got into like the virtual camels and virtual horses that people got super excited about, but that's a story for another day. 

12:28
You're a self-taught quant. I went through your Twitter account. I like that. You've kind of documented your journey as a full-time sports better with eight threads over the past couple of years, with just some learnings along the way, and we'll talk about some of them on the show today. But anyone who did want to see that on Twitter they could. But you did say in one of them that you're a self-taught quant. One of the questions we get a lot is me and Johnny through Q&As that we do here on Circles Off is where do I start with modeling? Do I need some sort of statistical background? 

13:10 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
I'm curious what resources did you leverage to get you on the right path in pursuing this endeavor? Yeah, so like I always had a specific problem to figure out right, like just using MLB, like how do I come up with my own fairs for MLB? So like I kind of had a specific problem to try to figure out Literally from there. Like my biggest resource was something like Google, like today would be like a chat GPT type of resource, but at the time it was mostly Google. 

13:35
Now, the other big resource that I that I've used over the years is academic papers, and some of the academic papers are or I would say most are not exactly practical in use but they're really good for, like idea generation. But then there's a few out there who like give you all the uh, you know what we would call like the secret sauce, like the code even to like you know, figure out like how to build a markup chain and here's how you would, you know, simulate a batter versus pitcher matchup. So I kind of I found I found some resources that kind of helped me like step by step, and I kind of tweak things along the way, of course, but I would say like between Google and academic resources, academic papers those are my biggest resources as a self-taught quant but over the years, like I've had so many different problems to solve that, like I feel like my base is so strong now I'm not a PhD data scientist but I think I have enough to be pretty well rounded. 

14:31 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, we have pretty much never talked about academic papers. There's 153 episodes in. We haven't talked about it on Circles Off. I'm glad I actually came up because I used to attend MIT Sloan Sports Analytics betting conference. I used to attend MIT Sloan Sports Analytics betting conference, not necessarily for the conference or the panels themselves. It was for the academic papers in, specifically sports that I was betting on. So there was a lot of young kids that were coming up. They published the papers beforehand. I would read through them and I would actually be able to pick their brain at those conferences. I actually learned a ton going that route. 

15:07
I would highly recommend for those out there. If you're just interested in any sport, you can search all sorts of stuff online academic papers and you can gain some real valuable insights and some not so valuable ones, but that's actually value in and of itself. Knowing that, hey, somebody's already pursued this and it led nowhere. I don't necessarily have to waste my time there. So I'm glad you brought that up. You mentioned the horse racing tournaments. I've been around racetracks. I don't think I've ever seen a horse racing tournament personally. Are they widespread and like what made you focus in on that to start? Versus what like the traditional parimutuel market? 

15:49 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Sure. So firstly, like how I found the tournaments? Um, I think at the time I was living in Vegas and they have this uh like grand tournament called the NHC. That's like a annual thing, annual tournaments that you need to qualify for and uh like winner gets like close to a million or something like that. And I think at the time I just kind of discovered that there was like this tour surrounding this tournament in order to qualify for this grand tournament, and they would have these qualifiers in Las Vegas at like that different casino. So I kind of stumbled and saw that they were running these tournaments and and again, my only um experience with horses was just, you know, with uh, basically as a kid. And um found the tournaments and you know they were very similar style to a poker tournament and I think back then if you were a poker player like you, kind of love playing to a poker tournament and I think back then if you were a poker player like you, kind of love playing in a poker tournament. So that's kind of how I found them. 

16:50
There's, there's, there's different formats today. There's, uh, most tournaments are online these days. There's some that take place on track, or only on track, I should say. But there's different formats where, um, there's a mythical bankroll style which which is how I first started where everyone starts with zero dollars but you mythically bet on horses to win in place that's either to come first or second and you just accrue points as horses finish, win in place. And there were several sites that did that. I think there's really only one major one left, maybe two. 

17:28
I think the more popular style tournament and more like glorious in terms of prize pools are the live bankroll tournaments, which is you buy in for a certain amount let's say it's five thousand dollars's. You might start with a $4,000 bankroll of real money. $1,000 goes to a prize pool and you use that $4,000 to make actual bets in the power of mutual pool and you know same thing try to queue the highest bankroll. And there's a lot of game theory that goes into any style of the tournaments here. So you could be a really good handicapper but just apply zero game theory and you're probably going to lose, unless you just get super lucky. But there is a lot of game theory. That kind of also was attractive to me into this and 10 years ago when I started playing these, or whenever it was, there was a lot of inefficiencies in terms of, you know, other contestants, uh, game theory, that that's tightened up over the years, but there's still plenty of um inefficiencies out there when it comes to this type of stuff yeah, it's really interesting. 

18:36 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Just a random question here out of curiosity did you ever get big into dfs? 

18:42 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
yeah, yeah. So when I was, when I built my ml model, I always had DFS in the back of my mind as well. So I use the output of my model to play DFS and did the same thing and, you know, chase them like big tournaments and same thing there. Just, you know, had some limited success there, but only did it for a couple years. 

19:02 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, just a lot of parallels, obviously, between the horse racing tournaments, where you need the output of your model to be successful, but you also want to apply some level of game theory as well. We're going to go pretty deep into horse racing here, hopefully as much as my knowledge will permit me to go. Before we do, can you explain the current horse racing landscape, like? Who's currently betting on horse racing? How does the ecosystem for horse racing look? 

19:30 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
yeah. So, um, you know, first off, it's I hate to say it, but it's it's definitely an industry that's in decline. Um, adjusted for inflation, the handle is down like 50 percent, like in north america, so it's not exactly moving in the right direction. And, to make things even more competitive, there's a top tier within the ecosystem that you're describing. The top tier of the ecosystem is dominated by what's called CAWs, computer-assisted wagering teams. It's a phenomenon that was, I guess I don't know if he was the only one doing this, but Bill Benter is probably the most famous one who started this in the 80s in Hong Kong, where, you know, using computer prediction models and forming different teams would attack horse racing markets. And that's still a prevalent thing today, and possibly even growing, just based off of you know me talking different people within the industry. Um, these guys are what I would consider like the market makers of power, mutual, I think you know, just to level set people who don't know power mutual. 

20:38
Uh, you're betting against other players, uh, within a, within a given pool, and you're not really betting against a book, you're betting against other players. So these teams, who are very good at what they do and very good at making markets, are staffed with PhD, data scientists and whatnot, are very, very good at what they do and I know we'll get to rebates in a bit bit, but they also get the highest rebates because they're the largest bettors as well. Um, you know, second tier, you're probably going to have some smaller caws who still put up, uh, you know, like eight figure handles and you know pro players like myself sending pro players who put up seven, eight figure handles as well, and it's really, uh, the everyday horse player is extremely loyal to the game. It seems like, just compared to sports betting, which is kind of a new thing, like you know, just since it's gone legal. 

21:36
I feel like, and but really, the like the casual players is, the is the fan that's been dying. Um, you know, you get fans on Kentucky Derby Day this past weekend, of course, but like the retention of these fans, it's just, it's really minuscule. And I and you know, again, I don't like to bash the industry, but they do a very poor job of marketing the game as like a gambling game of skill, which I definitely think it is, and they really market it more toward like the party atmosphere that goes on like Kentucky Derby Day yeah, I was gonna pick your brain on that a little bit more because, um, to me horse racing really lends itself to the younger demographic. 

22:15 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Like you think about what a Gen Z might want and I'm not all Gen Z's are are created equal or whatever but it's like you know, short bursts of uh of like baseball's kind of dying because the game's so long they've had to accelerate the game as much as possible to appeal to a younger audience. In theory, you know you go to a racetrack, you can watch live races and in between you know the 30 minutes in between each live race you got all sorts of other tracks running that you could bet on. To me that's like the most optimal scenario for a younger better, yet, the industry is declining and I mean you kind of gave your thoughts on the marketing side of things. Do you think there's anything else that we're missing there? Or like, what are your overall thoughts on why this hasn't picked up with the younger demographic? 

23:06 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Well, I compare it to like sports betting, where there seems to be like a seismic shift to you know plus cd betting or whatever you want to call it. 

23:15
With sports betting, you know we'll get into remades and pricing and whatnot and how that's probably really hurting the game. But um, there seems to be more intellectuals, uh, from the younger demographic, who kind of, you know, subscribe to places like unabated or use betstamp and like I think since sports betting went legal they're like everyone has flocked there and not to horse racing but for like an intellectual looking for a challenge, or originators. I think, like horse racing is uh, a dream. You know there's definitely like bad things when it comes to horse racing and why it wouldn't be a good endeavor to take on, but I just feel like the marketing toward that demographic just doesn't exist and um, there is no like coalition of horse racing, like each most tracks like operate independently and there's really no like commissioner overseeing everything. So you know there's really no unity on like how to like look each other in the eye if you're an industry professional within horse racing and say how are we going to turn this around or stabilize? 

24:24 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
yeah, totally understood. Uh, yeah, it's kind of a shame. I mean I grew up and I went to the racetrack with my dad and you know he'd say let me bet a horse here or there and it was just like a fun little rush. And I think there's a real casual gaming element where people can, even if you're not looking to win and you just want to do something, uh, I, I really love the day at the track and just being able to bet and like for all the sgp bettors that you have out there nowadays we're looking for like a put down a small amount to to get a big payout. I mean you could do that in every single horse race pretty much. Or you could play a pick three or a pick four. There's just a lot of transferable bet types to regular betting. It's kind of a shame that it's fallen off, but yeah, I think the influx of sports betting for sure everyone kind of flocked that direction and horse racing's kind of getting left behind. 

25:16
You've mentioned rebates a couple of times already. Let's get this out of the way really early here. So we talked a little bit about rebates with Vegas Horse Pools in episode 150, not a whole ton, but can you explain the concept of rebates to the audience? And also I've talked to many, many people about horse racing before. Pretty much the vast majority of them have told me it's currently not possible to beat horse racing without rebates. Cur curious where you stand on that. So just the explanation on what rebates are and then whether or not someone can have success without rebates sure, I mean just a simple definition. 

25:58 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Um, rebate is a form of a volume discount. Uh, I mentioned takeout, or takeout is basically equivalent to Vigorous, in that if a wind pool is $100,000 and the takeout's 15%, the track takes out $15,000 right off the bat. For the higher volume players to incentivize more volume, the track will issue a rebate. So for every dollar that you wager, if you're eligible for rebates, you'll get a certain percent of that back. So what it does is it reduces your takeout to a more generous, effective takeout, and these are mostly offered to your higher volume players. I mentioned the CAW teams. They get the best and people who just are everyday players and act as liquidity providers in a sense. On an everyday basis you get access to rebates sort of threshold of volume, of course, but it's not like everyone gets that benefit and it really is like a obviously a huge benefit if you're reducing your takeout. So, um and just to, I'll answer the the second question next, but I I failed to mention this earlier. 

27:18
The main reason why I ended up in horse racing, or betting horse racing and taking it more seriously, is that you know I was betting mlb. Primarily, I was card counting. Both of those endeavors were incredibly successful, but it became more about maintaining my accounts because obviously they were getting limited. It was camouflaging my blackjack play and both of those just got really, really tiresome for me. And then meanwhile I'm looking across the street and horse racing is we'll pay you to bet and I can always get down, never have to worry about that. Like I said, I'm a self-taught quant and that's like my passion, so I can focus on that and, you know, execute my bets. So that's kind of how I found rebates was basically how I found horse racing in the first place, or really looked at it as a serious endeavor. 

28:07
To answer your second question, yeah, I mean the takeout is ridiculously high compared to sports betting and just to give numbers, like you know, you're minus 110, vigorish is going to equate to like four and a half percent or something like that. And you know your typical wind pool takeout is going to be anywhere from like 15 to 18%. Your exotics like exactives and trifectas are going to be 20 plus percent just taken right out of the pool. So if you don't have rebate to reduce that, it's a high hurdle to overcome. Do it without rebate probably, but you know, I don't know how long that's sustainable. I think the only way like if I didn't have rebate, I probably wouldn't do it as a career because you wouldn't be able to scale and get as much volume down like that's part of the reason why it's a sustainable uh, income for myself is the rebates. But, um, you know, if you're, if you're trying to beat the game without rebates, you would need to be extremely selective to try to beat it. But you know, I don't think you're replacing any income. 

29:12 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
On the rebate side. Did you actively seek out rebates, or does the track come to you and offer you a rebate? What's that process like? 

29:22 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
So a lot of the CAW teams do that. They negotiate directly with the tracks and say, like you know, look, if you offer me this, this is what my handle will be. It's like legit a negotiation. For me personally, I was offered rebate back in 2018 after I won one of these tournaments that I talked about. It was the first live bankroll tournament I ever played at Del Mar Racetrack in San Diego and it was a nice six-figure score for myself. And then, you know because oh, here's this kid with money like a bunch of rebate shops came to me and they were like well, yeah, bet with us. So that's kind of how I first got it originally. But I think the more typical route is, if you're a CAW team, you negotiate directly with the tracks. 

30:09 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
if you're a high volume player, in general there's different options uh, through different rebate shops uh, if you're comfortable sharing, and it's okay if you're not um, but you have kind of lived your, your life like in an open forum, not giving away too many edges but but documenting your, your history. Out of curiosity, what would your roi be, pre-rebate versus post-rebate? 

30:35 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
yeah. So this is a good question. It's it's um, something people have to understand that when you are a rebated player, you can actually lose pre-rebate but collect a rebate and be a positive player. So someone like myself, someone like the CAW teams, which are high-volume players, they might target losing 3%, 4%, but an 8% rebate would make them a 3% or 4% ROI player. So I typically target 4% and that's kind of what my you know, my data kind of indicate to me and you know there's a lot of variance in the game. But over a year I probably stabilized near there, maybe not exactly 4%, but you know I've had years with 2% that's somewhat disappointing, and I've had years with two percent that somewhat disappointing and I've had years that are like five, six percent. 

31:28 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So yeah, and I I mean when the, when you call it the takeout right, the vig, when it's that high, like imagine a vig that high in sports betting and how much more challenging it would be for someone like, instead of you beating minus 110, you gotta beat minus 140 on both sides, like it's just not reasonable. So for that reason, that makes a lot of sense to me that you could have a negative ROI pre-rebate but then you get that rebate back and all of a sudden it's a sustainable living. It's really interesting. Honestly, didn't really know a whole lot about how that specifically worked. Honestly, I didn't really know a whole lot about how that specifically worked. 

32:08
All right, I want to get into the data side of things for horse racing, because this is always what's prevented me from going into or trying to model horse racing my personal belief. I love baseball and loved modeling baseball in the same era that you did. I don't know if your edge washed up, mine kind of did. It just became really hard to win. There was way more competitive in market, but I did love it because it was like the ultimate data sport. There were so many numbers for me to use and apply. 

32:37
The same thing exists for horse racing, but I often like I'll go to the track. I mentioned this with Vegas Horse Pools in episode 150. I'll buy the booklet for a couple bucks. You know I'll go through there because I'm a numbers guy and I want to feel like I'm handicapping in some way. I know it has no impact at all, but I'm looking at these practice times. I'm like how do I know if they were pushing the horse during this practice or if he was out there for, like, I don't know any of this. So I want you to talk about the data that you leverage for horse racing. But particularly I'm interested in how do you go about parsing what is useful from what could potentially be deceiving? 

33:18 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
yeah, and just to know, an MLB. Yeah, my hands washed up and I kind of had to make a decision like do I want to like get deeper into baseball data because, like I think stat cast was like becoming more prevalent than and I honestly, at the time I gave up baseball for horse racing because it actually I think horse racing is a little bit more data rich than even baseball, which is saying something, just because there's so many things that may or may not influence a horse race. So you know, you, you mentioned practice times, which are commonly known as like workouts, and you know that's just like one of like hundreds of different like concept, like you know a factor that might influence a horse race. You've got pedigree like who the horse's parents like, how do might influence the horse race. You've got pedigree like who the horse's parents like how do they perform in this race, who's the jockey, the trainer obviously are probably pretty well known speed ratings, class ratings, all these different numbers. There's a lot of numbers that surround the horse race and there's just so much uncertainty. So, like now to answer your question, like, how do you parse that data? 

34:17
There's, in my opinion, there's two different methods to do this and I mentioned, like the market makers, right, like these are guys who are trying to come up with, um, you know, fair odds for a horse, or you know a horse let's just keep it simple in the wind pool, but there's. Obviously it gets very more complex when you start talking about the exotic bets and multi-rager, multi-wager bets. But you know, these guys are trying to come up with fares and, um, you know, like something like a speed rating, right, which is going to be pretty publicly available. Um, there's different types of speed ratings but, like the one that's most commonly known is the buyer speed rating by this guy, andrew Byer. You may have heard of that. 

35:03
If you're forming your own probability, right, well, speed ratings are going to indicate that you know, within a given race, like the higher speed ratings are going to be more influential. 

35:14
That horse winning right influential and that horse winning right, well, that's great. But if you take that same factor and you compare it or you regress it against the final price, it's actually going to have a negative effect, meaning, like horses with higher speed ratings might typically be over-bet. So you know there's value in both sides of you know, being a market maker, where you're actually trying to, you know, originate a market, you know, in its purest form of like, coming up with a fair probability. And then there's a second view where you're basically saying, like, okay, this horse, this type of horse with this, with these factors, is typically going to be overbet. And within that paramutual framework, there's, like this seesaw effect where if one horse is drastically overbet, that value is going to show up somewhere else in the form of one horse, multiple horses, whatever. So you know, I think you kind of have to pick an approach or do some sort of hybrid to figure out like what type of data model you're going to be. 

36:31 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I get that. Yeah, listen, I mean, it's a gigantic problem to solve horse racing, right? I mean, I maybe took a stab at it for one week this is not an exaggeration and I'm like I don't think I could do this because, even like results of races, there's context that needs to be applied to each race. Right, you might look at the time of a horse, but then you will watch back the race and you're like, well, this horse had a clean trip for the entire race, got out of the gates, great. No, and you, all of that doesn't show up in, just the numbers itself, right? 

37:06 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
um, so that context. 

37:08 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yes, yes, so I I imagine people who are able to find that context and context and apply it the best are probably the ones that win out in the end. But that's actually not all that dissimilar from sports, honestly. Yeah, of course, same type of thing. Sports bettors with an edge are constantly looking for volume. If you have an edge in a market, you bet it. That's what the vast majority of pros do. Is it the same in horse racing or are you a little bit more selective because of the uncertainty? Going back to the data, like I imagine betting different racetracks, different surfaces, different field sizes are all like very different problems to solve. So for you, is it more of an approach of volume or is it maybe scaling back and saying I'm really good at betting races that are on turf? I want to focus here. How do you approach horse racing from a volume perspective? 

38:13 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
yeah, so from 30 feet, I think, like my overall approach is to bet as many races as I can. I think, like you know, the saying is what, like a mile wide and an inch deep, where I'm trying to bet as many races as I can Small edges, large edges, like there's a lot of uncertainty in my edges, just to begin with, because you know you're betting on animals and a horse could fall out of the gate and your edge just goes, you know, kaput. So, um yeah, I think like 30 000 feet, like that's. 

38:45
That's kind of my approach here got as many races as I can. But, like, what you learn over time is that, yeah, you're going to be better at certain things. You're going to be, um, poor at certain things. Like for me, like I've I think I've talked about this on Twitter quite a lot is that like, for whatever reason, going back many years now, like December and January, I just like terrible months for me and, like you know, logically, people always say like, oh, it's, maybe it's the weather or whatever, but you know, it's still like 70 degrees in California and Florida, where most of the races are. It's still like. You know, I've spent way more time than I care to admit on like figuring that out. Like, why am I like so poor in December or January? And you know, the same thing applies to, like you said, different surfaces, different tracks, I think. But if you're going to do this at a high level and try to make, you know, a substantial amount of money, you want to be able to do this as many races as possible and, um, you know, be able to scale. 

39:42
Now there's some pro players out there who are the opposite. These are the more traditional pro players. You know I don't want to call them old school, but they are old school kind of handicappers, um, where they might create their own speed figures or have a different type of edge, but they they might truly specialize in you know one track or one type of race and they're looking for, like what they perceive to be like huge edges type team, where you're trying to, you know, compound many, many, many small ledges compared to, uh, an old school type player who's, you know, has a lot less volume but probably a much higher roi uh, unrelated to betting, but you had just mentioned something that got me thinking about, like a horse stumbling out of the gate. 

40:33 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Um, I was going to share a story. I mean, at woodbine, once thoroughbreds are done, they do some harness racing and I would go back to harness racing as well and I'll never forget it was a rainy night. It was like a five horse field, cause there was a few scratches, uh, due to the weather, uh, and there was a one to five favorite in the race and uh, it wasn't one to five to it like was one to five at post, where this horse is just getting bad. So I'm like, all right, I'm going to get in on this, you know, and uh, this horse didn't make the first turn of the race. He just, you know the, the, the car moves and the gates come out and everyone, and he just just ran like basically straight into wherever the stables or whatever are and everyone else turned and that do you remember? 

41:15
Like, do you have specific bad beat stories? I mean, I know you said you started in poker, I started in poker. I can remember, like, all my worst bad beats. Is it the same thing for you in horse racing or is it like a balance where you actually do remember the memorable wins as much as you remember like the big losses variance works both ways. 

41:35 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
We both know this. But like, yeah, I like, for as many times I've had bad luck, I've had good luck as well. I think, like the most commonly like complained about bad stories, like on horse racing twitter, are horses where the horse actually wins the race but committed some sort of foul right, and stewards who subjectively make these decisions to take a horse down and influence the. You know your, your payout or lack of payout, like that happens all the time. But it works both ways, like where I've had a horse finish second and now the horse gets put up. 

42:13
So you know it works both ways and I feel like I've been gambling long enough where it sucks, like it doesn't make it any easier, but, like you know, variance works both ways. And horse racing you see a lot of variance visually, like horse might have a bad trip, like you said earlier, it falls out of the gate. Like jockey makes a bad decision, jockey drops the whip, like. And there's even more extreme ones where, like you know, on a rare occasion a horse will like jump the rail or something like that. Like, I think, like, uh on, like the espn bad beat segment. 

42:46 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I think they show that sometimes, like I remember at gulfstream park like a horse, like jumped the rail or like bucked and like threw the jockey off, like right before the finish line and stuff like that happens, like that's just part of the uncertainty and, and you know it makes it makes the game fun but also frustrating at times yeah, uh, in our bad beat corner here in the studio, I still have the maximum security, uh, picture here, because that was, that was one, and, and you're right, it's so frustrating when it's just like the horse finished in first, won the race, and then like, uh, you know, we're gonna see what happened here, um, but that's, I mean, that's honestly kind of what makes it exhilarating as well. On top of that, um, an extra sweat, of course, once you, what, uh, what do they call it when it's, uh, when it's delayed at the end of the race because they're, like, they're reviewing? 

43:35 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
an inquiry as soon as you hear that it's. 

43:37 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It's like you got two sweats for the price of one. 

43:39 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Yeah don't throw away your tickets. 

43:41 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah when I was uh, this was probably back in 2012, ish, I was working at the score, um, and there was, like um, a national news article. I want to say I can't remember the outlet that had posted some guy in I want to say Buffalo I could be wrong maybe Baltimore, whatever it was making about $60,000 a year just picking up tickets at the racetrack and going and feeding them through the machine Like it was just a full-time job, collected as many tickets, fed them through, and I imagine most of the majority that came off of races where there was an inquiry or something like that. People see the result, they throw the ticket down on the ground and they move on, but credit to that guy, yeah. 

44:26 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Credit to that guy. 

44:26 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I mean he found he found a way to do something and be around the track all day. On the modeling side of things, are you able to backtest any changes that you make to your horse racing model, or do you just bet it and kind of rely on the results to tell you whether or not you've done something that's worthwhile? 

44:51 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
I would say both, but I do. One of the first things I did when I became a pro was really put together the framework to be able to do that from a data perspective, just easily be able to backtest something. Backtesting is highly debatable, but at least it's a good start. I think, like you said, more forward testing is probably what I would lean on more just in terms of analyzing results, and I think we'll get to it. But like there really is no like secondary metric, like a, like a CLV, to kind of determine, like when you're, when you've got the best of it, so that's, that's kind of how I would answer that. 

45:35 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, a little bit of a follow up there. So you've talked about variance being super high, right um for me, and this is just personal to me. It might not be personal to you, but there are certain sports that I bet on um and if I were to have like a prolonged losing streak, panic would set in for that sport where there was maybe others where, if I had a prolonged losing streak, I would maybe be able to fall back on some secondary metrics or say you know what I think this is good it's going to turn. Where do you stand on that with horse racing? Because obviously I'm sure that you're. You know, if you were to plot your results, I don't think it's just like a linear chart up to the right, you're probably going to have some very drastic swings. So do you ever have panic setting in where you're like I may have lost my edge here, I don't know what's going on. How do you, how do you live through that? 

46:26 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
yeah, I mean to say I'm not scared of that, would be just false. Like, of course, like you think that and like your results are anything but linear, like, but it works both ways. So you know, you could have, um, a month where you your ROI is like 30, 35% and then the next three months you just like drop 1% and after four months, like you're back to single digit ROI and then like, yeah, occasionally you're going to have like a negative 30% ROI where, like, things just don't go your way. Like yeah, and you just like look in the mirror and you're like what am I doing with my life? Like, what, what, like what, what brought me here? 

47:07
So you know, obviously, like it's key to remember your wins as much as your losses. But yeah, the losing sucks. But the one thing that I do is I still am active somewhat with sports betting, to kind of diversify that a little bit. And you know it doesn't mean I win in sports when I lose at horses, but, like you know, I think it flattens that line a little bit that you're referring to. 

47:40 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Makes a lot of sense. Sense, um, in our interview last week with uh telemachus uh he talked to us about uh tracking coin flip bets uh, particularly in basketball, to get a better determination of luck and seeing how many times over time might have swung things in his favor versus uh against him. Is there something similar that you do uh to measure luck in horse racing? 

47:57 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
yeah, I I look back to just basically gauge how lucky or unlucky did I get, like with uh finishes. Um, you know, it's not always true that like the best horse wins. Like the race, like I think the kentucky derby was probably a great example where the horses that finished second and third probably ran a much better race than than the winner. Or it's debatable, like I'm not saying that's even true or not. But in the same sense, like I will look back to basically say, like okay, from a beaten links perspective, like this horse lost by a nose and you know he was 10 to one. Like an outcome like that swinging one way or the other, like has a, you know he was 10 to 1. 

48:39
Like an outcome like that swinging one way or the other, like has a you know a huge sort of impact on, like my overall performance. So to basically discount that as a loss, yeah, it doesn't make sense to me. So I think that is a secondary metric that I kind of created just to basically say like all right, you're running pretty bad, you're running pretty good. Like you got lucky here. So there's just a lot of random variance that happens within a horse race, like we kind of just said earlier, like when it comes to trip and jockey decisions and and that last you know, 50 yards right before the wire, like so much different stuff can happen and it still like works out where, like the better horses probably win. But you know we're betting on probability. So when you're betting on a 10% horse and he's that close, like you really wanted to get there and like I wouldn't say you were wrong, if that horse loses by a nose, right, uh, interesting, um, in sports racing obviously we have a sports racing sports betting. 

49:35 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
We have the um, I mean I guess there In sports racing obviously we have a sports racing sports betting. 

49:39 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
We have the. 

49:40 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I mean I guess there are sports racing, technically whatever F1, nascar, other sports. We have a concept of of closing line value. Right Now you're betting into a pair mutual market, so there the close is the close and it's the number you're going to get on the horse. But I'm curious if there's like another way to use that closing number. Like let's use an example where, maybe 15 minutes to post, there's a horse at 5 to 1. And you like that horse at 5 to 1. You're like, ah, this horse should be 3 to 1. This is how we price him. But now at post post, he closes at ten to one or something like that. Like can you use those market reads in between races to kind of tell you whether or not you're along, moving along the right path? 

50:32 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
in some ways, yes, but I'll take it a step further, I think, to make to make this game even more complex, like right. 

50:38
So we're betting paramutually, you don't know your exact price and everyone gets that same price and it's very different than like sports betting and like top-down approach where, like, yeah, you're trying to get the best of a number compared to you know, like the, the market making bookmakers and you have that gauge. That doesn't really truly exist in horse racing. But what you need to be able to do these days, if you're taking this quantitative approach, is to project where the market is actually going to land, right. So in your example, you think a horse fair odds should be three to one and um, and it's let's say it's like you said it's five to one, you project it to be four to one. So, like that's still like an edge that you probably should bet if you think the horse is three to one. So what happens is there's a little bit of adverse selection here, similar to like what happens on exchanges these days where, like, you might only get filled on orders, that where you just kind of have the worst of it according to the market makers, right. So let's just say that horse that's five to one, place the bet, it's five to one right now, your fair's three. You think it's going to close at four If that horse drifts up to 10 to one. Okay, pretty extreme example, but like it can happen to one. Okay, pretty extreme example, but like it can happen. Like everything that you know about, like ev and probability, like says, like that should be that that's an amazing bet, right. 

52:07
But like what happens in paramutual, is that, like you, what you don't have, there is some sort of market signal to basically confirm that your model is correct. 

52:26
So the better or the closer that price actually lands to your projected odds, confirming that market signal is there, the better results you're going to get. I think I tweeted about this a couple months ago where, in that exact situation where the horse drifts up to 10 to 1, like I'm a, I'm a huge loser in those instances, like those horses can win, but in the aggregate, like you lose. So, like market signal in the power mutual market is is just so important and I know, like uh quantum, uh solutions, who's a japanese uh horse player, he tweets about it all the time as well. Just that you know, if you don't get that market signal in what we call the last flash, um, which is like the last, like the last 30 seconds before the race actually starts, it's, it's, you're just a, you're drawing debt. In those instances, again. The horse can win in a single race, but, like in the aggregate, it's just a bad bet, yeah. 

53:17 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, it's a really fascinating market when you think about it. Lots of similarities to sports, but also a lot of differences as well, I guess. In that sense, then, if you're modeling horse racing, you don't really if you have a model that aligns very closely to the closing price, like, for example, in sports betting. I know of people who just model the market, so they'll take closing prices from previous games. They have a general idea of where teams fit on the spectrum, opening lines come out, whatever, and they're able to capitalize on that because they know what the number should be. But in this type of market it would actually be disadvantageous to have a model that strictly aligns with closing prices, because you would basically never have volume if that was the case. Am I talking that through correctly? 

54:17 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Yeah, the more correlation you have to the market, like you're just going to lose the takeout. I actually think it's proper betting strategy. Like if you are making a fair odds price on every single horse, you're actually supposed to bet every single horse in the race in proportion to what your fair odds are. So you need to have, you know, a certain opinion. I'm not saying I do this or anyone should do it, but I've seen papers out there that suggests this. So basically, you know, if you have a horse, that's 20% in your fair model, like you bet 20% of your allocation for that race on that horse, if it goes off at 15, you're theoretically collecting that five percent, like in the, in the difference there, like you know, disregarding the takeout and stuff. But you know, I think I think that's supposed to be the proper strategy. Um, yeah, that's what I would say, that how prevalent um is. 

55:22 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I I don't want to use the word like inside information, but I'm going to use it just because the general public might understand that a bit better. How prevalent is that in horse racing? Betting, like, how often will you see a number that just you're like? This number makes absolutely no sense to me. Someone must know something in regards to this horse. Does that happen regularly? Rarely. 

55:44 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
You know what's the frequency of that yeah, again, I don't know how frequent that actually happens, but there's definitely some bizarre things there where you know the money is always Like like that's kind of how you have to approach this, I think, and that's kind of what Bill Benter kind of made famous with his academic paper that he wrote Just basically, like you, you need to look at the market or understand where the market's going to be and kind of use that as an input into your model, and I think that's a little outdated these days with horse racing, but it was prevalent for many, many years. 

56:23
So just respecting where the money is is just something that you have to do. Like again, like similar to sports betting, the final closing price in a wind pool are going to be the best predictor over time. Um, for for a horse race, and you know, just like closing lines in sports as well. So, um, yeah, that's it that uh, the kentucky derby just passed. 

56:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Is that, uh like, super bowl for sports bettors is like kind of a decent, you know, comparable right. And you have some sports bettors who are like, ah, super bowl is just another day, you know, I don't, I don't really care all that much, it's very hyper efficient line on the, on the side in total. Why would I bet that? And there's other sports bettors, um, like rufus, peabody, for example, who have like a massive portfolio on super bowl that they build up over the course of a couple weeks. I'm curious for the kentucky derby, for you, maybe the triple crown as a whole, are these high volume days for you, or do you just view that as like another day at churchill downs? 

57:28 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
uh, both, it's definitely another day, but there's, like you know, deeper pools so you can get more money down. That's the other thing we didn't really talk about. Like the difference is that your, your bet size is basically limited to like how big or small pool is. Like there's certain instances where if you were to bet like 5,000 on a horse, like you're just completely betting your edge away because you're influencing the final price too much. 

57:52
What was, oh yeah, so the, the, the Derby is just another day, but there's like also like some intricacies that happen when the public does show up. It's kind of like the Super Bowl, like you're saying, where you might see some anomalies that exist across different pools, but they definitely have a bigger influence on prices. So you'll see some bigger edges and whatnot influence on like prices. So you'll you'll see some bigger edges and whatnot, but it to me it's just like another day and um, but there's there's more edges available, I would say, and just the like. Our super bowl, the horse racing super bowl, is actually the breeders cup that you may have heard, but every november it's like the championship races for each uh division. 

58:35 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I am familiar with the breeders cup. I did not realize it was the Super Bowl of horse racing, but that could be a better comp for sure. I actually do want to pick up on what you just said that we didn't talk about, which was obviously. Every bet you make is going to drive the price in sports. Now, in horse racing, is it entirely automated? So, like, is it? Are you able to know in real time, hey, if I bet 10,000 on this horse, the number is going to move to this? Like, do you have full access to the total pool in real time and does it move off of each bet? Or is it at the discretion of someone at the track? I actually don't know how that works. Do you kind of know what I'm getting at there? 

59:20 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
I think so. I mean, all the bets are pooled together. There's different um, there's different mediums where the bets are actually placed and, like the, the most obvious one is on track. Right, but I don't bet on track like I bet here in my home, so I bet through what's called an ADW, which acts as a medium. 

59:41
And there's several ADWs. So when I click yes, I want to bet this, it sends my money, the ADW sends that bet to the track and on track, I believe there's tote companies I shouldn't say on track, but there's different tote companies companies I shouldn't, I shouldn't say on track, but there's different tote companies that work with the tracks and aggregate the pools, uh, to reflect how much is bet in the pool. And, yes, that information is, is, is out, is definitely available to see and it's something that I have to model to understand, like you know. Okay, here's the money flow or here's like typically, how much a similar race like this is going to handle at this track. You know, on this day, this race number, like the later races, are bet more than like the earlier races. So it kind of lets me know, like you know, what is like my maximum amount that I could bet here, like if you know, if I need to. 

01:00:36 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I was. I was sort of of comparing it to the sports betting industry. Right, like um, no offense to my producer, zach, I'm gonna throw him under the bus right now, right, but if, if, if I went to the counter, um at a sports book and wanted, you know, five thousand dollars on a hockey game, and I bet it they're probably going to move the line based off of that action. If zach, zach went and did it, sorry, zach, again it could. I'm just like I shouldn't throw it. It's all good. Another wreck. 

01:01:03 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Zach's a good beard. 

01:01:05 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Zach's a good beard. You know what he is a bad example because Zach actually wins at sports. So it's a horrible example on mine. But let's say a losing better went to the window and bet five thousand dollars. They're not going to move the line, right. So I was just curious about how that works in horse racing, whether or not certain groups are profiled and they immediately move off of those bets, or if it's just the total pool and money comes in they say we move, yeah, it's always the total pool. 

01:01:30 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
So like there's, uh, they don't know who's you know making any bets, like they profile accounts or anything like that. 

01:01:36 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Like if your money goes into the pool. 

01:01:39 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
It's fully reflected in the proportion of what's bet. In my example earlier $100,000 wind pool 15%, takeout 85,000 left. That's split between horses and everyone's dollars are just aggregated and affects that final price, that that final proportion indicates what the the uh, the fractional odds are going to be on that horse makes sense um, do you attend any big races, or not even big races like, do you go to the track often? 

01:02:11
um, not lately. I I've been to a couple of Breeders' Cups. I've been to the Derby. Two years ago A few years back I think, like 2019, before COVID, a buddy of mine did a road trip across country where we went to like all these, like small tracks, big tracks, and so I think I've been to like 25 tracks. I'd say I've never been to Woodbine, which is one of my favorite tracks by the way, um, but for what reason? 

01:02:44 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
out of curiosity, like because you win there, or yeah, I'd say all the above like, like it. 

01:02:50 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
I definitely went there. I like the uh jockey colony. There. There's some like really good riders that are like just totally under appreciated. But they also have a surface that's uh called tapita, which is an artificial surface. It's supposed to be safer and there's a lot of debate on whether it is or not. We'll get to that, but like it's a very um misunderstood surface that many people get wrong just in terms of like traditional handicap approaches. So there's a lot of more opportunity there. They also have two turf courses, uh, turf, another surface that I like. I mean I like all the surfaces, but I would say like dirt racing, which is probably the in this continent, um, the most popular source of racing. It could be boring at times, like where horses just get out to the lead and they just never stop running, where a tapita service, which is supposed to be more fair in terms of like different types of running styles and definitely turf, like any horse can win any, any race. 

01:03:53 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Just regardless of their style right um? Have you attended any horse racing outside of north america? 

01:04:01 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
no, no, I I do know a lot of people who there's been like a migration away from like north american racing to hong kong. That seems to be like a more player-friendly place to bet, but I've never, um, I've never been to um any track outside. I would love to go, I don't know if it's shot in or happy valley, but it's like it's the one race course that's like right outside the city and like overlooks, like one of those cities there. It looks amazing. But uh, same thing with like Australia, even the UK. Like I would love to go to some tracks there. It's a whole different ball game. 

01:04:37
Like from my approach, like people always ask me like you know, why haven't you done any international racing? And it's just like a you know, not yet type of thing for me, maybe someday, but um, that's what makes horse racing also great is that it's extremely scalable. Where you know, I'm betting on all the tracks in the US and Canada, but I'm ignoring the uk, the australia, like I said, hong kong, and there's even tracks like in india and france and like all over the world. That you know, it's what these caw teams really do. Like you know, I was fortunate enough to meet uh john wilson, uh, jelko at bet bash last year, and you I don't think he'll mind me saying this, but like he just wants to be in like every pool, every breed all over the entire world, and to me that's just like amazing that him and his team can do something like that. And you know so appreciate the international races, but I'm not betting those yet. 

01:05:37 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, that was one of my highlights of last year's Bet Bash as well being able to meet him Very interesting character. I attended a pre-COVID I went to. I couldn't tell you the track, but it was just outside of London, uk. And what was fascinating to me I live five minutes from Woodbine and I've lived around Woodbine my entire life, so I'm used to that. You go to the UK and there's like 10 different sports book kiosks set up at the track that are trading different prices on the race. So if you like the seven horse, you just look around, you do some line shopping, you go bet it at, you know, ladbrokes or whatever, and, uh, completely different experience and different vibe. But I did kind of enjoy that. Um, yeah, reminded me of sports betting in a way where like it's fixed odds. 

01:06:25 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
I believe it's fixed. Those are, those are fixed odds those are odds. Different than Paramutual. They do have fixed odds in the US now in certain states, one of them being New Jersey. Actually, that's really the only state. They just introduced it to Colorado, but it's like tiny, it's only a few tracks. Same thing when you bet fixed odds. It's the same experience as a sports book where, like if you, if you went too much, you're going to get limited. 

01:06:55 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I would imagine you're just applying the same knowledge from sports, where here's the closing price and here's all the odds that are being offered, like let me just bet the differences and I'm sure you'll win, and then, naturally, you just won't be able to bet those anymore, such as life. 

01:07:11 - Zack Phillips (Other)
It's no different than sports betting. 

01:07:14 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
On the topic of sports betting, do you think it would be easier for a sports bettor to jump into horse racing or a horse racing bettor to jump into sports betting? 

01:07:26 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
I would say horse racing to sports for sure, just based off of pricing in itself, like we talked about, even with rebate, it's just substantially worse pricing Not substantially, but just worse pricing, I would say. But I would say, and I feel like there's been some examples of this that sports bettors know maybe have that poker tournament background, making their way to the horse racing tournaments is definitely a uh, an easier path to success. Like you don't like it, like I said earlier, there's some game theory that goes into this. I know some sports betters who basically don't know anything about horse racing who have played in these tournaments and just applied some some game theory to it and and have done like, okay, you know, so the vig in those tournaments is comparable to sports betting, I would say, uh, or at least it's much, much more generous than pari-mutual. So you know, you know I would say those would be definitely beatable for sports better once they understand the game theory that goes behind it. 

01:08:37 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
We've been hyper-focused on horse racing here, which is great, because we honestly haven't done something like this, I think, in our entire history. But you did mention earlier, you're still doing some stuff in the realm of sports betting. What's, uh, what's going on in sports for you nowadays? 

01:08:56 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Yeah. So, um, just going back a couple of years, I moved to Colorado, which you know was sports betting heaven, where I could move to Colorado and open up 30 accounts and you know, just kind of ran through a bunch of accounts personally picking up some some uh picking off inefficiencies that these guys were offering, so but that ended and again, I'm not someone who like like goes to bet batch and like I need accounts, like I don't want to do that, like I don't want to focus on like trying to get accounts, and so you know, I play some major markets offshore these days, mainly or really mainly UFC, which doesn't really sound like a sport that could be easily modeled. 

01:09:38 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm very interested in that because most people that have tried to model UFC have come back to me and said like listen, everything is modelable in some way because you just have to be able to do it better than other people and better than the market. But yeah, most people who've tried before have told me that they've had like pretty much no success. 

01:09:58 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
I would say my model is a starting place, uh, and similar to horse racing, there's there's definitely context, uh, that needs to be applied. 

01:10:08
So so, again, it's an intellectual challenge because I'm not just fully relying on, uh, my model, like I'm making some decisions as well and, uh, I think that's where, like the, the edge lies, is like knowing how to. It's always, like that's always your edge right, like knowing how to kind of perceive your model and how to use it correctly. But I think, with a sport like u UFC, like it's even more important. But yeah, like I said, it's just it's a starting place for me and it gets me to a certain point where I can make a decision or not. And like it's the opposite of horses, where I am an inch wide and a mile deep, where, like you know just to steal or borrow a term from our Aussie and Kiwi friends like these are like the boards to me where I think there's like double digit edges for sure in UFC, and but I might only, you know, I might only bet like a hundred fights a year or something like that, you know so, but when I do, like I'll slam that market where horses is the exact opposite. 

01:11:09 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Very interesting. We'll get into our final questions here. I appreciate your time, dennis. This has been, uh, really interesting. We might I might want to do a part two down the road as well, because, uh, I probably could have gone for like another three hours with some stuff that I've been uh, typing away here for potentially maybe a more advanced episode at one point. But but let's go into our final questions here. Um, it, plus ev, minus ev doesn't have to be related to sports betting. It can be, if you want to. 

01:11:36 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Totally up to you one thing that's plus ev in life, one thing that's minus ev in life okay, plus ev, it's changed my life is that I didn't like necessarily totally replace coffee because I used to be like a two cup a day, like first thing in the morning. But I started drinking water with electrolytes in the morning. What first thing when I woke up and it just makes me feel so much better and it's like that feeling is just way more sustainable than coffee. But yeah, just drinking like electrolytes to properly hydrate yourself, like first thing in the morning when you wake up, seems like you know we sweat at night when we sleep, Like it's, it's like made my days like way more enjoyable, I'd say. 

01:12:20 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It's actually really interesting you say that. So I drink a lot of coffee, which is obviously a diuretic, and you know I don't drink enough water over the course of the day. I personally drink water with electrolytes right before I go to bed, because if I don't then I'll wake up with a headache from the dehydration. But either way, I think we're kind of reading each other's mail there. 

01:12:41 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Producer Zach. You I do at night and then in the morning before I have my coffee. Look at this guy. 

01:12:47 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
One-upping us. He does the double dip yeah. 

01:12:50 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
I still like my caffeine, you know, straight from the coffee. It's just a different feeling. But I've definitely like reduced the amount of like cups that I have in a day, I'd say. 

01:12:59 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
All right, that's a pretty good one. Before we get into your minus EV here, I'll give a plus EV as well. By the way, I read all feedback for the shows, youtube comments. If you want to drop comments down below, I do. If you DM Circles Off, you DM me on Twitter and it's related to Circles Off. I'm going to read the feedback. Someone sent in a piece of feedback. I won't give out the Twitter handle, but Smash said he likes when I also contribute me and Johnny also contribute to Plus EV, minus EV with the guests as well. So I'll contribute a plus EV this week. I was in Vegas last week. 

01:13:36
I don't fly as much as I used to. I don't know if this is a thing that people know about or don't know about. I'm very I'm one of those guys that on the plane I'm usually going to sleep. For most of the plane ride I don't bring a form of entertainment. I don't take my laptop out of my bag. I don't bring an iPad or anything like that. 

01:13:53
But I saw the guy in front of me take the barf bag out of the seat holder in front and what he did was he popped off the cover of his phone. He then put the bag down and put the cover back on and then embedded the top of the bag into the back of the seat tray and created a basically TV stand with his cell phone so he could watch programming. I thought that was genius. I copied the guy. I did it myself. I copied the guy, I did it myself, watched Ferrari on the plane, had a blast. 

01:14:34
But honestly, what a professional move. Take the barf bag out of the seat, pop the cover of your phone off, lay the barf bag flat on the cover, phone goes back in on top and you can just prop up your phone like that genius invention. Don't know who came up with it. Wish I could give them credit. But that guy on the plane in front of me great content for Plus EV segment this week. Because, yeah, I'm not prepared. I'm the guy that's like gonna be holding my phone, have neck problems or whatever. So I thought that was a great move. I see you nodding there, dennis. You're gonna try that I can tell on the next flight. 

01:15:09 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
I feel like the planes I fly on already have a stand. I just got back from Costa Rica. I could take my cell phone or iPad, put it in front, hang it on the back of the seats. 

01:15:23 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So the direct flights from Toronto to Vegas nowadays are I don't wanna slander different airlines, but like the planes that WestJet just bought, swoop very cheap airline right and they have some of those planes now in circulation and I caught one of those planes on the way to Vegas. 

01:15:46 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
So you gotta do what you gotta do, then yeah. 

01:15:48 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You know, like even business on those is not. It's like you might as well be an economy on a better airline. But anyways, sorry, I slandered a potential airline there. I'm not like, not, you know, above flying any airline. I just I didn't have that available to me. I didn't have the a nice stand available to me there. Uh, dennis, unfortunately. 

01:16:10 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Okay, um, minus ev for you, dennis oh man, you guys are gonna kill me, but maybe not because your team just lost. But like I, like I gave up fandom for my sports teams many years ago and I used to be pretty big Islanders, mets, jets fan like just three horrible teams like in my lifetime and I just feel like my life is just so much more enjoyable. I still can like watch the games, but like I just know how to regulate my emotions now and yeah, it's just like I used to be also a UNLV basketball fan and they would like do the same thing every year where they were, like you know, be mediocre but win like a huge game, like right before, like the, the conference tournament. 

01:16:57 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
get your hopes up and like it's just like, yeah, I, I can't be a fan anymore so I I totally understand this and I will be lying if I didn't consider fandom as a minus ev move for me this week as well. But then I thought about it and it's just a matter of perspective, right like, for for some people fandom is a huge plus ev move because their teams always win. Like if you're a kansas city chiefs fan or something like that, you know you're, you're be ecstatic for like the next decade. So it really depends on, I think, your, your locale or your geography. I am a Leafs fan, I have this. I'm a Dallas Cowboys it's basically the same organization but in a different league. Great regular season results never win anything. So I feel you. But part of me thinks if I was living in another city, you know Boston's had some good runs, they had the Patriots for years. Bruins I mean Bruins are not like a Celtics, they have a lot of successful teams Could be plus EV depending on the city. 

01:18:01 - Zack Phillips (Other)
Well, I mean funny enough, Dennis said this one my negative EV for this week because of what just happened is not just the Leafs, but it's being a toronto sports fan. I said it before when the otani thing happened. But like we got, we got fucked by otani and now the jays suck. They're terrible. The leafs they're out, they're terrible. Tfc not great. The raptors they suck the argos quarterback suspended. 

01:18:27 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, like we, it sucks, we suck the whole thing sucks, it's, it's like it's hard to say the, the Raptors won a championship. Yeah, I mean yeah, very recently, but right now I still have the Kawhi picture right here but they, so it's hard to say like it's all been bad. But fandom can certainly be depressing and I uh, that's the thing, though. 

01:18:48 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
Like the championships like are so few and far between that like it's temporary elation, and then you're just back to like suck it again, like why would you put yourself through that for like temporary, you know a game, if you even want to call it a game, like you didn't win a championship I know the way that you, the way that you worded that, really makes me want to reevaluate all of my fandom as well. 

01:19:13 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
We'll get into our final question here Before we do. We're 100 subscribers short of 7K. If you're not subbed yet here on Circles Off, 55% of you who watched last week's video have not clicked that subscribe button. Please subscribe here. It helps us grow our channel. If you haven't smash that like button, please subscribe here. It helps us grow our channel. If you haven't smashed that like button down below, smash that like button down below. And, of course, comments take them at any point. All this stuff helps us in the YouTube algorithm. So do what you can to support and if you think one of your friends may enjoy Circles Off as well, hit them up. Say watch this video might be right up your alley. Please do so goes a long way in helping us monetize and continuing to produce these episodes on a weekly basis. All right, dennis, if you could go back five years and talk to a previous version of yourself, what advice would you give to your former self? 

01:20:04 - Dennis Montoro (Guest)
This advice probably would pertain to maybe me personally, like maybe like seven or eight years ago, but like close enough, right. So like I as a better was coming up, I was probably too risk averse, like I wasn't aggressive enough, and it's something that like I take my perceived edges pretty seriously, even with horses, like there's a lot of uncertainty around it, but like I am not shy about being really, really aggressive. It's really just a matter of confidence, I think, in what you're doing. I think seven, eight years ago I was still like new and not confident, but like I had some good stuff back then, just wasn't taking full advantage of it. So like I think I'll always my advice for myself right now, seven, 70 years ago would just be like you know, believe in yourself and be confident in your edges and be aggressive enough well said, completely agree on that front. 

01:21:01 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I think we've shared some similar life experiences and I would stand by that, even though it's your own personal advice, I would also give that same piece of advice. His name is Dennis Montoro. You can follow him on Twitter at DennyCaps1, link down in the description below. He's a full-time horse better and sports better as well. If you did enjoy this episode, smash that like button down below. This has been episode number 153 of Circles Off. We'll catch everyone back here next week.