How To Find An Edge, Scale It Successfully & Stay In Your Lane | Presented by Kalshi

00:00 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
This is your fault. It is only your fault. You are to blame for me turning my page off. Steve Kerr would make a terrible betting partner. If he's coming to you and he's on the mover side and he's saying I can get you a million dollar fill, or he's on the originator side, he would say I win 100% of my bets, but Steve Kerr would make a great tout. Let me tell you, steve Kerr would make a great tout. Let me tell you so when we bet, what we're all trying to do is measure a stretch of coastline with a smaller ruler than our counterparties are. 

00:51 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Welcome back to Circles Off, presented by cal she. We got an interview episode lined up for you today for the thanksgiving holidays. I hope you're excited. We've got a lot of requests for more interviews and we're definitely bringing them back into the fold going forward. This one's been lined up for quite a while. I ran into this person at Bet Bash last year, actually came to our live circle back and was in the audience for participation there, approached me right after we did that episode, had some kind words to say. We interacted a little bit, stayed in touch. 

01:15
Our guest today is going to be Calvin. You might know him from X at Calvin, and Hobo is the Twitter handle, or the X handle, as I should say. He's become one of the sharper NBA prop bettors out there right now. He's someone who built a real sustainable edge in a market that I mean some bettors frankly just don't even take seriously enough. So I want to talk to him about that. He's also deep into the ethics of sports betting, the grind, the reality of doing this stuff full time as someone who previously wasn't. So I'm really excited for this conversation. Calvin, thank you very much for joining me here on Circles Off. 

01:52 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be on. It feels very surreal, but I'm excited. 

01:58 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yes, what I'm really excited about is I do this with every guest, but I kind of send a rundown beforehand of this is how I envision the conversation going, and we deviate from that here, here and then. But you saw the rundown and you provided some feedback, but I know that you're a real OG circles off listener, because I did not include what would have typically been the final question and you added it to the rundown. You're like this has to go in. So that's how I know you're an og and that's why I'm excited about this absolutely. 

02:31 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
There's things that we're going to talk about throughout this episode that are direct tidbits that I've picked up from other people and used to help myself. I you can't. You have to include the last couple questions, rob. How did you forget that? 

02:45 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
yeah, I listen. I mean it's I. I'm not in the in the the regular routine of the weekly interviews anymore. Before, when I was, it probably would have just been. You know, came to me immediately. I got to include this. But thank you for catching that. We'll get to that at the end. I always like to start simple, um, and this one is just. I've always had a question about this. I know you've done some other podcasts before. I don't listen candidly. I don't listen to a lot of stuff in the sports betting space, especially during the football season, so hopefully I'm not repeating too much that you've been asked before. But the Twitter handle Calvin and Hobo where did that originate? Obviously, your name being Calvin, calvin and Hobo, where did that originate? 

03:27 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Obviously your name being Calvin. What's the end of it there? So obviously with the name Calvin. As a kid getting all kinds of jokes about you know? Oh, where's Hobbs? Calvin and Hobbs, ha ha ha. People see that username and imagine someone named Calvin who had an imaginary friend who was a hobo instead of a tiger, and the imagery made me chuckle and the alliteration also. So that's what I went with. 

03:51 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I will say the bullying where you're from is a lot different than where I'm from. You know, listen, my last name. There's all sorts of spins on on pizza that you can do, but if Calvin and and hobbs was was the worst that you got, I mean, uh, you grew up in a pretty nice area with some good friends yeah, no, it was nothing bad, just just jokes. 

04:13 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
I wouldn't even call it bullying, just little boys teasing each other got it um, from a betting perspective, what? 

04:19 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
when did betting first enter your life? Was it? And when it did, was it more of a hobby, or was it something that you approached seriously as soon as you started it? 

04:27 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
was definitely a hobby. So betting I guess I would call it betting. But I started with NBA DFS on DraftKings and FanDuel before betting was legal, playing really small stakes, playing stupid lineups, but like a dollar a night, just for fun, cause I was always a huge NBA fan and at that point in my life I was flat broke also. So it was just like a way to enjoy the night for a dollar and I had no edge, no idea what I was doing, just kind of vibes based. And then I moved to Iowa and I got a what I would call a less bad job and, uh, in Iowa betting became legal right around when I moved there and I've always just kind of understood like math and numbers at a little bit better level than the average person. 

05:18
And so when all these free bet promo, you know you deposit a thousand dollars and bet it and if you lose you get a free bet, that just it stuck with me and I was like, oh, that's like money, I can just have money. And so I took my bait what was basically my life savings at the time of two thousand dollars and went and deposited into two sports books and bet opposite sides of the same game and then one would win, one would lose and I'd take the free bet. I'd bet that on another game and then the first book where I won, I'd go hedge the free bet to get my juice back that I lost from the minus 110 on each side and did this with every single sportsbook that had the offer and had a initial bankroll of $2,000. As a result of the sportsbook, I started with $10 bets at the time with this $2,000. And that was the beginning of my betting from. 

06:24 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Uh, I guess that's a similar story for a lot of people. Uh, in the sense that they capitalized on a lot of the sportsbook bonus offers that were out there early in the day. Um, you said you kind of had like a a bit of an inkling when it came to math with this particular scenario. Did you have other friends who were potentially betting who are like, hey, this is a possible, a possible betting strategy or something like that, or did literally that just come to you as? Hey, I think this is an opportunity that I can get my bankroll started here? 

06:53 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
So from consuming DFS content you hear the ads from people farming referral links about the sports book, just repeatedly saying if you go, click my link and sign up at this sports book, you get a free $1,000. So you can only hear that so much before you realize like, oh, it's actually like a free, whatever it is, four hundred dollars, right now you build up your bankroll in the early going, you actually have some money to play with at that point. 

07:19 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
What's the next step for you? 

07:21 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
so it started with the ten dollar bets and losing like a little bit, but not very much for a long time, just betting stupid stuff, betting the things you still see people betting today, like thinking of basketball as a one-on-one matchup instead of a five-on-five matchup and saying, oh, this guy can't guard this guy, I'm gonna bet he's over. Or fading the public, or looking at recent trends or all the obvious nonsense. But despite betting all the terrible bets that I was betting, I still barely lost anything because I had signed up at every single book. So therefore, I was getting the best price on every single bet that I placed. And when you do that, you're basically betting with a no hold market. So, despite the terribleness of the bets, I still lost I don't know, like a hundred dollars over the course of a year, which is something everyone, in my opinion, who's just starting out you have to do that. You have to sign up at every single book, you have to get the best price on everything you bet. And if you do that and then you just bet for fun, you're going to be okay. Yeah, you bet. And if you do that and then you just bet for fun, you're going to be okay, yeah and the uh. Then what? 

08:30
My first like edge came after the bubble, when the NBA went back to playing in uh, real stadiums and the the COVID season was happening, where players were getting ruled out all the time and getting COVID and the whole season was a mess for were getting ruled out all the time and getting COVID and the whole season was a mess for a lot of people. And what I started doing was I started basically COVID tracing. So if a team had five players all get ruled out because they all got COVID, I'd go look at who they played in the previous game and then I'd go bet a bunch of role player overs on the team that they played in the previous game and then I go bet a bunch of role player overs on the team that they played in the previous game because those players are probably going to be getting COVID or have a decent chance of getting COVID and getting ruled out. And then these rule players are going to start and have way incorrect lines because I bet them first. Then it built a little more. 

09:22
I started figuring out how to get better at the COVID tracing, looking at who already had COVID because they're less likely to get COVID again in a recent amount of time and they're going to be more likely to play betting on those players. So I had fewer voids and that was what led me and started me into really like winning, and it still carries over to this day. It's a similar style of betting that I have, where I'm doing everything I can to try to predict injuries and predict rest before everyone else can. 

09:55 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So I love this story. To start with Sorry to cut you off in the early going there I think the line shopping part is extremely important for anyone who is a beginner here, because you know a lot of people deposit into one sports book or prediction market or whatever and they're basically betting into one set of lines. Oftentimes if you're betting, let's say, major market spreads minus 110, right, but the more and more books that you add and you can start shopping prices, you can get that VIG down substantially to the point where you know it might be no hold, it might be minus 101, minus 102 on all sides, but it takes a lot longer to lose that way. And that's as simple as it is. Calvin, it's somewhat sophisticated for a very rec beginner. Better to figure that out. I'm curious how you ended up figuring that out. 

10:48 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
So this is actually an ongoing theme that I have with one of my gambling friends, who I've been, like you know, talking shop with and messing around with ideas with years, and he keeps telling me that like I am not normal, I'm actually like really good, and I keep saying to myself, like this is so obvious, like when you buy a can of tomato sauce, are you going to just take the more expensive tomato sauce when it's the same brand and one can is on sale and the other can is not on sale? Like that seems so obvious to me? I don't. I, I hear you say that and I hear other people say it and I just don't get it. Like people don't understand that minus one, oh one is better than minus one 10. 

11:38 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
It's a tough concept to I get frustrated in teaching some basic betting concepts. Um, I think part of it is a lot of people are preconditioned to bet a certain way and they almost get delusional when it comes to betting. Whether that's through having some sort of winning streak, cashing an SGP, whatever it might be, every bettor inherently seems to think that they know everything about betting. I look at the educational videos I do on this platform and a lot of them I do are not super advanced technical. They're very low-hanging fruit and I read through the comments afterwards and I'm just it's, I'm almost gutted. When I read through some of them. I'm like this is sad that there's this many comments that where people are preconditioned to think in a different way. So I don't know, the space is really weird. 

12:31
The fact that you were able to recognize that in the early going to me, I believe I would lump you into like a higher intelligence quotient, just based off of that comment alone, but also the way that you found your first edge right, like that is just logical. It makes a lot of sense, but the average person is not going to think about doing that. I was doing that for NFL at the exact same time through injury reports and kind of mapping. All of this and like that was fundamental in my handicapping of NFL, but I don't think a lot of people would go down that path. So I think it's something about the way your brain is wired, calvin, where it might seem intuitive to you, but for a lot of the average population, sadly, it just isn't. 

13:18 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
honestly, yeah, I guess, I mean maybe, but I, I, yeah, I mean, I don't know, I'm still not the like, I'm nervous about thinking of myself as this, like amazing, intelligent, amazing person, because that can mess with your personal life, that can lead to overstaking, that can lead to you just being a jerk in real life. So, like, I try to be careful with that. But I the evidence says that you're right, even if I want to pretend that it's obvious the evidence says that people aren't doing it. 

13:52 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
That's good to stay humble. I mean, it's a it's a good trait to have when you look back at the early days. So you've presented some good examples of um, you know, kind of I'll say quote, unquote, getting it like understanding things, ways to find an edge. I often think back and this comes up through doing Circleback on this channel, where I see tweets that I want to rip on now and I'm like, well, you know what, that was actually me 12, 13 years ago. When you look back at your early process, is there anything that sticks out to you? Now? It's like, wow, this is really embarrassing. I can't believe that I used to do this. 

14:30 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Definitely, definitely like assuming that Las Vegas didn't know very obvious things. So like if who's a play, if, if LeBron, or actually if Chris Bosh is out and LeBron and Dwayne Wade are going to play, going, oh, chris Bosh is out, I'm going to go bet Dwayne Wade's over because Chris Bosh is out. Like do you, what are you doing? Do you think Vegas doesn't know that Chris Bosh is out? Like what kind of nonsense is this? 

14:59 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
yeah, that's like the. I think we've all been there in some capacity. If, if you've started as a beginner, it's five, 10 minutes before a game and you're like, wow, this team's missing so-and-so, tonight I have to bet the other side, as if that, like, the market has not already priced that in. I'm ashamed to say, like I probably did content in the early 2010s on national TV where I probably handicapped games like that. So I think that's just the nature of not understanding the market. Now, as you're going through your early process, did you have like a friend group around you that was also betting at the same time that you would share ideas with? Or were you kind of just doing this in a silo? 

15:42 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
So once I uh, so in real life I had no friend group who I told about this and in like on the internet with my Calvin and hobo alias, I once I went from $10 bet sizing to $20 bet sizing when I won my first hundred units. I started sharing my bets in like a little corner of the internet in this random server where there were like 20 total people in there and maybe 15 of those 20 people actually were active and that's kind of where I started with that and those people saw what I was doing, saw my results. I had a picket at the time also that was public and people could just see exactly how well or poorly I was doing and they all started tailing my bets and that was kind of who I like socialized with sports betting wise. But in my real life I never told anyone I was doing it because I wasn't exactly proud of it at the time right. 

16:41 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So so yeah, that's, that's interesting. Um, like a lot of times, the I mean everyone has their own origin story in terms of growing as a better. Um, oftentimes, you know, mine was realizing I had an edge, telling people around me, them telling me I'm crazy, because that was like the common theme. You know, I first remember telling my parents like I'm quitting my job and I'm going to be betting, and they're like, excuse me, like these hotels in Vegas they're not going up because people are winning. I'm like, well, I'm doing something math based here. I'm curious how you went from the level that you were at spotting one edge, covid injuries, saying I got something here to being able to eventually build up over time to the point where you're at now. What's the next level of that story? 

17:38 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
so the thing is the injury edge, so to speak. This is a permanent edge. This edge is never going to go away. Players are always going to get hurt or come back from injury or rest or whatever. This is still my edge. It's evolved greatly. It's changed in terms of how I process things. It's changed in terms of the things I'm looking at, what I'm using to decide to place a bet or not. I'm looking at what I'm using to decide to place a bet or not, but it still is my edge and it always will be my edge, unless science improves to a point where players just never get hurt. 

18:12 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Right, I'm not going to ask for specifics necessarily on that, but I do want to get into it a little bit more. Just at a high level, you're doing content. I mean, this is going to go out to thousands of people who are going to watch on YouTube. They're going to listen in audio form. Lots of people are just scared to talk publicly about an edge, especially when it might be one specific item. So I would guess that you think that what you're doing now potentially is just like a long lasting solution. Or, and even if you were to share stuff publicly about it, you feel confident that you'd still go be able to go back next week. Edge is still going to exist over a period of time. 

18:53 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Very, I feel very confident because what I do and how I bet is really hard to replicate because it takes so it takes so much work. There's so much digging involved and research and it goes without saying that everyone on Twitter already knows like, oh, I can bet based on who I think is and isn't going to play, but can you win doing that and can you be more accurate than the people pricing the lines by doing that, because they also know players are going to rest or get hurt or whatever. So it's not so much that I'm worried about creating other bettors who can do this better than I can. I can, but in terms of like specifically what I look for and how I go about deciding if people are, going to play. 

19:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
That's the part I'll keep secret. Okay, let's get into the process a little bit more here. So give me a sense of what your day-to-day actually looks like. Like a day big card in the NBA season, as an example, where we're at right now, what does the workload look like for you on any given day? 

20:09 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
so for me, I think of the start of the workday as the tip off of the last game of the night on the uh on the upcoming slate. So I think of the start of Tuesday's workday as the tip off of the last game on Monday. So then my girlfriend will go to bed around that time and I'll put a game on just to like have on in the background and I'll start checking Twitter for any potential injuries news, things like that, watch any videos, look up coach stuff, and then I'll, as the night goes, I'll make a list of ideas of things I want to look into further and see if there's anything there, and then I'll look at more info that I'll keep to myself about various things and make a list of further ideas based on the info I'm seeing about that kind of stuff. And then I check certain things every night, even if I don't have to, just as a form of studying, so that when changes happen they stand out in my memory because I just looked at them yesterday. Then I will take my list and I'll go investigate it based on the things I'm doing to win, and once lines are up everywhere and not just at like a couple books, then I'll start getting bets filled in the middle of the night and spend my time doing that, looking at line movement while I'm getting my bets filled, figuring out how much I can get filled or not get filled, making sure I'm not getting too much filled accidentally. Then I'll check the line movement after I'm done betting and see what moved, what didn't, what I could bet more on if I want to, and then look for any further lines. 

22:03
Some game gets uploaded at like 3 or 4 am If it's like on a back-to-back. Other games go up at like 9 pm. So check all of that any further. The nighttime is when I'm finding and betting most of my bets and then I go to bed around 5 or 6 am central time. I'll wake up around 1 or 2 pm central time. I'll check the news, see what I missed, look at my list of ideas and see if there's any players who now have lines, like bench players who didn't have lines previously. I'll get maybe a couple more bets in, but not too many, because the lines are sharper at this point, and then once the first game of the night tips off, then that's kind of the end of the workday around 6 pm in my way of thinking about a workday and then I'll go and I'll cook dinner for the girlfriend and spend some time with her, and then, come 9 or 10 pm that night, the next workday starts. 

23:00 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, so that's obviously very atypical. Listen, in the sports betting space people work all sorts of crazy hours. Just curious, though prior to that, were you like a night guy, night owl type of thing, or was this a big time adjustment period to get to this type of workday? 

23:20 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
So it happened because of my job, because I worked the overnight shift at my cubicle farm job, making, you know, not great money but enough, enough like doing fine, doing kind of what an average American does betting system started and that's what. That's what led and continues to lead to me betting overnight as early as I can to get the first pick at the bakery when the donuts all come out of the oven before everyone else picks them over. 

23:57 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Now your workday starts, ends, I should say, at the first tip off of an NBA game. Are you following like you go cook dinner in real time for the girlfriend, you sit down, have a meal. Are you following your bets in real time? Are you tracking, do or do you just try to stay away from all of that until you sit back down, you know, later in the night to to get started? 

24:19 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
it depends. Uh, like I'll kind of take her into account also, see if she wants to do something else or watch something else or whatever. I don't really sweat my bets too much, but if she doesn't care and you know, if she wants to put one of her true crime shows on in the background, then I'll do that and then I'll put a game over on mute on a different monitor and I'll have box scores open and see what's going on on a different monitor and I'll have box scores open and see what's going on. But it's not super critical to like watch the games because I can watch them later when she's in bed. 

24:51 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I have them all, you know recorded, so we have some overlap in the way that we do things. I think yours is more extreme than mine. Over the years, I have really tried hard to automate as much as I can in the sports betting space because I run a content network. Now I have commitments that people don't know about outside of sports betting or content that are important to me as well, and I really value my time. But when it comes to NFL injuries, as an example, I found it extremely hard to automate it to the point where I can rely on it and I still find myself having to sit at a desk Wednesday, thursday, friday afternoon while practices are happening. 

25:40
Read through specific things. There's like this human component to knowing this beat writer cannot be trusted necessarily. This one can, or this beat writer saying you know something like this player is available to play, means this in reality versus something else. Like there's a lot of logic that you're deciphering right and and I'm curious if you think that there will ever come a point where you could potentially reduce your workload via automation, or if you think that this is just it's like paramount to the way that you handicap and it's going to have to be like this for you to sustain this edge. 

26:24 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Okay. So first of all and most importantly is the fact that doing this and being curious and looking all of this stuff up, it's what I would be doing anyway. Even if this wasn't my job, I if it wasn't props, it would be something else. I'd be looking up which country makes the most robust tasting olive oil. 

26:49 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'd be looking up whatever comes to my mind morocco, I think, is right up there, because I just I just searched this like a week ago while I was getting olive oil, so I can't even believe how much we're similar. 

27:01 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Yes, so like if it wasn't, if it wasn't props my mind never stops racing. I'm always curious about something and it's just kind of who I am Like. I I have. I have made peace with it, I've accepted it. I like that. I'm this way because I'm always hungry for the next answer to whatever crosses my mind. So if it wasn't, if I wasn't, if I wasn't working and I wasn't investigating props, I'd go investigate olive oil, I'd go investigate whatever you could possibly think of. 

27:34
So it's not so much a grind for me, because I just love it. I just love everything about it. I love solving the puzzle and figuring things out. And, if anything, it's a problem because I will constantly spend my time digging down these rabbit holes and wasting time, wasting four hours to figure out if I have an edge on one bet instead of looking at the rest of the card and betting 10 other bets. I don't think of it the way that other people think of their jobs. I'm doing what I love now. 

28:18
Yeah, it's great to hear available actually mean all of that stuff. That's why I can win. It's because right now people can't click a button and do that. You have to go and you have to manually do so much of this stuff. If you're betting based on injury-related things, there are modelers who will intentionally avoid these type of bets. If players are questionable, they may set the whole game out instead of going and digging into things. So, because of the work that's required, that's why I go after that, because I can't automate, so I want to pick things where I'm not competing against automation yeah, it's, it's super interesting and I think, like sports betting is this elaborate puzzle and there's so many things you can bet on. 

29:07 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
it differs from sport to sport, like my experience with hockey versus football is night and day because hockey. I could pay someone to be my quote-unquote news guy and overnight they would do exactly what you're doing and I'd wake up at 7 am to all these notes for every single game and I would be able to, in my opinion, price all that information better than, I guess, other people in the market, in the morning at least, and I felt confident that I didn't need to spend those hours personally doing that. I could rely on someone else to project which goalie is going to start and things of that nature, and then price it accordingly. Nfl is just a completely different beast. The market moves so quickly. 

29:51
It's actually not that challenging to price what a certain player is worth to a point spread or a total, and because of that I don't have the same luxury of saying, okay, someone else, I can automate this. I can get telegram alerts whenever a beat writer tweets this, but by the time I go to bed it's going to be completely gone. So you have to solve these different problems in these different sports and I'm glad you really enjoy it. Over the years it's kind of worn on me a little bit and there's times when I love it, times when I don't. But having the mentality that you have where it doesn't feel like work like this is what I would be doing. I think that contributes and having that, that mentality like it's almost what you're doing, is challenging. But it's almost easier to win when it doesn't feel like you're grinding, like when you enjoy it. I don't know if you would agree with that or not. 

30:44 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
So I would completely agree with that. But you said something else there. That's the other key to me being able to win without automation. What you said is that you can pay a hockey guy to go over all this news and then when you wake up at 7 am, you can take that info and bet on it. You can take that info and bet on it. The other key to me winning is that my bets are all done. Once you get your list, you're going to be picking over my leftovers. That's the other part that has made me successful is not just betting early, but being able to scale those bets and get those bets in for size before you and other sharps get to pick over the market. 

31:26 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Right, this is going to be a very vague question and you might say to me this is ridiculous, I can't answer this. I don't even know how to answer this, but I know that I have to ask it because a lot of people ask me the similar thing and I struggle to answer, which is how do you figure out which news matters and which news doesn't? 

31:52 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Okay. So, first of all, all news matters, including bad, fake news, because if the news isn't correct, one way to interpret that is that it doesn't matter. But the other way to interpret that is see if the line moves, see if people are betting based on bad news and go bet the other side. So the better way to think about that is to think about okay, in which direction does this news matter? If it's a NBA Centel tweet and someone goes and falls for it and bets the wrong side, just to give an extreme example, then that news also matters, even though it's fake. So every source of news matters if it impacts the market. But in terms of what I do with that and how I bet that, I do have to sadly keep that to myself. 

32:42 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
OK fair enough and I don't expect you to give away everything here. I just I have to do my due diligence and ask it Now. You know full disclosure, everyone that knows me, they know that I'm not like a basketball originator. I never have been, I've never really attempted to do it but I do have a lot of exposure, luckily in my life, to very good basketball bettors. Kirk Evans is my co-host on Circle Back. I think very, very highly of his knowledge. Jacob and Pips Fedran Aricic. 

33:11
I used to watch Pips every single day and what I pick up from a lot of these bettors is how in tune they are with player rotations and coaching tendencies. You know, you hear them talk about it a lot. A guy like Pips knows that if one player is out for a specific team, it's going to impact XYZ players in specific ways. Or you know, a team might attempt more three-pointers because of the absence of this player on the opposing defense, all that stuff and it's fascinating to me to hear that because there's a lot that goes into it Like that's a lot of work to be able to track all that and understand all that. 

33:48
So when you're going through stuff like that, is it some sort of manual charting process. Is this something that just gets ingrained in your head over time? How do you go about like it's a very loaded question but one player being out is going to have this trickle down effect on everyone, on not only their team, but the opposing team as well? How much of that is mathematical? Versus you, versus, um. You know just something that that comes to you naturally, so what it is is. 

34:18 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
At first, it's something that comes to me naturally in terms of oh, this player got ruled out. Here's what I think will happen. I'm going to write down a terms of oh, this player got ruled out. Here's what I think will happen. I'm going to write down a bunch of list of ideas or bets to look at and then after that it becomes database where I check my ideas and look at metrics and things and sample sizes and all different kinds of stuff and say, okay, is this idea good or is this idea bad? Cross off these two ideas, bet this third idea, but it's. I do think you need both. It's not one or the other, and if you're only betting based on one of those things and not the other, I don't know how much you can win. 

35:00 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, makes sense. When you were going through your overnight process, you talked about watching some things back, but you also said that your betting day kind of ends start of the first tip-off, so I assume you're not watching games in real time. How much does watching the games, even after the fact, contribute to your overall process, do you think that? Yeah, how much of a ball watcher are you? Let's start at that. 

35:28 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Pretty big ball watcher. I'm mostly watching for defensive tendencies and defensive coverages and which teams are doing certain things on the court. Are players getting double teams more or less frequently than they normally are? Are other players getting left open? I'm watching for a lot of that and then if I see something interesting happen, then I again same thing. I write it down and then I use data and go look things up to verify if what my eyes are telling me is true, instead of instead of purely just blindly betting it. 

36:03 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Makes sense. Yeah, got it. On the news front, I have certain types of news that annoy me across different sports, certain teams that annoy me with the way that they maybe are I guess, intentionally misleading in the NFL, with the way that they produce their injury reports. The Patriots for years would just list, like everyone is questionable. The 49ers have known to lie on some injury reports and stuff like that as well. I do top down NBA props and you know there's nothing I hate more than a game time decision or someone you know like that's going to affect everything in that particular game, cause then it's kind of mad scramble at that point. What's the most annoying type of news that you deal with in when it comes to NBA? 

36:55 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
The complete opposite answer. For me, the most annoying type of news that I deal with is when, before lines go up, a coach says here is exactly who's playing, here's exactly who's not playing. If a player's on a minute's limit, the coach says here's exactly how many minutes he's going to play tomorrow and gives all the info before the line goes up. That's the most annoying thing for me to deal with, because then it's algorithm time, then it's modeling time, then everyone can price things correctly. I thrive on the chaos. The chaos is why I win. I want more chaos. I want more teams lying. I want to go figure out who's lying more or less than other teams, because that right now can't be modeled for. So that's what's most annoying. To me is certainty. 

37:40 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
That's such a great answer and I think a casual better might not really understand how much like uncertainty can play in your favor as a better, especially when you're not the best modeler or something like that. You give somebody perfect information. If everyone has access to perfect information on a game, they there's certain people are just going to win out over time because they build out the best models and that's it so. So I love that answer because the average person just doesn't really realize how uncertainty can be important or utilized to your advantage in a lot of cases. And that's like. Another thing that really bothers me, calvin, in sports is when, like, people speak in terms of absolutes when it comes to injury stuff right, this guy's going to play, this guy's not going to play. It's like, well, no, that's not the case. I mean, you know someone coming back off of a concussion protocol, you know is not a certainty to play, even though they're practicing, and like just putting percentages on that. That's the game within the game. 

38:41 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Exactly, and I'll use NFL as an example here so I don't leak any edges, but I'm not an nfl expert, so correct me if I say something completely wrong. But if we've got cj stroud questionable with a concussion, and then the line they're playing some other team and the lines, uh, plus three on the texans, and then you say to yourself, okay, this line, if cj stroud doesn't play, should be plus three, and then, if he does play, it should be a pick'em. And if you think that cj stroud has a 50 chance to play, then you need to go bet the plus three, even without knowing if he is in fact going to play. Because the middle line, the hedge line, if you think your 50 chance to play number is good, is one and a half. So the certainty doesn't mean like I'm only betting things. If I know a player's gonna play or not play, I will look at the line and I'll decide okay, if he has a 50 to play, I still need to go bet it. 

39:48 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I love that answer. I might be revealing too much here, but I mean, the reality is I don't have the same hockey edge that I used to at my peak and that's why I don't bet as much hockey as I used to anymore. There's many, many reasons which I can get into in another day, but whenever I created my hockey numbers in the morning, I did not price the game as if a goaltender was 100% to start unless they were already confirmed to start. I priced the game based off of what I actually thought the probability was, and I always used to remember I won't say the name of the person, but someone I used to argue with really frequently another sharp, better. We used to, you know, telegram back and forth and when we we disagreed on something, you know, he would always say to me like you just got lucky on this one because this goalie is starting, and I never wanted to say to him it's well, no, I, I priced this guy as starting 25 percent of the time and you didn't, and that's where the difference was in our number when I bet it, and I think that's a good lesson for people out there. 

40:54
Right, it's again sports betting. You have absolutes in some cases where you know players are confirmed. Even then, it's not truly 100 in any given instance, but pricing the uncertainty um is definitely definitely valuable. Uh, on your end, could have picked anything to bet in the nba. Uh, it's my understanding that you do mostly props and not sides and totals. Is that correct? That's correct. Was there a specific reason that you gravitated towards props? 

41:24 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
so long answer coming up, but I think it's important for everyone to listen to. So something I think about when I think about betting, something I still think about is something called the coastline paradox, and what the coastline paradox is is. It says that the larger your ruler is that you're using to measure the length of the coastline, the shorter the measurement of that coastline is going to be. Now, if you have a 10-mile stretch of coastline on the edge of a country and your ruler that you're using to measure the coastline is a mile long, you're going to flip the ruler over point to point to get to each stretch of coastline and your measurement is going to be like 11 or 12 miles long. However, if you have a one inch ruler and you take this ruler and you flip it over point by point, you can get into all the little inlets and all the peninsulas and everything else and your measurement of the coastline is going to be way longer than the 11 or 12 miles. Now if you go even further and you have a microscopic ruler and you can measure around the length of each grain of sand, and not only measure around the length of each grain of sand, bump by bump, you can measure around each molecule within each grain of sand. The measurement that you're going to get is going to be close to infinity because you're getting this bump, circle, half circle, half circle, half circle. Your length of a 10 mile coastline is going to basically be infinity. However, it's not going to actually be infinity because a coastline isn't a perfect fractal. There's a specific number that's the definitive, correct number for that measurement of the length of the coastline, and no one knows what it is. 

43:11
So when we bet, what we're all trying to do is measure a stretch of coastline with a smaller ruler than our counterparties are. So for me, I started as a $10 better. This means that I can bet into any market that I want to. I do not have to bet on sides and totals, where what everyone is doing is trying to measure the length of the coastline of an entire continent. Instead, I can go find these little inlets to measure these things that people aren't bothering to measure, and I can go, do my best to measure those and spend my time betting there. 

43:48
So when we think about betting, what we have to think about is where our edge is. So if I'm a $10 better, I don't want to compete against people like you or Kirk Evans or Haralabob or whatever. They're all measuring the coastline of Australia. Go have at it. I'm not capable of measuring the coastline of Australia. I want to measure the coastline of this little inlet that no one has bothered measuring yet and I want to do it better than other people can do it, because I have the time and the work ethic and the dedication to go grab a one inch ruler and flip it over thousands of times, compared to a sports book who is just throwing a number up. They have a million props, they list every game. They're not measuring those coastlines with this little one inch ruler. So that's why I bet props is because I want to bet the the least efficient market that I can with the amount of money that I have I love that answer. 

44:51 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
In probably hundreds of interviews that I've done, I have never heard someone put it so eloquently that, using an example that every single person can understand, and that makes a lot of sense. It really does, jacob. We're going to use that for a clip at some point in time as well, because that was a really, really, really good explanation of why you attack those specific markets. Now, with those particular markets and player props, we've obviously had a lot of news in the last year. We've had the jonte porter situation, terry rogier lately. What do you think in terms of the sustainability of these props moving forward? Does that worry you at all? Whenever you hear these types of stories coming out like players basically throwing away careers um, for you know minuscule amounts of money compared to what their salaries are. What do you think in terms of the the sustainability of what you're doing? 

45:51 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
I I worry a little bit, I do. I don't worry too much because there's always going to be options. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube and if regulated sportsbooks start limiting the amount of props you can bet, then other offshore sportsbooks or sweepstakes sportsbooks are going to intentionally offer those to compete in the marketplace and get more customers and the money supply is going to make that have to balance out one way or the other. So like, yeah, it's a little worrisome, it's a little annoying, but I don't foresee a day when player props just aren't offered or anything like that yeah, I think I have to agree with you. 

46:34 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I mean, this is nowadays the appetite for player props is so big amongst the everyday regular better that maybe there's some restrictions going forwards. You know, maybe you don't get players who are super deep in the rotation that are offered or things of that nature, but I, I mean I just cannot envision a world where they go away completely, like that makes no sense to me, would just drive money back to offshore markets like not not going to happen. Um, for my own personal betting, there's always a combo of let's just use ball knowledge here, even though some of it might be puck knowledge but ball knowledge versus market knowledge. And you know I do I do content for the hammer on forward progress, where I'm giving out football picks on a Thursday during the week and I'm always telling people you know I'm looking at the limits on some of these sports books right now If you want, you can get $50,000 on a side or a total in the game. I'm not sure that I can necessarily beat. You know the market as it stands at this current price. 

47:43
A lot of my advantage in betting is market timing, knowing when to bet right. Do I wait on this? Do? I think that you know, based off of the way things have trended over the last couple weeks in the NFL, that that one team might get supported on game day and I'd be better off waiting. So I'm constantly having these conversations with myself. Now you're more of an overnight better. You're attacking earlier markets. I'm wondering do you have those same internal monologues with yourself, or is it just I got to get this volume down? You know, walk me through, I guess, the balance of ball knowledge versus market knowledge and how that contributes to your process. 

48:23 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
This is my next hurdle this is a skill issue on my behalf and it's what I need to continue to get better at is understanding and learning the market side of things as opposed to the ball knowledge side of things. I don't want to come off as arrogant or cocky or whatever, but there's kind of no other way to say this. But I've got the winners all set. I don't need any more help. Figuring out. This bet is going to win. 

48:55
What I need to continue to get better at, and what separates lower scale bettors like me from the big end bosses that you've had on for interviews in the past, is the ability to scale and the ability to figure out. Okay, if this is a winner, how do I get money on it? How do I make money off of this at a significant scale? And the market knowledge. I've figured out a lot of things with that, but I have not figured out enough and I will never figure out enough. I always will have to learn more about the market as the market changes. 

49:30
But the thing that I've done better than other prop bettors is I've scaled somewhat. I've scaled to a degree. I need to scale more. I need to get better at scaling. That's my biggest hurdle is figuring out okay, this player is this sneaky enough to last late into the night, into the next morning, or potentially up until tip-off, into the next morning or potentially up until tip-off Is it going to be something that's like an adjustment or a thing I found that people aren't going to realize and aren't going to model for? So, for me, picking winners is basketball knowledge. However, scaling is market knowledge, and it's my next frontier, so to speak. I'm partway through the frontier. I've gotten to a point where I could quit my job in March and do this full time, but it's not yet at the point where I can think of myself as an equal, better to some of these other guests that you've had on, and I will continue to learn and I will try to get there that you've had on, and I will continue to learn and I will try to get there. 

50:36 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I definitely want to talk scaling with you when I I mean, this is a natural segue into it. But when I sent you the rundown you said, robby, we can't talk scaling without talking about the ethics of touting first, and I think you briefly mentioned it to me at Bet Bash. We didn't interact for a long time, but I think you dropped that. I used to sell picks and now I'm betting full time. So let's start there, because you think it makes more of a logical flow for this interview. So you were a pick seller. Walk me through what that looked like. 

51:11 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Okay. So when I went from $10 bets to $20 bets with the COVID tracing, I started sharing these bets for free in this random corner of the internet and people saw my results. They started tailing me and it was cool because I was feeding winners to people and it was less than 20 people and we were all small bettors at the time, so it didn't mess up the market or anything and I liked that feeling. I liked helping people and feeding people a little extra money when it came at no expense to me, because I was also only betting $20 at the time, so I wasn't having any market influence on anything, on anything. And as I won, I raised my bet size and grew slowly too slowly, according to a lot of people and I had a public picket also that I was sinking my bets on. And eventually, once I grew enough and I got to like a couple hundred dollar bet size, I kind of gained a little bit of a cult following and these people had also grown their bet sizes as they tailed me and people started stealing my bets off of picket. These touts were stealing my bets, claiming them as their own and being like look what I you know, here's the bet of the day, and that just annoyed the crap out of me, and so I eventually I had to figure out a way to deal with that, and so I turned off my picket. I went over to juice reel, which is another app that's like picket, and I added these 20 people as friends on juice reel so they could see the bets for free, and then everyone else had to pay $ dollars a week to see them. So that was me starting to tout. Now I didn't have like a discord or I wasn't going on twitter and being like, come sign up for my here's my lock of the day link in bio, like I wasn't doing any of that. 

53:11
But the Juice Reel has a leaderboard feature where they rank every better based on certain metrics like your ROI, your consistency, how much actual money you're winning because they will rank a better who's winning hundreds of dollars higher than they will someone who's winning $10 since getting money into play as part of betting. Your consistency, how quickly you're sinking your bets so that other people can tail you. And within like a couple months of being on Juice Reel, I hit number one in the rankings and I stayed there the entire NBA season and it shocked me. It stunned me, honestly, because I knew I had an edge. I knew I was winning. But at the time there were 50,000 people sinking their bets and there I was number one the entire season and I was not expecting that. I thought that, like I was a winner, I thought I was good at what I did, but I thought other rec bettors had to have stronger edges than I had. I wasn't the best rec better, but I guess I was. And so I gained a bunch of followers from that Cause, when you're ranked number one, people are going to tell you you have I have definitive proof of my winnings. Anyone can go in and look at my chart going up into the right, and see the previous bets and see what I'm betting and see how often they're winning, like it's. You can't argue with the actual math. So I gained this huge maybe not huge, but I gained this bigger following and it was cool Like I helped a lot of people. I'm I'm proud of that. I I changed a lot of people's lives. 

54:54
And then I blew up. Then problems came because I got discovered. I don't know who discovered me. I still don't know who discovered me. 

55:03
I don't know who was doing it, but when I would sink a bet, the market would blow up. The lines would get hit everywhere instantly. There were $5,000 or $10,000 up on exchanges at the minute this bet came in and I destroyed all my lines. Any when I would sink a bet, the line would last for two minutes maybe, except at some books that no one can bet on. You know, doesn't really count. If the hard rock line still exists, right, every other line is gone. So the it was it like it stunk. 

55:39
It bothered me because now bettors can't get the bets in that I'm betting unless they click it instantly. And I was stuck with this moral conundrum. What do I do, you know? Because what the problem was was the newer bettors. They don't know any better and they're going and they're clicking two point bumps. If I bet someone over 16 and a half points and then 10 minutes later the line is 18 and a half, don't bet that. Stop it. Like you're going to lose money doing that and these people would just do it anyway. 

56:12
You can click on someone's profile if they're tailing you and they leave like a comment on your page or something, and I would click on all these profiles and I just kept seeing it 18 and a half, 18 and a half parlayed with two other bumps, 18 and a half bet, with a amount that was disproportionate to their unit size, overextending. And so I had to kind of decide, like okay, you know, people are not listening to you, no matter what you say in your bio, what you tell people, they're still eating these bumps and, as a result, they're losing. Even though my chart shows winnings, their chart is going to show losses. So I had to morally look at myself and say what do I do here? How do I, how do I? Can't give plays out anymore to everyone, because the lines are just gone. Some group or pro is ruining it for everyone quietly. 

57:11
At the time I was doing this and working with like one person at a time and it was going well, I was doing great, and I tried this like middle ground where I, if a, if there was an outlier number that was only available at a couple of books, I'd go bet that with someone else quietly. 

57:32
And then, if there was a bet that was widely available, I'd go bet that on exchanges and sync it up, and it's still it didn't. Was widely available, I'd go bet that on exchanges and sync it up, and it still. It didn't help, didn't work. Lines still blew up in a couple minutes, and so I was faced with a decision like who? Who am I? What am I? What am I made of internally? Am I a good person? Do I want to look in the mirror and dislike myself because I'm leading to people losing money because they don't know better? So I want to look in the mirror and dislike myself because I'm leading to people losing money because they don't know better. So I turned the page off. I said it's not for me, we can't do it anymore, and I stopped touting and am now just full-time betting with my own money. 

58:11 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
That's a very interesting story, and one of the things that I've loved about doing these interviews over the years is talking to other bettors, and oftentimes I share either very similar experiences or sometimes completely different experiences. But in your case, calvin, I share a very, very, very similar experience to you and the people who don't know this. Back in 2017, 2018, there was a website called Prediction Machine predictionmachinecom, and the original founders sold it to a larger conglomerate. The conglomerate that bought it reached out to me and they said, rob, we don't understand any of this simulation stuff. We know we're in due diligence to purchase this site. Our staff can't figure it out. We need someone to run it. Would you be interested in taking it over for a year? And at first I told them no. Then they called me back and they significantly upped the offer and I said, okay, I'll sign a contract for a year, which I did, and I went through pretty much exactly what you've gone through. So the first thing I did was evaluate all the models. I rewrote the ones that were the worst and needed rewriting, but I would get you know the way that that site worked was there was like timestamped plays, so we would release all the numbers for college football games. Let's say, on Tuesday at noon, every single play. And then the plays were timestamped and locked right. It was this is what we're going to be graded against Kentucky minus three, florida plus seven and a half. And for these amounts of money, because this is the Kelly staking on it and we would have some. 

59:58
You know, I get this all the time. I get one guy on Twitter, uh, who comes after me all the time. He's like ah, you're a failed tout. You know, you sucked, you had to sell the site. I had never had to sell a site or I didn't own the site or anything like that. But the reason that I stopped doing that was the exact same reason you've just given, which was I would get emails and it'd be like Rob, I can't understand. Like you guys are advertising that you are up this amount of money on the year and I'm I'm playing all the same games and I'm I'm not. I'm not up nearly this much and I'd be like okay, we have to find out where. You know I'm like do you play all the games right? Are you only playing the top ones? Whatever you know, walk it down. He's like every single one of the releases. That is an edge. I play it for the same dollar amount. And then I'm diving in. I'm like okay, send me a spreadsheet of all the games you play and you start to see the prices that people are playing are nowhere near the same. So I'm following up. I'm like are you playing these when we release them? When are you playing them? They're like ah, you know, I just play them over the course of the week whenever I have time, and you know I'm trying to explain this to people. 

01:01:12
Got very, very tiresome to the point where I'm like I don't, I don't want to argue with people. I'd love to educate, but a lot of people are not grasping this concept. It's taking a lot like it's weighing on me. I think a lot of people don't like they find it really insincere when you're like oh, like it really? You know, you look at yourself in the mirror. You're like is this what I want to be doing? 

01:01:32
I basically had that conversation with myself where it's like yeah, I don't want people to be losing money because they're making bad bets. Right, if we send out the Yankees minus 125 and it moves to 145 later in the day and someone bets it, I ultimately feel responsibility for that, even though I don't know that I should. So I feel the exact same thing as you, and I just made the choice to not renew the contract at that point, and then I don't even really know what happened to the site, but that really resonated with me. It also sucks when people are copycats and steal your plays as well. It is one of the downsides of doing things publicly, unfortunately, and I'm very cognizant and aware that by appearing on public platforms previously, I did have my Betstamp account public as well, and I just couldn't do it anymore. So that also is another pain in the ass, I'd definitely say, as I'm going through some of that stuff now. Out of curiosity, though, if you hadn't encountered those problems necessarily, do you think you'd still be touting at this point? 

01:02:47 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
I don't know, because even with the people blowing up my lines, I did hit a point with bet sizing as I scaled up, where I was partly blowing them up myself. You know, it wasn't the release that blew them up, it was the fact that I was putting significant money into them just on my own. So eventually I think I would have had to stop as I won and as I grew, because there will become a point, if I maintain my edge and knock on wood and all of that, where I will take the number off the screen by myself with only my own money. That's the goal. I'm not there yet. I can take the number off the screen at some books, but I don't have the bankroll or the connections or anything else to completely obliterate the number. 

01:03:36
But if I win, it'll come eventually. So I don't know if I would keep touting or not, because I'm not going to release a play that people don't have access to, but it's interesting to think about. However, I think the answer is no, and I will tell you why specifically. But first, have you ever seen the movie stepbrothers? I have, have you? Do you remember the scene when the parents are getting divorced and will ferrell asks is this our fault? And the mom says no, it's not, and the dad says absolutely yes, it is your fault you remember that scene? 

01:04:14 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I remember it very clearly. 

01:04:16 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Yes, so to all of you who were tailing me and you were taking 18 and a half when I took 16 and a half. This is your fault. It is only your fault. You are to blame for me turning my page off. If you would, would have stopped doing that. There's a chance you could have still been tailing my plays when you could get them, when I put them out. Because of you, I turned my page off. It is completely your fault. Stop betting stuff before tip off. Damn it. 

01:04:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I love that. Do you think that worked? Do you think anyone will listen? I don't think so. Nowadays I don't think anyone's going to listen. I do want to move on to the scaling conversation by just one last question on the touting side of things. I did a video on Circles Off here a few months back now. We click baited the shit out of it. We put like don't buy picks on the thumbnail, which I still think is very good advice for the vast majority of the population. I think the people that can understand where buying picks can be valuable are not the people that you're generally sending that message to of don't buy picks. What's your view of touting in general? Now? Do you find it cringeworthy when you see, you know, people promoting these short-term trends, these SGP hits? You know just what's your general view of the touting landscape? 

01:05:44 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
It sucks, man. The thing is like first of all, we have to remember that 90 plus percent of touts are losers. So we're only talking about a section of whatever 10% of touts. Maybe it's more. If I want to be generous, we'll call it 20% to be super duper generous. So first you have to get all the 80% out and you have to know enough to not buy picks from someone who's losing when these 80% people are lying about their recaps. They are defrauding people. They're showing screenshots of winners when they're not showing screenshots of losers all the various fraud things that the losers do. 

01:06:24
So first, that's really hard for a new better to say, oh, he's a loser, because the new better doesn't know how to tell that type of stuff, how to tell that type of stuff. So then if magically someone can find a winning tout, then the question becomes for that winning tout, how they answer the question that you and me had to answer about what to do with the new bettors, because I don't think that saying oh, it's their mistake. I told them very clearly and specifically don't't take the bump. And they took the bump anyway. I don't think that's like unfair to say that's not my problem. 

01:07:00
You know, I can't be any more clear about it wins and does not win at bet 365, but instead wins widely and tracks picks widely available, then I think that's fair to say like, okay, I told the guy not to take the pick and he took it anyway. But overall, man, I, I, it's, I don't know man, it's, it's a mess, it's a giant wasteland. If you can stumble into finding the winning tout, then like good for you as a new better. If you're a sharp better, you don't need advice about this. But yeah, yeah. 

01:07:44 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, yep, wasteland says it all we can. We can end the talk conversation there, because I very much agree with you Not to say that there's not people who do it right, but there's just so many bad actors in the space overall that it kind of shines a negative light on everyone, unfortunately, on the scaling side of things. So at some point you're trying to build this up. What are the first real limitations that you run into? 

01:08:12 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
So the first limitations I saw coming like they weren't a surprise to me that I would have certain problems such as telling't realize was that I'm going to miss the best bets. I'm not going to miss 20 percent of my bets at random. I'm going to miss 20 percent of the best bets because the best bets, the lines, aren't going to last. They're going to be too incorrect for people to just let them sit there. They're going to get hit right away. So can I still win, not just with missing 20% of my bets, but can I win with missing the best 20% of my bets? So that was a challenge at first. And then there's other challenges that people have already talked about that people know about, such as you know, priming becoming good at priming. People know about, such as you know, priming becoming good at priming, becoming comfortable with priming, intentionally losing money for weeks on end. That was the mental hurdle I had to get over, and also kind of changing my mindset as a whole about how I bet, because now the game is not to have the best ROI, the game is to get the most money out of each account, and this is what separates a REC better or a REC plus better or a tout from an actual professional. 

01:09:44
Better is money. It's not ROI. Roi doesn't matter. I don't care about anyone's ROI anymore. It's about how much money can you get out of this account and how quickly can you do it. Because if I were to bet million to one parlays, I could have an edge on those, but the person is going to be waiting a whole lifetime before we hit one and get the money out of the account. 

01:10:05
So you have to find this balance between winning and winning quickly so that they're satisfied and getting the most money out of the account instead of just winning each of your bets. Getting the most money out of the account instead of just winning each of your bets. So I struggled with that at first. I've gotten much better at it now, but I'm still struggling with certain books and doing well with other books. I can tell you I'm still struggling with FanDuel, for example. Fanduel has been a disaster for me this season. It doesn't matter how much I prime. It doesn't matter what I'm doing. When I flip the switch and I bet my player props early, which is already like you know, it goes without saying that that's toxic behavior on an account. 

01:10:42 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah. 

01:10:44 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
But even if I parlay them, even if I bet some player props and some spreads, I'm still getting cut right away. 

01:10:52
So FanDuel is a good example of something I'm struggling with. 

01:10:54
And then there's other things that I'm doing very well with some of these other books that I don't want to say, I have figured out how to get the most money out of those accounts. So, as someone who just quit their job within this year is not yet at the tier of better that some of your previous guests have been on, these are questions that they all figured out five years ago, that I'm currently figuring out and I'm very honest with who I am, what I'm doing, what type of better I am, how good or bad I am as a better, since good or bad levels are purely defined by how much money you can win as a better. They have nothing to do with how sick your edge is or whatever. It's all about how much money you can win. That's what the unit of measurement is to define a good, better. So I'm currently facing all these obstacles. I'm doing all right with some. I need to improve in other areas, but here I am, you know you know, yeah, I totally get it. 

01:11:58 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Um, now, betting props. It's very different from betting, you know, nfl sides, for example. Right scaling looks very different for both of those things because nfl sides you can get a bit bigger pop at pretty much every single sports book. You're less likely to get limited. That's not to say you know, I haven't been limited betting nfl sides because I have. But you encounter different challenges when you are betting props and I would imagine that scaling up through betting props no longer becomes a one-man operation and you have to start to leverage partners, which I assume that you're doing at this point yes, so it is easier for me than it would be for a top down better who's betting props to scale, because my edges are strong enough that I'll bet the whole screen, right I? 

01:12:48 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
if there's a 10 cent price difference between books, I will bet all of those prices, including the 10 cent price difference. It has to get to like a pretty high, maybe 40 or 50 cents depending on my confidence in the bet. But my edges are strong enough that I'm betting the whole screen. So it's easier to get money down because I can bet things in every book when I have a bet and if something is a bet that is only good at whatever FanDuel or DraftKings, then I'm not currently a good enough bettor to have enough outs at 2 in the morning to hit DraftKings or FanDuel 5 or 10 times. I need to instead bet things that are not outlier lines. Also because it looks better. If you take the best price on all your bets on an account that's, you know they're not going to appreciate that. I don't recommend prop bettors. Do that, I think. If if you're a ten dollar better obviously ignore everything I'm saying, but for, like people who are betting real money, I think it's important to not take the best price on the screen and that's helped with account life. And then more parlays hiding great legs within parlays instead of just smashing the great leg yep, that is part of things. 

01:14:03
Using kiosks if I have like super toxic bets, if I can find someone at a kiosk, that's part of things. There's the old school options of you know, you just message people and tell them to bet things. There's technology options. There's plenty of ways to scale as a prop better, but it is harder because I cannot. If I have a 10 or 12% edge on my prop bets and then someone else has a 10 or 12% edge on at post, whatever college basketball lines, then that person with the 10% edge at post on college basketball lines is going to get more money out of the account than I'm going to get. So it's a. It's a mix of a bunch of different things, but largely the thing about scaling is that you have to. You have to let go of taking, of being picky and taking the best option, and instead just get your money in. 

01:15:03 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You know it's it's about dollars one, it's not about roi now, um, one of the most reoccurring topics that we have on circle back um happens like once a month is somebody that doesn't know any better publicly releasing an edge or leaking an edge, whether that's for clout or whatever reason, maybe just to help other people. And then we have all the sharp bettors who jump down their throat and be like dude, what the hell are you doing? You could be betting this stuff and making so much more money, and then you typically get a response of like I don't care or I wouldn't even know where to start with this. So you had to go about scaling your operation and finding partners. What did that look like for you? Did you do the outreach yourself? Did you have people reaching out to you because you had, you know, your public picket and maybe word of mouth or something like that? How? How did you go about finding other people that could assist you in your operation? 

01:16:06 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Just asking people. So I started with the people who I trusted most and asked them. Some of them said, no, you know, goes without saying, but you just got to ask and and also reaching out to people above me in the food chain and asking for advice and saying, hey, how do I go about this? How do I handle this aspect of things? What percent should I offer someone if I'm free, rolling them Like the the just. It sounds obnoxious to say it, but I'm just going to say it. Go figure it out. You know, like people, if you have genuine questions and you're not just DMing someone and saying, hey, what's up, if you're saying, hey, here's what I'm doing, I'm trying to figure this out, do you have any advice about this specific problem I'm having? People are helpful, they will help you. Some of them, some of them will help you if you're coming at it from the right direction and not just using people. You know, and that's kind of yeah, just, that's how I went about things. 

01:17:16 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Did you, in the early going, experience any um trust issues per se? Like I know that when I first started working with a larger group, there was a learning curve um and like a trust curve, I would say of not being the one who actually clicks the bets themselves anymore. Like you go from being the person who clicks, executing everything where you have full control, to now being reliant on other people. And there was definitely some situations in the early going for me where I would get returns, where it was like this isn't what I asked for, you've gone way beyond my price threshold or just, and in the early going that was one of the biggest challenges for me just learning to trust other people in the space. 

01:18:05 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Curious if you experienced that yourself Big time huge, huge amount, still kind of have it Like I'm not yet at the point where I am out of, like people who I know either in real life or on the internet for a long time. 

01:18:21
Like I still have some people who I plan to work with in the future, once my current outs are done or once I scale up more or whatever, but like the concept of some random person who you don't know ding you and saying, hey, I can get down on this market for you when I've never heard of you before. I still have trust issues with that and I'm not yet at the point where I'm working with those people, unless we like, at minimum, get on a video chat and tell each other who we are and where we live. But yes, I struggle with that and I actually had a conundrum that I wasn't expecting. That's the opposite of what you just said, which is like, if I am not betting a million dollars on every prop, if I'm, if I have a ceiling, a bet, a bet size that I want, what do I do? If I message a mover and I say, hey, can you bet the same game, parlay for me, and then they don't respond? 

01:19:13
yeah because what if they what if I like say never mind, and then I message a different mover and I say, hey, can you bet this for me? And then the first mover replies and it's like oh sorry, I got the bet in. And then the second mover messages you back and it's like yep, I got it in too. And then you're overextended, like that's, that's something I struggle with, like what do I do in that situation? I don't even know what the right answer is. 

01:19:36 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Still, I listen. I've had many times before where I send out to multiple movers at once saying I need you to get whatever you can on this Because it's it's just like quick. We need to go in the next two minutes news or whatever. And then I get the returns and I'm like, oh, I am now way overextended on what is a great play, but definitely not the proper bankroll management. So that's always a challenge. I'm a little bit more I don't want to say trustworthy, I guess maybe a more risk tolerant in the space. When it comes to working with other people, I kind of give them the benefit of the doubt and you know it's burned me before, but it's also created some good relationships. But it sounds like you draw the boundaries in the early going of like I got to really trust this person before I'm willing to work with them. 

01:20:27 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
I wouldn't say so. I've grown past really trust. It used to be really trust and now it. It's like I have to at least have known them for a decent amount of time, and also I will. I'm more likely to work with someone who has a public profile, who has their face and their maybe their name out there, because if that person stiffs me, that's way way more damaging to them than if, like you know, some random twitter person with a egg avatar stiffing me would be. 

01:21:03
If I go, and now that I've been on this show and been on other things and been on twitter, if I go and I stiff someone else, yeah, and then that person tells everyone that I stiffed them. I'm cooked, cooked, I'm completely cooked. My face is out there, my name is out there. I might not ever recover from that. The reverse goes true. So if I am working with someone who has a public persona, I don't think they're nearly as likely to stiff me because they're cooked if they stiff me and they have their face out there. So that is also a kind of decision maker, kind of tiebreaker type of thing, if you want to put it that way. 

01:21:42 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, got. It Makes a lot of sense and definitely reputation, extremely important in this space. Paying on time, just being easy to work with All those things definitely matter. I want to talk a little um about bankroll management and not like just you know the the nitty-gritty of it, but it's definitely um, you know you would admit you're, you're more of a, you're a newer, uh, full-time, better um, yes, and where I personally have seen the downfall of most bettors that I've had promise and I hope this never happens to you, calvin. 

01:22:19
You seem like a very humble person and a good guy, but they tend to overextend themselves very early. They're like this edge might go away six months from now. I got to do whatever I can, and then they end up betting way beyond their means to try to effectively capitalize that on that in the early going. Now listen, there's a counterside to that, where there's been a lot of bettors who have taken those risks in the early going and they owe everything that they have to being, you know, super aggressive with those edges and pursuing them as much as they could, knowing that they could go away. So there's different lines of thinking when it comes to this. How do you approach managing your bankroll? 

01:23:04 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
So it all has to come back to who you are and where you came from and what your options are if you go bust or if you come close to going bust. So for me specifically which does not apply to a lot of professional bettors, because for most professional bettors, a lot of them are modelers and most of them if like a significantly large amount of them are successful in other areas of their life. Either they got into betting straight out of college, from a good school, where they learned how to do a bunch of things and can go take that and get like a really nice job should they collapse as a better, or they're successful in other areas of their life and they then went into betting as a hobby and then they scaled up to the point where they had to quit their really nice job. But I did not come from that. I'm kind of a unicorn, because I had, you know, like a middle class job, If you even maybe like lower middle class job. 

01:24:05
And when people are starting out you'll hear other bettors tell newer bettors who have edges. They'll say, when you first start out, this is the time to really hit the edge, Because if you go bust you can add more money to your bankroll. But what if you can't add more money? What if you're where I was? What if adding more money means adding $50 a week and eating rice and beans? Where's that video? What do we do in that situation where there is no more money to add? And also, what do we do if you do go bust or you come close to going bust, you get your bankroll cut in half or something and you have to go back to work and your job is not your calling, like mine was. You know, if I go bust or I get my bankroll cut below half, I'm going back to a cubicle farm overnight making blah money and my quality of life drops way further than my bankroll drops, because if my bankroll gets cut in half, my quality of life probably quadruples down. On the other side, if I bet aggressively and I win and I double my bankroll, the quality of my life does not double. 

01:25:26
I'm very happy right now. I've never been happier. I get to just be curious 24-7 and channel this racing mind of mine into money which I never dreamed of. I thought I was going to work a crap job my whole life and I'm not. It's incredible. It's so cool that I have hit this point point and I'm not willing to risk doubling my bankroll at the expense of having a chance that I cut it in half and have to go back to the cubicle farm. 

01:26:02
Because if you bet so if you bet half Kelly then, depending on the source you use, you have a nine to 13% chance of getting your bankroll cut in half. And if you bet quarter Kelly, you have a 0.7% chance of getting your bankroll cut in half. And if you bet quarter Kelly, you have a 0.7% chance of getting your bankroll cut in half before you double it. So, first of all, this implies that you're doing everything correctly, because it implies that you are exactly quantifying your edge to the decimal point Right and it's completely correct. And it also implies that if you have a couple bad days in a row and you lose I don't know 2% or 3% of your bankroll that you're sizing down, every single bet that you use, your next bet is sized appropriately. 

01:26:47
So I don't know about you or anyone else, but if I lose 3% of my bankroll over the course of a couple days, I'm not sizing my bets down based on that to adjust for lose 3% of my bankroll over the course of a couple of days. I'm not sizing my bets down based on that to adjust for a 3% tweak and I also, as a non-modeler, I can't quantify my edge exactly. I can put like a ballpark and I will scale my bet sizes depending on the confidence that I have. But it's not a number. It's not an exact number. So this 0.7% chance of getting your bankroll cut in half is not actually 0.7% chance because no one's doing everything correctly. It's probably much higher than that. I don't know about you. I've hit many 50 to one parlays, like not just one. I've hit a couple. I'm not willing to bet the quality of my life as a whole on a 50 to one parlay. 

01:27:41 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I love this discussion because for every better it's different. And at one point in my life probably you know, 2019, 2020 ish in around that area, 2019, 2020-ish around that area I thought about everything in terms of maximizing EV. You know, if I am away from my computer for 10 minutes and a baseball lineup comes out while I go make a coffee, I've just cost myself EV right on all the bets. I can get down there. And I was obsessed with this to the point where I was working, you know, 16 hour days. I'd be at my desk 16 hours a day. I would take, you know, my tablet with me to eat dinner, Right, just in case stuff. It became an obsession to the point where I started sacrificing quality of life. I started sacrificing quality of life, right, and I get this question all the time from some other pros who are just like you know, nfl Sunday you're not betting live. Like, why are you not betting? There's so many opportunities available to you. Well, I love watching the NFL. I wouldn't trade like watching Red Zone for anything on NFL. I just love. It's part of my, my culture and like what I love to do. Yes, I'm sure I can make a bunch of money over the course of a season if I sacrifice that. But at some point I think every single better has to find their proper balance in EV versus quality of life. And as I've gotten older, I'll be 39 in a few weeks and I'm at the point now where I've done well in betting. Sure, I can continue to scale. Sure, I can make a ton more I'm confident in that but at what expense? And at some point you got to also enjoy your life and do things that are important to you. And I have hobbies outside of betting that are important to me. I like music a lot. I, you know I'm learning the drums now in addition to playing. Like all these things, you only have a finite amount of time and you have to figure out the best way to balance it properly. And for certain people, they just want to maximize EV and to each their own. If that's the way you want to go about it, go for it. 

01:30:01
For me, I definitely experienced a burnout period where I started liking betting less. Now I golf a lot. There's all sorts of things that I can do to supplement betting and it improves my quality of life, even though I'm not making as much money as I possibly could. So it's. It's a very long winded answer and I would love to, like you know, have one of those charts. X-axis is just like EV, y-axis, uh, quality of life. See where, like, every better fits on the scale, cause you'll have some extremes and others. But I'm more towards maximizing quality of life. 

01:30:39
Now, just where I stand and that doesn't mean I can't earn, I still earn very, very well. I just I've prioritized other things that make me happier and I think everybody's kind of got to find that for themselves. And in the early going, you know, if somebody doesn't have that money to fall back on, let's say, I think that they're going to spend a lot of their time maximizing their EV because this is their opportunity to grow their bankroll and build some wealth. But I think eventually people get to a period where they're like I don't know that I want to do this anymore. Right, I look at people around me and you know my closest friends in the betting space. 

01:31:22
I have a guy like Rufus Peabody who still is accelerating with his betting Like he hasn't he probably hasn't even hit his peak yet. 

01:31:31
It's still, there's still room to grow, and he loves to do that. He loves to enjoy that credit to him. That that's not going to be me. I know a guy in Spanky who like stepped away from the day-to-day operations of the business to just let everyone else run it, so that you know his kids can go to college and he can, he can see them off and all those things. So for each person it's going to be different, but I think finding the right balance is extremely important. I think it's okay to sacrifice some dollars to have better peace of mind and I think it's also okay at some points to be like you know what? This is my opportunity for the next couple years. It's going to be full steam ahead. I'm going to work really hard and maybe my life won't be the best, but it'll be worth it at the end of the day. And I think everyone's got to struggle with that decision, or at least make that decision for themselves. 

01:32:22 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
But, Calvin, it's not universal, yeah, yeah, and a big part of it though that is different for me that other people it does not so much apply to is that my fallback is a big fall back. Other people, more successful people, people who leave six figure jobs that they enjoy, where their company values them, and if they can go, if they were to want to go back to that job, the company would take them back. Like that's a whole different discussion. I'm not talking to those people who have that type of option in their life, but for me that's not the situation that applies, so my answer and my risk tolerance have to change as a result of that. 

01:33:04 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, out of curiosity, since you, since you ventured over into the full time betting space, have you, have you, ever felt the pressure or the stress of overexposure? Has that happened to you yet? 

01:33:17 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Yes and no, Not so much the one bet overexposure but if there's a 15-game slate then I might have 30 bets. So I won't be like stressing over one bet but the accumulation as a whole. I'll be like, oh man, this is a big night. Yeah, like I I have. But I know intellectually that the 15 games have nothing to do with each other. Right, and a day is an arbitrary unit of measurement. So if these 15 games happened over the course of three days, then I would have the same amount of bets. Instead of having a 15 game slate and a two game slate and a three game slate compared to a seven, seven, seven slate. I'm going to put the same amount of money in over the course of three days and I know that intellectually. But emotionally, man, it's different when you see the number that you've got for the day. 

01:34:10 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Oh, it totally is. Sometimes I'll get to a sunday and I check my positions like five minutes before about 12 55 eastern, I'm like, wow, I I didn't realize how much I bet this week. That doesn't happen every week, but there are weeks where you're like, wow, like I got a. I got a lot in play here today and I didn't really realize it because I'm placing these bets over the course of the week, even just like placing, you know, 30, 40 prop bets will add up over a certain amount of money and that's in the total figure. So, yeah, I was just curious about that because that kind of changes, that kind of changed things for me. 

01:34:48
I've shared this story publicly before. I did an episode of circles off, which was just like a very candid episode where I talked to the camera but I definitely felt the stress of overexposure and just like going out to dinners and just being like, yeah, I can't enjoy this, like we're at a really fancy restaurant but I have hundreds of thousands in play here tonight and not knowing how this is going in real time is going to eat away at me. So that also affected my my decision to to scale it back. But anyways, this is more about you than it is than it is about me, so we'll move it along here. 

01:35:25
We talked earlier about automation, a little bit right off the top, and you talked about you know, manual process being very important for what you do right now, about you know manual process being very important for what you do right now. Is there anything that's currently in your workflow that you would want to automate someday? Like you look, you look at it now and be like, wow, you know, it'd be really nice if I, if I didn't have to do this, maybe my quality of life could improve. I know you said you really enjoy the process, but is is that something that you think about? 

01:35:56 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Yes and no. So I would love to automate my tracking more. Yeah, not necessarily finding the bets, but if I could improve my tracking significantly compared to what I have right now, then I would become a better bettor and I'd become sharper and I would win more. But the actual finding of the bets if I were to build a model, it would not be very good. I don't know much about what I'm doing, so therefore the model that I build would reflect my knowledge of building models. It wouldn't be very good If my betting becomes my garbage model, competing against other people's really good models. That's not going to go well for me, so instead I want to focus on the things that can't be modeled. 

01:36:49
If you, if a coach goes and he says something in a press conference and then he gives a little smirk at the end when he answers the question, how do you put that in a model? What's a smirk worth in a model? It's like, if you know is whoever is joel and b gonna play tomorrow? And then the coach says I expect him to smirk. Where's the button for smirk? 

01:37:13
You know, these are the edges that I go after, because if I were to build a model, it would not be very good and I would have to build a really, really good model to beat other modelers, and that's not where my advantage comes from, no-transcript. But in terms of tracking completely different discussion I want to be able to one day get tracking that scrapes better and gets not just CLV but like hour by hour CLV see when the market moves, so that I can better understand the market, which, as I've said, is my next hurdle to overcome, so I can know, like when to bet certain things, how late can I wait, that type of thing. So those are two different answers, but that's my answer to automation. 

01:38:13 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, this is a really interesting convo because there is this human component and this human element that you are capturing that a model or algorithm or even like AI right now cannot capture, and that's a distinct edge. But there's this other side of me that thinks about your process right and training AI on your process, like if you went through a year where you recorded everything that you do really regularly into chat, gpt, grok, whatever some sort of AI. At some point I think you would get back potentially a model that does not capture everything you're doing perfectly, but maybe 98, 99% of your doing and I don't know for sure because I don't want to get into the details of everything you do to capture an edge, but I do think that that possibility is going to be there for this generation of betters moving forwards. I think about how much I already incorporate AI into a lot of the stuff that I do, not only embedding but in my life, and I think that there's an opportunity there. I listened to this is many, many years ago, when I was listening to a Bet the Process episode with Rufus and Jeff, where Rufus was just talking about how he tries to quantify everything and put it into his model. Right. 

01:39:36
If somebody says they think something has an impact on a specific game, he's going to try to attempt to quantify it. It can be something as crazy as somebody saying there's a revenge narrative in a game. You hear like, oh, this team wants to get revenge for having lost a big game with them previously. It's like, okay, let's try to quantify it, see if there's something there. If it is, let's put it into the model. You have essentially given an example of something that, in my opinion, cannot be quantified at this point. But I wonder if there's going to get to a point, calvin, where maybe 98%, 99% is good enough, right? I don't know, I'm just speaking out loud here. I don't know how much experience you have with AI, but I feel like you could eventually get to that point if you wanted to. 

01:40:28 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
I don't fully agree with that, because I think that AI will improve, obviously, and it will get better and it'll get smarter and better at finding things, and I don't think AI will be perfect though. Yeah, and the only way for what you said to cause a problem with my betting is if AI is perfect, because if it's not perfect, then my process will change and I will go and I will try to find where the AI is imperfect, as opposed to where the lines right now are imperfect, and, frankly, I'm just good at that. I'm just good at saying, oh, this feels wrong, instinctively, let me go investigate it. So I would. Then, you know, it would just change the process a little bit, because I don't think AI is going to get to a point where it'll get perfect. And if it does get perfect, then there will never be CLV. You know, bets will open and they will stay there until post, and if that happens, then I guess we all have to figure something out, but I don't, I don't worry about that too much. 

01:41:42 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
All right. On the human side of things, you mentioned previously in the show that you have a girlfriend and, um, you know, I I still remember the first conversation with my wife at the time where you know still my wife but at the time when I said, yeah, I'm going to leave my full-time job to play at the at the time DFS for a living. Eventually that evolved into into sports betting and it was very important to me to get the support of my partner right. I had been, at some point in my life, a true degenerate gambler and she had seen me go through that period of my life, through high school and university. So, you know, to eventually have her come full circle into this is actually going to be my life going forwards, and I'm actually good at it now was it was a great moment in my life to have gotten there, but I had a support system in place that I knew I could fall back on. 

01:42:43
Just out of curiosity with your partner, how do you, you know, how does she process all of this? Right, because it's very rare you can. You know, you tell someone that you're like a pro sports better. Even when I'm golfing with people like, oh, pro sports better, like what do you sell picks? Or like you know they never can really buy that as like a true career path. How did you approach that with your partner and like do you have that, that full confidence that she supports you in everything you're doing? 

01:43:15 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
I do have that full confidence that she supports me. I told her about, I told her I was thinking about quitting and asked kind of thought, got a picture of what she was thinking about that idea, and I didn't like bam, I'm quitting. It wasn't like that. I thought about it for like a couple months before I actually quit and she could see my results from betting. So like there was this long track record of like proven, verifiable success that you can't really argue with. So she had confidence that like yeah, like okay it, I do understand that you're going to win. 

01:43:57
It does make me a little nervous, but the reason that she's so amazing is because the main question she asked herself when I was telling her about this is will this make him happy? And the answer to that was unequivocally yes. So then the decision becomes easier for her to be comfortable with, because I'm going to be happy doing it. And that's just unbelievable, just having that support, having someone at your back who can keep your mind away from betting when you need it to be away from betting, tolerate the fact that I have this racing mind that never stops and that it needs to be doing something at all times, and if that's betting, then it's betting If it's what we talked looking up olive oil. If it's whatever else, then she loves me because of that. She doesn't love me in spite of that. So if it's going to make me happy, that's what the main decision point for her was when I asked her opinion about how she felt it. 

01:45:09 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Nice. In your opinion, Calvin, what's the hardest part of the job that nobody sees? 

01:45:18 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
So I think there's plenty of things that other people have talked about that I don't want to rehash, but the one that surprised me a little bit that I I knew it was coming, but I didn't expect it to come to the degree that it came was the lack of social acceptance. Once I told people I was quitting my job to bet full-time, because a bunch of people thought like, oh, you hit some slots, you got lucky at the slot machine, and now you're going to go quit your job to play slots full-time, yeah, and then other people think, oh, are you going to become a bookie? Like that's illegal, what are you doing? And other people then are like, what do you mean? You're, you know, quitting your job? Like, how are you doing? Are you, are you breaking the law? Like so many people think it's illegal to bet with another person. And if I tell someone else like, hey, go bet this, they think that's illegal and they don't know any better. 

01:46:22
And it hurt, man. I was not expecting the lack of acceptance from other people, it sucked, it surprised me. It still kind of hurts, like when I tell people, hey, I'm a, you know what do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a sports better. You get that. You know, like the it, I was not ready for that and it did not. It did not sit well for me and it still doesn't sit well with me. I don't want to be seen as immoral and I have, like, sacrificed a lot to remain moral and it hurts to be seen that way. It just I wasn't ready for that. 

01:47:06 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I will say through my experience, which may not end up being yours, I felt the exact same that you do in your shoes now. Over time, once you can show that you're doing it for many years and you're successful, the opinions of everyone around you change to the point where it almost becomes a badge of honor. Probably have been ashamed, like seven, eight years ago, to tell people that you know my, my son went to college and, look, you know university and now he's just like betting on sports and now he's very, very proud of it, because there are very few people that can actually sustain a living from doing it right and I. I do think that that changes over time and and I used to share the same sentiment that you do now it's like I'm trying to convince people that this is like you know. This is math-based. I'm approaching it in a way that I'm very, almost certain I'm going to win in the long run. It doesn't matter to those around you who don't understand it right. 

01:48:21
It took years for my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, to truly even understand or get what I do. They almost put blinders on. They didn't want to believe it was real. For the longest period of time. It's like, oh, my daughter is marrying someone who's like gambling for a living. Like that's no, but now things are good and of course the blinders come off and they're like, okay, you know, this is this, is you've been able to accomplish this? So I do think it will change. Going forwards Can't say for certain. I hope it does for your sake. But yeah, I, I did go through that myself as well, curious where you see this going for you in the next five to 10 years. What do you think this is going to turn into for you? 

01:49:12 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
So I plan to stay in my lane as long as I can, as much as I can, and grow sideways instead of growing vertically. I want to continue betting overnight when everyone else is asleep, before the lines have been picked over by other people, and I want to expand that as much as I possibly can until I get to a point where I just can't anymore. And only at that point will I even consider going to betting props and competing against other sharp prop bettors. Right now, I want first pick and I want first pick to remain for as long as I can have it remain, and I may keep it there forever. 

01:49:54
If I'm making enough money per year and I can't grow anymore, but I'm doing very well, I may say okay, here's my plateau, I'm happy here, I'm content. Now I am fully aware that I am playing checkers and everyone else is playing chess and I just don't care. I could not care less. I am trying to maintain my happiness, am trying to maintain my happiness, fuel my curiosity and turn it into money, and I'm content with where I am right now. If I don't even scale any further, if I, if this is my plateau, then I'm good, I'm fine, I'm happy there. And if I'm playing checkers while everyone else is playing chess, I'm completely fine with that. King me. 

01:50:44 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yeah, I mean it's a very unusual answer. To be honest, like most people I asked that to, it would be venturing out into maybe a different sport, trying their hands at a different sport, or like taking the next step up in the markets that they're at. I, I I appreciate the honesty 100%. It caught me off guard because it doesn't feel very aspirational, and I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, it's just a very unusual answer, calvin. 

01:51:13 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Yeah, no, and it's all about, to me, the growth I've had as a person, just in general. It's all about my internal happiness and my peace, and am I enjoying my life? It's not about money. Only money provides happiness. Money leads to a better quality of life, of course, right, but that's not my focus for what I'm doing. My focus is my happiness. 

01:51:43 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
So is that how you define success for you? Just on how happy you are, basically? But money would contribute to happiness for you Exactly. 

01:51:52 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
And money also contributes to security, which leads to decreased stress, which leads to happiness. So I'm not saying money doesn't have anything to do with happiness. That's a very arrogant thing to say. That usually only comes out of the mouth of people who have money. But the the million dollar a year kind of aspirations, like I think I might you know, not right now, but like years down the road I think I could possibly do that betting overnight if I can scale sideways enough. I'm not there now. I'm not claiming to be there now, I don't want anyone to misinterpret that. But I think there's room for growth here within what I'm doing and I want to try to achieve that. But I want to enjoy my life. You know what's the point of having money if you're miserable? I want to enjoy my life. You know what's the point of having money if you're miserable, like I've never understood that at all from anyone. Like if you hate your life and you make a bajillion dollars a year, what are you doing? Get your priorities equipped. 

01:52:50 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Yep, I echo that one Totally agree with you on that I want to do before we get into the closing questions here. I want to do a little rapid fire segment with you For those in the audience. If you've enjoyed this interview so far, please smash that like button down below. If you're not subbed to your own circles off, I think you should sub. Honestly, I think we put out some good content. You can set notifications, get notified any single time that we drop a new piece of content. If you're listening in audio form, please rate and review five stars. Put together a short list of questions here. We'd like to get your thoughts. All right, calvin most honest coach in the NBA and the least honest coach or the most dishonest coach in the NBA. 

01:53:35 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
So the most honest coach in the NBA. I'm so sorry I have to keep it to myself because I am currently profiting off of his honesty. It's this little random nugget that I found, but he does a thing and I make money, so I have to keep that to myself. But the most dishonest coach far and away is Steve Kerr. 

01:53:59
Now, this man will say things to such an extreme level for no reason. So he can't just say like oh, you know, whatever, jonathan Kaminga played good. He's going to start going forward, but we'll see how long it lasts. Instead, what he said is Jonathan Kaminga is playing absolutely amazingly. He is our starter. It's entrenched, lock it in and then a week or two later he'll bench him. And then the next week he'll say like oh, moses Moody played great tonight. Will Richard played great tonight. They're both going to start going forward. That's where we're at right now. That will change because he's a dirty liar. He cannot tell the truth about anything and he says everything with his chest. He says things in such a grandiose way and it's very funny because Steve Kerr would make a terrible betting partner if he's coming to you and he's on the mover side and he's saying I can get you a million dollar fill, or he's on the originator side. He would say I win 100% of my bets, but Steve Kerr would make a great tout. Let me tell you. 

01:55:08 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Steve Kerr, a WAP or dub club post-career. 

01:55:12 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Absolutely. He would have a great dub club career. 

01:55:16 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
As soon as you said, steve Kerr, I looked to my producer, jacob Jacob, who's a big NBA fan, and he, like, immediately nodded right away. So you have a stamp of approval here in studio. Um, what's your favorite type of NBA prop to bet? 

01:55:30 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
uh, same game parlays finding. Finding a new random same game parlay edge that I was not expecting to find in the middle of nowhere, like, oh, that's exciting. Why is this being incorrectly priced? There's too much or too little correlation being factored in here. That's a very fun feeling, because normally when I find that, it's because I accidentally stumbled into it just clicking around, as opposed to saying let me test this, okay, it's good, I'm gonna bet it a lot of times I'll find edges with those just randomly, and that's very that's a fun feeling yeah, I found one uh this week very randomly and it is a fun just clicking around. 

01:56:07 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
I'm like, wow, I didn't even know this was offered and uh, we'll see how long that one lasts. 

01:56:12 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Uh, worst beat of your betting career so I try not to focus too much on these, but the I guess, if I had to pick one, it was a couple years ago when I bet on DeJounte Murray to get a triple double 30 to 1 because I was anticipating Trey Young not playing and Trey Young didn't play. 

01:56:35
And then at the end of the third quarter, going into the fourth quarter, dejounte Murray had points covered. 

01:56:41
He had 10 assists and he had nine rebounds, and so I turned the game on and I watched the fourth quarter and he was actively trying to get this last rebound. He absolutely knew that he had one rebound to go to get this triple-double and his teammates would not let him have it. They kept stealing the rebound to the point where I think there might have been a chemistry issue on the team and they might have been doing it on purpose, because there would be times when someone would shoot and the other team would all get back on defense and there would be three of the Hawks standing under the basket with no one to box out, no competition. This is normally a situation where you let the guy with the triple double get the triple double and his teammates were still stealing those rebounds and he didn't get it. It was very frustrating, very annoying to watch. I was yelling at his teammates because of their selfishness and I do wonder, like what's the backstory there? Why would his teammates not just let him get it? 

01:57:40 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
But that's what I would pick for the worst beat of my career yeah, it's one of those where you got to like intentionally miss a dunk or a layup so that you can quickly grab your own offensive board. Not that players are thinking that in real time, of course. Uh, let's flip it. Uh, the best bet that you've ever made, and this is very you can interpret this however you want. It's very loose, however you want to define best bet. 

01:58:02 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
So I'll ask you what do you think the listeners want to hear? Do they want to hear the sickest edge I ever found? Or do they want to hear the bet that won me the most money? 

01:58:12 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Ooh, that's a tough one. That is a tough one, I mean both. But if I had to pick one of the two, I would say I personally would like to hear the sickest edge more than I would the biggest bet. 

01:58:27 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Okay, okay. So at the beginning of this season, kawhi Leonard, or was it this season or last season? It all runs together. I think it was this season. 

01:58:46 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
But Kawhi Leonard came. We're like a month into the season, calvin, it's not like it's been so long. 

01:58:52 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
That's why I messed it up, because actually it just happened again two days ago and I bet the same thing and it lost. But last season, I should say. Kawhi Leonard came back from injury and he played one game and he played a total of 20 minutes. But he played 15 minutes in the first half like a normal starter and then he started the third quarter. He played five minutes and then he came out and then he never came back into the game, so he only played 20 minutes. It was his first game from back from injury. He was on a minute's limit, but it was really weird because no one does minutes limit like like that. Normally you play about five minutes a quarter and no one asked Ty Lue about it in the press conference and no one wrote about why that happened. And it stood out to me. I was like what the hell is that? But something clicked in my mind and I remembered from about three years ago when Kawhi Leonard came back from a different injury. He didn't start the game, he came in in the middle of the second quarter, played the closing half of the second quarter and then closed the game as if he was a normal starter playing normal starter minutes and that was also really weird and they asked him about it three years ago. I went back and looked it up and found the article and he said it's because if he rests too long in between his stretches of play then his muscles get tired and cool down and he doesn't feel loose anymore. And he thinks that that doesn't lead to him playing well if he's all tightened up. 

02:00:35
So the next game lines come out and Kawhi has a a fair points line. His points line is 16 and a half. If he's playing 36 minutes his points line should be much higher than that. But because he's only going to play about 20 minutes, 16 and a half is a fair line. But then I just was like, oh man, that's a bummer, like they priced him correctly. That sucks, sucks. And I just accidentally or maybe not accidentally, maybe some part of me knew something but I went and looked at his first quarter points line and that was three and a half. That's a terrible line because he's going to play eight minutes in the first quarter as if he's a starter. He's not going to play five minutes in the first quarter, which is what they're pricing him for, because you know, 16.5 divided by four that's like whatever 4.125, I think, and the three anda half points line with juice on the over is exactly a fourth of that. 

02:01:36
So my first instinct was oh my god, like this is a terrible line, I need to get as much money down on this as I reasonably can. But first of all, quarter points bets are very hard to get money in. And second of all, I thought, because of this first quarter points line, that Sportsbooks didn't realize what I realized, which is that all his minutes are going to come in the first half with a little third quarter sprinkle. So I started building same game parlays based on this and what I did was I tinkered with everything and I bet over uh, four and a half alt line, first quarter points at plus money I think it was plus 200 and then over 0.5 rebounds, because he had a 3.5 rebounds line and a 0.5 quarter rebounds line which is also just divided by four. 

02:02:32
It's not correctly compressing the minutes into the first quarter right and then in the full game I took under 16 and a half points and under three 3.5 rebounds just to see what it did and I got 34-1. And because of the implied negative correlation between going over your first quarter points and under your full game points they're. Obviously those are negatively correlated with each other, but this is way too much, because all his minutes are in the first half. So I reach out to a bunch of people. I'm cold dming people. Can you please get this down for me? I'm placing other bets based on uh, the clippers to win the first half and the minnesota timberwolves to win the full game, because kawaii is not going to play in the second half. 

02:03:19
So that line is improperly priced. Improperly priced, I'm placing first quarter full game opposite bets, I'm placing straight bets on the Minnesota Timberwolves second half points line and trying to think of all the possible ways I can leverage this. And then Ty Lue goes and in his pregame press conference before the game, he confirms a reporter who says hey, you know this minutes thing with Kawhi, is that going to happen again tonight? And Ty Lue goes yes. And then obviously the reporter is not happy with that because that's not a quote. So he says OK, so then Kawhi is not going to close the game tonight. And Ty Lue just says again yes, so I have confirmation of my angle. 

02:04:13
So we go into the game. Kawhi covers the first quarter over points, over rebounds and subs out out. And I'm sweating all of that. And then, because that's not enough to sweat, when the third quarter starts I smash his under points, under pra, under whatever I can get live on my own p1 accounts. So not for as much as I would like to have smashed it for, but but he won everything. I won every single bet that I placed, basically, aside from maybe the second quarter Clippers full game, timberwolves bet, but everything else won. It was an incredible day. I will never forget that day. This was when I had my deuce reel page page, so I gave this play out and this angle out to everyone. It was such a such a cool feeling to nail such a weird read like that yeah, it it's. 

02:05:11 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
it's essentially the equivalent of knowing that a player is going to get injured in the game even though they're not actually getting injured. And having that information beforehand, you can use it in so many different ways to profit. I really like that story. I'm glad I went with option one instead of option two, because it is a good story. Last rapid fire One opinion that you have about betting that most people would disagree with. 

02:05:42 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Every obstacle is good, including the obstacles completely out of your control. If you can't get your location to verify on a sportsbook, that's pretty frustrating. That's a good obstacle. You want that obstacle because every obstacle cuts some of your counterparties. When you have something else that's completely out of your control maybe a team releases a bad starting lineup that's incorrect because some person screws it up somewhere along the telephone that's also good. Every single challenge that we face as bettors is a challenge that at least one person is not going to overcome, so people drop out. The field gets thinner, there's less competition All the stuff that people myself included want to get frustrated about in terms of the problems with scaling, how hard it is to scale, what changes when you scale these are all good problems because I will overcome them. I will work my way out of it. I will work harder than other people and some of my counterparties are going to drop out. Every obstacle is good as long as you've got the internal fire that you need to really make it in this industry. 

02:07:01 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
You know, when you first started that answer, my first reaction was to disagree. Then, as you explained it, I totally agree by the end of it as well, and I will remember that next time I'm in Ontario and I log into a sports book and they ask me, you know, for a G location check and it doesn't work properly, I'm going to remember this quote and it's the. All the rage that I'm going to have in that moment will just dissipate, because it's a good thing. It's a good thing for betters. Um, you know the drill. Here we're at the end of the episode. Let's start with a plus EV, minus EV move of the week. Could be anything you want, doesn't have to be sports betting related, but one thing that you think is plus EV in life and one thing that you think is minus EV in life. 

02:07:52 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
My plus. Okay, we'll start with plus EV. My plus EV move of the week is pay it forward. Now I am at a point in my life that I never knew I could get to, because I'm happy, but I picked up so many things just from other people above me in the food chain, things that they said on shows like this one, where they may slip it in, maybe even accidentally, and I'll go oh, I didn't think of that. Let me, let me figure out how to process this. What can I use this information for? Things about how to build partnerships, how to make people happy with the process, how to grow. Is it better? How to appropriately All these little tidbits that I learned from shows like this enabled this enabled me to be here, to be doing what I love now. 

02:08:50
I did it the hardest way possible. I had a bankroll of literally zero dollars. I took what the sports books gave out and I turned it into a career and even my paid like statistical resources or other tools that I use for gambling that I have to pay for. I took that money out of my bankroll to pay for it. I didn't take it out of my job money. I never deposited one cent into this because I didn't have one cent to deposit and I made it. I did it. That's incredible and I did it because of the people above me in the food chain Now going forward, I want to pay that back. I want to figure out some way somehow how to help the people below me in the food chain who maybe have good questions, maybe whatever else. But paying it forward is my plus EV move of the week. 

02:09:44 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Um, that elicited like a little bit of an emotional response from me. Um, uh, because of everything I do in the content space nowadays, people can question my motivations all they want. Uh, or motives, I should say and uh, without a doubt, you know, I've invested in a company like Betstamp and created the hammer and there's certainly monetary gain, which is one of the motives of doing these things, but I legitimately do not want to see people go down the path that I did as a rec better when I was in my late teens and early twenties and that drives me, um, very heavily to do the content that we do here, especially on circles off. Um, when we met at bat bash Calvin, you came up to me at the end of that circle back and, um, you know, something you said stuck with me, but like it was about how much you know watching this channel had an impact on you as a better and that you know you owe a lot of things to me and nobody owes anything to me to make that explicitly clear. But it's definitely something that I strive for. 

02:10:54
I do, oddly, as like a better, which is really weird like believe in karma. I'm superstitious for a math guy and a logic guy doesn't really make any sense, um, but I do appreciate you saying that because I think it's really important. I think if you get to a spot, a spot in your life where you can assist people or not have them go down a path that you know, uh, is a dark one, doing what you can to get them on the right track is important. So appreciate you sharing that and sorry about making it about me, but I did connect with that quite a bit. So thank you for that. One. As a plus EV move, the minus EV move will just be listen, sometimes you can frame the plus EV as a minus EV. We didn't really think this through when we created it, but we got to do a minus EV move now. 

02:11:45 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
Okay, my minus EV move is Twitter polls or YouTube chat polls or discord polls that do not have a show results option. 

02:11:55
So if I put out a poll and I say who's a better basketball player, player A or player B and they're both bench players and casual fans don't know who they are, that poll is not going to give me any information. Because if you yourself see that poll on your Twitter feed and you say, oh, I'm curious, I want to see what the results are, but I don't know the answer, I'm just going to pick one. The results are, but I don't know the answer, I'm just going to pick one Then the poll is worthless because everyone is going to do that, not just you other people. If you ask a hockey question and you put up a poll which player is better, player A or player B, I'm going to pick one at random with an uninformed decision and skew the results of the poll. You have to have a show results option in every Twitter poll that you put out if you want the poll to actually give you any kind of relevant information, because if you don't, it's completely worthless. 

02:12:51 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Love that. I can already think of at least a dozen polls I voted on in life, just to see what the results are going to be NFL pinnacle beater on Twitter or NFL pinnacle watcher now because he's not. He's not beating pinnacle anymore. He makes that mistake pretty regularly. But yeah, I agree, show results. Simple as that, telling I'm sending out a company wide email today because we do a lot of YouTube polls. That needs to be. That needs to be a perfect example, feature feature going forwards that we're not. 

02:13:19
We're not the best with um. Okay, let's end it off here. We're going back to the, the roots, the early days of circles off. If you could go back five years and talk to a previous version of yourself, what advice would you give to your former self? 

02:13:36 - Calvin and Hobo (Host)
okay. So I don't believe in destiny or fate or predeterminism or whatever else you want to call it. I think life is a series of random events that compile on top of one another to shape where we are today. As a result of that, I would not tell myself a single thing. I would go through all the struggles, I had all the unhappiness, I had all of it in order to be at the point that I'm at now, and I would not risk changing anything and potentially not being in the spot that I'm in now. 

02:14:11
However, if I was talking to someone else who's in the same spot that I'm in that I was in five years ago, which is a newer, better, with an edge, who just started figuring things out and is still betting less than $100 a bet, my advice would be to figure out how the market works right now instead of focusing on just the bets, and learn from what happens when people bet. Try to understand not just like picking winners, but what's the best way to get money down If you have the same bet that has the same exact lines at four different books. You should learn things like bet $25 at each book instead of betting $100 at one book. All the market stuff is a problem you're going to face in your future. All the market stuff is a problem you're going to face in your future. It's a problem that I faced and I'm still well, forever face, that we'll all face. Try to figure it out now, before it, before you have to figure it out. That would be my advice to someone else. 

02:15:13 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
About an hour and a half ago when we were first talking, um, I think you really sold yourself short on you know we were talking about line shopping. You're like I can't understand how other people you know don't figure this out. Now, after having talked to you and hearing your final answer where you gave a case of you know I wouldn't change anything for myself, but if someone else is in the shoes, you have a very nuanced way of thinking. I can see why you're successful in the space Really well thought out answers and really enjoyed talking to you today. Calvin, I really wish the best for you going forwards. Continued success. 

02:15:48
For those out there who want to follow Calvin, give him a follow on X at Calvin and Hobo. We'll link that down in the description below as well. If you did get value out of this interview, please smash that like button, subscribe here on Circles, circles off. We'll be back with some content going forwards in the future, so make sure you're subbed here. Make sure you turn on those notifications. Uh, peace out everyone. Enjoy the rest of your week.