00:00 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
In episode 161 of Circles Off, Rob and Johnny are joined by the legend himself, Matthew Trenhale. Three hours discussing the current landscape of the sports betting space. This week's episode of Circles Off starts now. 

00:16 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Welcome to Circles Off, episode number 161 right here, part of the Hammer Betting Network presented by Pinnacle Sportsbook. I am Rob Pizzola, joined by Johnny from BetStamp. 

00:26 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'm back, I'm back. 

00:28 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I forgot you were away. Sorry, I should do like this. 

00:31 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Two weeks off, marty Gale came through, as it always does, if you can bet big enough and for as much size as you need to. But I'm back. Yeah, this podcast is. You know, last week you reviewed with joey kanish did the best episodes of all time. Apparently I couldn't miss. In that fesic episode, as kanish said, I said I came off the bench, I went eight for eight, couldn't miss. I was laughing, I was listening to that. 

01:01 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Smiling ear to ear was very happy you had a lot of good things to say about you in that episode he did. I thought Kanish was going to roast you for a second there. He's like Johnny. You know, every once in a while that guy, you know that NBA player goes eight for eight. Oh, man Off the bench. You're like, where has that been? Yeah, he had some good words. I was very surprised about that. 

01:23 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Not because of you, just because of him. 

01:26 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Just because of him. 

01:28 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
But yeah, he got through, it was a good episode and today I think we got something really special for you. And speaking of really special, oh, absolutely. 

01:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I was going to say, like the specialist, it's not even a word. A really special sports book for you is pinnacle sports book, available to bettors in ontario. Find out what pro bettors have known for the past 25 years pinnacle is where the best bettors play. Football season's not too far from now. I know we got canadian football league action right now it's. It's not the same. I'm gonna have college football coming up, nfl coming up. Make sure you do check out Pinnacle. Obviously, pricing is extremely important when you're betting on football, so be smart and bet at Pinnacle. You must be 19 plus, not available in the US. As always, please play responsibly. Before we get into this week's episode, we need pre-likes for this episode. 

02:22 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
This is going to no, no wait, no likes for this episode. We this is no, no wait, no, no enough. Listen, you're gonna like the episode already, zach. Please now cut to Rob. 

02:29 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Introducing the guest, although everyone already knows who it is, because you saw it in the thumbnail and in the description our guest this week previously appeared on circles off episode number 81, which friend of the program, Joey Knish, last week referred to as the greatest episode in the history of Circles Off. He's a former bookmaker, syndicate trader and FX trader. He's now the owner of Anubis Trading Limited, which offers consulting on trading software and systems. You can follow him on Twitter at Matthew underscore Trench. Matthew Trenhale joins us again on Circles Off. Matthew, how's it going? 

03:08 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Going very well. Thank you very much for having me back on. Guys. I feel a ton of pressure, obviously, to get the accolades from such a discerning personality as Uncle K. It's hard to live up to that really. So, yeah, I was very, very flattered that he said that I made things easy to understand, because that is not what a lot of people who talk to me about betting think. So, yeah, it's great to be back. 

03:36 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, so it's been a while Welcome back, obviously over two years since we last spoke and we did that intentionally? 

03:42 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Wow, has that actually been over two years? Yeah, it was. 

03:44 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Time flies the old studio was a long. We covered so many topics in that interview that I've been meaning to get you back on since then, but it's like we already covered so much we had to let it breathe a little bit. But it's been two years now. You were previously a Pinnacle trader when we had you on last time. So, uh, if you want, you can give the listeners an update here on what you've been up to since leaving pinnacle sportsbook yeah. 

04:09 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
So I mean, I decided that I wanted to, uh, you know, go out and you know, make something for myself, but, um, I have limited abilities to uh raise money, code or like work too hard. So basically that meant you meant I was just going to be a freeloading consultant and hopefully get people to pay me to just talk at them. And, yeah, it's gone. Do you know what? There's a big transition between receiving the paycheck regularly to going on to contracting work, but, um, but it's been good. It's led to having a lot of like fascinating windows into parts of the business that even I like had not like been exposed to. 

04:57
Um, and you know, just like, I've had people contact me from either from the, you know both sides of the counter. Um, and, yeah, you know I'm trying to sort of, uh, I guess, build up, build things, but, um, yeah, it's going, it's going good and you know I'm, you know I still, probably even now I'm slightly in the anxious. You know where's the next meal coming from? Stage, I guess. But but you know it's good and you know it means that I'm hopefully getting paid to talk about betting, which is still fundamentally my favorite thing to do. 

05:32 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So what I heard is basically, if you're a betting group, you just call Matt Trenhale, you pay him a couple bucks consulting fee and then he just makes you win unlimited money. 

05:42 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
That's what the rumor is. Can you confirm or? 

05:45
deny this that the do you know what? There's this like, there's this horrible like it always comes down to a trust issue, right, because there are definitely people who've maybe heard me speak on a podcast or even just had, like they speak to someone else of somewhere I worked, and maybe someone who worked with me at a pinnacle or some other book or something like that and they're like, yeah, this guy, you know, he seems to know something at least. And you know, invariably there's like we're pretty happy with what we do. You know we're making a lot of money, so you know, but could there be something we've missed which is absolutely? That's exactly the kind of call I want to take. You know, I'm happy. One of the best things for me in consultancy is, like, if you could just reassure people that like, no, guys, you, you've really looked at everything from every angle here from my perspective. You know you're doing a great job and you should feel like, oh, I can sleep easy at night. I'm not like you know, missing anything out, but you get this, you get this message. That's just like, can you, you know, can you help? And I'm like, maybe you know what's your, you know what's your problem. You know you're trying to scale. You know, is it the getting the best placement, is it the modeling aspect, whatever? And it's like, it's like, well, we just think maybe we could do things better and and you're like again. But I appreciate at the same time if someone just says to me oh, we're thinking of moving from a Monte Carlo to a Markov chain for this, but we're not sure whether it's going to pay off the dividends. No one wants to be saying that conversation to someone unless they, you know, implicitly trust and you know, like betting syndicate, ndas are probably worth, you know, not a huge amount, I'd imagine, you know. So it's kind of like you know there is, there's definitely that kind of trust issue, but I back myself to, if not provide you with, you know, possibly new ideas, I do back myself to at least be able to say, you know, give you the confidence that I have experience of a lot of failures is the reality and, you know, if you want to avoid making some of the obvious pitfalls, you know, because there's also a lot of too good to be true scenarios. So people like it's like I don't know. 

08:02
I think back to some of the real big crypto exchange arbitrages. The crypto traders were like how on earth can this price be this different between crypto exchange A and crypto exchange B? Like why is this not being arbed out? How can the price difference be so big on Bitcoin and it? You know, when you dug into the weeds of it, it turned out that it was absolutely impossible to get it out of this Korean exchange or whatever, and so people would sort of be like oh okay, that's why that can exist. Now, if someone came to me with the equivalent for sports betting, I'd like to be able to say, well, a yeah, you know what. The reason that can still happen, though, is because you know, because you know whatever reason. You know those numbers aren't real. The book holds your money. 

08:47
People have tried whatever it may be. 

08:49
Or, I can say, in rare occasions, I might say, look, no one's done it yet, but if I was to do it, this is potentially how you could get it over the line, kind of thing, but a lot of the times, I feel like there's value just in people. 

09:04
People have always thought like I wish we should be doing this. Why aren't we doing this? You know the fear of leaving the FOMO effect of like have I left money on the table. It's super real because syndicates know that kind of like. You know it's hard to think of syndicates that have been around for like 30 years. They all feel probably like they're on finite time, like how long can we get you know as much money out the market as possible? And so you know you don't want to kind of be like you know the real. The people are doing this at sort of scale and super seriously. They're always looking for like extra areas that they can basically deploy capital and try and generate you know any sort of ROI anywhere. And so I think that it's entirely reasonable to be worried like am I not doing enough with the resources I have? 

09:49 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
With your Anubis business. What's the breakdown of clientele right now Like? Are you working mainly with other sportsbooks that'll reach out to you? Is it syndicates or individual traders? What does that breakdown look like? 

10:04 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
So I have had like interactions, phone calls with both, both sides, probably both sides of the count, I probably say in equal measure, and I'd say that in terms of people who have actually sort of wanted to get the ball rolling and get things working, it's more the bookmaker side you know that's still there's still an element of bookmaking weirdly can sometimes still feel like this sort of magic art in a little. 

10:36
In a weird sense, people kind of there's not many conventions where, like all bookmakers get together and the head of trading from like every different book then chats about like so how do you deal with this problem? So having someone who's got experience of how different people you know solve that particular problem, um, and sort of bridges that gap. So I'd say, like you know, it's very much more skewed interest to the or the people who've actually gone and like sort of committed to sort of working with me, very much skewed more towards the book side than it has been the, uh, the better side. But you know I'm, I'm, you know I remain open to to both sides. 

11:13 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
How do you rep the book, and the better. So you just rep the book, and then so are there any betters that are betting into those books you're repping? 

11:22 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Well, I mean that that's like a good question. So, in terms of, like you know, I I said to myself like it would be like if there was, let's say there was a betting group that um were competing in the same identical space. You know, like, let's say there was a group and they were both. You know, let's use rob's, rob's passion. You know, let's say, both two groups betting nhl they wanted to know more about. You know how to use use Rob's, rob's passion. You know, let's say both two groups betting NHL they wanted to know more about. You know how to use, like I don't know, computer vision, motion capture of NHL feeds to create their own like expected goals or whatever like that. It'd be like, well, I can't work with two people, so we just have to make a decision. If, by weird chance, two people ask me this at the same time, it's probably first come, first serve. 

12:05
You know, or referral, a lot of these, just the same way, like working with, you know, betting partners or anything. You know, a lot of it's still done on word of mouth and you know, you call some guy and it's like these guys people work good to work with, kind of thing. But yeah, so I don't. I would try very much to have no overlapping, no one who is competing for the same lunch on the betting syndicate side, um, which undoubtedly limits the pool, but I think is better for me now in terms of, you know, syndicate versus like bookmaker, or better versus bookmaker I. I have yet to cross this particular problem because more of the people who are more interested in my bookmaking experience are more in the we want to try and take bets category um and weirdly, like the questions I've had from people maybe call like recreational books or whatever, um, the questions have like not been so much about I've yet to be asked the question how would you limit players or how would you stop players like? Interesting enough, it's been more sort of um modeling stuff. I suppose you know my time with like mustard maybe people so more talking about like how to build out you know products for people to bet. It's been more about that side of things than like you know. So tell us how to catch you know bonus abuse or tell us how to catch that. That that has yet to come up and I think that, to be honest, I mean ethics hot topic in the betting industry in the betting space on on gambling Twitter right now. 

13:44
But I think, to be be honest, like if someone told me like, oh, can you help us, like spot past posting, I'd have no problem taking that gig. I'd be like, yeah, I can, definitely we can work. We can find, like, how to get the best feed aggregation, how to work on the time delays, how to ensure, like absolutely happy to take that job on. If someone said, like you know, we're building this mass profiling project to basically, you know, absolutely nuke customers as fast as possible, whatever in that situation because I have experience in a broad spectrum I'd want to know a little more details. I I semi have the luxury to kind of work on the stuff I'm more interested in and that's not as interesting a project generally, to be honest, profiling. 

14:33
You guys could rattle off between you comfortably the top 10 factors to take into account when adjusting, trying to account for the lifetime value of an account. You know there's a lot of stuff that's sort of just so easy and, to be honest, a lot of the books have been trying to solve that problem themselves pretty intensely. So getting a contractor in just to sort of look over the homework on that regard, I don't I don't envisage it happening. You know they're more interested in like it happening. Um, you know they're more interested in like how can we do like sgp calculations faster and stuff like that. And you know, I don't necessarily that's not necessarily my area of expertise, to be honest, but, um, but those are kind of the problems that I think probably like some external help, maybe something that they're interested. We can see that like people have bought um, uh, bannock and angstrom and so on. 

15:26
You know you can see the kind of things where books are happy to take outside input to try and accelerate their own learning, um, and it's more in those kind of problems than it is like. It's like, hey, look, you know, I've got the has clv playbook right, I know how to close people. I don't need your fucking advice, for you know how to do that, so you know. But yeah, I know it is definitely that kind of like both sides. But like the, it's funny because the betting people I'm, you know I talk to, they're mainly betting into exchanges. Or you know books that are kind of expecting that kind of action and yeah, I've not really had the kind of poacher, gamekeeper scenario we. But we'll see. But when it happens I'll be sure to tell you guys how it played out in my head. 

16:10 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Matt, one of the reasons we wanted to have you on is obviously your depth of knowledge in the space, and we have a wide array of guests here on Circles Off. But you cover a subsection of the industry and like a lot of crossover on topics that we typically don't broach here on Circles Off all too often. And you mentioned consulting on product and trading software and systems, and I want to hone in on that a little bit at the start here, because it's something that we just don't talk about all that often and maybe a blind spot to a lot of people who listen to this podcast or watch this podcast. So in in your consulting work and your experience. What are some of the biggest advancements that you've seen in in trading software and systems, uh, that have taken place over the last few years? 

17:00 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
so I I mean I would say that all the greatest development. So I mean I would say that all the greatest development in terms of like use of technology has all been utilized for scaling. So like in general, like just the scale of the BEP processing task has become much larger. Like boring stuff, just like how to optimize for cloud computing, like this, because some of these, but with all the merging of these bookmakers together, like the flutter group, the entain group, so on, these people are just taking like just it's unfathomable how many millions of bets they're taking like at peak times. So you know, just things like like load balancing and the experience like the, the back-end engineers at Big Book Makers are like just serious people now trying to manage that. So that's been like an advancement. Correspondingly, the products that people want now require a lot more computational heavy lifting than they ever have done. 

18:00
You know we transitioned to live. Live requires this amount of updates per. I remember once upon a time in soccer matches it would be every one minute we'd tick the price update. Now people want an intense number of calculations across an even wider product map. Soccer. We went from just calculating markets that could be priced off the goal matrix, as they call it. So, like you know, team A's got this many goals they could score Team B, you know. And then we wanted to have first half and full games, so we've got two matrixes. And then it's like, well, now we need the player props updating at the same time as well as, like all the rest of it, and now we need to actually work out the correlation between them, because we want to be able to do SGPs, we want to do SGPs in running and then, on top of all of that, we want to do cash out and on top of that, we want to be able to cash out one leg of your live SGP and leave the remaining legs open or whatever. Like it is just like we're now. When they're now mapping the calculation space, like people are going it, it creates a moat, right, because it's only like Fangio can afford to do this, right, you know Entain, you know DraftKings, they can afford to like solve this. 

19:12
But there's, like I mean, there's some dudes, like you know, there's some guys who are just thinking to myself like I do not know how I'm going to get to the point, where and the reason they can probably sort of semi-tackle the problem is because they have so many fewer players, so it's not quite as intense. But imagine if you have a Super Bowl and you have a million tickets open and of those million tickets that are open, there's like 300,000 of them are SGPs with five selections or more, and each one of those selections has to be updated real time to give a cash out value for each portion of the it. You know it's that it gets into mindfuck territory. It really does. So that is massively where trading technology, like you know, and and cut and all this automation is like cutting out the human element anyway. It's like the reality is is that it's very hard in live game decisions to make human trading decisions that make any meaningful margin difference other than just, oh, the feed stopped up, we've got no live data, the prices are stale, we're getting hit. It's like a watchdog role. 

20:16
Other parts of trading technology just haven't adapted at all. So there's still guys there'll still be guys and offices around the world looking at bet what they call bet tickers, bet scrollers, whatever you want to call it Like bets are just dropping in like an Excel sheet almost coming up. There's color coding, there's small markers saying this means this. This is this type of player you know. You know like there was that moment where maybe we got to the point where like, oh look, you can click on the scroller and it takes you to another system that we bolded on, that gives you player details that I that has. Just it's slow, and it's slow in part because maybe it doesn't need to evolve that much. I guess it's not the pressure for it to evolve, um, but that's just so similar and like the interfaces where people like make price changes, like manual price changes, those interfaces like haven't massively changed and you know, so those things like sort of feel like they're trapped in time. 

21:09
Sometimes, I mean and certainly depends on the you know what kind of like. If you're like a classic, like let's use like sort of the offshore, you know US facing style books, it's like well, there's only a handful of sports our customer base are interested, only a handful of markets like so the sophistication of the tool that the trader needs to use there is just so much lower. Like the guy at bet365 catering to the uk market, like he's got to have more bells and whistles, but even then there's kind of like we've got some clicker arrows to move things up and down, we've got some typeovers. We've got like some drop downs. You know it's all kind of stuff that's not like. You know there's very few like trading back ends that you'd be like, holy shit, this should, this should be like b2b sass. Software like this is so good it will blow people away. 

22:02
Um, and in fact I suppose probably some of the interesting things that people have done is the bolt ons on top of the bet scrollers and the trading backend software, which is often something with data, is basically some sort of visualization. So dashboards that can give a large amount of information condensed into a, into a decision making that. There's that so much. I've seen some really nice kind of dashboard visualizations of these. Are your positions on this current sport, this game? These are the parlays you've got rolling up into it, these are all that like that kind of information. 

22:36
Now, you know you still would employ people good enough to use that information in a meaningful way. But yeah, I would say if you had to say something like what's so different meaningful way. But yeah, I would say if you had to say something like what's so different? Like that, there are literally like completely like grayscalenet type, you know, brutalist interfaces that look identical to like 2000, when I got into bookmaking, while the back end, you know the back end 20 years ago was a guy with a piece of you know a graph paper, like literally, like plotting out like 37th minute, this is what the price lines up with here, kind of thing you know in the back ends. Now it's like you know it can do four million pieces of those graph paper. You know a second, so you know that's. That's definitely where the the quantum. 

23:19 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Well, nothing's a quantum leap in bookmaking, but you know what I mean, like that's where the big, the big jumps be made definitely yeah, well, I mean certainly there's been a massive acceleration on that in recent years and that's like the. The consumer expectation now is very different than what it was even five years ago. Um, zach will erase the board behind him in a second, but I have experienced myself consulting for sports books and and this is in the 2016 to 2020 time range and even as I think about the systems that were in place, I mean I've been in trading rooms for Super Bowls where there's just a trader that is scrolling through a massive list of liabilities that they have for specific props and moving based off of what looks like a Word document, like nowadays. It's like that would be impossible with the amount of bets that are coming in. 

24:16
Even with live trading, which you mentioned, at one time it was good enough to just be on the board for 25% of the game. Let's have a lineup for 25% of this soccer match Now. It would be absurd Like people would just I mean they would switch to another product if that was the case, and I think it's really ramped up obviously US legalization, canadian legalization now as well, but I think the acceleration has gone. I mean it was pretty much a flat line for maybe a slight increase for a decade, a couple decades, and now we've just hit, like this, exponential growth in what the requirements are for a trading team 100. 

24:57 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I mean, I, I kind of like. You know, once upon a time we gave customers like one storyline and you had to pick your storyline is team A or team B and how much teammates going to beat team B or vice versa, you know. And now we're allowing people to create complex storylines with like multifaceted, like you know, parlay combinations. And so it's like you, you know, it's like a free-form computer game, like, yeah, one person's view of what's going to happen and what will be entertaining to them can differ wildly from another person, and we've facilitated the ability for them to manifest that in a bet. Um, yeah, I, I don't think, um, I don't think anyone necessarily envisage just like. I remember like people were, like really people are gonna parlay live and people kind of like, oh, I can, I can see it, but like is it? And just like, bang, just absolutely. You know, just suddenly, now people want to be able to. 

26:01
Like you know, my initial interpretation of this game was that lebron's gonna blow them away. They're gonna start slow in the first quarter. You know, come the third quarter, this like and the moment, like the storyline isn't playing out, how their first sgp was, like gonna happen. They're like, rewrite the script. I'm in charge here. I'm not gonna. This is now how the game's gonna go. I've seen it lebron's off. I've seen him, he doesn't care today. So now I need a new storylines back and it's like you're just allowing people to inject so much complexity into your system. It's just, and it really does seem to be sort of exponential in that regard. But yeah, I mean, it's been phenomenal for the profitability of the books, undoubtedly. 

26:45 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Also. You just think about the behavior of an average consumer. I grew up watching every NFL Sunday with my friends and having them over or going to a buddy's house and we were betting at a very early age, but it used to be. You bet the early games, the 1 o'clock Eastern time games in the NFL, and if you had a losing 1 o'clock, guess what? You can just throw some money down on the 1 o'clock Eastern time games in the NFL. And hey, if you had a losing 1 o'clock, guess what? You can just throw some money down on the 4 o'clock games. And guess what? If you lost there? You had that 8 o'clock Sunday night football game where you could chase all your losses for the week in that game. Now the behavior with my friends is completely different. You have the 1 o'clock games and if they're losing at halftime they're making live in-game parlays on the remainder of the one o'clock games like it's. 

27:28
It's expedited the chase like the chase game has come much earlier because of the evolution of the product. It's actually pretty dangerous to the consumer nowadays with the amount that's available to you in in real time with what's happening there do you think, though, if, like if the current product landscape existed when you started betting, do you? 

27:44 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
you think you would have been $110 to win multiple games? Or do you think you would have been one SGP $10 to win $500? Would you have bet 10 SGPs up to $100? I don't even know if the staking landscape would exist. The same way, I still come back to the thing that, in same way, like it's, I still come back to the thing that, in my mind, it's kind of. It's kind of brilliant, in a sense. 

28:10
The american odd system basically encourages you to bet a hundred dollars. Right, because we've made a system to. You know, this is what you, this is what you need to bet to win a hundred dollars, kind of thing. It's like it sort of perfectly set up for that. And then we look at, like the uk, for example, where the average odds of what was bet, you know, once upon a time, it was like horse racing, you know you couldn't bet on. You know soccer, once upon a time, and like, maybe, greyhounds, you know, but like, the average odds was larger, you know. The idea is that if you bet a hundred dollars, every horse, even with favorites, you know, maybe two to one or whatever. You know you go broke faster that way. So like stakes were smaller, people maybe bet on 10 to 1 etc. So like culturally have evolved to stake according to sort of the risk parameters that exist. And I'm just like there was a. 

28:58
There was a discussion I so I read an interesting article recently about the computer groups who bet into horse racing in the US. So they exist in all large US, all horse racing pools around the world, and one of the things that the guy mentioned and this has come up quite frequently was that horse racing tracks should stop promoting or allowing these bets that basically are some form of roll up bet across all the races, basically. And you know the argument was that this kind of gouged the player, reduced turnover over the races, et cetera, and I'm like you're kind of taking away one of the most fun bets If you go like. Taking away the lottery bets is like. And US horse racing is like all, like most horse racing jurisdictions not all, no, some it's still very healthy, but a lot of horse racing jurisdictions, like all, like most horse racing jurisdiction, not all, no, some it's some. It's still very healthy, but a lot of horse racing jurisdictions around the world are suffering with lack of popularity in the product and I thought you know you're going to get new people into the gate and tell them, like you know, oh, you know that six race, you know you know multiple, but you know we don't do that anymore because it used to gouge people 40 or or people perceive it to gouge. You know anyway. But like I'm like it's the same with people like I see the argument a lot about SGPs, people talking about like look at the margin on this. Like you know it's just crushing the customers or whatever. 

30:16
But I very much because I've just observed like retail type betting patterns within the UK where a lot of people go in they play parlay cards for like the 3 pm kickoffs in the uk and they're betting just like 10 pounds to try and win like 100, 200, 300 pounds and they're really happy with the buzz they get from that level of bet. And I I sometimes feel that like, even if I bet like an sgp for each game on NFL Sunday but I had $10 a time, does that feel like you know, in terms of a responsible gambling perspective, which you know obviously we've all got to be aware of, is that maybe better than like the 110 lost, 110 lost. You know, like I sometimes think that and you just can't get away from the entertainment factor of it, like, like it's it's so. I like the engagement. Even even I'm like not that interested in it, but even I am more interested in like looking on twitter sometimes at, like what, how many legs is that? What, my god? Like there's like eight green ticks down a long list of things that have happened. Like it's literally like the guy has like predicted exactly how the game will play out, to the finest detail, and I'm kind of like, oh wow, that is kind of mental that you can literally and of course, a billion people do this. People are going to hit, some people are going to hit them. But I'm kind of like already, that's kind of like If you were telling the story in the bar, that's already such a more interesting story than what happened. Well, they're Baltimore, yeah, they cover they story. Then, like, what happened? Well, that Baltimore, yeah, they cover, they did a nice, you know, it's just already. 

31:47
I'm kind of like I'm checking out on it, whereas, like you know, like, so you know, and then I thought it wasn't gonna hit, but then the final over three and a half, you know over three points for this guy and he hit the buzzer and kind of like, and I won 10,000. Like that stuff is just like like people, like I think there's almost a section of the crowd that kind of like legislators should step in and stop it. And, like you know, ohio should not be the state where this kind of stuff happens to customers. Come on, guys, literally you're becoming the fun police at this point. It's here to stay and people love it. 

32:21
And when people talk about the margins, it margins. It's like. It's like you're multiplying in the simplest sense. You're multiplying things out right and I'm like just multiplying margin will create high margin, high hold products. It's like. 

32:34
Now I could argue that, let's say, minus 110 like standard. I could argue that for each further leg of the parlay, the next one should be treated as if it was minus 108, minus 106, minus 104. So essentially we try and taper some of that juice multiplying effect. Maybe, maybe that's like better. But in a world where people couldn't give a crap between the difference of minus 115 and minus 110, like how do you sell that? It's like look, you go and put this exact same 10 leg parlay if you've got got time before the game starts in DraftKings and Fangio and then you'll see that you're going to get paid out. 

33:11
Odds Checker actually I don't know if it's in the US version, but in the UK version did the same game parlay price comparison product. So the idea is that classic options like over-under points cover the spread. You could put in like five or six parameters and it will compare it across books and, funnily enough, there's, you know, as is so often sometimes the betting comparison sites you know the kind of the odd screens kind of for customers like have built their own versions of comparing because people are finding correlations in the same game. Parties haven't been factored in doing the price comparison job there, but generally it's like a really hard sell to tell people if you bet the next 500 sgps with us instead of there you know you're only going to lose, like you know, three thousand dollars instead of, like you know, five thousand dollars over there. It's really hard messaging um, so, yeah, so, but yeah. 

33:59
But I think sometimes people kind of like it's like, oh, this market's like minus 40% hold or whatever, and this is like only like one minus 110. It's like we're not comparing like for like here. It's like you know, and also like in terms of a risk curve, the more you multiply out things like, the smaller the probability, the kind of, the larger the variability that can be in the outcome. So whenever you're multiplying lots of things like that, you're always going to have just like hold is just a function of like hold is a function of probability in many in many regards. So, like I never quite understand people's uh obsession with like you know, you may be having fun but you're going to be losing. 

34:39
So bad it's like okay, well, I think we can. I think they'll live with it, they'll get over it it's an interesting perspective, like you. 

34:47 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You asked me, matt, if, if I had grown up with same game parlays instead of, you know, just straight bets or whatever, what would my behavior be like? And I will say I mean, each better is is very different, and there are some pro bettors who are only going to look for edge regardless at all times. They cannot in their mind, like justify laying a bad bet or or making a bet for fun. I'm not like that at all. I like to make recreational bets to enjoy a game. Um, they're not big. I don't even like consider them a portion of my bankroll, but it's just something that's fun for me to do. 

35:23
I rip all sorts of same game parlays during NFL season and I love the bet type, I think because it is so intertwined with ego, almost in that, like you can, you're predicting the game. But exactly like what you said, it's more than just saying I think the Cowboys are going to cover today. It's, I think the Cowboys are going to cover today, but they're going to do it with a second half comeback and Dak Prescott's going to have to throw for a ton of yardage and the Vikings are going to run the ball and this guy's going to go over it Like it's it's creating this story and it's so much. It just feels so much better to be right when you're correct on this whole story rather than an individual bet. That's what drives me to make those bets, more so than the money. Obviously the money, like you wanna win, but that's what I find interesting about the bet type. 

36:17
I think where people really take issue with the SGPs is the way in which they're advertised, because it's all around. I mean they are lotteries in a sense, but it's a lot of success stories, right, like this person put down 10 bucks and won 100K off of that bet. That could be you as well. It could be, but in most cases it's going to be you putting down 10 bucks and losing the 10 bucks, right? I think that's where some people see some responsible gaming issues with that specific bet type, with just the way that it's marketed. I go back and forth with that one a lot because I don't know how you market that, but it is a fun bet with the opportunity to win a lot. But I mean, if it was me growing up, that would have been my life I would have been just placing same game parlays with no edge and just be like any other recreational better. 

37:12 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I saw a guy yesterday on Twitter. He posted like or two days ago it was a 15 game, mlb parlay, like every game, and he went like 12 of 15. And he was like I'm getting getting closer. Like I'm getting close, like this is I'm hot, tomorrow I'm gonna hit, and it's like it doesn't matter. You know what I mean. But it's crazy because if you really think of it, like he was still so far away from winning that parlay right, and a lot of times people put in like they'll go four or five on a parlay but the last leg loses and it's like a plus 800. And you're like, okay, well, you were so far away from hitting that it was not really like by a hair, you weren't 50-50. 

37:52 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, you hit all your minus 1000s and you threw a plus 800 at the end. That lost. 

37:56 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah, I like the SGP is a good format. Personally, I do like it. I think most people just want a low risk for a high payout Cause. Like Matt, for example, if I asked you right now, hey, like, let's, uh, let's play like a randomizer and if I win you pay me a hundred thousand, and if I lose I'll pay you a dollar, You're you're probably going to be like, nah, fuck that, I don't. I. It's not worth the stress for me to even risk a hundred thousand to win this dollar, even if I have like a you know 50 percent edge, like it doesn't really matter to you, right? 

38:27
the average person would never even 10 grand if I told you rob, like let's play, you're not gonna do it because you're like, fuck, imagine I lose 10 grand to johnny and this thing on the air, like I know I'm not for what, for a dollar, like I don't even want the dollar. But the average guy would like I'd play you right now. I'd risk a dollar for just for fun even if I had terrible odds. 

38:46
You know I had terrible, I know I and and I think that's what people hold on to is like the low risk for the high payout. They're like whatever, I don't care about this dollar. So like sure, and a lot of these guys are playing like legitimately, for one dollar, three dollars, they put three dollars to win ten thousand, six dollars to win a thousand and it's like all right, whatever, I lost six bucks yeah, so that's really the value what. 

39:09 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
What's interesting is those the is the again the. So one of the you know people often talk about, like you know, in the sharp space it's like the point of betting is to win money. I, yeah, I don't. That's not something I want to go like to down there, but undoubtedly one thing that is true across Sharps and Rex is that part of the appeal is being rewarded for being right. The right factor is huge and it's undoubtedly looking like complete Nostradamus, like being right about every single facet of a game. It literally is like the galaxy brain meme. Like you just feel, like you're in, like you've done something. That's impossible. 

39:49
What I find fascinating is like predicting eight games on the NFL, like in the spread, like it's kind of like. It's like the you know the, the meme of the guy with the girl he's looking over his shoulder at the other girl. It's like I literally walk around, like hitting game nfl parlay on the spreads, like that's the girl he's walking with looking back. There's like hitting eight games, same game parlay, but like I've predicted the rushing yards, the passing yards, or it's like. It's like I, I'm interested, like the same payout and yet one is just so much cooler in your mind than like the other, like literally the same, but that's I find that fascinating. And one thing that I got like a little window into recently was that there are some I don't know, I don't know how universal this is across all books, but like same game parlays has hit live volume. Yeah, like people thought live volume was unstoppable like we hit 50, 50, we hit 60 live volume, 70 live volume. Like books were hitting like 80, 85 live volume. Like this is live volume. Books were hitting 80%, 85% live volume. This is an unstoppable train. Pretty much people just won't even bet pregame anymore. And the same game parlay. It brought the fight back and there were people going. Why is live volume dropping off? This is a worry. This is like the cash cow. What's happening. And the funny thing is people going. Yeah, I want to be worried, but the margin seems really healthy and like literally people just like processed and put two and two together. It's like, oh, people literally have a bet for the whole game. They have a bet for the whole game so they don't have to like stare and you know what's like this. 

41:17
This will sound like overly, like pathetic and over romancing, but I'm like I love the idea that people are actually watching the damn game rather than watching their phone, looking at the odds update on their phone. I love it if there's more people out there who are chasing ridiculous same game parlays and enjoying the actual sport and cheering every three point and all the rest of it. Like you know, I sound like a sucker, but that that is more fun to me than the idea because, like, like, this whole trend towards like the micro market, like that to me is just so brutally dumb. Like I hate. I hate the like. 

41:50
Like I remember sitting through pitches where people were talking about like yeah, so for an mlb game, you'll be able to bet on something every single pitch. And they were talking about it like, can you think of anything cooler? I'm like I cannot think of anything that would be more torturous to me than, like, betting into it's only minus one, 10 in these, fast my life, betting into minus one 15, a thousand pitches in the road, like I just I'd rather die, kind of thing. And those markets like genuinely, because they're I don't care what anyone says, like is this next pitch going to be a strikeout or not? I just don't think it's an interesting proposition. So really they need to lean heavily on gamification in the apps and the websites to make them attractive and then we get into slot mechanics to make those markets actually anything other than the piece of shit that I think they are. They've got to have some kind of like. I'm surprised, like if you hit one like little gold coins don't rain down on the screen yet telling you like congratulations guy. Like that is like and you know all power. To people like like I've, I've read like the attention economy and these, I've read like all the tricks people do to get you glued to this stuff. 

42:51
But like I I almost find the idea of the same game parley, you and your buddies. You each pick your same game parley and then you sit down and watch red zone, which is like I mean, is there any purer religious experience than Red Zone? You know like literally you're there Just like. I love the idea Like, instead of looking at our phones like trying to, you know, like, oh, you know what's the price update. I just love the idea that I'm just like watch the game. 

43:14
Like what I think is that the cross same game parlay across all the games on Red Zone. Like I've got something that's like total touchdowns across all games, all the rest of it, like that, like every time they cut to something it should be. Like someone in the group is like, oh, that's good for you, buddy, you know, like you've got that guy like overpassing yards or whatever it should be like and that is how, like you know, that should bring To me. It's like if you're a be having, like if I'm esp, I've got like whoever the talking head currently, these men I've got like. I just I want to see shaq's same game parlay listed on the side of the nba game and as each one hits, I want a big green tick to appear on the side of the bar. So then find like and like, like if shaq wins, we all win, you know whatever and like it just be, you know, tremendous, you know. 

44:05
I think I think genuinely like it could really be, because I think it feels kind of ten dollar same game parlay to a guy's like, congratulations, you win the car, whatever. That just has like a kind of more innocent vibe to it than like the kind of guy takes, you know, a ledger out from behind the bar. So what is it like? I'll have 500 on the patriots, whatever, like that, like that I think in the american mindset. It could be wrong, but it feels like there is sort of still this kind of like oh, that's a bit seedy, but, like you know, buying lottery tickets, like not no one ever like going back to, like the advertising of the lottery, like the euro, millions, so like the, the largest, like it's like the powerball for europe, like uk, all the countries, like all the tickets go into the same thing and it's always like what's the appetite? You know literally must be the easiest job in the world. So what's the ad campaign? Guys, people with swimming pools, butlers, massive cars, whatever. So what's the? 

44:57 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
messaging we're sending here. 

44:58 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Well, we're in 150 million and it's pretty cool. Like, yeah, okay, great, pretty cool. Like, yeah, okay, great. Like literally, let's go to lunch and it's like that is completely fine. And like people, people like I think the funny thing is a lot of people like, oh, but people only buy like one or two lottery tickets. Like dude, they do not. There are people who buy like 100, 500 lottery tickets and when they're getting the lottery tickets, they're buying the scratch cards next to the lottery tickets at the same time. So it's like. 

45:21
I find it so like you know, the adversarial, like bookmaker versus better, like, don't get me wrong, they're advertising aggressively until someone puts something that says you can't advertise this way, they're going to push horrific limits. They will go, you know, and people like don't cry, this is capitalism, you know, like you know we, we allow people to like advertise like fast foods filled with shit and all the rest of it. Like that people will push right up to wherever they're allowed legally to push um. So you know, hey, we removed. You know we removed cigarette advertising in the uk. You know there's heavy restrictions about alcohol advertising, like if anyone says like oh, you're pro bookmaker, whatever. So that's like, totally, I am, I love betting, I love bookmakers, I love bets, whatever. But like, in terms of like the advertising, yeah, if someone said to me, like we wiped it out, it's illegal tomorrow, I'd be like, yeah, it's nice kind of miners, don't care, they bug me, they bug you. I make my living from bookmakers and still, like you know, it bugs me to see all that like advertising. 

46:22
People obsess over the messaging of the advertising. It's like, oh, but they say like you can get rich, you can win infinite with us, and like that's the problem because they close, you're just like ah, you know, the problem for me is just the incessant like. It's so brain dead. Like bookmaker, when was the last time you saw an ad? They were like, oh, that's kind of cool, that's clever. I see what they did there just doesn't happen. It's just saturation, kind of like. 

46:44
Yeah, I have to deal with chris rock at the moment, with the mgm campaign in the in the in the uk and the. The only, the only enjoyable part of that. One thing that's interesting is but mgm thought that chris rock translated universally like don't get me wrong, uk people obviously know who chris rock is, but like it's not, like they didn't get like a very uk facing person, but they get him to say things so Seng in Parley might be called Bet Builder in the UK. So it'd be like get your Bet Builder. And it just sounds so weird to hear him. 

47:14
He's clearly been held that script and it's kind of like I have that image of oh, lost in Translation, bill Murray kind of being given the kind of script, like I got to say what, okay, you know like. And I just picture like chris rock just looking at this, going like how much might be paid for? Oh, like a million, okay, yeah, I'll say whatever crap they want me to like, because it's just like just some of the jargon that he has to put. And it's like like when he's saying like bit over corners in the euro competition, like it's like come on, like you must just be going mad, like having to do this. 

47:46 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, it's interesting. I thought we get Jamie Foxx for MGM in Canada. I thought that Jamie Foxx might have been like the worldwide MGM guy, but I didn't know Chris Rock was doing MGM, so they're picking based off of the region, which obviously makes sense. 

48:02 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
But yeah, anyways, I didn't want to interrupt you, but you mentioned the MLB betting, like the at-bats, Like oh I don't want to bet minus 50. 

48:08
You know what they got to do. So, by the way, they have like live same game parlay. So you're even saying like live. And then it was a list by same game parlay For the micro betting markets, like next pitch. They got to just allow you to combo those for a while. So, for example, like a guy's coming up Aaron judge is coming up to bat, you have to be able to pick the whole at bat with like crazy odds. So you pick like strike, strike ball, ball home run, and then it's like massive payout. That would actually be something you can watch. 

48:39 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Yeah, I, I, you know what I'm in, I'm in on that. No, I definitely am in on that. And can you imagine when they bring up the strike zone box and you've missed out on your fifth leg because the ball has been called incorrectly by the umpire? Anything that increases umpire rage? Umpires listening to this will hate me for saying this, but the reality is it's like. People say like far is the worst thing ever in football. I, I am, I am like, I don't like var. You know, I am, you know, kind of a luddite in some of these things. 

49:16
Um, but one thing you got to say is, like, you know, in terms of like, because twitter has kind of coined this environment whereby no such thing as bad engagement, it's like, you know, the algorithm just wants rage, that's all it cares about. And it's like VAR is just, I mean, it's hard to think of anything that's created more rage than VAR, like in recent times. And I just think, like, suddenly, if people literally hint, like there's one pitch and it's like that's a strike, I've won, I've won $10,000. That's definitely a strike. And it's like ball or whatever, like what, you know, like that. And then you know because, because, and essentially, at some point we'll just be all videoing our responses, all because you don't want to miss the one time that that happens, like because let's you know the the grp video was? I mean, is that, is that one of the more significant twitter events? I feel like, like even I don't even know which video you're referring there. 

50:04 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Could you could be referring to the one where he bought the when he bought his new balance sneakers or no, no, the oh going back the player of the year ticket was, oh, yes, the joe flacco uh, comeback. 

50:14 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Player of the year and they're like, literally like, like for me, like I remember when um sky, which is like sort of the sports broadcaster in the in the uk, I remember like when they first started showing um, like basically two fans commentate on a game, like in a split screen or whatever, and a lot of them would like excruciatingly boring or cringe. 

50:37
But sometimes you get to like guys like oh, these guys are going to be amusing, because if you're one fan from each team, kind of thing, and it's like if someone like, if I was like on Tiktok, whatever, and it was like, is his like the hundred worst bad beats, like slow mo's of the faces as they go down, kind of thing, I definitely would be stuck on there for at least a little bit, because just the number of times we're like, you know, the problem is that, yeah, you'd have that real and you know what. You then have like another reel of people who'd be like, and then I cashed out and yeah, it just so happens the next one would have been the losing bet. So you know, whoever me, you know like I could just see, but yeah, like, at some point we'll need to. It'll be like big brother, you know. But yeah, but yeah, no, I do like the idea of being able to call a hole at bat. That would be, and that's doable, right? That's yeah, that's definitely within the realms of calculations. That would be good. 

51:37 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
With these particular bet types. Matt, do you think that there's any concern to the sports book from a retention point of view? So I've had this conversation with some other people. They'll remain anonymous. I don't want to use their names right now. But on the topic of what will retention look like a couple of years from now? And one of the hypotheses is that, well, people were so used to betting these straight wagers which, whatever, you lose 5% at a time, and now they're betting into markets where, okay, every dollar you put in, you're losing 15, 20 cents at a time. And it's all fun and games now, but eventually, at some point, people will look back and be like, well, I can't keep making these types of bets because I'm losing my money so quickly. Do you think that there's a legitimate argument that, okay, this is great now, it's building a lot of entertainment, but we might reach some capacity in a couple years where people are just like I'm actually just done with this because I'm losing my money way too quickly? 

52:38 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
So right. So one thing is I have to assume some change. So if I deposit $500 into a sports book, thing is I have to assume some change, like so if I deposit 500 into a sports book, you know one guy's betting five straights and I'm betting maybe 50 different, you know I've got to assume that, like any extra holds, you know that I'm I'm losing by doing sgps. I may be getting more bang for my buck generally by betting more small things. Now you may be the guy who's like you know I'm betting 10 sgps today, hundred dollars, deposit hundred dollars long, and it may be that they're equalizing. But I say that in general. In terms of time frame, maybe the sgp guy is taking longer to burn through that 500 than the straight sky. 

53:19
Now, in terms of, like him, not taking longer to get the satisfaction hit of having hit a bet, well, the beautiful is that we're no longer alone ever are we. We're always only one second away from some inspiration. So because we all bet collectively now via social media, like I will know a guy who hit a big one, because you've got to remember, like the people who play parlay cards week in, week out, very unlikely to hit. You know the parlay cards and they kept on playing them like everyone's got, like a dad or an uncle or a friend or whatever who's like play parlay cards every week of their life, their entire lives, and like they've hit very few, but they still come back and play them. So for me, like, as long as the content marketing around the space is always revolving around highlighting people who hit the jackpot, there's an element of you know you'll never. 

54:12
It's like people to a degree you know it's funny because everyone goes to. You know, like, let's say, there's people who fly to Vegas every year, right, and they take certain amount and they're pretty confident that like, yes, they come back from a trip where they broke even, but a lot of the times they go have a great time spend it. I think the sgp provides more opportunity for kind of an emotional high low experience that can be shared with other people. That maybe then allows you to remain engaged in the process of placing them and like, if it's just you and a bunch of buddies got the whatsapp group telegram with you, whatever, you know, someone posts it one leg you know one leg of the parlay away from hitting it and then you're in on it and like you're like I gotta get to. Where can I find a way to watch this game? You know, like, because my buddy's about to hit, like the jackpot or not you're. 

54:59 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
you're a good friend, by the way, matt, because most of my friends, if I I post that they're going to cheer against me, they're going to go fade you too, and then send you the screenshot. 

55:08 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I said I wanted to watch the game. I didn't say which way I was cheering. You know, like. 

55:11
I definitely like, but yeah, no, you know, I think the increased engagement factor of that is like is definitely going to stem some of the retention thing. The other thing, though, is that I think the books used to do this kind of almost on autopilot without realizing, but now it becomes a more conscious business calculation, in that once upon a time, you had your big whales and you'd be like you know, okay, this guy gets a reload bonus or this guy gets whatever you know, like just you know, you could almost look at his graph and it's like oh, that's ugly. You know he's like, you know he's only supposed to lose 5%. He's losing like 20% over this and a last NFL season. So you know, we gotta look after it. Yeah, we've got to get him into MLB for this year. So maybe the you know 200% reload or whatever that kind of thing. 

56:01
They managed it because they understood that these people like now they may not be talking whale in terms of value, in terms of absolute dollars, but sgp has turned a lot of us into whales in terms of long-term lifetime value, in terms of quality of player. You know a guy who plays only sgps and plays like 10 a week and ten dollars, maybe a hundred dollars, but, like you know, the other beauty is like sgp, like you don't have to wrap any data. Live data is just an absolute ball-breaker, so you don't even have to soak up that. The guy who bets just pre-game and just loses and is like that he is legitimately the most valuable player in the book now, apart from the super whale. So I think there'll be more people who will literally monitor these accounts on a more strict basis and be like anyone who drops below this line. They're gonna see the free bets appear in their inbox. They're gonna see like the little extra boosts, like the. The hyper personalization to ensure that you lose at the required rate. 

57:03
I think is definitely a thing there will definitely be, people listening to this and be thinking this is such cynical shit. It's like it is big, you know, it's like you know that, believe me, you know, look at mass farming. There's some cynical shit. But you know, like it's it, to me it's kind of like there is going to be a point where, in terms of these customers are so good, the generosity that you can give them will be far better. And so, like right now, people are like you know, you've seen the rush where people are getting crazy bonuses to open accounts or whatever. We'll pivot towards retention. 

57:36
You know, it's like I remember there was a period in the off. I mean I don't know if it's still like this, rob, but like with offshore, once upon a time it was leaned heavily into deposit bonus and then rollover, and then the rollovers got bigger and bigger and bigger. And then someone said, how about if we gave a small bonus on deposit but a bigger bonus on redeposit? And then that suddenly kind of like, oh so we see who's good first before then we reward them with like that definitely felt like a mindset change at some point, particularly in offshore, and I think that that mindset right now customer acquisition is still like in a new place like the states. 

58:10
Obviously a hyper focus, but long term, I think, thinking about how to look after really good players. And once upon a time, a really good player was a guy who would chase losses into sunday evening on nfl, maybe. And now, who knows like the great player can just be that guy who bets $10. He's, he's the royalty. Now maybe he, maybe he gets really looked after, but looked after in like small, creepy ways rather than you know. Definitely he should be. That guy should get the DraftKings cap in the mail. 

58:37 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You know, that's, that's, that's definitely the guy you should be looking after, I'd say yeah, I think the good player nowadays is considered someone who's highly engaged with the product, so probably a lot of play days over the course of every month, maybe even every day. Multi-product is still got to be pretty huge in the industry, right? If you have someone that's playing both in the sports book and the casino, that's got to be viewed as a great player. So I think a lot of like what's viewed as a good player. I don't know that that's evolved a lot over time. Those are probably still things that were looked at before. 

59:12
But yeah, I'm just curious because the landscape is changing so drastically all the time and we're like in a new era now where we don't know what these new bet types and we don't know how that's affecting. I mean, we have some data on how that's affecting behavior over the past one or two years, but we don't know what the long-term effects of that are. So I'm very interested in hearing, uh, all these different hypotheses on on potentially where we could go down the road well, I mean. 

59:37 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
One thing I would like is, like I I don't know, but like it feels to me that draft kings and Fangio, when they were DFS sites, purely DFS, like if someone won a Millie maker, whatever like, or you were like a top DFS player, you'd hear about the crazy shit that they did for you, like flying you to the Playboy mansion, all this kind of crazy like I met someone who's flown to the Playboy mansion. It's quite a disappointing story, sadly, but anyway, you know, know, like you hear about these things. What I think is that fangel and dfs right now, be like. You know why am I not hearing about the guy who hit the biggest same game parley of the weekend and what happens is we flew him to the draft kings lounge in vegas to like live it up. Because, like, like you almost and again sorry, we're entering into cynical territory be almost. Like we're rewarding this guy like he already won. People are like he's already won like fifty thousand dollars. How much more reward does he need? No, because he was so damn clever. He picked out 12 different things that happened in the game. Do you know how galaxy brain that shit is? So you almost make it look like it was the skill game. You make it look like he's the dfs, because dfs winners like, were always projected to be like. Because it was. You know. You know they're just taking the rake so it's not adversarial. You know it's kind of like they could always promote them as like this incredible winner. They're so brilliant, they're genius or whatever and it's like I think you know if you really wanted to, you could be like and you know we took bobby to like the super bowl because you know he was like the biggest like. 

01:01:04
You know you could like submit your ticket Like so one every weekend. You could submit like like a circuit contest. Like each weekend you could submit a ticket and put a tick next to it Like that's my SGP, like tick for the competition, and then at the end of the competition, you know there'll be a guy A who hit multiple SGPs across the NFL season and B would be up. He'd be up a lot, you know, across all their draft kings or fan duels, like customer base. There'd be some guys who were like and you'd have a leaderboard and then there'd be people putting in like I need a 20 leg parlay for the final weekend to get into the top of the leaderboard of this, like that, and then you take these guys big photo with them, you know, just living it up, whatever, like at the super bowl, like you know, pressing flesh with all the players or whatever, and they'd be like. 

01:01:45
You know, these guys were like like DraftKings, like the DFS sorry, the SGP Avengers. These guys took us like and they added up like totalize it. Like these guys took us for $5 million this NFL season. These are the biggest brains in sports betting. It's all complete bullshit. But then again, I I mean everything in our industry is complete bullshit. So it's like, but yeah, I just think, um, they just haven't even hit the limits of, like how they should be promoting this and, like, you know, really, really going about just, you know, making it cool yep, totally agree. 

01:02:19 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Um, on the flip side of this, matt, uh, I'll ask you a very broad question. You could go in whichever direction you want, but we talked about, I guess, the good in the product space in terms of innovation within sportsbooks. What do you think are some of the biggest weaknesses or blind spots right now in sportsbooks? And that could be from a product perspective, it could be from a trading, software perspective, internal systems, anything that you want to share that you think is a huge blind spot right now. 

01:02:50 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
So you know, we are, I suppose, getting into the point where the complexity of the products that they're offering is getting to the point where, like humans, can maybe not fully understand the level of risk that they're going through. Right now, risk management does still revolve largely around the fact that, as a bookmaker, your counterparty the better is not as smart as you, so therefore the risk should be minimized in that regard by virtue of the fact that you don't need to worry about too much. But you know, we've seen some examples, um of tickets of like what looked to be fairly heavily color-related parlays like a fan jewel or a DraftKings, these kind of things, and you just think to yourself. One thing that is true is that the average advantage player has been given a huge leg up by software, like those unscrupulous BetStamp people and those unabated people or whatever. But the result is that we now have huge customer bases of bookmakers and a lot of those customers can then end up using a software tool that directs them to the perceived advantage play or whatever. And if the advantage play is no longer something that's like minus 110, if the advantage play is something that's plus 1200 and enough people bet, that you can build up like meaningful liabilities. 

01:04:03
I have heard of certain let's call them leaks that have yet to be found, costing amounts of money that to a smaller book would be really damaging to the book. Like, really, I mean they're eye-watering amounts of money but because they've happened at a, a 365 or a fange or whatever, you're kind of like, ah, it's going to be soaked up. But, um, I think that the observability of these kind of liabilities can sometimes be hard to display in a meaningful real time way to trading teams. That's probably like the slightly sort of like nerdier thing, I guess that's sort of I feel like not being not being displayed well enough maybe in bookmakers, but in terms of where they're behind, it's kind of like everyone who's not producing a product that is at that level of a 365 or a FanJul. It's like you shouldn't really even focus. 

01:05:04
In a strange way, people might come in to me and say, oh, what can you do to help trading and risk management? And the reality is that if you don't have, like the SGP or the, you know all the things, the bells and whistles that people want, it's kind of like building that's going to give you more margin than me telling you that you know you shouldn't be doing, you know, know these kind of markets in this fashion or whatever, um, but yeah, I mean there's, there's still some, like you know, low-hanging fruit in terms of the way they're doing it. Um, and yeah, I suppose technology, just, you know, you need to have technology showing you there aren't enough. I this this is super boring. There is not enough watchdog systems, like so. 

01:05:52
It's it's hard to get people to be hyper engaged in trading all the time when there's already such level of automation. And it's funny because we have bettors who have figured this out, whereby it's like I get a telegram alert telling me to do something, or I have you know a software, you know I get my notification from my desktop, whatever, like that. And so people they don't have to hyper-focus all the time. They get alerted, they go place the bet somewhere, whatever. And it's like I think there's a lot of expectations, like you clock in buddy and you stare at those scrollers nonstop for the next eight hours and you catch anything that happens or whatever. 

01:06:21
And it's like, or maybe we should just be building better systems that notify us in real time when something could be happening before situations develop. I still think that, like I see, I will tell people like okay, so how do you know if there is, you know, a severe upsurge in a live college football game, because maybe the time clock or the feed is slow coming from your provider and you know there's, like you know it, someone else has got a local radio feed in the state maybe, and it's fast and everything and what's happening is every down you're being past posted. I've used a very like I haven't actually had that experience, but you know, like use a very sort of hyper specific example and they're just kind of like well, maybe a liability trigger would hit at some point or something like that, and you're like I feel like that's savable dollars there. I feel like we don't need to hit the offline this game because we've hit like minus 50K or whatever. I feel like we could have hit. You know we could have seen that before, because is it common for that lower division college football game to have that kind of volume? Should there have been a volume spike indication? Did something get really interesting? Why did it get so interesting these kind of things. 

01:07:37
Some people listening to this may be like oh yeah, I can see that. And other people may be thinking my god, that's the most basic shit ever and it's like. Well, in a world where you broadly print money as a bookmaker, you know sometimes you do miss the, the, the sort of seemingly basic stuff. Um, but yeah, you know you've got to aggregate absolute load of like again boring. You need such incredible databases. Now to. You've got so much player data real-time. You know sports update data. You know the data lake. Warehousing of data is like a massive thing that like no one's very few people have like done really well. Um, aggregating like a million data feeds from different providers. You know you've got your bet radar, your bet genius, you know your img, all the rest of it. But like these are, these are like more. Yeah, they're probably not for you. This audience probably couldn't give a crap about all that stuff. It's a bit boring, but those are like sort of. 

01:08:33
I suppose the, you know, just just like how do we keep the show on the road at the scale that people want is like a big part and like if we're going to have a product that's at this scale, like you can't just have your shopping mall with all blood your one guy looking for. You need to give people the tools to monitor that huge attack surface area that you're presenting to the world. Um and yeah, and do it like it's got to be done, not in a kind of like staring at individual bets coming in, because essentially what you're doing there is, you're like each person will have different filters. Like I can go in a trading room like five guys have five different setups for the same piece of software. You're like okay, oh yeah, he likes it like that. Okay, right, is it good? It's his must be terrible. 

01:09:23
Like literally, guys would joke with each other about like my, my configuration is the best you know. Like no one's better than my the way I set up my scroll or whatever. And it's like okay. And it's like and I I literally would ask like have you, have you ever gone in a room together to discuss the like is there an optimal here? Like no, like you know what it's almost like you know touching, you know touching another guy's fries or whatever. I would not tell him how to set up his scroller. That's his business kind of thing. So I feel like providing people better ways to be alerted and to react to information that's beyond just what we were doing in 99. 

01:10:05 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Almost would be a step up to step up yeah, it's pretty topical as well too, when you consider, a few months back we had the jonte porter situation with uh draft kings building up a large liability and uh just not. I mean, listen, I can't speak to the exact specifics of that situation, but I think a lot of people, uh, a lot of people's takeaway from that story was like how could they have built up this much liability and not realized it on a bench player, essentially through same game parlay. So, yeah, I think technology it's a good example, matt, that you bring up. On the same subject of technology, have you heard of any artificial intelligence being used or utilized in trading rooms right now for sportsbooks, or any other potential emerging technologies that might be a little bit under the radar that are being used? 

01:10:58 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Yeah, I mean so. I mean, when we say artificial intelligence, you know what we mean. Is machine learning really? You know. When we say machine learning, you know looking for meaningful patterns within data that can be utilized. Customer profiling is the most obvious thing. Feed in a ton of data points about a customer, you know, get the algorithm to try and tell you, like, how good of a customer they are. That's like pretty standard practice. Now, know, get the algorithm to try and tell you, like, how good of a customer they are. That's like pretty standard practice. Now, that's sort of where you get your probably your your best mle machine learning engineers, kind of going into um for the same reason, like it all feeds off that because the same project that determines that will be the same thing that determines when you send your email shot like what's got the highest rate of, like email opens when do you send it. 

01:11:51
Do you send it sunday morning? Like you know what color scheme do we use for? You know, like this, like what gets? All this data gets fed in and you're just trying to constantly feed it into basic, like like you know, huge data sources that then have machine learning running on it to basically determine. You know, anything from marketing strategy to retention strategy, to bonusing, to all these things like what do we put on the front page of the website when no one is doing this? Like? Like AI? Personalization is a phrase that I've heard, like the idea that we will learn what Rob likes to bet on, and what would be great actually is so if the AI was doing its job correctly, in one way, rob would log in and it would take him straight to like NHL spread or whatever like that. 

01:12:37 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Thank you, Matt. I've been waiting for this for years. I don't have to look at the live Swedish soccer on the homepage when I log into my accounts. 

01:12:46 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
And the reality is is, if the AI was really doing its job, it would present Rob with EPL money line Rob, because we don't think you're going to win here. You can see, you can see this. And NHL is buried in the menu like 4000 clicks away. I can't even find it now. Where is it? Like you know, hang on, there used to be a search bar. Have they disabled the search bar here? For me, like I can't even put leafs into like the search. No, so that would be, but yeah, no, that's the personalization Again. Like I think to myself, like okay, so you want personalization, so you want to kind of have settings that are bespoke for every customer and you've got over a million actives or whatever it's like. 

01:13:26
I'm starting to think like, oh, that's kind of costly, um, especially when we know that everyone just wants to bet the nfl on sunday, it's kind of there is that sort of you know, it sounds cool, it's clever, it is cool and clever, but is it practical when you actually try and execute on it? It's can be a challenging technical thing, but yeah, so like that sort of you know, you know, is that the use of like that you know how, how to manage customers from all directions optimally, I guess, because they're the biggest sources of data, machine learning in terms of um. You know, building live sports models. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, I. 

01:14:11
I think the reality is is that the, the sports models, like so many of the sports models, are just kind of like dressed up white papers from like 10, 15 years ago, from like the university of sydney or, you know, the university of exeter in england. Like there's some guy's, some guy who said this is how I would model this board at some point. They've then been iterated through another 20 white papers and they just kind of work and they do the job, the live margins that bookmakers achieve. I think they feel like they've already got it to a pretty good space. Although one of my favorite topics like that who was the? There was the story about that they use the soccer model for ice hockey. Was that? Was that a thing, or I? 

01:14:55 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
saw. Yes, that was, uh, matt peralt I want to say bostonian versus the book he had tweeted, tweeted, I think the Vegas Golden Knights were down in a game and he said he was live betting them, because the algorithms don't properly account for when a team is down because they're using the saw. I believe that's the story. 

01:15:15 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Yes, so like subsequently, like I've heard, like like someone told quite recently, someone said to me that they told me like this was absolute fact. They're like yeah, no, bet 365 initially, like this is way back, like you know again, we're talking like 15 years ago yeah, just use the rugby model for NFL and just let the guy like interpret the like, change the inputs to get. I was like come on that, that's that that literally feels impossible. But then you know that one I have no way to verify. But then there are other things I've heard that are so like, absolutely cringingly dumb. This is the great thing about it the betting industry does allow you to think it could have happened. You can never rule it out because you just hear some just ridiculous things as a bettor right now, matt. 

01:16:03 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
so where would be the place you would look to attack the sports book the most, the easiest? 

01:16:13 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I know we asked you two years ago, but where would you look now? So I'm going to come at this from the perspective of, if you're betting and you want to do betting, you're looking for a primary source of income, let's say, or even not like, even if it's your side income, but let's say you want to take betting seriously. I think that people who are really taking betting seriously should view it from the perspective of like a professional athlete, in that you have X years of it being good ahead of you and I would not project further than 10. I would assume that either you know crypto collapses maybe, or legislation changes things, or suddenly banks stopped accepting payments from whatever. Assume that there are black swans ahead of you or just your skill issue will hit at some point, you just can't beat it, or whatever. But assume like, assume your betting career is going to end far sooner than you maybe think, or just your skill issue will hit at some point, you just can't beat it, or whatever. But assume your betting career is going to end far sooner than you maybe think. And project yourself to think well, what do I want to achieve in that timeframe in terms of how much money? What's my escape velocity here. What do I want to walk away from? That will make me say that was really worthwhile putting in all that effort into sports betting. 

01:17:32
And I keep coming back to the fact that when you start assessing betting into, like you know, making two percent roi, like minus 110 sides, whatever, and you start to think about just how much volume you have to put through that methodology to get to it sounds grotesque same meaningful amount of money because obviously for some people, you know, $5,000 is a very meaningful amount, whatever. But you know, if we're talking about someone who's like I've got to get to a million dollars, $2 million, $10 million, whatever, I want to take this much out of this experience, and then you start retrofitting it back as to how much I need to bet and scale my bankroll to. I need to bet and scale my bankroll to and then bet at this amount and then try and avoid draw. So for me it's kind of like you've got to dial up the chance of failure really, because only by taking on more risk can you increase the asymmetric chance of success. And it literally brings us back. 

01:18:28
I literally look at the sweepstakes products now and I look at these kind of um, you know, player prop parlays and these kind of things, and I look at that and I think to myself it's got to be parlay orientated. I think it has to be based around something that feels synergistic with the book, because they want you to bet those products you want to hit. You know, you want. Because I again I think back to like all these people who became hyper successful bettors. They all have this breaking point in their story at some point where they hit this exit velocity, where they hit a lot of money. That could just be that they were bankrolled by someone, which is like hitting a big payout in a sense, because you got bankrolled. It could be all sorts of different things, but you need some way to break the slow curve. No one wants to do this slow trajectory. You've got to hit like an exponential moment early on. 

01:19:12
And so to me, like I now see a lot of Twitter content revolving around the sweepstakes sites and these kind of sort of DFS 2.0, whatever, like I saw, there's a guy who tweets a lot about over under round scores for golfers and he puts them together in like four or five and he's kind of basically measuring um course difficulty for the day and he's just assuming, like he's trying to basically um, multiply out that small edge across the fact that I think the course is going to play easier or harder. So it's all overs or all unders across several players. And to me it's like it's hard, right, because you're going to go in longer losing runs because of the odds range. But it also to me seems to make a some of the edges were multiplied out just so huge and b. It's like that is how you will get a meaningful amount of money for sure, if you, if you're persistent and you're diligent and you're disciplined, that is how to make a real amount of money. And there's every chance that, like three years down the line, you know you can still be betting into some. Like if you find a way to just hit, you know, incredible over NFL quarterback passing yards on the over. 

01:20:27
You know, like, week in, week out, like the rope you get on, that, like a lot of people, like little people, like to talk about what's the, what's the way to keep my accounts open or whatever. It's like dude, the only way to keep your accounts open is to do exactly what the book wants you to like, literally do exactly what the algorithm tells you, it wants you to. You know and think, once upon a time, just saying focusing on live was enough. People were like but now, because live has its own kind of tricky area where there's a lot of people who are botting the live, they're literally just algo-botting either live arbitrage or latency between one feed and another feed. Even that's become like if you really like, if you're going to bet once a game and like the sweet spot, like the perfect pivot point, yeah, you probably get away with that for a while. But again, we want to scale. 

01:21:13
Like I'm talking to people maybe who listen to this podcast, who are like you know they've had the bet stamp subscription. You know they've got their, you know, got their unabated. They've done all this, it's like, and they're just thinking to stuff like how can I like I want retirement money. I may not retire, but I want to really just like rip this to pieces and it's going to be by doing something the books want you to be doing and at scale, and you're going to have to put yourself at risk of ruin, like you know, let's, let's, let's disregard this kind of naive sense of like I bet a percentage of my bankroll so I can't go bust or whatever. It's like no, like you have to take on some risk in order to really hit the big numbers. 

01:21:56
Everyone I know who's like literally now sitting pretty and like you know, don't that doesn't have to work for a living. They all overbet at some point in their career. All of them, a huge percentage of them, went bust bentner, bill bentner went bust, went back to america with his tail in his, between his legs, then went back to hong kong and then made infinite money. It's like all of these people at some point had an edge that was like big and they overbet it aggressively. And it's like like like the, the, the bloody, like plain machine gun outline meme like survivorship bias meme, like that is just professional gambling. But don't be ashamed of the fact that. Like there's survivorship bias. Embrace the fact that don't feel bad if you know you do it for three years and didn't make it. Go do something else. There literally are other things Like sometimes I've never known a group of people who like feel so passionate there's nothing else worth doing than like people who want to be professional gamblers like there are a million things you know open a coffee shop, do whatever like, but I would say that you know. If you know that you've almost got to be a survivor, then do something that is like spectacular example of survivorship. You know, like so yeah, so I would. I would maintain that right now. You know, right now, right here. 

01:23:11
You know limits are undoubtedly wild for player props compared to the quality of pricing that goes into them. Like there is no correlation between limits that people like Fangio and DraftKings are setting and the quality of pricing into those. I know people sort of talking a lot about like, oh, fangio's pretty good, but like there is plenty of windows where every single prop is probably the wrong price leading up. Like there are literally games that, like you know, you can open an NFL and it stays the same from open to close or whatever. Like there's just always a point where almost every prop on the board at some point is wrong. And these are markets that we would have done in 200 in america, in the uk, like 10 years ago, and now they're being done for 2k, 3k, whatever, um, and you can parlay them and you can find things that a lot. You can find like eight things that are wrong on a given day that you can parlay in size. 

01:24:02
You know the nba guy. You know the, was it jonte jonte porter. Yeah, he's literally giving you the blueprint. The fact that that bet got through says just how dumb they thought the bet was. Maybe that's one possible argument. You know he literally has given the blueprint. So find the sgps or the. 

01:24:19
I think sgps is tough like, and I think sometimes people like people sort of say like this correlation is broken, like sometimes the correlation is really obviously broken, but sometimes people get really cute about like this player's out, so these points can go to this guy, the assist will go to this guy, and they talk about it like they're so damn sure. 

01:24:36
I'm like, yeah, it feels tenuous, feels like we're just one poaching decision away from your massive negative. You know massive correlation to be not quite so correlated, but you know I would say that there's probably easier low-hanging fruit maybe to just classical parlays, but yeah it's. You know, literally find what the book's advertising like, you know and I any any sort of anything that's just too important for the book not to just stick its neck out. So, like I wanted to. I was really obsessing over the Paul Tyson fight because you know you could just have stupid-sized bets on it and it's horrible because you know that you could get done on a bloody terms and conditions, or like oh, there's no, the fight didn't end properly, or whatever. You know there's a load of problems with it, but at the same time you know you know for a fact this guy's saying this on purpose, or what? 

01:25:30 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
This one, no, I don't. This picture right behind me over here brings back very bad memories for Johnny on a fight not ending properly. 

01:25:37 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That was absolutely robbed, Matt. 

01:25:40 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Actually no, I remember hearing about this. 

01:25:43 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So who are you going to bet in Paul versus Tyson? It's still going to happen later in the year. 

01:25:48 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I mean, I've got no idea, but all I know is that when that comes up, if you're serious about betting, I would suggest there'd be a lot of people who would tell me like, oh, you shouldn't be involved in that. Like, don't get me wrong. Okay, if you're like Tony Bloom, or if anyone tells you you could have a huge amount of money on something where no one knows the right price, you've got to be thinking well, I've got to be there. You've got to be thinking that I've got to have a. I got to step into that. You know, look at it from all angles. Like I don't care, you know, you know, I, I don't care what you do. But like, if you come away with the conclusion that there's no value bet, that's fine and don't have a bet, that's obviously fine. But in those situations I feel like you just have to step in. It's like, can you really have if you're able to bet on elections or political markets in your jurisdiction, when you're literally allowed to have infinite money on something? When you're literally allowed to have infinite money on something? And we know that these markets are historically have been I don't even want to talk about efficiency here. 

01:26:56
There is price volatility. You look at the price 24 hours before even the election it goes to vote and then actually at the time of vote, and there's a chance that if you took the best price on the two, three outcomes across that time period, it comes to 100. 100. That's what I would, you know, determine like the sufficient price volatility that the market self-arbs in a short time frame and you can have infinite money on. That, to me, suggests you have to dedicate. If your ambition is to live on a desert island at some point you have to step in Now. You can get cute with it, you can hedge it, you can try and optimize it, whatever. 

01:27:40
But that, to me, is like you can't turn those opportunities down and they're uncomfortable, don't get me wrong. You know they are uncomfortable. You know the recent. You know biden, trump, you know debate. You know I had people speaking to me and like back and forth and it's like literally, people say I don't know what to do, like I don't know. 

01:27:58
I hold this massive position on biden, I hold this trump. Like you know, I don't know what to do and I'm thinking to myself if some of the smartest people I know don't don't know what to do at this point you could either say, like well, I'm not as good as them, so I give up. But reality is is that you know, I'm sorry, but I've never, I've never, met a successful professional book. You know, like you look at all the people who like did well, very few of them like. Yes, they have humility in some regards, but in many areas they do not. And also they also know that when there's the opportunity to deploy a huge amount of capital, not get limited, not get your account closed, whatever it's like, you've got to at least put every ounce of your effort into seeing if there is an angle in it before turning it away. 

01:28:43 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So Matt, what would you say about, let's say, something like Euro, euro Cup, and the reason I say that is at this point you mentioned, obviously, looking for stuff with liquidity won't limit your account, stuff like that. If you odd shop on Euro, if you compare odds and you have a variety of sharp offshore books, penny, a few other accessible books, let's say, you're in that spot. There are scenarios in which you can essentially have your pick at either side of a game for massive liquidity within, let's say, one penny. Is that something you'd look to attack then, given the liquidity is so high and then the juice is so tight, is that something you would look to attack or no? 

01:29:25 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
then the juice is so tight, is that something you would look to attack or no? Well, I mean, let's not be coy. If you're in a situation where you can open new accounts, let's say you have a way to get access to new accounts and you're, I mean, I guess, like PPH kind of of things there's not so much as much advantage as this, but like, if I'm going to open a fan jewel account and I want to genuinely create the perception of a high roller, I probably want to bet every single euro cup game on a liquid market with them in the max. So I'm talking again, we're not talking about, like the guy on the street. We're talking about guys who are like building big gambling operations here. They want to pad the fan jewel right, you know if you believe in padding or not, but like, I guarantee you that like people sort of think to themselves like, oh, I kind of like build my way up to like the whale stakes to make myself look like a well, no, no, whales come in, they don't, don't build them. They're like, oh, maybe I'll try 500 and bet 50k later. Like whales come in and they just start slamming. So like, if I'm, like you know, opening a fangirl account, maybe in you know sort of a economically wealthy area, part of the states, and I'm just coming in and I'm max betting, you know and I can. 

01:30:47
People are thinking about like, oh, I don't want to have a negative view, but no, screw it, you just max bet every single euro game. Make it look like bet it, you know 10 minutes to kick off or whatever. Max bet all of them. Hedge it out if you want, take the you know 500 ev loss, whatever you know, if you want to, or just let it ride. And and the reality is that it's sort of a free roll in the sense that if you somehow went on some mad run at 10-minute-to-kick Euro Cup wins and you win, well great, you've just turned a lot of money into a lot more money. 

01:31:21
And if you lose, then at least now this if you're not getting the phone call from the vip team at some point in that process, then you know someone's not doing their job correctly. You know like, if you go on like if you lose the first six games and you're max betting like money line, like you know the favorite, whatever, um, then you know that should pay off. Now I'm not, I'm not in a position to be able to say the long-term account value that that buys you. But that's one way you can look at it. Like, if there's a way to get a large amount of money down and have it look, and the cost of doing it can be minimized to that point, like either you can almost arbit or whatever, then there's advantages to being able to do that in terms of creating account perceptions From just the perspective of like, can I bet into 100% market? Should I be doing something? So I think a lot of people are like oh, this market's really efficient, I can't bet it. 

01:32:19 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So here's what I was going to say because on the regulated sites right now you can't really bet soccer. The VIG is just not there. If you want to, if you want to bet soccer outside of pinnacle, there's not really any shops in in Ontario or in the regulated U S market that are going to take fair, fair pricing because the margins are so thin, right? So what I'm that? I agree with everything you said, by the way, but what I'm actually asking is let's say you had a plethora of sites that were not going to limit you, no matter what. They weren't going to limit you in taking big size. So you don't have to worry about any of that stuff and you could bet soccer at. I'll give you a two-way line so it's a little easier, but you have your pick at minus 127 or plus 125 for every single game on the board. Is that something? And massive liquidity? So let's say you can get up to 250,000 per bet. Is that a market that you would attack right now? 

01:33:16 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I really think, like the spread money line total, I still think that is like a tough. The funny thing is you'll get to the end of the tournament right and there'll be plenty of twitter guys who post their record for the euros and they'll have won money and they'll have a good roi. Um, the one thing, the one thing that never, so always, there is potential weakness within futures. I think in big tournaments, you can safely attack to qualify from group to win group to you know, get reach semi-finals, all these markets. I think you can safely attack to qualify from group to win group to get reach semifinals, all these markets. I think you can get away with a big bet and it doesn't look terrible as well, and I think there is a sufficient opportunity price volatility within those markets to make that worthwhile doing. In terms of the game, big limits it'll always be like the second tier of derivatives. So there's still an element of big tournament. 

01:34:07
Football is played in a way that is slightly different to, you know, league football. So there's the element of team can't qualify. So you get these like no, no effort games. Potentially there is elements of it's the very first game of the thing. You know people are going to play so defensively not to lose. You know, in the first game of the group or people, you know when it gets to knockout football, knockout football's played better. Now you can try modeling, like you know, the core markets to account for these kind of biases that international knockout football has, and many people are very good at that. My preference would be to take the core markets, try and create a sort of a derivative element. Or look at the game like. 

01:34:56
Still one of the people don't believe me when I say it's still one of the hardest like markets to get really good is both teams to score, because there is, by definition, a in like. So, like you can't use raw poisson in soccer. Well, a, the distribution doesn't fit perfectly, but b part of the reason doesn't fit is because people change the way they play based on the current score. That's why raw poisson doesn't work. So both teams to score is like all the pricing around that market is based around the premise of in a league game. 

01:35:30
You know this is the way we behave when we go one nil down or whatever, and yet there is a completely different behavior, not completely different, that's overselling it. But you know, both teams score is a really interesting market where I would want to like, if I'm going to model a derivative that still has a good limit on it. It's a square market. Well, on the yes side it's infinitely. Like you know, books will literally probably be 0% margin on the no lifetime in the book at you know soccer, and then they'll be like making 10% on the yes even though the market is like 106%. You know they make above the margin just because the yes is so over back kind of thing at times so similar to baseball, with the nerfy and your run in first inning. 

01:36:15
Basically yeah yeah, yeah, absolutely so. So that's sort of the you know, and also the dislocation between first half behavior and game behavior knockout football is again like, so I would maybe look at like again first half so, and game behavior knockout football is again like, so I would maybe look at like again first half so you can still get reasonable limits. Um, so I would. I still think it'd be a hard ask for most people, unless your job is to be a massive football syndicate. I would say, like, definitely look at those markets where you know you feel like there's going to be the most impact in changing in play styles compared to standard league football. Basically would be my best advice on that. 

01:36:53 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
A lot of good advice here from Matthew Trenhale. You can follow him on Twitter at. You'll often notice that he does elevate what I would call good information, whether that's through articles or strategies that other bettors are posting, and sometimes, if you look through the comments, that comes at the dismay of other people who are like ah Matt, why are you doing this? This information is a little bit too good out there. So, matt, out of curiosity, do you ever give any consideration to not giving any more visibility into winning strategies? I'm just just on a personal level. What goes through your head when you're, you know, going through your Twitter and and and posting stuff out there that you think might genuinely be good? 

01:37:45 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
So, yeah, so it's tough. I mean, you know I'm not, I don't, I can't not interact and at the same time I can't just live on shitposting and good job buddies alone. So I kind of need to talk about subject. You know, I'm in social media for some of the social aspects and I want to talk about things I'm interested in. 

01:38:10
Um, I don't feel often that the stuff I give out, like I certainly don't literally give the blueprint. I don't think I can't think of instances where I've like given away, like because I always think about the fact that, buddy, if you want to go make money, like betting, like you know, there is like the, you know bonus abuse, then arbitrage, then some form of top down, then player props and derivative, then like there's, like there's already the roadmap out there on the internet for like how you can make X amount of money from it before it then becomes tough and you've got to make a decision in your life as to what you do next kind of thing. So I always feel like anything I give out is unlikely to sort of supersede that as an already transparent way to um, you know, god, if I've ever given out. I wish someone would tell me if I've ever given out a syndicate's key edge, because that would be like almost a real moment of pride for me. But, um, but, but know, yeah, I don't think about it, I try not to like. 

01:39:09
I observe a lot of people talking about some things that I know were moments of conflict within betting groups as to how to solve, and this person's putting out their suggestion how to solve it and I know that that's the solution that was come up with elsewhere and I'm kind of like I've that situation. I looked and got, oh, this person does not realize that they literally just put out something that you know is um, is is valuable, so I'm and I'm sure maybe I've done that before and it's um, I don't, I don't try to do that, but I do always comfort myself actually on the. The other aspect of all these things is that it never ceases to amaze me how in the you know internet age, you can literally post, you know how to breed the geese that will lay golden eggs, and be like oh man, that sounds like a lot of effort. Oh, can't you just give me the damn goose you know that lays the damn golden eggs? Like you know, there is this kind of inertia. 

01:40:09
I sometimes wonder, like, is there a load of people? It's like the person who I believe, rob, someone approached you privately about talking about NHL originating. Like I don't know who that person is. I obviously don't want you to tell me who that person is, but what I find fascinating is invariably the person who did that. Whether to tell me who that person is, but what I find fascinating is invariably the person who did that, whether it's to you or someone else is just an egg what we used to call an egg on Twitter. Like zero follows, hardly any following. 

01:40:32 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Exactly. 

01:40:33 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Like barely made any like, and I think to myself like, oh you know, maybe there's, you know, I will never know if ever I leaked something that was really valuable. I don't think until, like literally, something pops up in my DMs and threatens to kill me. 

01:40:45 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'm sure you have. I'm certain you have leaked at least a few things that are valuable. I can go through and maybe say what they are. Maybe they're not valuable to everybody, but they've got to be valuable to at least a few. I think on this podcast, rob and I we try to skirt the line between giving out the exact edges and we're not really ruining the markets, we're not giving out everything but at the same time, like stuff slips through and you know the certain people listening and they get a certain edge. But if you really want the real edges you got to buy mine and rob's course and that's how we're going to teach you guys how to how all the real edges but um 

01:41:20 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
that'll be soon yeah, that's an inherent challenge in the space. It's like we can preach betting education, but obviously you all want to earn ourselves as well and you're constantly just trying to maintain that balance. But, like to your point, matt, like let's just use a random sport and these are all completely fictional numbers, right? But like I could do a 10% ROI betting on the NFL. I don't, but let's say I'm doing a 10% ROI betting on the NFL. I don't, but let's say I'm doing a 10% ROI betting on the NFL. I could put out like a long Twitter thread or a video and say this is exactly how you can go and build my model to earn a 10% ROI in betting on the NFL. 

01:42:00
And probably upwards of 50% of the responses I would get or DMs would be like can you just send me the picks? Can you just tell me what to bet? And it's like this weird. I mean it's not weird. I mean at the end of the day, you have to work hard to win. You don't actually have to work hard, but there's levels of sports better. But I just always find that hilarious where, like, I'll put out a piece of content and I'll be like very explicit of like do x, y and z, and then someone will just message on the side and be like how about? Instead you just tell me whenever you're going to make an nfl bet and I'll also bet it no, not even when you're going to make it after you're going to make it, johnny, when rob posts that thread, how do you set the odds? 

01:42:45 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
but of Sprott, shipper and Knish, who the first person to troll Rob's 10% NFL model is Like what's the first tweet reply? 

01:42:57 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That's definitely going to be. You know what? I don't even know who would troll the most, probably even some other guys that just go on. Like Rob gets a lot of random guys that are not necessarily names on twitter, that just are always in his uh, under his comments, that are roasting him, and he probably has a lot of them muted at this point, so you don't even see him. 

01:43:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
yeah. So, like I've talked about this on the show before, but if you have a large following on twitter, I think one of the best things I can suggest that you do is only set your twitter settings to only see mentions from people that follow you, because most of the people that troll told me actually don't follow me, which actually makes it even sadder because they're they're going out of their way to check my account without no, they, probably they see you on the for you page like this fucking guy again on the for you page, and then they, and then they start. 

01:43:43
So I don't see a lot of that and and if I get one, one negative or like perceived negative comment from someone, I will just mute them because I just don't want to see it and I don't need to deal with this person again in life. 

01:43:54 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
So I don't see a lot of it well, you've also got to talk about the beauty of the mute, right, because to me it's like everyone's like, oh, block that guy. I'm like he'll know he's blocked. I like the idea of the mute. I hope he rages, yes, forever against me. I hope you spend portion of every day like just thinking. I hope you saw that. I hope you saw that. I hope you saw that. 

01:44:15
I didn't see it, guy, I did. Did not see it even slightly like um, the mute definitely, I think, is like I I originally was kind of like I didn't really block anyone unless they were out and out. Like just, you know, horrific abuse kind of thing which I have been very fortunate in my multiple twitter accounts, not to not to really suffer from really, but like sometimes, you know, sometimes like just the the muting feels kind of satisfying because you're kind of like you know, if they, if there's like a train where they crop up and come up with the same kind of like, well, of course you'd say that because you're so stupid, it's like just kind of a better thing. I love the idea of like I really hope you just keep racking that up every day on every post I make and like you're just muted and you just don't you know, don't even realize. 

01:45:00 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I completely agree on that. I'm just checking my Twitters. I don't have a blocked account right now, so I've not blocked anyone. The muted accounts I could scroll for the next three hours and I would see a bunch of them as well. I'm a big fan of what I call the forced unfollow as well, where you do the quick block and then unblock and it makes them unfollow you. 

01:45:21 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
That's a little secret of the pros right pros, Not just a pretty face, Pozzola. You know that's next level. 

01:45:28 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Talk about finding an edge. 

01:45:30 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's fine, there we go, there we go. That was somewhat of an ethical question for you, matt. I'm going to keep going down this path with maybe like a little bit of a discussion around ethics. But a few weeks ago friend of the program, spanky, was involved in a situation where he was accused of intimidating someone else. I'm not going to give the full story. Zach will post a link to the article down in the description below. Spanky then posts a full explanation of the incident from his point of view, pretty much exonerating himself in this situation, but in that explainerer he admits to bearding at sportsbooks and then this whole conversation ensues on gambling twitter about bearding, whether or not it should be allowed, is it ethical and and all sorts of things that go down that path. So, matt, if you can, for those who are unfamiliar and maybe not um as well versed in in sports betting glossary, can you give a brief description of what bearding is, but also whether or not you think that it raises? 

01:46:35 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
ethical questions in the betting community? 

01:46:36
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a real thorny area, I guess. But yeah, so I mean bearding. Like if you'd asked me, like you know, 15 years ago or whatever, back in my early bedding thing, bearding would have been quite literally like, more often than not, like if you told a guy, can you place a bet for me, people wouldn't have even considered, like conceptually, that this was bearding. This was just like telling a friend can you have a bet for me, you can have some as well. They'd be like whatever, and Bearding back then was very much. I have got someone else's login, I am logging in as if I am that entity and I'm placing wages. You know that person has told me it's fine, you can just log into my account, you can have my password and you can place it. That would be like like bearding then. Now I think, because bearding has scaled probably ad infinitum now in the online age, people would classify my beards as people that I can just literally tell on Telegram here's the pic. Get me on as much as you can across your various outs. Now, why does this matter? I'm going to say that, depending on what jurisdiction you're in and the laws within your relevant country, it matters because there's going to be a far dimmer view, legally, of you doing the first one than the second one. The second one. You can very easily say that essentially I'm a tout service. The way I'm paid for my tout picks is by basically revenue share with my customers. 

01:48:07
You could say you know in terms of ethics, like I think, if ever you find yourself, you know breaking the law. You know not to get too philosophical, but if there's a social contract with wherever you live, you know you obey the laws so that you get things know safety provided by your police services, etc. You know if you've been, if you you know if you buy into that social contract shouldn't break laws, unethical, there you go if you're doing something that breaks the law. So if when you look through the terms and conditions of said bookmaker it says that you know logging in, you know and as a logged in entity you cannot be someone else kind of thing, to me that's like there shouldn't be any sort of debate over this. In the case of spanky, don't know the details, I'm assuming. What's more, the case is there's a message to someone we need to get down this. 

01:48:57
Can you place the bet they come back? You know whatever um ethics of that um, is this morally now? To me it just kind of falls in like a nothing. So I don't think these people are like books behave unethically. Therefore it's fair game, I can do whatever I like you know. 

01:49:17
I don't really think that you know. If it's your ideation, it's your bet. In that sense, the book would not let that bet come from you. So the only way that your ideation manifests itself as a bet on a ledger in a book is via communicating that information to someone else. Like it just doesn't like. Maybe my moral compass is off. It just doesn't sort of like. To me it's just kind of like, eh, you know, as a bookmaker. Like like everyone knows it's happening. Like no, I don't think, like I don't. I don't think I think the time of like traders even being that upset about it, whereas once upon a time they would have been like really triggered by it, I think even that's kind of disappearing. 

01:49:58
I think there's almost just like an assumption that a certain percentage of flow into your book at any given time is going to be, you know, from people like, is it that different? Like this there's been historically, like a lot of people love to. I mean, I know the us environment is very anti-tow, but they've been like uk horse racing, tout tipping service etc. Which have been run by very legitimate, successful people who've been good at like handicapping horse races, that have given away good information and until they gain prominence and it becomes obvious that they're good, their initial 50 customers are just like on a gold mine and they make, they print money. It's like and you ask yourself like how different? You know, was my hot run in mlb from. You know the tout service that maybe went and had a great. You know like it it just sort of almost feels like. You know the tout service that maybe went and had a great. You know like it just sort of almost feels like. You know like the idea of people like so I have unfortunate direct experience. 

01:50:54
You know the period where in the UK got to the point where we were scanning passports and we were scanning utility bills and we were opening accounts. So we were opening accounts, so we were opening them when, even telling people what we were doing with the details, they just wanted money. You paid them. These are often people from, like you know, poverty backgrounds. Yeah, they were being paid money and literally they didn't even ask why we wanted it. You, you know, literally you scan the details. You could upload the docs to the book you know you create, you know you use their name and so on and that's you know. 

01:51:33
Now, where does that sit on the ethical bounds? That I mean that it's weird how you can make the decision like, oh well, what would be the difference between just meeting the same guy, not scanning shit, getting him to open the account? The reality is we scanning shit, getting him to open the account. The reality is we did that because, inevitably, you wanted to be in full control of the deposit and withdrawal methods. You didn't want people to run away with the money. That's why we did it. But weirdly enough, like when I think of that, that kind of feels like almost industrialized crime at the end of the day, whereas me telling, like my Telegram group, like I want 20% of whatever you guys get down or whatever. There's even some tipping tout services that already work on the principle of only pay when you win, or actually some tip services that do actually work on the give me a percentage of the bet you get works on honesty system kind of thing. 

01:52:19 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So there's already You've got to account for a 35% stiff rate if it's working off the honesty system. 

01:52:26 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Yeah, that'd be light 35%, yeah, but you know. So, in terms of like, the ethics of it, like you know, is it any more or less ethical than? Oh, I always get this wrong. There's tax avoidance and tax evasion. One gets you in prison one's just being sensible. Avoidance and tax evasion, one gets you in prison, one's just being sensible. Um, you know, is it? Is it like you know? Is it any worse than reducing your, you know, your time? I don't know. 

01:52:54
I, I feel like there's people, people out there who can probably discuss this like on a more almost philosophical moral level, and like to me, because I've just been in the weeds for so many years, I'm just kind of like, you know, if, if, if, anyone had threatened anyone over anything, that's the shocking thing to me. You know, like the fact that someone was using a high roller or anyone else to get bets down, it just doesn't even sort of register as like I could read that sentence and not even think there was anything wrong with the sentence, which maybe says more about me actually than than than the thing. But yeah, I guess you know, but I, I think the idea of like, literally like like 365 had. I mean, they're aware of this, I don't need me to tell them. But like they had problems, like in places like we're talking, like places like pakistan, bangladesh, things like that, but the guy's literally going to villages, like literally buying 500 accounts, like everyone in the village line up, get your pay, like whatever, like it's almost weird how a question of scale and organization level can kind of make the difference in my perception of it, which I'm sure is wrong. 

01:54:05
You know, I'm sure someone would tell me like look, is it okay or is it not okay? Like these people, you know, by law, if they're, by law, allowed to refuse your business and this person is circumnavigating that via any means whatsoever, you know surely that is incorrect that they are, you know. You know, denying the, denying the business. Well, you know what? I'm sure there's hotels that don't want me to steal all the toiletries or whatever but I don't know it's like I, I, yeah, I just I'm, it's, it's. 

01:54:36 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I'm probably the wrong person to really get into the subject, but um, yeah, it's also part of a larger discussion, right, because this this is mainly pro bettors, right, like casual bettors not bearding into sports book. There's no need for them to do that but it comes as a result of being limited by the sports books that they bet at. So it's kind of like, well, you're going to do this bad thing. On your end, in my eyes, you're going to limit me. You don't want to take my bets. On your end, in my eyes, you're going to limit me. You don't want to take my bets. Okay, now I'm going to circumvent your rules and figure out a way to get you. And it's like this chicken and egg type of thing. 

01:55:12
But I think the main complaint, like when you look through these threads of people who are arguing nonstop, it all comes back to well, if they just took my bet, I wouldn't have to go this route which, by the way, I still think is a lie. I still think there'd be people multi-accounting and getting additional liquidity, even if a lot of these books did take a bet. But that's where a lot of this stems from. And I'm curious, like, what is your stance on the pro bettors who are just complaining about limiting? Because to me, like as much as I hate to say it I just view it as part of the ecosystem now and like something you just need to figure out how to work around. I'm curious if you view it any differently. 

01:55:50 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Yeah, I mean so for starting multi-accounting. Like you know, when the exchanges started putting in premium charges, for example, for big winners, you know people used to multi-account there. When you know people, you know people used to multi-account there. When you know people would try to gamify Pinnacle's profiling, people would multi-account there. I'm sure Chris got multi-accounting, you know. I'm sure if even Circa started to know the runners, I don't know how Circa would be. Circa deals such a straight game. It's ridiculous. 

01:56:20 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
They don't have an auto-mover, though, so they get double-pop. Yeah, so I'm sure there's ways that multi-accounting circa would work, et cetera. Not me, Jeff, by the way. Not me, Jeff. I wasn't doing anything. 

01:56:36 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Yeah, I mean. A great example of like this would be like they have the minimum bet laws in Australia where certain horse racing jurisdictions you have to lay to lose. I think it's 2000 Australian dollars and I speak to people who literally have 100 bookmaker accounts on bots so they get down to win 200k Bang, literally like that. And the reality is that if any one of those books does not have a good enough order move because they only have to lay one bet to one account, does not have a good enough auto move because they only have to lay one bet to one account, so there's obvious incentivization to multi-account to get even higher amounts down in these situations. Most of them have some sort of auto mover to combat this. So chances are second bet isn't worth having. But you know, so yeah. So let's, let's, let's disregard the idea that somehow multi-accounting goes away, like if everyone lays a, it's impossible to find a bet that's big enough to satisfy the pro better. Yeah, there just isn't a, there isn't an amount that's fair enough to satisfy them basically. So you know, there's that. 

01:57:37
But in terms of like the ethic, like okay, so here's, here's a different ethical quite like, more broadly speaking, societally, like the ethics behind speculation for pleasure and profit? I guess you know is it that there is still essentially a taboo around gambling or frivolous speculation of any description? And so because all too often in many parts of the world gambling is categorized more as the sin, people talk about sin, taxing a government level and so on. So if you have this perception that gambling is the boogeyman, it then becomes acceptable to gouge the boogeyman. No one cares about you know treating the boogeyman. No one cares about you know treating the boogeyman badly. So bookmakers have seen like I don't want too many violins or too much crying, you know it's okay. But bookmakers have seen this incremental cost base that has. It's not a big, it's not a high. I know people talk about like the massive high margins, like 10%, broadly speaking, like after cost. Bookmaking has not been a particularly high-margin business. Good business, but not high-margin. 

01:58:52
And every successive government has seen or federal, whatever has seen it as an easy way to tax. No one complains about taxing bookmakers. Everyone sees it as a valid tax target. Banks when banks are making charges you know the grocery, you know walmart, you get one set of bank charges. Fanjul, you get another set of bank charges. You know data costs. Okay, so we're you know x company who's just bought the data rights to the NFL. If we had to sell to widgets on fan websites, there's one price for that. Now you want to sell that data to bookmakers. There's a different price for bookmakers. 

01:59:37
The general perception, over and over again, is that and there's a phrase in the UK that's time immemorial is you never see a poor bookmaker. It's like a cliched phrase that people say, and this is permeated. And also we should punish bookmakers because they're making money from other people's weakness, whatever you want to call it. So, because this perception comes about, the cost base has grown and grown and we tripped over this point where a customer who loses slowly no longer became financially viable to support the massive product range that I've just talked about. All the clout aws aren't reducing their bill. You know all these people like the cost base, the tax rates, all the rest of it. 

02:00:20
You know there's been some good talk like there's been. It's really great that, for example, people like joe brennan and and Adam Bjorn are talking about this stuff in the open, alex Kane at Sportrade talking about the costs that are incurred by these people. You know we've seen profit go down now exchange in New Jersey, et cetera. People are now starting to talk about these cost bases and the reality is is that if you get to the point where the only way to sustain the business model and we can talk chicken and egg like who was the you know did bookmakers get too aggressive 20 years ago, make too much money and that's why they got hit, or do people just see them as an easy target to hit for costs? But our costs of like you know absolutely Like I look at, like there's a big problem in the UK with talks about how large scale grocery stores put a lot of pressure on farmers. 

02:01:09
They're absolutely crushing them. The lowest amount of money per liter of milk, per side of beef, whatever ever Bookmakers have got zero. Like Bet365, which is a power powerhouse, they get some negotiation but even then, like like everyone sort of thinks that like the big bookmakers have like the whip hand, like they're literally just like please don't close us, please don't, please, don't make gambling illegal. Like we will do whatever you say, like we'll pay whatever you know. That's kind of what they're in. So when you get this rising costs they have faced over the last like 20 plus years, you get this situation where, in regulated markets, the low value player and the low value player can still lose, get squeezed out, which is unfortunate, which is sad. 

02:01:56
So when people like bemoan, like these big twitter threads, like, oh, if they just like, it's like there's only so many customers, like like, let's say, you gave out free coupons to your restaurant for free meals, there's only so many customers Like, let's say, you gave out free coupons to your restaurant for free meals, there's only so many free meals you can serve before. It becomes like untenable. And in the same way, we've created this. Now, what's the solution to this? I don't know. 

02:02:18
A lot of people talk about like, oh, if they had more reasonable tax rates, they would like be more bookmakers and there would be more. Like grow the pie bigger and there'd be greater tax revenues overall. And it's like just play it back in your head, guy. Imagine if you're in front of the legislature. It's like you know what the solution here is. We want to just have more gambling. We want more people gambling, and the best way to do this is to not tax us as much so that we can get even more gambling going. 

02:02:43
It. It's like if you're someone who genuinely is concerned about the risks of gambling. That sounds like well, no, I just. I just want to get some tax for what I find distasteful and I don't, I don't care about growing the gambling industry as a whole and allowing more, you know, more gambling. Um, so you know from for me, like I've done, that sort of broadly speaking, like as long as, ethically, society finds gambling questionable, yeah, there will be no limit. 

02:03:09
This cost rise and as costs continue to rise, bookmakers will need to have higher and higher margin customers and margin products and as this happens, you know, you'll get to this point where, um, the the customer that you know, the bar that gets raised higher and higher, where a customer no longer is worthwhile having and there's only so many of those that that can be sustained. So the reality is and, like you know, we can look at this from perspective in that you know if you're a pinnacle or you know planet tech, you know group of bookmakers, whether it's Prime or Chris, whatever, the greatest bit of due diligence those people end up doing is the cost-based analysis of going into a regulated territory. How feasible is it? The tragic like Jeff, when's Circa coming to my state? And it's like it's coming. If it's financially feasible. They want to be in states, they want to do these things. 

02:04:09
Same with Prime, same with you know, like when's Pinnacle coming back to the UK? Not sure. Like you know, it's one of these things. And the funny thing about the UK the UK is actually remarkably reasonable really by cost standards compared to many areas. So, um, so, yeah, so you know, for me it's kind of like the people who are like really kind of obsessing over you know that it's kind of like maybe just acknowledge that heavily regulated markets is going to be a struggle to accommodate you. You know, take out my new academy course on how to be a pro parlay better and bet that system. 

02:04:51 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Bet that system into the regulated book we'll add that on to the one that me and johnny are doing as well. We'll do it as an upcharge no, it'll be if you. 

02:04:58 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
If you buy our course in the next 10 minutes, then you get access for free, yeah, and a free pinnacle circles off merch exactly nice, um, and then. 

02:05:07 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
But then you know I, I think to myself, if you're, if you're constantly facing this, you know I, I still understand why there's not just like a realization of like the world is working against me doing what I'm doing, and because we have developed a solution for transferring funds outside of the conventional banking system and because there are still places where I can play. You know, just broaden your horizons and just stop being old man, shakes fist at sky about everything all the time and you know, you know bet into, you know the places where, places where you can bet um or or just like. You know, just just just stop like like, yeah, you know like. What I find so funny is that some of the people who are like raging the hardest are quite possibly some of the people who opened like 50 fan gels last week. Exactly it's it's like, come on, you know it's like, you know it, it's made your life harder, but not that hard by the looks of it. You know it's like. 

02:06:09
So you know, do I do I feel sympathy for the guy who's like been losing like at one, two percent, just betting straight, betting like whatever, and that guy suddenly gets limited and and that does like. People say like like I was a loser, they still limit him. It's like, yeah, guy, that's not where the bar is winning and losing is no longer the bar exactly. It's like you're just not, you're just not losing at the rate that covers costs. I'm afraid, like so the guy who's losing, but isn't that mid-range I, I definitely feel for that guy. I absolutely it's like, and I think, just in terms of Rand wrecking, like so I'm almost certain that, from what I understand, fanduel has not been hyper-aggressive with the limiting and closing compared, relatively speaking, to other books, and I'm sure that they probably have some almost cost-neutral players and maybe they see overall the perception A cost-neutral players can lose discipline and suddenly become proper losing players. 

02:07:06
So it's kind of like well, we can keep these going. These are kind of like. These are kind of like you know, you know we're investing in this person's possible future degeneracy. It's not happened yet, but it may. It may happen, you know. So I think that definitely having a more longer term view about those players, definitely um would be a benefit. But um, and you know, and that would then probably create more of a. It's interesting that, like we went from all book rec, books are scum and I really do feel like fangel has like this alternate perception and like what are the ones that are? This? There's like spanky's allowed a bet there and he's allowed a bet somewhere else. I can't, is it? 

02:07:44
I believe he said super book, super book, yeah, maybe like that, yeah and you wonder, like cumulatively over time, being the person who's like wrecked but not a complete dick, I wonder if that like has good brand messaging, maybe overall. Um, but I still maintain that you know, the guy who's betting 20 sgps every week, like, as far as he's concerned, can't believe this product exists. He probably thinks a bit the same way when I see something entertaining on Twitter. It's like can't believe this app exists. This is brilliant, I guess, to just be entertained In terms of that whole. Is the book being unethical? It's like no, it's just operating within capitalism, by capitalism's rules. Basically it's allowed to do it, it's going to do it, whole sort of like. Is the book being unethical? Is like no, it's just operating within capitalism, by capitalism's rules. Basically it's allowed to do it. 

02:08:28 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I agree yeah, crazy part about the limiting stuff is, I think, a lot of these people who are um more older school bettors, um, like you know, for example, spanky still bets now, but you know in back when he was betting and first starting. Um, there's a few other people as well who are like all on gung-ho on these limits, like the crack man Bill. 

02:08:50 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Krakenberger. 

02:08:51 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
We should have him on. By the way, I do think he's a super sharp guy in this space. He's always on the. You know, books should never limit a player. You should never limit a specific player. But the reality is, at least right now. I think these guys might be coming from more of like the old school street bookie style where there was no fees, there was not many fees associated with like payment processing. You know, give them cash, take the cash back, like, where's the payment processor fee for the withdrawal? 

02:09:20 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
The fee was buying the baseball bat. The fee was the stiffage. 

02:09:23 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
There was some stiffage fee, but no, obviously that's a joke, but realistically, like nowadays, as Matt was even mentioning, you have so many different processing fees. Like someone withdraws and deposits back in, you might be paying whatever a couple percent each way. There's all the different taxes and things like that. 

02:09:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Bonuses. The bonuses, the funds. 

02:09:42 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
And then, in addition to all of that, you have now these regulated books which are offering so so much more where, even compared to a pinnacle's offering, like you know, pinnacle right now, at this given moment, they don't offer these crazy same game parlays that you can bet. Um, you know, if they did and they were to just like offer you know millions of options across the board, you know maybe they would have to start, like you know millions of options across the board, you know, maybe they would have to start, like you know. But our the reason is they're probably not offering that because they don't want to cut people off. They want to be a fair bookmaker and eventually they'll get to a level of tech where they can offer that, but right now it's just not there. Fanduel is offering like crazy amount of offering. 

02:10:19
When you consider the beginning of the show, we said, like you can now do live SGP on some of these books, like on DraftKings, you do a live SGP. You can put during the NFL, like be John Robinson to get over 83 and a half yards and he's at 80 yards and you don't know if they're going to run out the clock and give it to him or whatever the backup. It's crazy the amount of stuff you can bet on right now. There's absolutely no way you can run that book profitably with all the fees, with all the taxes, with all the regulation stuff. Impossible unless you're going to have profitable players. 

02:10:55 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
And going to the real old school guys, but I think sometimes also goes slightly missing is use the information. Use the information, use the sharp players information. So the process of someone like Pinnacle or Chris someone with an auto mover is that we have to move the price because the price was clearly wrong. We've identified this person as sharp, so we need to move the price. When we're moving the price, we're trying to get to, yes, the new price, but also we're trying to find a free hedge, essentially for the bet. We know that that person wins long term if every time they bet we move our price, we can take the counteraction within the vig movement, so like we literally are selling out the bet without it costing us money. Now, if they're really really good, we want to move the price aggressively, hold the price, build a position with that person right. All of that. 

02:11:45
I've said that in 30 seconds. What I've just described in 30 seconds is fucking like launching a rocket to the moon. At times it gets so fucking hard to execute on that efficiently all the time with all the betters, sharp, betters behavior changing all the time, new edges, new, whatever. It's like really challenging. Now, one thing that people could circumnavigate this once upon a time is they could bet out Like I remember there was a great interview, was it? It may have been with Spanky. It was a Jewish guy. I can say this because they were called something like the Bar Mitzvah Brothers or the Yiddish Brothers. They did a great Be Better, betters, like they traded on the fact that they were Jewish. 

02:12:28 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's an oxymoron there, by the way. 

02:12:29 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
A great be better, betters but like it, interviewed with him and he was talking about it and he was talking about how he would ring up books and books would like basically talk about having enough time to take the bet and then bet the bet out. You know people literally was like it was known that you know I would take a bet from a really sharp person but I was going to pass that, you know, sandwich down the line, you know, to some unsuspecting other guy kind of thing. And like in the offshore there used to be a lot more like you know, betting out once upon a time and you get this situation, um, but of course, like all these things, you know it's always ruined by the person who, um, takes it too far. So, like again, I will use allegedly, but the greek, a, once great. May it rest in peace. Sports book spiro. You know there's a culture of betting out but makers are offloading risks to each other. All all fine, all good. Spiro, a betting maniac, from my understanding, allegedly Like incredible volume across the like, astounding volumes across the space during his peak Spanky, almost certainly will have good stories about him. 

02:13:45
And it's like now it's no longer people just like betting out shops here and there. It's like now you're just like a massive syndicate that's exploiting the fact that you're calling from a book to another book to like, basically, you know, try and just beat us up. So you know. So like the once upon a time bookmakers used to in the UK used to sort of hedge, like the smaller bookmaker would hedge with the next level of bookmaker, so they basically any you know sharp bets. They would kind of disseminate the damage throughout the ecosystem and so that became sustainable. We just do not have that. I very recently actually was on a race course for ascot um in the uk and I actually got to observe this still happening where some of the smaller books were hedging up the line. Actually that does, that does still happen like risk gap, but mainly what happens is that they will just have got to too high liability and maybe they want to lose some of the liability of the top end. So like and that's always a hedge that the bigger book's happy because the smaller book doesn't want that liability. That's fine. The bigger book knows that the incentive behind that bet is not because it's super sharp, it's just it's got too big for them to handle. That's like a positive. You know, an upward spiral in the ecosystem, but they're trying to hand off super sharp bets to other people. It's again, you look back, peak early. I mean, you'd argue, starless is still peaking, maybe, but tony bloom, you know, I, I would hear stories of the old days where people would desperately compete for tony's bets because they were going to absolutely destroy all the unsuspecting they. 

02:15:25
They found out big european guy is, you know, infinite winner. We can just bet all his stuff ad infinitum and um, and yeah, and so, like you know, people would be like happily to risk manage that by just over betting it with other books. Um, it later became quite amusing because it got to the point where the like, if you had a british axe, where, like, if you came from the uk, there was a chance that you were sharp, and so a lot of stuff was just over bet, hedged out that was quite square or not as good as star lizard were, and a lot of people like lost a lot of money and they're over hedging. But yeah, so, like you know, the reality is is that, um, you know, everyone should take every bet all the time. Like, if you can, if you could bet out at very low cost, that would make a huge difference in many ways, but that's just a bygone era. 

02:16:12 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yeah. I do believe, though, that nobody should limit bettors, or you should have a standard house limit on straights, like on major market straights. There's pretty much no reason that you shouldn't be able to book every single person at a fair limit, at a pretty high limit, and then be able to trade that effectively with the information. That I do believe. 

02:16:32 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I agree that's very reasonable Because, like people who are right now there's like people advocating for what you're talking about, but across the board, right, you can't have it, for same game parlays and that's going to kill the product. 

02:16:44 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Also, where can you, if you get a same game parlay seven team, same game parlay, correlated or not, and you're trying to manage the risk, there's nowhere to do that. You can never get off that. That's just what it is, especially for a lot of the smaller bookmakers. I'm not talking the DraftKings and FanDuel's of the world right now it's nearly impossible. But on major market straights I'm talking MLB money lines, mlb totals, like you have to. You got to have some sort of posted limit and you should be able to beat that Like. 

02:17:18
I personally know multiple people who would would be able to trade that from a bookmaking standpoint and be super profitable even at thinner margins than the what they're dealing like even thinner than a minus one, 10, 110 aside and multiple people like I'm sure you know a bunch of people that could do this as well. So we're not talking about like rocket science here. Trading nfl straights should be pretty easy for a book, but uh, yeah, the rest of this stuff, once you factor in like all the fees and stuff, it's just not there yeah, yeah, I think the the reality is is that there is still and again I'm, you know, I don't want to be soft on this, I agree with you, I do. 

02:17:57 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I guarantee that there would be some people with my sort of personal experience, I guess, who would argue that. Let's say, for example, you know it's really prevalent like so the injury declarations are different NFL, nfl, but nba, right. So what is the? What's the twitter account of the moment for nba injury? Is it still? 

02:18:19 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
it would be underdog, but you could just pull off the board for that. 

02:18:21 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
It's, it's, it's not right, it's not difficult, it's a race condition, right not really like you. 

02:18:27 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
you can pull off the board for injury reports and then when an injury hits that's part of trading you pull off the board. 

02:18:32 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
No, no, no. But I know people, I know books, who integrated the Twitter API to suspend and they got beaten by people betting into them faster because they had the same integration and they just beat them. 

02:18:47 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Well, the thing is that underdog API, that underdog Twitter feed. All it is is an aggregator of the beat reporter, so that news is actually out there like 10 to 15 seconds earlier than underdog in most cases, as long as you just find it from the beat reporters direct. 

02:19:01 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
So that obviously is not. 

02:19:02 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
But so that's what I'm saying, though, is like that's a shitty move by the book. Be better than that, you can. You can if you're only trading straights. Again, I'm not saying if you have to, if you have to take care of every market, but if my job right now for as, let's say, I was a bookmaker, which I, which I'm definitely not I've actually never bookmaked disclaimer he's certainly not I'm talking and I'm. 

02:19:23
this is not a. This is not a formula one car situation here. Let's say I were to just only have to trade NBA spreads, totals, money lines Every day, from open to close. I can pull off the board whenever I want, whatever. That's all I have to trade, guaranteed profitability. 

02:19:41 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Okay, but what about that guy who's literally only scraping beat writers and only his only bets are betting when that happens? 

02:19:51 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
he won't be able to get a bet in. But but you would have to be. You would have to be scraping the beat writers on top of your additional duties as the trader. Yes, I'd be ahead of that, I. 

02:20:01 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I think it's possible like I wouldn't mean, it's possible, it's possible, I already do that. I would be ahead of that. 

02:20:08 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I 100% guarantee that the poacher beats the gamekeeper in race conditions at the top level. 

02:20:14 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'm not saying somebody wouldn't beat me. I'm not saying somebody wouldn't be profitable in certain situations. 

02:20:20 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
But you'd turn a profit as a whole. 

02:20:22 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Yes, what I'm saying is I'd turn a profit as a whole and I'd say, in the long run, I'd likely turn a profit on most, on almost everybody, except the people who are maybe giving opener information, in which case I'd happily not turn a profit on those people. 

02:20:35 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
But what I'm saying is we've now isolated literally a customer that I know exists. I know people who are this customer, who will never ever give you useful information other than the fact that you're too slow so you can. 

02:20:51 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
But then you can do other things to offset that, because it's not just like there's no stated rules of of. There's no stated rules of like you have to give everyone the exact same thing. So, for example, if someone's only past posting and beating me by two seconds, then you slap a two second delay on their account, or you just look yeah, I mean, he's not he's not really past posting there. 

02:21:12 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
He's kind of he's interpreting information faster than you're interpreting it, but he's not past posting in the sense of it's not like he's not won the bet. His bet doesn't go to 100 equity after placing that. He's just beating you on intro. I'm you know, to me that guy's still the cost of doing business. 

02:21:27 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'm fine with him, right I'm you know, to me that guy is still the cost of doing business. 

02:21:30 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I'm fine with him, Right In terms of posting full limits to everyone, though we are saying that that guy, once he knows that he has got you know his in. He's going to set that bot up and he's going to go to lunch and he's just going to be eating away at your underbelly all the time, every day. And if that's, you know, what you can do is if he becomes so good which does happen at sharp books if that guy becomes so good, you stop looking at the twitter feed or the beat writers yourself. 

02:21:59 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That guy just he just offlines the game. Whatever you know like that yeah, you do that. 

02:22:04 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
But what I'm saying is there are some people out there who do not want to entertain someone who basically is systematically like making money off you in that way. Now I debate over whether you should entertain that person or not. You know, I would say, for the greater good, let's say he becomes so good at like NBA injury information. You know he's an employee. At that point he literally is. Instead of paying some guy to watch the Twitter feed, we're now employing this guy. So I'm fine with it. But I can definitely see how there are people that are like what is that? We've gone through our lifetime value calculations for this customer. This customer, we had to pay bank fees on him. We had to pay to get him in the door. He used the bonus and now this is all he does. I can. He used the bonus and now this is all he does. 

02:22:51
I can see how, at executive level, the trader is up against trying to convince people that that customer should be allowed to live. But we're talking about a very isolated group of people here, right, of course, there's only some people who go to. It's probably like the who's. I think hagrin's an elite scraper. I seem to remember someone saying that hagrin's like you know top percentile of scraping people in the world or some shit you know so yeah, so maybe we're talking about that, but like I'm guessing that the funny thing is is that every time I think to myself like, oh, it's okay, like one of these, you'll then hear the story about the guy who like, yes, I packed up my family, moved to Colorado, scraped the entire planet and made $2 million one year. And it's like, oh, wow, shit, okay. So the people's appetite to scale an advantage, like risk of ruin, is great for this. Like you hear, like, oh, so how much could people really make from air miles? Oh, it turns out they've bought $10 million mansions with their air miles. And it's like, okay, but like Johnny, I completely expect if you're trading straights or major markets or major sports, I 100% believe the committed trader will make money on that and I don't think any major book is not making money on that. 

02:23:51
The question is that anyone who basically impacts the bottom line, where's our tolerance to it, I guess and the tolerance probably should be higher on the straight markets as a reputational. This is the product we want to project. We want to keep some of those old Vegas values and you know, know, everyone else is doing their money on online casino, sgp, whatever, so we can afford to do that. I, I'm, I'm, I am like it's absolutely cool. But, um, what is fascinating is the moment you like set what you think are fair rules. 

02:24:26
It's just incredible, the people who come out the woodwork who then are like, hold my beer, let's go. You know, they're like this. This guy says he can take, you know, take me on, like it's fine, let's go, kind of thing. Um, just because, like I just, you know, inside pinnacle you just see a lot of just plain sick shit and it's like, yeah, okay, you know, just like, that's what happens when you don't uh, when you don't boot the player. They're like you know, yeah, we'll see what we can do with you now, kind of thing, fair enough. 

02:24:54 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I just want to clarify my position, as earlier I did say like yeah, there has to be limits on the book, but I wanted to make it clear Like I don't believe that there should be limits on the major markets, or maybe not, you don't have to have super VIP stuff, but should be able to do it Rob Rob. 

02:25:10 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
No, rob. What I want to know is, like, where do you set so like, so minus 110. So 4.76% expected theoretical hold? Like, where do you set Johnny's over under on, like you know? 

02:25:27 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Oh, okay, I'll put it into context. What are you saying? What are you saying would be my hold? I can tell you. Do I get to bet out or no, do you get? 

02:25:35 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
No, no betting out. Just in terms of people betting into you. 

02:25:38 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I can only book no betting out. 

02:25:41 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
You can only book no betting out. We're in the no betting out era, yeah. 

02:25:51 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Probably be. Yeah, probably like point. Probably less than half percent. If I had to book everybody, if I could book, I could book anyone in the world. I'm only taking on sharps. Probably half percent. If I have a big wreck, wreck wreck presence, then probably like one and a half and I broke tight juice as well I'm hugely. 

02:26:04 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I was expecting an f1 formula car moment here. I'm hugely disappointed at your humility, Johnny. I was really hoping for like 4, 4.1, something like that. 

02:26:17 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I was going to say 1% is what I would have. 

02:26:20 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Depending on the customer base. But I'm saying if I'm taking on all customers, I'm going to be. Let's say I was able to operate somehow in like every single region, every single whatever anywhere in the world. You could just bet into me any single person in the world at that point. Yeah, there's, the margins are not going to be that high. 

02:26:35 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Yeah, I mean you, hey, hey, you, you, you a stop. You're spot on. 

02:26:39 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
You know like but I was really hoping zach would be rubbing his hands together with like this is the mini clip for this episode. 

02:26:55 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
So no man, johnny says I will hold four percent against anyone like so do you wait, do you agree with what I'm saying? Then, yeah, yeah, 100. Yeah, I mean if you, if you can hold, you know if you can hold one to two percent in that situation. I mean you know, if you get minus 110, if you can, if you can hold two percent, you're doing like super good. Like I mean if you had technology and a team behind you or said, feel like you know you can hold 2%, you're doing like super good. Like I mean if you had technology and a team behind you or etc. 

02:27:10
Like you know you can definitely um, you, if you think about it like capturing half the vig, if you think about any given time around the world there's different books moving their odds, and if you think about it like there'll be a moment where someone goes minus 120 plus 100. 

02:27:28
And so then suddenly you are half a VIG best price and you get exponentially more volume when you hit best price versus when you're not best price. So essentially, if you're really optimistic, you can hope to capture half the VIG in these situations. But the reality is that that is kind of like the dreamland. Like, don't get me wrong, there's books who, like have massive, like loads of books around the world, will have products where they have 100% margin capture, because the population of the, you know, it's just so square, like almost 100%, even on straights, and it's like, okay, that's doable. But like, yeah, in your situation, if you right, if you're head of like major sports, major three markets betting to minus 110, you've got to take on all comers, like you know, yeah, if you get up to two percent, that's, that's pretty good, you know uh, it's very, very, very good feasible for nba with with what I'm saying here. 

02:28:23 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
But I mean because you wouldn't have a wreck, market betting into you it, We'll see. 

02:28:27 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
The thing is he's going to get some recs. 

02:28:31 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
No shop book. 

02:28:32 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Here's the thing, like I'm talking. If so, let's say I were to just do this, but like with the full team at the FanDuel customer base, I think, yeah, then I can potentially get a little bit higher. But if you're just saying like it's a new shop, this is going in, I don't think so. And also another thing to factor in is I'm basically gonna be on like neck close to best price in market on one side. If I'm actively trying to trade and take two action, I'm gonna be likely on one side. 

02:28:59
I will be taking bets like any sharp will only ever hit me on like let's say it's ravens, titans. I'll be like all right, this guy's building a position on the ravens right now, like no one's hitting him on the Titans. If you have a rec base and I have a worse price in market on the Titans and people are hitting that, then yeah, I mean I guess, but it doesn't make sense for people to hit that side. If you're looking at having any sharp base, no one in the world is going to hit me on that. 

02:29:21 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Don't worry, in Fantasy Circles Off Book, we are allowing you in auto movers so you're allowed to sleep. You can dial the limits down overnight or whatever if you want. 

02:29:31 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
See. Another thing is this I don't see a reason to book big volume overnight Because the reality is which guys are going to leave your book and not be happy if you're not booking a massive bet overnight. It doesn't need to be the same limits overnight as pregame, which for a lot of these current regulated books they're trying to replicate. That I don't think there's a need for that. I don't even think there's a need to book the full limit until right before the game. So if it's a 7 pm Eastern game like, yeah, 6 pm until 7 is when you can fire full limit, before that there's game like yeah, 6 pm till 7 is when you can fire full limit before that is going to be like a lower stated limit and before that to be a lower state limit. 

02:30:12
There'll be a lot of circled games. For games where there's projected injury, you don't know where guys are in a note it will be fair, there'll be stated limits. But I there's a lot of ways I have to like that I would run a book. Unfortunately, I don't think it'll ever come to fruition. I don't. I don't see myself as a bookmaker. 

02:30:28
I am superior, better right now you could do what Rob did and consult for the sports. That's it. 

02:30:33 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I like it Play both sides. 

02:30:36 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
We can buddy up. 

02:30:38 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
We can be like a duo. You know, I don't think. The grizzled old limey bastard the Bar. 

02:30:44 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Mitzvah brothers. 

02:30:46 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
The young hop. 

02:30:47 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I actually took a look through my phone when you said that for spanky's podcast on who that was. I I couldn't find her. 

02:30:53 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I cannot find who you're talking about are you sure this wasn't a lost episode or something? 

02:30:56 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
uh, matt uh, now, now I've, now I'm worried that like um you're canceled now no, no, no, no, no. Now I'm worried, like was it a risk? 

02:31:05 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
no, it was genuinely like no, no, I think it was a be better, better, so I had, I, I did. I vaguely remember that, but uh, I just don't see. Like I'm reading through the names, it maybe there's no clear description here someone will know in the comments. 

02:31:18 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Someone comment down below which one it was it's not often where I kind of pause when I'm listening to podcasts nowadays and I'm like that is a correct like, that is a for real, for real statement. And it was in that podcast where at some point he's talking about some guy who was like the absolute, like so, so much of us action ended up ultimately at his door in vegas. I can't remember who the guy was like. Well, you know, like one of the absolute tentacles, like he was. You know, action that was bet on the streets in new york, in philly, wherever like a portion of it would always end up eventually you know, like one of the absolute pinnacles, like he was. You know, action that was bet on the streets in New York, in Philly, wherever like a portion of it would always end up eventually like at this entity, this guy, and he was talking about how he was talking to this guy about sharp action. And this guy was like you know, he basically was like saying, you know, like we don't want sharp action, but if you're going to book it, you've got to book all of it. And that was like, that is like, and when you extrapolate this out, the only way to grind the mid-level sharps into profit is by seeing the top level sharps bets. So this idea is that like so weirdly enough, like there were moments where I think from my pinnacle standpoint it'd be like I almost want to see. I almost want to see, like I really wish I was seeing every sharp bet on the planet so that I could be really informed. Because right now, like certainly in the sports that I was doing, like the growth sports, there's no doubt in my mind that a there's a better volleyball trade or handball trader at some of rec books like knows more about the sports etc and he may even have his own marks that he moves off guys he lets bet and they're probably betting like fifty hundred dollars, but like they're good marks and he's moving. So the arbitrage I'm taking I'm like it's losing arbitrage. Normally arbitrage, pinnacle is very good, but in my situation on this sport, in this crappy bulgarian league, whatever I I'm, I'm the worst of it and I I would find myself thinking, if only the sharp guy who's betting that at the local book in bulgaria, like if I saw his bet first, you know the advantage that would be to me. And I just remember that, that statement from that guy. Again, I don't remember the jewish guy's name. I don't remember the guy this sort of kingpin of all us betting in his era but I remember thinking to myself that statement because I thought to myself a lot of people will listen to that statement. 

02:33:41
You can only book sharp action. If you see all the sharp action, a lot of people be like what you know what more sharp action is good and it's like, well, no, that's the thing is it does kind of get to that tipping point, like if you don't have the costs associated where, literally, if, like I can like power, rank every sharp on the planet, then I know that well, if this is the number one sharp in this sport, I don't need to worry about the 10th rank sharp anymore, because I now know, like, if I got the top three and I get to see their three hats you know they're playing cards face up with me and everyone else can't see them it's like, yeah, I'm going to grind out all those other pseudo-sharps no time at all. So I just found that a very interesting like statement. Like you know, these are the sort of little things I listen to in podcasts. Like one thing is where I'm kind of like huh, that was, that was good, that was a good, a good point, kind of thing interesting. 

02:34:31 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Hey, did I come? Did I come across looking? Am I going to get flamed for this book? Making opinion? 

02:34:35 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
no, I actually think you came across looking really well, which is very unusual okay, good podcast. 

02:34:39 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Well, yeah, from this definitely straight after this. 

02:34:42 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
You want the uh one that I. This is my favorite hagrid phrase ever after this. The next episode has to be the Aussie dingoes coming on and grilling you about how to run your own book. 

02:34:54 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You should actually do that at some point. Shipper and Sprotz together. 

02:34:58 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I can share a lot more Like I didn't really give my. A lot of people listening will know what I'm talking about and there are a lot of books right now that are kind of emulating like a similar model to what I'm talking about give or take. But, yeah, most people, I understand, will be like, oh no, that doesn't work because of this, this, this. But most a lot of people you know what I'd say is a crazy thing about sports betting. Most people underestimate how much they can win on on, how much people can win on sports betting. But then the people that start to win, they well overestimate how good they are. So it's like probably including myself, but you start before you win you're like, oh, it's impossible to win. Like, how could you ever scale and make 10 grand in the year? And then, once you start to make like in and around that range and higher, and higher, and higher, and then you're like, oh, the sky's the limit. 

02:35:48
Yeah, and then you realize like, well, probably there's a lot more difficulty in this and a lot of people have tried and then gone through certain levels. But yeah, interesting stuff. I hope I don't get flamed for that. 

02:36:00 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
But if I do comment down below. 

02:36:04 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
And please comment who Matt's talking about. On Spanky's episode. 

02:36:12 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Because a lot of people are going to head down in the comments. First thing I've searched be better, better as bar mitzvah brothers and nothing. 

02:36:15 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I don't like it. It was kosher brothers, kosher brothers. I think it was the kosher brothers like the light bulb, just that might be it, that might be it. 

02:36:24
I feel like um I feel like that was it. It's a good like. I'll be honest, like the Be Better, I kind of like listening to the old stories from the old guys, but there's very little. I'm going to pick up and go. Oh well, that's informed how I'm going to be doing things tomorrow, because it's a different era kind of thing. But like, sometimes when they get a good one, it's like I like that. That was definitely one episode I could recommend. But sometimes, when they get a good one, it's like I like that. That was definitely one episode I could recommend. 

02:36:53 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I searched Kosher Brothers Be Better, betters on YouTube, on Google. I didn't get it, but the third did you see the third result. No, what is it? It was fake. Professional sports better gets exposed. Episode 62 of Circles Off. That was the Simon Hunter takedown episode um all right, we're ranking ranking seo doing its job. 

02:37:14 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
There we go, man like um matt the tweet. 

02:37:16 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yes, in june of this year, you tweeted uh, would be tempted by a regular spot on someone's podcast. I'm thinking something along the lines of what really grinds my gears. So we haven't given you a regular spot on the podcast as of yet, but the floor is yours. What are some of the biggest frustrations that you currently have in the sports betting landscape? 

02:37:46 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
So so I think all of them revolve around the limited amount of knowledge. I now know everything dynamic. So I have been doing X betting angle for six months. I've got it solved, and it's like everyone knows that when it's a snow game, you want to be doing X or solved. And it's like everyone knows that when it's a snow game, you want to be doing x or whatever. And it's like I always think to myself, like why are you setting yourself up like this, like you're coming out, you're? I know this is the way we are default on the internet, our personas we create for ourselves, but it's like everyone knows you want to be doing this. And it's like even that phrase like everyone knows it's like a challenge, isn't it? You're laying it down there like this is the absolute fact. So I think, literally each week on on twitter, like I will see something where people like just state as fact this is how it is. 

02:38:43
And it's like and of course, the, the obvious ones are like statements about bookmakers, because I sort of have this, like you know, and there's an interesting one going on at the moment where people are commonly talking about so we're in the euros at the moment and people are talking about the outright betting market on the euros, on Betfair, on the betting exchange, and people are talking about particularly the England price and how the odds seem very short. England have been terrible. They've played disgustingly, there's been no signs that they should deserve to be favourite for the tournament and people are going back and forth a little bit on how much of this is the very favourable draw the teams they get to play against and they're half of the draw. How much of this is the very favorable draw the teams they get to play against and they're half of the draw. You know how much of this. And there's people talking about like is this hedging? Is this this? But like one of the statements is you know, betfair is a predominantly uk facing you know product. Like is this just people backing england? And it's like at that point I'm just like it's. It's just not guy it. It is just not that. 

02:39:50
It's like there are a handful of syndicates who like literally will be modeling out tournament outrights. It's not a huge like, it's not like a multi-billion dollar kind of like earner doing these outrights, but it's very doable and the idea that these guys are giving like the england team the, the emotional home team bump or something like that for like market making or whatever it's like. It's just sort of like, kind of like, think about that. It's like if someone was giving up massive you know massive amounts of like REV, basically because they had England disproportionate, because you can back and lay on exchange. You can oppose an opinion, back and lay on exchange. You can oppose an opinion. 

02:40:31
It's like, literally, this will trend to efficiency, because it's and and the more liquid it becomes, the more interest syndicates will just dip in and go. That's wrong. It's like this market has to trend towards. And when we talk about efficiency, efficiency for me is where you know you cannot overcome the costs of the transaction. That's like there's wiggle room within the costs. You know, in terms of like, it's not the perfectly accurate, but it's like you'll get to a point where it's very hard to beat that line after costs in terms of if you bet, you know if you've got to live this in 10,000 universes over and over again. 

02:41:01
So it's like and I think that's a classic example of where someone has stated that and maybe they've heard at some point that, like you know, everyone in the country bets the home team. I don't even know what the logic like? It seems like we're so far beyond that. It's like things people talk about like 15 years ago and there used to be this discussion about like cross global arbitrage, like yeah, so england played germany, so I'll go bet england in germany and I'll bet germany and england at the books, and like it'll be a massive ARB or whatever. Now don't get me wrong. Once upon a time there were classic examples of this kind of ARB in a more disconnected world and they were the kind of ARBs that could exist, so large because it probably meant pre-Euro, probably you probably had to get a train to Germany, get Deutschmarks, the cost of transacting those, place the bet in somewhere where it didn't look too odd that you were some guy placing a million Deutschmark bet on England, whatever. Anyway, you know, like large ARBs exist, the harder it is to close them, kind of thing. 

02:41:57
But you know the idea that in this day and age, with right I'm sure there are people betting into Betfair who are, you know, syndicates from around the world. You know they've got someone. You knowicates from around the world. You know they've got someone. You know got access to an account in the uk. You know all with their own calculations. 

02:42:12
You know everyone's going to be using some form of player-based model to evaluate the teams, to create team ratings. They're going to be simulating the basic. You know outcomes that can happen from the games. They can have a momentum factor built into. You know how much better the team's rating will improve depending on the performance getting through, etc. Multiple different models will have been run on this problem and aggregated and backed up with real money. So the idea that it's like oh, just all the wrecks, just press this England price in, that grinds my gears and that would be one of these, I think, almost certainly like. I mean, sometimes it feels like twitch is out to get me. Sometimes it feels like there's five of these a day but like you know, I'm sure, I'm sure one a week would be uh, would be. 

02:43:01 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
No, no problem to come up with we might have to, we might have to lock it in off air. After this is, uh, done, we'll get. We'll get your rights signed away to the hammer. 

02:43:12 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
What's it going to be called? 

02:43:13 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
We'll grind my gears. 

02:43:14 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That's got to be copyrighted somehow. 

02:43:16 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, it certainly does In the trenches In the trenches In the trenches. 

02:43:21 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Yeah, I did see that that was. Yeah, I'm happy with that. 

02:43:27 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
In the trenches right here on Circles Off. Part of the Hammer Betting Network. 

02:43:32 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I feel like in the trenches cut away, I should kind of have the shirt unbuttoned but with the tie kind of pulled down and a cigarette and looking haggard and it's like you know what bullshit I've had to put up with today In that chair actually probably suits it right where you are in, in in. On the interweb, some dumb fuck said yeah, exactly yeah. 

02:43:57
And then I want like um, I want kanish on the soundboard, maybe like with a little gong, or like a little like like the clown nose, for like you'll never guess what this clown and kanish just like squeeze the little clown nose for me. Yeah, that would be. 

02:44:10 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Well, if we were going to do that, you'd have to expect him to show up 45 minutes late for recording. Though, just so you're aware, I don't, I don't think you want to Kanish part of the recording, but well, you might. You really might. Just got to give him a time and he'll be there right, right when it starts so he has. 

02:44:27 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
He has been very kind to me. 

02:44:28 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I can wait so, matt, we've talked, we've talked a lot about, uh, obviously, consulting. Now, when we chatted last time it was you know more about the book making stuff. But uh, you know, we know you're also you. You do bet as well. Uh, I know you mentioned to us, um, what are you betting on right now and how is that like? How much of your time is that taking up? 

02:44:46 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
uh, so still, uh, predominantly golf. Um, which is like the first sport I ever was a, you know, worked for a bookmaker doing um, and has always been my sort of primary interest. Um, and it's kind of like a condensed process now, like I do very similar things to what I've always done, but sort of refine the process down so it's pretty, pretty quick. I can sort of assemble. I can assemble my, my ratings, my simulations et cetera relatively, relatively quickly. I have not gone down the route of hyper optimization of models et cetera. I probably have gone down the route of it's an old friend now. I know when it makes you know, I know when it's going to be out, I know the scenarios where it fucks things up, I know, like I know when just to not run it for that week at all because that particular event's going to. It's kind of it very much will have spots where I feel very confident to go to bat with it and other times when it's just not so strong. So it's become like it's one of those things where I can't not do it kind of thing. But yeah, it's still predominantly golf. I still like to look at like Wimbledon just started. I still like to look at other sports, but generally I'm kind of trying to. All betting for me is kind of revolved around. I'm not going to be able to find time to model this hyper accurately. So I just want to try and find a strong trend and it doesn't have to be like a, a narrative trend in the sense that, um, you know, because the newspapers don't shape, you know, or like, you know, barstool sports doesn't shape the line you know, but like, sometimes there can be trends in terms of um, like modeling perceptions or the way sharp groups are looking something, and I always look to see, like do I buy into that, in which case I'll discard it, or like so, like golf majors be a good example. There's other things, like if someone's talking about course setup and it's like everyone has factored in that something's going to be super hard. Or you know, if someone news came out like so they relayed Wimbledon years ago now, but like it went from being like super fast and skiddy to being more sort of bouncy, it wasn't as fast. Like, if I, or if I hear like the NBA rules change. 

02:47:21
If I hear these things, I try to think is there going to be a bias created by modelers, and is it a bias that I want to either I suppose, potentially be with in some capacity and the market will under react to it, or is it something that I can wait till post and maybe it'll be absolutely over aggressively pounded? It's like it's like when there's like a really bad weather game, I suppose the nfl you ask yourself. You know there's going to be a force in this betting market. There's going to be a heavy directional force on the prices. So do you want to get ahead of it and try and bet before it and agree with it, or do you want to wait until it's absolutely being smashed and then bet against it and do you want to do that? 

02:48:02
These are sort of things where I'm kind of. These bets are probably certainly not my most profitable bets, but they're fun because it requires me to think conceptually about how other people are approaching the betting problems in their sports and it's, you know, it requires me just to pick a side and a entry point and find the best price I can get, rather than hyper granular, build the model and spec it out and do all that kind of stuff. Um, but yeah, like you know, in terms of how well I've done on that versus how well I've done on betting golf. It's not. It's not really comparable, but I yeah, big events come around. It's always, always enjoyable to still have have a look at that. 

02:48:43 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
All right, matt, listen, we already had the episode. Last week you were rated the number one episode of Circles Off history. Many think you already are, would already classify you as a legend, without a doubt. But I'm going to give you a chance right now. All the doubters, the guys are like I'm not sold on this Matt Trenhill guy. I'm going to give you a chance right now, matt, to go down as a Circles off legend for the end of time. You're betting golf. Give us the outright winner for the john deere classic starting on thursday you've put me massively on the spot. 

02:49:20 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
I haven't even run it yet, so I, I couldn't, I, I don't, I don't even know the final um the the the field final field um, but let me just like. 

02:49:30 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
This is where I went to data golf and just looked at who is the highest in the percentages right now go ahead. 

02:49:38 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
This will make for absolutely terrible, um terrible, content. But I'm just like bear with me while I'm just uh, looking, looking through things. It's probably the best. 

02:49:46 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
It's probably the best content. Looking through things, it's probably the best content in this channel's history. 

02:49:49 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
People are riveted right now. I mean, if we were just doing probabilistically Wait. 

02:49:54 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
actually we can probably clip this and give it out on Thursday, because it'll come out after the tournament started, so you won't be able to bet the outright. 

02:50:01 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
We'll clip it if it wins. 

02:50:03 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
No, I'm saying on this Thursday. 

02:50:05 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I see what you're saying. I'm all lost for days. Now Thursday. Yeah, I see what you're saying. 

02:50:10 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I'm all lost for days now. 

02:50:11 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
This could be one of the. It's probably going to be. 

02:50:14 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
He could have just asked you about the Open Championship or something like that, a bigger tournament. 

02:50:19 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
He went with John Deere Classic this week's event. This is disgusting. Okay, we'll go with Kevin Yu. There you go. It's got to be slightly like left field, doesn't it? It can't be like yeah, no one expects. Like, oh, you ran your model and it came out with a favorite. Well done, Yu. Yeah, it's got to be like Okay, so you're betting that at. 

02:50:42 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
We'll quote pinnacle price here plus $47.65. 

02:50:46 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
If that hits, there's nothing else, kevin, you will solidify. I mean, you're already in the circles off Hall of Fame, but this will be I don't know what's above the Hall of Fame. 

02:50:58 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
No, if this hits, I don't even know, I'm just odd shopping here for a bit. He's actually going to bet it. No, I'm not going to bet this. It's 47-65 current odds. Call your folks at Pinnacle. Tell them to check my account. You will not see any bets on this. I'm rooting for this harder than I would root for my own bet. If you win this, it'll be an absolute legendary move. All right. 

02:51:18 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
One more question what happens if he misses the cut, though? 

02:51:21 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Nothing. We're not even airing it. We're going to wait that segment completely. Listen one more, all. Listen one more. 

02:51:26 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
All the best value bets, miss the cut, that's inevitable. 

02:51:29 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
So your previous role at Pinnacle was the head of the growth sports. Now I'm not sure if this falls in the growth sports, but the 4th of July is coming up in two days. How are you possibly going to attack this? There has to be value here. With Joey Chestnut missing the contest, what's the move? 

02:51:49 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
here 100. Have you have to bet it, incredibly, this. So this fell under. So pinnacle had north american sports and you'll be proud to know the competitive eating is classified as a north american sport. So it was not. It was not in growth, um so yeah. So I mean I'm I'm also fascinated by the. It's like what's netflix? Is netflix doing chestnut kobayashi? 

02:52:21
yes, I used to love kobayashi and I, I, I feel like I mean he's no, like my favorite is still, uh, black widow. She was incredible and like her records are just really sick shit, like cow brains, like four, eight pounds of cow brains in like 30 minutes, like that, um. But yeah, so I, I, to be honest, I wouldn't even know what the betting is in um for without chestnut what I'm gonna like, like this, without chestnut what I'm going to Without chestnut. 

02:52:51 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
this becomes a Tyson-Paul type of event. 

02:52:54 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Nobody knows what's going to happen. Nobody knows the true probabilities. 

02:52:58 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, and you feel like the recency Everyone's seen the chestnut numbers for the total. You feel like someone, you feel like taking best price under because people may be just like, oh, people, you know someone else will be able to put up near chestnut numbers and you should kind of forget that. No, no, no one puts up near chestnut numbers. Like, like, like. I can definitely see people getting a little bit over egged on the on the total total, maybe, um, but in terms of like, um, the top, betting the out, betting the outright, I mean, I, I feel like there's gonna be a lot of caution there. 

02:53:43
It's it's hard to sort of feel like anyone's giving anything away lower down. So I'm probably looking at the front, I'm probably looking at like the first, you know, the, the favorite and second favorite. Generally, people can be a bit bigger on the favorite. In these kind of situations, when there's like perceived uncertainty, people can quite often select the favorite, like at books, like if you're pricing this up, like you'd literally price this up from hand, just shooting the, with guys on the floor like who do you think's this? Someone pulls up a youtube video, like oh, I watch this guy do this, or whatever, and you're like. So in those situations, like sometimes, if there is a clear favorite but he's like I don't know, let's say he's like plus 150. That is right. 

02:54:24 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
What we're looking at right now, there's two, there's two people that are under plus 200, and then you got a decent wide open field. 

02:54:33 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Historically. 

02:54:33 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Chastain's been off the board. 

02:54:36 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
This will sound horrendous and again probably just come back to bite me horribly. But in that situation I feel like if the odds makers have isolated two people who they feel are the more likely winners collectively, they put them in for too little implied probability. So, dutching, like betting the, betting the fares, minus 900, both of them to combined or whatever can like be the be the bet potentially. Um, because people feel like I put those two guys in and they've added another eight guys and they're like whoa, we're up to like 150 cent book at this point. Like that's that looks safe, that looks easy, and quite often it's like guys you're kind of isolated, that it's probably one of these two, it probably these two probably should be a bit shorter, but this is kind of like I'm assuming in a world where there's no modeling for this. Really, you know, the expected dogs is probably not yet on the no, that'll be, that'll be up, though. 

02:55:26 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That'll be up, you know. You know there's one spot. 

02:55:28 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
No, but there's no stats, no one's done the computer vision on, like you know. 

02:55:33 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Oh, expected dog model. 

02:55:35 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Yeah, expected dog model. 

02:55:36 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
What are the advanced metrics for the hot dog eating contest? I'm going to check Length of dip, Like the amount of time that they dip it into the water for. 

02:55:43 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I got to check what they have. This I got to check what they have. This should be under entertainment for those who know the book I'm looking at. 

02:55:51 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
The last time we would have had you on, you would have given an answer of if you look five years in the future or five years in the past, what advice would you give? We're going to not do that, but you would have never been able to give a plus EV or minus EV of the week, because we debuted that segment long after you were first on. So we'll wrap it up on this, matt. Could be plus EV, minus EV, could be in sports, could be in life. Whatever you want it to be, give us your moves of the week. 

02:56:21 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Okay, so I'll give you a plus EV and a minus EV. So plus EV is people often use the phrase wisdom of the crowds and people often use the example for wisdom of the crowds of the county fair, where you have a jar with a certain number of beans, marbles, whatever it may be, and everyone puts down their guess, the number of beans in the jar and the average of the guesses is surprisingly accurate. People often use wisdom of the crowds when referencing betting, betting exchanges, etc. What people don't drill in to really is the amount of analysis that was done on wisdom of the crowd, sort of posthumously. So one of the great examples is they got people in the US to pick locations of hidden submarine bases right, and they found out that when you take wisdom of the crowds of people who have no domain knowledge at all about, like they don't know what makes a good submarine hiding place, it was pretty rubbish, right, it was not that great. Think about taking wisdom of the crowds of, like every Celtics fan on what the price should be for the celtics to win the nba championships, like it's. Like you know it's not. You know so and they at least have supposed some domain knowledge, but they've got a bias, etc. But what they then did was they then asked several naval commanders and like the top people to where they would hide the bases, and then they took an aggregate of that and that was like freakishly close to where they did then discover submarines hidden. So this became known as the wisdom of experts. So a smaller group, not a massive wisdom of the crowd, smaller group of people, wisdom of experts can be applied to provide a very good assessment. 

02:58:05
Now, in a world of information overload, twitter is the prime example. You need to be able to distill the crowd to the experts. So you need to get to that point where you're following 100 NFL accounts, whatever it may be, and you don't want to excessively duplicate the information that you're receiving. You want to constantly pare it back, pare it back, pare it back until you get an opinion. That's essentially what they would call an ensemble model, an ensemble model of the three, four people that you most trust and you're looking for consensus amongst these people. And this can be like on how to decorate your apartment. This can be on nutrition, politics, politics, whatever. 

02:58:50
But if you've got like a lot of people think like hey, I've done the lists on twitter solved it. If your list has got like 4 000 people in it, you've solved nothing. Like you will need to get to the point where you have and you've got to be constantly pairing and you'd be ruthless. If you're four top experts, you suddenly see some guy just running on tangent and it's like dumb. And the other three guys are like you can see that they're really not vibing with the fourth and then the fourth proves to be horrifically wrong. We can sub him out, bring in, but you've got to constantly be having this quorum of people that is tight but experts, people that is tight but experts, and that you know. That is a way to manage what is ostensibly just, absolutely just, an overflow of information in this day. That would be my advice and, like I say, you can extrapolate it to to all areas of life. 

02:59:40 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I would say one of my favorite pieces of advice that's been given out, because kind of the way that I learned the ropes for sports betting through gambling Twitter before and you know I went from rec to semi pro and pro but it was very hard to really, you know, decipher what's valuable and what's not on gambling Twitter in the early days and I've lived through that yeah, really solid it's still difficult today to decipher it is. 

03:00:09
It's really challenging to follow that up with the plus EV move that I was going to give out this week. Go ahead. 

03:00:14 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
However, but I will say, if you can see this, this is your opportunity. When you're curating your information sources, you are being the pinnacle profiling algorithm. Remember, like you know, we talked about taking all sharp action. The top sharp action should beat out the lower. So you can basically look at the aggregate opinion of your best opinions and you see people who disagree with it and you can almost simulate them betting opinions against each other. Now there's no, you know, but you've got to mentally keep score because you'll see time and time again like these people were the best takes on aggregate. Maybe they had one or two teams, they didn't get right for the season, but you can basically do this. It's actually got a name I can't remember the name of the ranking algorithm. It's like used in like e um, like fifa and these kind of games. You know, true, true skill sort of algorithm, I think, or whatever, but you can just sort of do a performance like this um and do that. So that's yeah. Sorry, rob I, I cut you off no, no, not at all. 

03:01:12 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I mean I'm I'm just embarrassed and ashamed now, and I was going to give us a plus okay, so uh, I was reading hagrin's uh bet pod ratings a few weeks ago and one of our guests I want to say it might have been the alex bartlett episode I think he said his minus ev move of the week was gardening, and I think Hagrin actually gardens because he was like what the hell happened to this segment. Now people are just giving out their opinions as stuff they don't like, yeah stuff that they don't like, which is very valid. 

03:01:38
so I wanted to give this as like a real plus EV move and uh, my grandfather taught me this when I was young, but I was recently at a barbecue this weekend. It's summer in Toronto, it's hot, people are having like ice drinks outside and the ice cubes inevitably melt into the drink and they dilute the drink to the point-. 

03:01:59 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Now I see why you didn't wanna follow up, Matt. 

03:02:01 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That it tastes like water, right, and people are like, ah, you know what, I gotta drink this faster, or whatever you actually don't. A little life hack here, plus EV move in the summer. Freeze a bunch of grapes in your freezer. Just get a bunch of grapes, freeze them. Anytime you wanna have some sort of ice drink outside or where the possibility of the ice is gonna melt, just toss some grapes in there. They don't melt, doesn't dilute. Your drink doesn't end up tasting like grape either if it stays out for too long. So just a little. Nowhere near the advice that matt just gave here no, this. 

03:02:36 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
This is infinitely better than my eb move they have multiple things. The other thing that is another beauty for this is because by and large, it's a horrendous thing to eat, in my opinion, but grapefruit segments make incredible if you want that acid zing. So it's like putting lemon in a drink or whatever. Take the edge off the sweetness. The grapefruit segment frozen is again another great ice cube supplement. 

03:03:03 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Like grapes, I like the grapes beautiful I believe this is the purpose of the uh whiskey stones. 

03:03:09 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I have whiskey stones as well, but anything like that like you don't have to use ice is what it comes down to there's alternatives to ice and I hear people complain all the time, but I I thank you very much, matt, for uh, for saying that it was a good plus ev. It means a lot to me. 

03:03:24 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I felt a lot of pressure after, after yours so I only have a minus, but this is probably going to be my best one ever. I'm the most passionate about this one, okay. 

03:03:33 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You never start like that, by the way. That just sets yourself up for failure. 

03:03:37 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I don't even care how good this take is, and I really hope people agree with me because we have in the Americas right now, and maybe in the whole world, this is somewhat of a maybe you call it an epidemic, I'm not sure but people are arriving to the airport too early before their scheduled flight and the amount of cumulative hours that are being wasted is honestly tragic. I can seriously tell you right now I have never missed a flight. I go to the airport with barely any time. I want to get to the gate just in time. The amount of people that are going to the airport three hours before the flight and they're like well, what if I missed my flight? Yada, yada, yada. These guys are wasting two and a half to three hours per flight. 

03:04:27
When you sum all that up, you could be missing two flights a year and you're even expected value on this. It is absolutely insane. We are not as a, as a global, as a world, right now. We're not taking enough risk, we're not missing enough flights and we're getting there way too early. Personally, I've been, I've been trying to go like later and later and I'm still going too early because it's just, you know, you don't want to miss a flight. I think another thing you do need to factor in, like how important is this flight to me? So if you're, if you're flying somewhere where you like risk of ruin, kind of thing, if you're flying to a spot like toronto to florida at 8 am in the morning, like if I miss that flight there's's an 11, 12, 1, 2, you can get to that flight right away, like you don't have to wait it out. 

03:05:14
If you're going somewhere where it's a one, where there's only one flight per day, and like you need to make that day for a specific event, I'm okay with you being a little more yeah if it's for a job interview or something yeah, okay, interview or something. 

03:05:35 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
Yeah, okay, take the flight. Okay, yeah, so that that is, uh, my. Take right there, matt, go ahead. Yeah, I'm good, I'm gonna. I'm gonna broadly agree. However, like all, like all good things, there's one small wrinkle which I'm gonna say right, so I do not have this experience. I do not have children, but I can picture a scenario whereby I've got two kids under the age of five. I don't get away much, right, you pay for that lounge access, honey. I've got to get to the airport three hours early. You know like you've got want to be safe, don't want to miss it. I've got to check in my golf clubs. Suddenly you've bought yourself a window of personal time, like you think you. Once upon a time you were thinking just being able to go to the bathroom without my kids knocking on the door. That was relief. Imagine three bought lounge hours with the drinks coming, all the rest of it, and suddenly, out of nowhere, you've created a mini oasis in your day, but, broadly speaking, a lot of time wasted in airports. You're bang right, johnny. 

03:06:26 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
Seems like Matt's a second plus ev for matt right there, but uh that's. 

03:06:30 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's just a nice that I just think to myself I've got friends you go to the airport at least eight hours early, get your lounge access, book a massage. Whatever you got to do, you deal with it for the most part. 

03:06:43 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
I would say, if you're in a group of friends, I don't know how often you guys might fly, but ask your friends in a group of friends, be like, hey, have you guys ever missed a flight? And I would say it would be a favorite for the whole board to say, no, they have never missed a flight. I would agree, and they'd probably. They're probably gonna say this because you, you listen to this podcast. They might not listen to the podcast. They don't hear me right now. They're gonna say, oh no, but my, my brother, missed his flight. I, my buddy, missed his flight. I know this person missed his flight. Then just say this have you personally ever missed a flight? They'd be like, no, I haven't. You'd be like, all right, well, in this trip that we're going to tomorrow, instead of leaving at 3, we'll be leaving at 5. Get two extra hours and also go do something with those hours, you know. 

03:07:26 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
There you go. 

03:07:26 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
It's not enough to just save the hours Do something with them, I know, and people say this oh, but I'm at the airport. You know, like the airport is one of the worst spots to be for free time. 

03:07:38 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
It's undoubtedly one of the worst spots to be. I don't want to feel like I'm rowing back on this, but there is that night, like I don't know, you're golfers both you guys, aren't you? Yes, yes, like that I'm not being funny like someone was to me. Someone the other day was like like rank the best beers and I think before. Like the group trip abroad with guys like if your hotel, if the airport does have a nice place to have a drink, that that kind of electricity that's building up when you're having the airport beer about to go on a trip together, yeah, that, that. That is like I'm not saying you have to give it like a three-hour window, but definitely make some time for that little moment to just like kind of build the you know, because everyone's kind of. What I love is that there's that moment. Everyone's almost a little bit silly. You know you're grown men, but you're kind of almost like oh, we're going somewhere, going somewhere, like it's kind of excitement and that beer is like a really great beer. 

03:08:28 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
That's very true, an airport beer with the buddies. But if that's the thing you planned sure that's not then that's just the use of your time. You plan to get there and do that on purpose, but yes, for the most part it's, I think personally, of all the takes and I haven't gone back and listened to my takes. I'm sure there's some terrible plus EVs, but for my negative EV, do not go to the airport too early. I think it's my best. One Comment down below. 

03:08:56 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
He's very, very passionate about it, matt. We'll let you go with your minus EV, and then we'll actually let you eat your dinner which you've been waiting for. 

03:09:05 - Matthew Trenhaile (Guest)
My minus EV is like a slight pivot on, I suppose, my plus EV and that, while getting a small handful of domain experts who can be trusted on a subject is great to become obsessive of, like gurus or like sort of the master thinkers of the internet kind of thing. Like I think that there are people who tell me like absolutely straight up, like I learned so much from reading paul graham's blog, or I read steve jobs biography and like it changed the way I thought about this, or I used to invest this way, read warren buffett, whatever. And I hear about, I hear about this, and I'm always slightly worried when I hear people say this. Because, going back to that survivorship bias, whatever, it's not even necessarily survivorship bias, but incredibly successful people are often the product of incredibly unique circumstance and people kind of really like you can be your own unique snowflake. You can be a great thinker. The key thing is is just to think and think more and put more effort and argue things from both sides in your head. Make more effort to make coherent arguments both sides in your head. Make more effort to make coherent arguments. All the rest of it. Do not outsource your thinking en masse to someone who you perceive to be worthy of doing your thinking for you. That is my thing. Like I say, the world of the internet, mega follower kind of accounts, it's very easy, like you see the Elon Musk truthers, eters, etc. Just talking about just this, just that, and whenever you dig into their stories you'll find something which is so uniquely lucky, or maybe they just had certain like a huge genetic advantage or whatever it may be and you're just like you're not replicating that and yet they afterwards will justify their success based on the narrative that they want to project. 

03:11:09
I worked harder than everyone. That's why I succeeded. I was, you know, did this or whatever these kind of things. Now, if you want to look at like famous, notorious people or stories, I personally much more enjoy reading and I don't know how much more value there are, but I like reading about catastrophic failures. So I love reading about Enron, things like this. I love literally looking at how because there's no, there's no bias in it. 

03:11:38
We know it failed. Well, history says this failed miserably. Let's find out why it failed and then try to avoid, like for me, like getting the exponential upside is kind of slightly just luck to a degree. To some degree, you've got to put yourself in a position to get lucky. I do believe in that phrase, but generally that. But what you can do is you can cut out these absolute, horrendous errors by just, you know, trying to avoid some of the worst stuff that other people did so, like. 

03:12:04
If you want to, you know, if you want to follow, like, um, you know, a guru like to me, it's like try and find someone I'd rather read the story of, like you know, I'd rather be the story of the guy who went to no, no Good example If the guy who did WSX like, who they recently found some gambling website recently found him like. So WSX very sadly failed because of a multitude of reasons. Like, you can find the articles online, right, it's a really interesting project set up by two really interesting guys, I believe, and so on. Right, I'd rather read his biography than the biography of Denise Coates, whose, you know, family founded bet365 and was astronomically successful. You know probably bits in both but you. But if Denise is talking about why were you successful, I'm guessing it's probably because she worked hard, great job. 

03:12:53
But reading out why W6guy feels like when he had a product that was really respected in the offshore space. Really interesting doing something slightly different. I think there were options market makers originally, the guys maybe behind it, finding out why did you fail and extrapolating what I can learn from that. That to me, is more valuable. So negative EV would definitely be. You know, try not to just outsource all your brain to gurus who possibly have lives that are in no way comparable to yours. Their situation is in no way comparable and you have no way of duplicating their success just by. You know, preaching what they preach, love it his name is matthew trenhale. 

03:13:34 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You can follow him on twitter at matthew underscore trench. If you need consulting on trading software or systems and you just listen to this man speak over the course of this interview and you don't hit him up, you're an idiot for not doing so. He's the guy. Anubis Trading Limited, if you want to reach out to him. Appreciate you joining us again, matt. Hopefully we can get you that segment you want. We'll try to pull the strings to get you that permanent segment. 

03:14:00 - Johnny Capo (Co-host)
We'll see you in the trenches. 

03:14:01 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
We'll see you in the trenches. Thanks for everyone tuning in here on Circles Off. We'll catch everyone next week, peace. Thanks, guys, banger.