00:00 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
I lost a little bit in the beginning and they just jacked up my limits. I had 70K live NBA spreads and 35K college live spreads, like 20K totals, and they were off market all the time. So you know why focus on anything else when you're getting a 5% edge and getting, you know, a couple million down a week. Come on let's go. 

00:23 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
You think I'm gonna come on here and put one of the Aussies in the elite tier. 

00:28 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I'd vote for Rob of 25,000. I wouldn't vote for you. I can basically just cheat and get the same ass that they're getting. It's weird because you can also pay your bills at the same place where you've been. 

00:39 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
This guy talks a lot of trash. 

00:41 - Zack Phillips (Ad)
He's talked a lot of trash about me, rob, a lot of people in the community, but he's refusing to show his face. 

00:46 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You're touting yourself as a pretty good NFL gambler. I thought you were an idiot. Take testing, testing. I'm a cuck. One, two, three, four. 

00:53 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Aussies Going head to head with the Aussies. 

00:58 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
That's what I grew up for. 

00:59 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
And I said get out with him. 

01:01 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
The Toronto Maple Leafs at 14-1 are staring me dead in the face. 

01:08 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
I'm already getting a lot of early. This could be the best Circles Off episode that's ever been done. 

01:14 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Welcome to Circles Off, episode number 164, right here, part of the Hammer Betting Network and presented by Pinnacle Sportsbook. I'm Rob Pizzola, joined today by Kirk Evans Playing a lot of golf. Recently I've been getting into it. I was going through your Twitter feed to see what shitstorm you've been causing recently, basically, and it's been surprisingly pretty quiet on the Kirk Evans front. But you did have a post where you said that you ended up playing with practice balls when you went out to golf and a lot of people were very unhappy. 

01:49 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
Yeah. So I asked the guy you know these bucket of balls, they're stamp practiced, are they practice balls? The guy tells me no, no, no, they're good, they're good, I buy them. I think they're 350 a pop. I think on hole nine I realized 350 a pop. Ooh, I think on hole nine I realized I think I got bamboozled. I think overall I'm just a bit too trusting. Like I go to bring my car into the shop, they tell me the circuit's broken, you need new oil gas, blah, blah, blah. I just believe them and I think I get bamboozled every time Were they Pro V1 practice balls? 

02:22 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
No, do you remember the brand at all? I think maybe, like Callaway. Callaway does have some upper tier level balls, but 350 a ball like that's what you're paying for a good ball. Usually it was a bad luck. See, like you know, there's a lot of people are like, oh, you got to play with like a good ball. Like when you stink at golf, you don't need to play with a good ball. Like when you stink at golf, you don't need to play with a good ball. It's actually a complete waste of money, like, unless you have like a specific trajectory on your ball that you hit consistently. If you need a specific feel, if you want to spin the ball in a certain way, like if you're that good, then yeah, get whatever ball you need, but like the rest of the time, you really don't need that. However, if you're gonna pay 350 a ball, you shouldn't pay 350 I agree. 

03:08 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
Balls don't matter. Paying 350 for a ball that says practice on it, it's just, it's just bad luck overall. The twitter comments, you know, I agree, I agree I got screwed. 

03:20 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
yeah, like, sometimes I'll go to like a if I'm playing at like a really good course, their range balls will say practice on them, but they'll still be like a pro V1 range ball and they're like they're better than you put a couple in your pocket. I don't do that, but I've seen people do that. You'll find them on the course right, like you'll be like. Well, how did this? 

03:45 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
how did this range ball 14th? 

03:46 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
hole. It's nowhere near the range. I think that's fair play. Yeah, maybe like, maybe not 10, but like three, yeah, I guess I I. I love hitman's response to your tweet too. It's just you got fucked, that's that's right, that's it yeah, I mean, what are you gonna do? 

03:57
but yeah, I, I never like there's so many people who are like, oh, you gotta play with a good ball, you're not giving yourself a chance. It's like dude, have you seen me swing like I already have no chance, I don't need to pay four bucks a ball. 

04:08 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
Like if the ball's rolling 20 yards, it doesn't matter if it's a pro, v or practice, get that extra one yard into the water. 

04:15 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You know when you duff it off the tee classic move. If you're looking for the pro v1 of sportsbooks, you should check out pinnacle sports book available to bettors across canada. Find out what pro bettors have known for the past 25 years. Pinnacle is where the best bettors play. You got olympics coming up. Highest limits on olympics are at pinnacle. I remember from the last olympics last time out. If you want to bet football coming up this coming football season, you get some pretty good limits at pinnacle. They're not going to limit you for betting the olympics or betting pre-season football or anything like that. So make sure you check them out. Use code hammer when signing up. It does help support us here on circles off and before we get into our guest for today's episode, make sure you smash that like button down below. Make sure you're subbed here on circles off. Over 50 of you watching right now are not subscribed to the channel. Make sure you're subbed for a bunch of great future content. 

05:09
Our guest on circles off this week is a can of beans on twitter and, as kirk once famously said, there's nothing worse than getting roasted by a can of beans. He's also an experienced sharp sports better. You can follow him on Twitter at Frank Frijoles. Frank joins us today on Circles Off. Frank, how's it going? I'm good, happy to be here. Well, we're happy to have you. We like to start with the background story for each one of our guests, so if you could walk us through your early days of gambling and how you got involved in the betting space. 

06:10 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Yeah, sure. So I think the first thing I ever technically bet on was a March Madness pool at my mom's office when I was five. Youjack lost 240 bucks a lot of money for an 18 year old at the time. Maybe not so much these days, but uh, yeah. So in the car back I'm coming up with all kinds of harebrained strategies to win. Naturally, come up with Martingale, google it, and, yeah, sure enough, it doesn't work. So I figured that out before I actually had to lose more money that way. But in the course of doing a little research on that I came across counting cards. So I learned to count cards and did a little bit of that at this Indian casino, jackson Rancheria. And at the same time it was right chris moneymaker had won the world series poker, so there's a big poker boom. 

06:51
All my friends were playing poker, poker tables right next to the blackjack table. So I kind of transitioned into that. Uh, bought some books, uh, by two plus two publishing, I have a big forum. Went to the forum didn't really post much in the poker section but, you know, read some, played some poker, but then naturally got to college, gravitated towards sports betting. Um, I grew up playing. 

07:18
I played a lot of sports growing up, but I played rugby in high school and that ended up being a really good transition because you know it's a small market, it's not efficient, especially almost 20 years ago, and, yeah, I watched the games religiously. There's not a lot of data in rugby, especially at that time, but there still isn't a lot of publicly available data. The teams now do a lot of track. You know, player track have their own proprietary metrics, but publicly available it's it's it's pretty sparse. So that was a good market to attack. Aren't a lot of games? Uh, you know there are a few leagues around the world and especially back then, you know, maybe the Greek would carry them and a couple others. But figured, hey, I want to, I want to do some more sports betting. So I tried college football and I actually ran kind of good. But I figured, hey, I'm not going to beat this with what I'm doing, so I'm kind of lucky. 

08:09
Kind of stumbled into arbitrage. And then I was reading the sports betting forum on 2 Plus 2 at the time, which was a lot of arbitrage talk and you guys call it top down now. So I kind of just transitioned to that because I said, hey, like okay, I'm losing 3% on one side, winning 4% on the other. Why don't I just keep the 4% to myself? So, yeah, started with top down and you know their long teasers were pretty prevalent back then. You know you can still find some outs where teaser odds are good on NFL. But you know, kind of transitioned from okay, we'll just play off-market numbers to, and at the time off-market numbers were like sports interaction back then. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that site. 

08:55 - Zack Phillips (Ad)
Very familiar. I don't think they offer. 

08:56 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Yeah, because I don't think they do American customers anymore. But at the time they did and they were just so square their number on an NFL Sunday night football game where if you had a home underdog they'd be a point and a half off and plus odds. And like that Patriots year where they crushed, they were like three points off every time. It was crazy. So, yeah, I bet with them and Bovada and a few others at the time and then did some long teasers and then kind of transitioned to some other approaches. So, similar to long teasers, I had an edge on pleaser bets and pleaser bets are kind of the opposite of a teaser. So instead of getting extra points, you give up points and so naturally, you think about it. 

09:40
You know you want NFL teasers or just teasersers in general. You want to find subsets that are are more than the act, and so pleasers are the opposite. So look for I think about it. It's like, okay, well, you know, six point pleaser for football you're probably you're gonna have to cross the three, probably don't want to do that, but for basketball it's great because you cross the zero and you're giving up three points instead of four. So so and you can look and say, hey, like there's plus 650, which I think is equivalent of plus 173 or so on the side on the individual legs, and, um, yeah, so it's like, okay, well, what's a money line for a three and a half point underdog? 

10:20
And then you can look at other subsets with, okay, two and a half, one and a half etc. So you know, an n NBA college basketball Saturday, you might have 20 games in that subset and just round robin everything. And so I started transitioning to stuff like that. Unfortunately, I learned a bad lesson about networking at the time, which kind of hurt me. I shared that edge with I was on sbr forum at the time shared that edge with a moderator who is widely known on twitter, believe, and uh, he said, yeah, I'll look into it, and then never said anything. Back a month later the book had uh, nerfed the odds to plus. 

11:02
A couple weeks after that, plus 550, three months later, they're out of business. And so I said, wow, I didn't get anything back from that. Uh, networking, yeah, I just keep edges to myself, I'm just crying, and so so I did for a while and, uh, to my detriment for sure, because I've started networking more lately and it's been a really positive experience um, the way that you're talking about you know you're, you're coming up in sports betting uh, seems like a lot of it was rooted in math. 

11:31 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I'm just curious um what? Did you have some sort of schooling or background? Um, like, did you study statistics or anything like that, anything that was transferable in terms of skills that would lead to being better at sports betting? 

11:49 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
No, I mean, I took a business stats class in college, right, and I was, like you know, kind of bored with it and it's like, oh wait, what's on distribution? I might be able to use that in sports or some other stuff, like if I know a meal assistant like them. But no, I don't have like a math degree or anything. I have a finance background. 

12:03 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
Okay, and so throughout that journey you kind of talked about being top down and then maybe some like math origination. How do you consider yourself as a better today? 

12:16 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Yeah. So I mean I would still consider, like those political bets, I'd consider that top down because you're just using a market-based approach, right? You know you say this is the widely available number. We're going to use that as our source of truth. We think the distribution looks like this. I mean I pretty much just use at the time I just use pinnacle drop downs. So whatever the price was on minus one and a half or two and a half, one interdog, I'd say that's no big is the fair, and so I'd still consider that top down. 

12:46
As time has gone on, I've definitely transitioned to like maybe a top down plus approach and then more origination in the last couple of years. But yeah, there's more you can do with top down. You know some people think top down just means stare at an odd screen all day and others might say, well, there's more you can do with that, uh, with that. So it depends on you. As time has gone on, I had to get more into origination, just because you know you either lose outs or you. You know things, things happen sometimes. 

13:15
Yeah, sometimes you can just focus on top down. I had an account, uh, with play up who's now out of business, where they. I've lost a little bit in the beginning and they just jacked up my limits. I had 70 K and live NBA spreads and 35 K college live spreads like 20 K totals and they're off market all the time. So you know why focus on anything else when you're getting a 5% edge and getting up a million down a week. But there's no reason to focus. So it depends on the timing. Yeah, if I have an account or a couple of accounts that are just a goldmine on something that's top down, then I'll focus on top down. If not, then I'll focus more on origination. 

13:57 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Those live NBA limits could explain why they're currently out of business. Sounds about right. 

14:02 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Yeah, and they would take it with 70 K on a spread, and then you can also take 70 K on each of the outlines, so you'd end up and a month and a money line too, so you could end up with 280 K in play. 

14:14 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
And all it took was you to lose a little bit of money when you came in the door. 

14:18 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Exactly so. But you know, people ask. You know, like nonstruck friends ask oh, but you can just lose in the beginning. And yeah, I don't think so, because, yeah, that happens, but that's more of a bonus to me when that happens, uh, I don't think it's. You have enough variance, naturally, that you don't necessarily want to just lose up. 

14:41 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I totally get it. Uh, you mentioned you get mentioned. You've gotten into origination now. You talked off the top about how you were big on rugby in the early going. With the origination you're doing now. Are you still involved in rugby? Is it other markets? What are you currently modeling yourself? 

15:02 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
it's not really a model. It's just pretty much understanding the lineups and player values and stuff like that, because there are a lot of lineup changes, like an old edge. For example, in the Rugby World Cup, there's pretty big variation in levels of teams and especially there's a big drop-off towards the benches on the lower-level teams. The US, for example, in 2011, might have had five or seven guys playing professionally in europe and then you know, and then everybody else is like a teacher or you know, has a day job, and so there's pretty big drop off when they're not playing. So and the regular cup back then. 

15:36
It's changed now, but I would have really short rest periods sometimes for teams, and so you it's kind of like american football, where you need a week to recover for your body. You would know that the US was going to rest their starters. It was very obvious they would be a 48.5 point underdog to Australia based on their starters. You'd take Australia minus 48.5 and the lineups would get announced and it would go to 62, which is a lot. It's kind of roughly similar to football. You don't see a lot of 38-point spreads in football. 

16:14
College football you see a few here and there. Yeah, alabama versus Jacksonville State or something. So yeah, yeah, so that's about the same balance. So it's minus 250 or minus 300 there maybe more. So yeah, pretty big edges. Rugby World Cup figured out. That wasn't very good for the product and also pretty unhealthy for some because some teams would just try to throw their players out and they'd just run out of games. So yeah, so that edge has kind of gone away, but that was a big one. You know rugby, I enjoy the sport, I watch it. I would say you know you can get some down at TPHs and a little bit at some of these retail books, but you're not going to get the amount down that you can get on NBA or NFL or stuff like that. 

17:08 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
How much competition is there in the rugby space? 

17:12 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Not much. I mean, you'll see it move, but you can usually still get a pretty good edge. There's not really anything like limits. Yeah, they might change once, but they're pretty consistent. Everybody, everybody copies off of off of some European book and then everybody posted it once. The limit is what the limit is for the most part. 

17:35 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
And do you think you would still originate rugby Like? Is it more of like a passion project? 

17:40 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Yeah, I, would say like college basketball is probably. Yeah, I would say like college basketball is probably 70 percent my volume these days. And then you know more nba origination, the playoffs, um and other points in the season where I think, uh, maybe something differs from what the base uh number should be so with rugby in particular. 

18:04 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I mean you mentioned you do a lot of college basketball. Uh, there's a lot of data sources for college basketball, like tons of metrics that you can use when projecting out. Well, you know what your, your, your spread is going to be in the game and your total what does the rugby data look like right now? Like is there any? Are there any elite data sources that you can use, or are are you essentially just going to be in the it, like I don't want to say stuck in what you're doing now, but just like being able to roughly assess what a player is worth. How far is rugby coming for in terms of data? 

18:37 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
yeah, so you can use opta and there are a couple other ones, but I actually tend to focus more on, like the even lower level stuff. So they're the top leagues in Europe, but then you'll have the US versus Canada or something like that. There's not a lot of data on those players because they're in lower level leagues. There is a professional league in North America now, but there aren't a lot of stats kept on that. So, yeah, it's purely just watching and kind of understanding the player's worth and finding big edges. But again, rugby is not a big part of my volume these days. I enjoy it, but it's it's less than 1%. 

19:10 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Got it. In terms of the market itself, we've chatted via DMS leading up to this interview as I was trying to book you to come on as a guest, and I know that you very likely started betting in the PPH slash offshore space. You even mentioned it with. You know, bovada, sports interaction, uh, having some pphs. How has regulated betting changed your life, if at all? Has it had a large impact on what you do, or are you still very much focused on pph and offshore? 

19:38 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
yeah, so it's had a really good impact, um, especially initially. Uh, you know I live in colorado and you know we had books come in in 2020. Unfortunately, they launched like in the middle of cogan shutdowns, but, um, but yeah, I mean they're offering great bonuses. Uh, lots more, lots more hours. I mean we had over 21 21 books at one point that were there. Yeah, there's been some consolidation, unfortunately, but uh, yeah, no, it's been, it's been a huge boost for me and even then, still, I you know I have circuit here, I have, and you know, the other accounts and then also, uh, counters and kiosks up in planck. So that's that's been, uh, really a positive for me. But I still bet offshore, I still bet with pphs. I mean, you know, it's just about getting it down as much as you can, right yeah, sounds like a pretty similar market to ontario. 

20:31 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Um, I think we have probably double the amount of sports books that you have in colorado, but at some point or another it'll be. It'll dwindle down, as is happening already. Um, we have some kiosks here now, as well, as kirk can attest to. Uh, I've seen him jamming some kiosks at Woodbine before. What about in Colorado? Do you have any experience with kiosking or anything like that? 

20:52 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Yeah, so, just randomly, I hadn't really considered kiosks or placing bets at the counter previously and I did a payout one time from a book. You know they can mail you a check or you can pick up something from Blackhawk, and I hadn't been up there since college I guess the playoff poker tournament, and yeah. So I drove up, picked up some cash and then just decided to check out the rest of the town and yeah, so I started jamming some kiosks at DraftKings, thinking, oh, I'm being really sly, right, just jamming this kiosk, nobody's noticing. The guy comes up behind me. He's like, oh, we'd like to make you VIP and I've been limited on DraftKings app at this point already. I'm like I'm good, you know, like bros, right? He's like, well, can we at least get your name? And I'm like, yeah, I'm Frank. Like well, we like well, we're gonna need your last name. And you know, fill out, uh, w9 and all that stuff. And so it ended up, um, after a little bit they didn't like some of the stuff I was doing. 

21:52
The kiosk. They say, well, you can have 500 limits counter, or you can have five thousand dollar limits on anything other than nfl props, uh, at the counter, which is amazing. Oh, I can get five thousand dollars on a rugby first half team total. That's amazing. That actually shouldn't happen. That was really good. Eventually they dropped that down to $2,000 and went to $200,000 this year. I don't spend as much time up there anymore. A number of places with kiosks is dwindling as well. Superbook had a kiosk and a counter. 

22:28 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
They closed, and a few others did as well but you're still allowed on the premises, so not so bad uh at draft kings? Yes, god, not at all monarch trespassed me and when you were jamming that kiosk were you like same bat over and over. When that guy came and tapped you on the shoulder. 

22:50 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Yeah, or same series of bats, yeah, so like a John Moran over four and a half or over three and a half threes in playoff game or something, and it happened to hit too, so they weren't very happy about it. But yeah, no, it's interesting with kiosks. Every kiosk has its own intricacy, so I think you just have to play around with it a little bit and figure out what it is. They all have some type of deposit limit. They may have an internal limit of the most you can put, but to win amount or to risk amount Some of them, like at DraftKings, at least in the past, you could just load up the. 

23:26
It used to be a $3,000 limit in the chaos and it may differ if you have a location it's also what I learned is the host casino it's not affiliated with a book also has some input, because I guess they're at risk as well, rather than just running space. But, um, yeah, so the time it was like 2999 limits. So what I do is I just put in $2,900, get a voucher back and have like eight of them to scan back. In that way, if you just rapid fire, other places may not have that capability and you know other places may have you hit a internal limit and then they stay after everything number 10% or whatever. So, yeah, you just need to kind of play around with it until you figure out what the best practice is. 

24:10 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
Yeah, if you're listening to this podcast right now, that nugget of getting the voucher to scan if that's something you might be interested might be a very good thing to take that advice. But I want to ask about how you feel as a whole. We talked some about consolidation of books, let's say, in 2020, when we got regulated, did you feel like by 2024, there'd be more consolidation, less consolidation? How do you feel like outs are in general in 2024 for you and more generally? 

24:44 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Yeah, I mean I don't think it's positive trend. I mean it's going to keep consolidating. Uh yeah, I, you know, into the 20, I wasn't really thinking about that much. I knew there would probably be some consolidation. But you know, you you're kind of in the golden age but you don't realize it. You know they're offering crazy bonuses on the apps and you just kind of take it for granted. And yeah, I mean, if I had to change something, I just, I mean, I went pretty hard, but you can always go a little harder. 

25:11 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So yeah, totally. 

25:13 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Um, just the same thing with like poker back in 2005, like five years later, I was like man. I wish I had just like played poker non-stop. 

25:21 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It was a goldmine, yeah I was going to draw that comparison too, and when you were playing in the heyday of poker, you you thought that this was going to be like the biggest thing forever. No one had like any idea that it was just okay. Slowly the best players are going to start beating the worst and, you know, eventually even a sharp poker better just is not up to the standard of those above them. And uh, that that tailed off pretty quickly um, in terms of Blackhawk. 

25:47
Um, just out of curiosity, I've never been myself. Everyone that I know that's Colorado based, or even who has been to Blackhawk before, they're always like you gotta go there, like it's such an amazing spot for betters. Do you share that sentiment and like what is it specifically that would make this like a must-see spot for another sports banner? 

26:09 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
well, it's a. It's a very beautiful drive up there. You can. There are two different ways you can go and it's very pretty. It's up in the mountains. It's actually kind of a pain in the ass in the winter because sometimes it'll just be three feet of snow. They got five feet of snow one time this year and so sometimes you'd go. So when I, when I had the, the big limits at the counter at draft games, there'd be days in the winter where nobody showed up to the counter because they couldn't get there or called them sick or whatever. So, uh, but it's a really beautiful place. Uh, you know it's. 

26:38
I don't think it's the best place ever. It's not vegas. Uh, like, the food isn't great. Uh, you can see there are a couple casinos that are nice, monarchs, a nice casino, maristar is okay. Everything else is pretty rinky-dink, but uh, yeah, it's okay. But it's a really pretty drive. You can go do hiking and stuff around there. I drove up there a couple days ago and I was asking some people doing whitewater river rafting on the river or on the creek, rather um, so, yeah, it's, it's worth checking out here in colorado. 

27:10 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
This might be a controversial take, but I actually hate being in a casino, you know, as a sports better like, that's not not at all. I I can conceptualize that, like people need to lose for me to be able to win, but the feeling of me walking through wood vine on a tuesday at 1 pm and there's the parking lot's full and there are thousands of slot machines taken just depresses me a little bit oh it's, it's, it's depressing. 

27:37 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
You got like some really awful people like I've, you know, playing poker. You just people are angry because they're losing. They're already kind of the dregs of society. So you know, I'm not a fan of casinos, I'd rather spend as little time as possible in them. But necessary evil, I guess. 

27:55 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
Agreed agreed. 

27:56 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Before we go deeper, I just want to make sure that I get this in so that people know. But the Frank Frijoles alias and the Can of Beans avatar where did that start? Obviously that's not your real name. I'm not going to share your real name or anything like that, but where did all of that start? How did you come up with that? 

28:19 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
I just thought I'd have a stupid Witterburner handle alliterative. Frank, friholois, frank and Deans, so you know pretty mature. And yeah, that's a lot of thought went into it. Alright. 

28:36 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I was always curious. Sometimes I wonder how people there's so many good aliases out there I'm not clever enough to come up with some of these really good ones, but there's some. There's some that you could clearly tell put a lot of effort into coming up with theirs for sure and I think no one thinks about like. 

28:54 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
obviously it's not actually impactful, but I'm sure when you're making a twitter account you wouldn't have thought that like now, everyone in the gambling community when they think of you, thinks of of a can of beans like NFL pinbeater I think he is Bill Belichick. Like when I picture him in my imagination, I imagine him as Bill Belichick, and if I ever see him in person, it's going to be very strange that he's not Bill Belichick. 

29:17 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
For sure, Hundred percent Also. Yeah, like some partners that I've met more recently, they just refuse to call me by my real name. They just want to call me Frank and that's fine. 

29:26 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
Absolutely, I have the same experience as well. 

29:29 - Zack Phillips (Ad)
Hey, circles Off fans, if you enjoy the content we put out here on this channel, you're going to want to see us live in person. This year at Bet Bash hosted at Circus Sports in Las Vegas, nevada, august 7th at 5 pm, rob, johnny and myself will be doing our first ever in-person Circles Off episode. If you want to find out more information about where it's going to be, how it's going to be hosted and how you can get involved, make sure to subscribe here to the channel, follow us on all podcasting platforms and follow us on our social media channels so that you can stay up to date with the latest news, information and updates. Enjoy the rest of the episode. We hope to see you there. 

30:07 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yes, all right. You mentioned earlier off the top some old edges that you've had in betting and it's very hard to do this podcast because there's a subsection of the viewership or listenership that's always like, oh, can you share some like real-time edges, and we try to point people in the right direction. I think a really good learning experience for people sometimes is when others can share old edges that they had and how they came up with them, because it kind of gives the mindset of like what someone might be looking for to find an edge in sports betting. So what are some of the biggest edges that you've had over the course of your sports betting career that maybe no longer exist, and how did you stumble upon them? 

30:53 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
So the pleaser bets were a good example, but yeah, obviously there are many, let's see. So there was a point where a major sports book was consistently mispricing first half team totals on almost every basketball league in the world. And I mean it would be like a first half total would be 80 and the spread let's just say it was a pick and one team would be 40 and a half, the other team would be 38 and a half plus 100 and on the over, and it's like, wow, that's obviously mispriced, uh. So I mean that was one example. Sometimes you'll find something systematic like that and you don't expect it to last long, but uh, but when you find it, yeah, I happened to find it like a week before my wedding, so I was like on my honeymoon like putting in, like hey, I just need a couple hours every basketball league in the world uh, how did your uh new wife uh feel about that? 

31:56 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
oh yeah, she's okay okay, she knows, pay for the honeymoon exactly, exactly, um, let's see, uh, cricket. 

32:06 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
I had a cricket edge where I figured out that, uh, half an hour before the match, there's a coin toss and the coin toss whoever wins the coin toss gets to choose whether they bat first or second. Also, right around that time is when the team lineups are announced. So I mean you could just go look at betfair and watch. I mean you could also like twitter search toss and you get some interesting results until you, until you got what you wanted. But uh, yeah, you know, the line would move like 20 30 cents, depending on their different types, types of cricket where it matters more, and some pitches where it matters more or less. But, uh, again, that's just a top-down approach where you knew that the line was going to move, based on something, on some news and uh, and get ahead of it. Especially, it's sort of you know, yeah, american facing books, especially back then, don't tend to be up on something like that, whereas a book in australia or england is probably going to be familiar yeah, I think. 

33:03 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but I used to watch some IPL, I want to say maybe like eight to ten years ago, and one entire team bats first, correct and then the other team bats second. So if you know that the better team is batting first, you're more likely to see more runs, I would say because they go through their entirety of their lineup rather than just you know when they win the game ends correct, although you don't, at least, on us facing books. 

33:35 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
You don't tend to see as many over-unders on cricket, got it. But but there is an advantage to going first or second and it depends on a variety of factors and forget cheap at this point anymore, but but yeah, like it, depending on the pitch, there's an advantage because the ball will bounce differently as it goes on because they don't like sit. So it's a moving target basically, and also based on, I think, the light from the Sun time of day, that the thing. So it's dependent on where in the world, because different countries have different kind of firmness to their grounds and different types of bars have different specialties in different parts of the world. But yeah, it's really an advantage to win a toss because you get to choose whether you go first or second. 

34:20 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I absolutely love the nuances of betting on sports, like depending on whether you're going first or second, the ball bounces differently, the time of day could be different, maybe the sun plays a bigger factor. That kind of stuff is what makes, in my opinion and maybe for some people it actually makes sports betting cumbersome and they don't want to deal with that. But that, to me, is a problem that I love to solve. 

34:43 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
For sure, for sure, and I will say, like I'm not gonna say exactly what the edges, but there's a similar edge in another sport in terms of like pregame decision-making that moves a particular line a lot. 

34:56 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Well, even like the euros in Copa America just finished, and if you were betting, going into penalties, if you watch the markets react to the team, uh, after the coin toss, the team that shoots first would just get steamed like heaven right away. So there's obviously a big advantage. I've never done the math on it, but there's obviously a big advantage in shooting first. 

35:16 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
Sure, in those types of situations maybe it's psychological yeah, that's what I was thinking the pressure of you know you need to score, I guess what? 

35:23 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
What's XG for a penalty kick in soccer? I think it's like .78, something like that. So it's almost four out of five you're going to score. So if you go first and you score, there's just like an added element of pressure for every subsequent shot. It's like that team's up against it. But yeah, stuff like that, I guess, is just like a small little thing, coin toss we're taking the ball first and you get steamed out to like 60% favorite based off of that. Absolutely Crazy. 

35:52 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
And how do you deal? I know for myself, for example, like I can think back to specific edges and like it gives me a pit in my stomach even thinking about like how I didn't jam it harder. How do you deal with? You know past edges, do you think about them? 

36:09 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Does it get to you emotionally at all? It gets me emotionally. I almost look back like wistfully, like oh, that was. You know I missed that edge, but you know it's going to evaporate at some point and you got to find the next thing, whether that's some top-down type thing or originating or whatever. Some top-down type thing or originating or whatever. You got to keep a ball in space because you don't know what's coming. Yeah, absolutely. 

36:27 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Totally. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about networking because I'm a big proponent of networking. Me and Johnny have talked about it several times before. We have Bet Bash coming up in a couple of weeks, which to me is a great networking event. You've had some mixed experiences which you mentioned off the top some. You've had some mixed experiences which you mentioned off the top. Uh, some bad experiences, some good. Um, I'm curious about the bad side of networking and and where it potentially caught you in the past yeah, so it was just like I explained on this laser bets gave away my edge, got nothing back. 

37:00 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
It went away faster than it otherwise would have. You know there's no proof that it actually happened, but it would happen. You know nobody stole any money, nothing like that. So it wasn't that bad. But yeah, I just kind of took a step back from that for a little bit. How? 

37:17 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
do you balance that though? Because, like a lot of us want to talk sports with one another and share ideas with one another. I mean there could potentially be good things that come from sharing that type of edge, right. Potentially, someone finds it and says like listen, I can really help you get down on this. So, like I mean, how do you balance that? 

37:37 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Right, and that was my intent when I shared it. Hopefully I'd get something back. And yeah, it didn't happen. But yeah, and more recently, yeah, it was to my detriment that I didn't network for a long time after that, but more recently I have been networking a bit more, starting with a friend who was a poker player. He had a PPH account. I hadn't actually done a lot of PPH until about five years ago and so I kind of taught him During the pandemic. I taught him top down. He had nothing to do. Uh, his job was pretty slow, with shutdowns. There wasn't much sports going on. You know, we were, you know, steam chasing nicaraguan soccer. Shout out to real madrid, not real madrid, um, but yeah. So from there, you know, he was able to get some more accounts and and then he got his brother involved. I think, uh, trench might have called them the Bar Mitzvah brothers yes, he did, he did which? 

38:36 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
uh, they're not the real. 

38:37 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Yeah, they're not the real Bar Mitzvah brothers, but that's what I call them. 

38:44 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Oh man, there's been a lot of debates and discussion on Twitter recently about hedging bets with potentially other bets that are zero expected value or even negative expected value. Based off some of your replies you've made to those tweets, you might have a strong opinion on what you think is right or wrong in these types of situations. So hedging bets, one of the most controversial topics in betting Twitter. I'll give you the floor to talk us through that and what you think about hedging with other negative expected value bets. 

39:20 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Yeah. So I mean, based on my experience, the way I came up is I I ground up my own bankroll. I I mean based on my experience, the way I came up is I ground up my own bankroll. I didn't have any partnerships and so I just used Kelly or a factor of Kelly, especially early on with top down type stuff, and so to me I use that as my kind of framework and my mindset. 

39:42
Maybe other people have different goals, they, you know I think trench mentioned, you know, over betting, because you either have to get to a certain level or not. But I think it depends on on your goals. Like if you have some amazing job and you're or like a job offer and you're deciding, well, I either want to do that or I need to make x from sports betting, then maybe that makes sense. But to me I'd rather especially with marginal utility concerns with money. Going from zero to a million is not the same as going from one to two million. It's just not in terms of quality of life. So I think for me I kind of lean towards Kelly usually and Kelly falls for minus EV hedges at that point. Always zero EV hedges, because if you're getting your expected value that's like the best thing ever, because your expected growth is always less than your expected value. 

40:35 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
If there's money at risk, this was the specific discussion that you taught me in a little bit rough fashion, but I appreciate it for sure. How often would you say you're hedging your bet? 

40:51 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Not, honestly. First off, it does feel terrible, absolutely To make a minus EV bet, right, but it's like something physically painful about it. But at the same time, there's also, if I notice something that's a good like zero EV hedge or even slightly minus EV hedge, I'll do it. But you have time considerations too right. There's opportunity costs to going and looking for all these hedges as opposed to just finding other bets or working on your models or whatever else. 

41:18 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I actually love that you brought that up, because I think there's a lot of people who think that you can solve a lot of these with just with math, and generally I would agree, but there's stuff, exactly like you mentioned, like there's an opportunity cost associated with that. If it's going to take me an hour or two to figure out what this hedge needs to be, it's like exactly and that's a drastic example Probably wouldn't take that long, but like could that time be better spent elsewhere? And what's going to be my EV on that? Like it's. 

41:46
It's actually a way more complex problem, problem, and I think a lot of people just overly simplified into like it has to be this or it has to be that, and I actually think that's that's just like gambling Twitter as a whole, honestly, like we see the arguments every single week and people pick up on like these little things, and I just think there's so many situations in gambling where, or sports betting, where it's it's just dependent on the better. Like what I'm going to do is going to be different from what kirk does, what zach does, what frank does, and I think a lot of that just gets lost in conversation when people are trying to figure it out? Uh, specifically through math, you know, solving it with math, for sure, yeah. 

42:27 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
And then like expected utility, that's not something you can really calculate. I mean, maybe somebody wants to spend all that time to figure out their own utility curve but like, come on, there's better stuff you can be doing. Yes. 

42:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Same thing happened with the trench episode that you mentioned, so episode 161 of Circles Off. We'll link it in the description below. But got a lot of good feedback on it. But there's a lot of people talking about Trench's comments about overbetting, which was, you know, some of the advice that he would give, and it was like real back and forth of like this is stupid advice, this is great advice, and my whole thing was like it's probably good advice for some people and probably bad advice for some people as well, like it's just his opinion on what you should do, but like let's not take it as like this is 100%. Every single better needs to do this. 

43:14 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Absolutely, and I think also you have a consideration, so like, if it's if we're talking about overbetting and you didn't get to a certain level. If you're new to the market, let's say you're, you think you're a great math modeler, right a certain level. If you're new to the market, let's say you're, you think you're a great math modeler, right. But there's still stuff about the market you may not understand until you're actually in it. You need to know the limits go up. You need to know what does market resistance look like, how should you react to that, and that's stuff you only get through experience in the market, and so I think taking a little time to build up a bankroll is okay while you figure that stuff out, before you start wanting to slam NFL spreads of post. 

43:47 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, totally agree. We like to wrap up with some personal reflections all the time. This one's a little bit unique. I need to know what your actual. I know you listen to Circles Off pretty regularly because we've chatted about some episodes before via DMs. I need to know what your exact reaction was when Kirk stated that there's nothing worse than getting roasted by a can of beans. Like, did you laugh at that? Did it, was it? Um, I? I'm just very curious about what your reaction was in real time. 

44:20 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Yeah. So, um, one of my partners, uh, who I didn't get a chance to mention yet, but I'll talk about them in a minute but in our group chat he said hey, you got to listen to the 836 or whatever, but the latest circles off. So when I was at a family gathering, went off into a room and listened to it and started dying. It was hilarious. And then I showed it to my wife and she thought it was the funniest thing ever too. So, yeah, very, very positive. It's actually what got me to come on the show today. 

44:51 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
There you go, Kirk, Look at me, there you go. Positive value Plus EV Kirk Evans over here. You mentioned. You wanted to mention your partner. So you're working with a group of people or just one single partner? 

45:04 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Yeah, well, yeah, so I have the two partners I mentioned before, who have been a really positive experience. They're great at getting accounts and they do top down on their own and I feed them some stuff too, and so it's been a really beneficial thing with them. They're also good friends, but more recently, about a year ago ago, a friend of mine who's a poker guy probably the only poker guy I would ever trust with any money, since they're always broke. But uh, it's a cycle. 

45:33 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It's a cycle for the poker guys right broke, they make it back and then they're broke again. 

45:39 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
It's it's vicious he never seems to be broke, so he's's good. That's a good sign, yeah, yeah, that's a good sign. For sure he's a good guy. But he was modeling some League of Legends stuff and we were talking about that a little bit and some other approaches and some other sports, and he knew that I had some Rugby World Cup group bets. I wanted to get down and he had some friends that were going to help me get down, so he introduced me to them and they all helped me get down, ran really hot, hit a bunch of 20-1s and stuff like that that were maybe like 600 bears. And so I'm thinking to myself, okay, these are great account skaters and it turns out they're actually legit on their own too. They're just crushing NBA player props and some WNBA and NBA stuff. And again, we're all, they're all into League of Legends betting. They crush it. So it's been really, really beneficial and so, yeah, I'm I'm all very positive on that the the way you worded that they're all into the League of Legends betting. 

46:45 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I take it you're not into esports, or are you on board with that as well? 

46:48 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
I mean I help them fill, but yeah, I mean I try to watch. I would like to learn more, but there's also a time issue and it's also often at like 2 in the morning, so that's harder when I'm old with a baby. 

47:03 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Yeah, I think I'm not going to ask you your age. I'm not going to ask you your age, but I think we're roughly just based off of your story, in the same age range, and I grew up on video games and I played a ton of video games when I was young, like always into it. Yet I still find, like e-sports it's just I can't, I can, can't get there. I don't know what it is about it. I, I, I. There's just something where it's it's so challenging for me to get over the hump. Um, I don't know, I I can't put my finger on what it is because I love video games I think it's. 

47:38 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
I've never played league of legends and maybe I, maybe I should if I wanted to get more into it. But uh, yeah, I mean, supposedly the tactics and strategy are really interesting. But uh, I'm not there yet, but happy to fill anything. It doesn't matter if it's esports or rugby or cornhole. If somebody had an edge on cornhole, that's fine. 

47:58 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
Like you know, money's money so so, going back to this partnership, what do you say? It's like each guy kind of on their own doing whatever originating top down and then helping each other fill, or do you guys actually hop on to each other's kind of origination and give tips and pointers there? 

48:16 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
So in places where we overlap, we definitely work together and that's been really beneficial, like attacking NBA and NHL playoffs this year. We did a lot of stuff together. That's been really beneficial. Attacking NBA and NHL playoffs this year, we did a lot of stuff together. It ended up being kind of like a loosely formed syndicate Somebody fills, they take half and then offer the rest to everybody else. It's been really good for my own stuff too that's good. 

48:40 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You guys pay each other in rookie cards with this syndicate every now and then. That's a different type of syndicate, I guess I guess, so yeah um, all right, uh, doesn't have to be related to sports betting. Can be, if you want to. Uh, you've, you know, totally up to you. Floor is yours. But uh, one thing that you think is plus ev in life and one thing that you think is minus CV in life. 

49:06 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
All right, plus CV. Um, you know we're getting old, rob, so you got to start thinking about the longevity stuff. So, yeah, I've I've been thinking a lot more about that lately. You know there's some books out there about, uh, improving your, your health span, but one of those pieces is strength training, and I hadn't done a lot of strength training until a couple years ago and I started this thing called starting strength and it's a great place for anybody that's a beginner or novice in in strength training because it's it's very regimented three days a week. 

49:39
You do almost the same lifts every day. There's a little bit of variation and you just add a little bit of each time and it's not going to get you to be, like you know, a competitive power lifter, but it's going to get you 90 of the way there, and so it's it's a really good program. They even have some gyms around. I I joined their vocal gym for a little bit, uh, and they're all the coaches there were former strength and conditioning coaches at the college level, really really good, and then I built a gym in my garage that I didn't need anymore, but it was really helpful. So you can look it up online. It's free, it's just pretty basic. 

50:14 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Really beneficial Starting strength. You can use promo code Frijoles as well. Promo code Frijoles If you want to get started on that. It's funny that you mentioned that. This is really sad, but I will share it anyways. Uh, regardless, uh, last week the cto of uh bet stamp uh, julian packer got married and I got pretty wasted at the wedding and I was, I was dancing like the whole night and I woke up the next morning and I I couldn't move, so like I could use some starting strength because I literally like can barely move after a night of dancing. 

50:46
Nowadays, I went to physio and she's like what the hell happened to you? Like you, you, I'm like, believe me, one night of dancing, it was it. Uh, zach, you got a plus ev no, not this one. 

50:58 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
I put him on the spot yeah, he's trying to find the buttons to talk anything from you, kurt yeah, this one I've actually had in the chamber for a while, but it's perfect that Frank is here for this. Posting either controversial or things you think might be dumb on Twitter Obviously pretty niche you need to maybe have a few followers for it. But if you have a controversial opinion that you're thinking 50-50, this is like way off, but 50-50, I'm onto something If you post it on Twitter, people like Frank will come in and tell you you're an idiot. If you're being an idiot and that's very true there are a lot of really smart people on gambling Twitter. 

51:40
You kind of have to get used to getting roasted on Twitter. I think that's something everyone has to. You know, take a couple lumps. Some people don't take too well to that, but if you post it and it's a fine post and people agree, maybe I'll get a couple likes. No one will really comment. If it's really dumb, smart people will let you know and then you can kind of form some opinions off that Like even last year posted some nba polls of who I think was who do you think is better, and look, it wasn't going to really form my opinion, but I got some really good, interesting comments and I learned about it. 

52:12 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
So I think you can kind of uh take getting dunked and make it a plus ev yeah oh, I mean, I know of someone, uh, who used to on the two plus two forums intentionally say something wrong to provoke you know really smart people to. You know they want to satisfy their ego and they start giving away little edges because he said something intentionally wrong. That was kind of trolling. So that's, definitely an angle, so yours is the nicer way to do it. This is the more nefarious. 

52:44 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
Yes, exactly Like people who are smart really hate seeing something that's posted that's dumb, they will comment yeah, and then you can learn. 

52:54 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
You don't know ball. Exactly you don't know ball. I'm going to keep piggybacking on the advice that Hagrin gave, which was let's keep the plus EV segment as like actual stuff that has positive expected value, not just opinions. Recently I've put a lazy Susan in my fridge, which sometimes I was just getting really annoyed by like reaching into the back of the fridge and knocking stuff over by putting a lazy how much stuff do you have in your fridge? 

53:26
don't get me started, this is a wife. There's a discussion with the wife. That needs to happen. But as a workaround you got like a lot of condiments or something like that that don't fit on the shelf. They're in a spot in the fridge. Just put them on a lazy susan instead, because you can just rotate that easy to grab stuff. Honestly, same amount of space but just way better utility. So it's a little small thing but it's caused less pain, let's say when. 

53:50 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
I opened the fridge, so you're just like reaching in the fridge. Milk was spilling all over the place. 

53:54 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It's not that milk was, but sometimes you gotta move stuff out of the way to reach something else, and I find that to be even though it's a little thing, I find that to be a nuisance. So, instead of having to move stuff out of the way, you now just spin the tray around and you get the stuff that's at the back Perfect. 

54:09 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
It really worked out. 

54:10 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Doesn't the. 

54:10 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Lazy Susan take up like a ton of space in there. 

54:13 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It does not. 

54:13 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
I wasn't going to say it, but that's what I was thinking as well. 

54:24 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
No, because that space I mean you're not losing any space it's you're losing like maybe a couple inches, but also you can't really let me get a picture of your fridge in the lakes. 

54:32 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
Yeah, that's a good, because also, can't you not put anything in the middle? Because then you're having the same problem if you're reaching around, if it's in the middle of the lazy susan, you don't have to give it the reach around. 

54:41 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
No, it's, uh, it's, it's very. Listen, you know what? We will post it to the circles off twitter account at circles off hq. Make sure you're followed. Uh, you're following on there and we will get that posted. I maybe I'm not describing it well enough, but it's honestly a big space saver and much easier to access things at the back of your fridge. I'm very excited to see the page. I'm sure people really are right now. 

55:02 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Uh, minus ev frank oh uh, all right, you're at a bar. It's like well, I don't stay out this late anymore. Well, last friday I went to the billy joel concert in denver. We're not kind of late, which is it's rough with a kid, but you know, having that drink at the end of the night it doesn't do you any good. You don't feel any better, you just feel worse in the morning. It's hard to say no to at the time because you're having a good time. But that last drink, like you have a drink and then leave, like what are you doing? You just pass out when you get home and feel 10% worse in the morning. 

55:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I mean, I feel you, man Like even truer words have never been spoken. That resonates, it hits home with me so hard. Cannot help myself with that last drink. That does nothing for you, because you're going to bed anyways. You're going home, you're leaving the bar, yeah. 

55:53 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
I will say I'm really bad at following my own advice. Yeah, we all are. 

55:58 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
It's hard to say no to a drink. 

56:05 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
You have to plant it in the back of your head beforehand or else you're done. That's a good negative EV. I totally agree. Mine a bit of like a double negative, positive EV, negative EV. But like not doing things because they're lame, like there's a lot of things in life. I do that like people think are like nerdy and weird, like I've been grinding Minecraft for the past two weeks, have gone dunked on by all my friends, but whatever I like it, it's fun, so do what you like. Who cares if it's like nerdy and lame? 

56:37 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
all right, it's. It's funny hearing that from you, because I think if Johnny were in this chair, the take would be a complete 180. Be like the exact opposite. 

56:45 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
I've seen. 

56:45 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
I've seen Johnny you're not learning any skills from playing Minecraft. It's a waste of time don't do that, it's. 

56:52 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
it's the perfect mindless game where, like you know, it's 12 midnight, you know you've got a summer league under. There's nothing worse than sweating a summer league under Grind some Minecraft. An hour goes by, it hits or it doesn't. 

57:08 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Frank, was there like a game that you used? Like I used to grind Roller Coaster Tycoon pretty hard Like extremely hard. I don't even want to tell you how many hours I wasted on that game in my youth. Was there? 

57:22 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
something in specific that you did. 

57:23 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
Mine was pretty lame, probably just fifa yeah, all right, fifa guinness, uh, world record holder in fifa, right here, by the way, for what largest margin of victory against an ai opponent? It still holds no, I got beat by like a bulgarian teenager a couple weeks after I set the record. Yeah, but I do have a certificate 289 to nothing that's pretty good it was wow, it's a good run. 

57:47
What was the game like? Uh, you, it's the max. So 40 minute halves, which is the max you can put on the game at the easiest difficulty level. I played as uh, juventus against cork city. This would have been in the mid 2010s, and the reason I picked juventus is because they had the best midfield. They had Arturo Vidal and Claudio Marchisio and these were guys that the big thing in this, like when you're doing like a speed run, like that, is how quickly you can dispossess the other team off of the kick Because you're scoring. They get possession. So you need like good tackling midfielders, those guys that can get the ball uh, quickly score that. Speaking of wasted time, don't get like the practice runs for that. 

58:31 - Kirk Evans (Co-host)
Don't even get me started oh, the practice was already an 80 minute game yeah, and I how many times you do it? 

58:39 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
uh well, I did it on work time. I was working at at the score, got it and I work project. I was the FIFA champ at the office and the social media guy at the score saw this thing come across like this guy set this record and he brought me the video and he's like you think you could do this. I watch this guy play. I'm like I will shatter this. And we did, and it became a big like popular thing for three or four weeks and me and this Bulgarian guy kept going back and forth. So I set it at 289. Originally. The best I ever did was 310. And then he did 317 and I never got there. 

59:13
In a practice run. My wife I don't know if I was married yet at the time, but she was just like we gotta stop doing this, like this can't happen anymore. I'm like, okay, okay, big time minus EV. Move in life. By the way, right there, big time minus EV. Frank, we'll end on this. If you could go back five years and talk to a previous version of yourself, what advice would you give to your former self? 

59:38 - Frank Frijoles (Guest)
Grind as hard as you can hit those edges while they exist and back hard as you can hit those edges while they exist. And you know, back then bonuses were were big. I would have probably grinded a little hard on bonuses. But yeah, I mean no regrets really, and you got to balance life too. 

59:53 - Rob Pizzola (Co-host)
So totally agree. For sure, his fake name is frank frijoles. You can follow him on twitter at that. I will post his Twitter down in the description below. You might get dunked on a few times, as Kirk knows, but it's all in good fun. You can check out Starting Strength or whatever. That's what it was right. Starting Strength, yep Promo code Freeholus. 

01:00:14
That doesn't exist, but it's there as well, if you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you do subscribe here on Circles Off. Got a ton more content coming up leading up to football season. Make sure you check out Pinnacle Sportsbook as well. If you liked the episode, smash that like button. Thank you very much, frank, for joining us. Thank you, everyone for tuning in. We'll be back next week with another episode. Peace out.