00:00 - Rob Pizzola (Host)
Right now, on gambling Twitter, the debate is everywhere. Some sharp bettors will tell you flat out never buy picks. Others say don't do it 99% of the time, which for most recreational bettors basically means the same thing. Then you've got the pick sellers themselves saying no, there's plenty of reasons you should buy picks. And the average bettor well, they're stuck in the middle, not knowing who to believe. So what's the truth? Should you ever buy picks? I'm Rob Pizzola, professional sports veteran CEO here at the Hammer Betting Network. This is Circles Off presented by CalSheet. Now this topic matters to me because I've lived it from both sides.
00:51
In my 20s, I bought picks. I thought I was being smart. I tracked free plays. I built little spreadsheets. I convinced myself that I could identify who was worth paying for. In hindsight, I was looking at tiny samples. I was chasing hot and cold streaks. I was ignoring how the market actually works and I lost money buying the picks. Then I lost even more betting the picks.
01:14
In 2018, I ran a pick selling site for one year. It was called Prediction Machine. I inherited it and that taught me even more about the industry. I learned how the business operates. I saw the tactics that drive subscriptions. Some are just normal marketing Others. Well, I'm not comfortable with them at all, and that experience cemented a simple truth for me the incentives between the seller and the buyer are very rarely aligned. The seller gets subscription revenue no matter what. The buyer takes all the betting risk. So when you hear people argue about whether you should ever buy picks, understand why I care. I've paid for them, I've sold them and I know the pitfalls.
01:53
In this video, I'm going to walk through what I learned how the market reacts to real information, the red flags in marketing and record keeping, and what almost no one tells you about availability and pricing. Before we dive in, I want to hear from you down below have you ever bought picks? Did it help you? Did it burn you? Who did you buy from? Drop a comment below. I'll be reading all of them.
02:16
Now let's talk about why don't buy picks became the default advice. It's not because every pick seller is a scammer. It's because most casual bettors are not equipped to separate the few good actors from the sea of bad ones. Teaching that skill takes time. On YouTube or Twitter, you get 30 seconds. So the simple rule exists just to protect people.
02:37
Now, most recreational bettors can't easily verify records. They see a graphic with a hot streak, not a full ledger. They don't notice when plays were graded at numbers that they could never get. They don't track closing line value, so they can't tell the difference between a good process that lost or a bad process that won. There's also line movement.
02:56
Real information tends to move prices. Even if a seller is sharp, by the time hundreds or thousands of people try to bet it, the number is gone and now you're paying for leftovers. That's how edges disappear. And then you've got bankroll and sample size. Buyers chase streaks. They bet too big and they judge a capper, sometimes on 20 or 30 plays. That's noise. Survivorship bias kicks in, which just means you only notice the winners and you ignore the losers, like seeing the few people who hit a jackpot but forgetting everyone else who goes broke. The few who ran hot are the ones you keep seeing over and over. So the blanket advice is just a seatbelt. It's not perfect, but it stops most people from driving straight into the same brick wall that I did when I was in my twenties.
03:42
If you can't audit a seller's record or understand pricing or get the same numbers that they grade at, the safest move is simple Don't buy picks. Now, one thing you have to understand before even considering buying picks is how the betting market actually works. Sports betting markets are efficient because information gets priced in quickly. When something valuable becomes public, it usually moves the line. So here's the reality. If a tout releases a play and the market immediately shifts, that tells you that the information or the opinion was respected. It had value. But by the time most buyers log in and place their bets, that number is long gone. You're paying for a play that you can't actually get. You're left betting into a worse number while the tout grades themselves at a better one. On the flip side, if the release doesn't move the market at all, that's a bad sign too. It usually means nobody respected the play. It wasn't valuable in the first place.
04:44
Most casual bettors never think in these terms, but once you see the math, it's undeniable. This is why availability is everything. It's not just about whether a pick wins or loses. It's about whether you can even bet it at the same price as the person that's selling it. If you can't, you're just buying leftovers, and leftovers don't win longterm. And, let's be honest, nobody goes and orders a steak dinner to eat the scraps off someone else's plate.
05:13
One of the biggest problems with pick selling is that the incentives are completely misaligned. Betting, by nature, involves risk. If I make a bet and I lose, I'm going to lose money. That's how it works. But the moment you start selling picks, that risk gets shifted. Here's why the tout is now free rolling. If their bets lose, sure they lose on the wagers themselves, assuming they're even betting the plays that they're giving out. But they've already collected subscription money from the clients. That revenue cushions the blow. They're not fully exposed to the downside anymore.
05:49
The buyer, on the other hand, is in the exact opposite position. You're paying for the picks up front, and then you're also taking on the entire risk of the bets themselves. If the plays lose, you don't just lose part of your bankroll, you lose the subscription fees too. And remember, you're not only fighting the VIG. Like every better does you now have to overcome the cost of the subscription as well, which I frankly never see touts including in their tracking. It creates this dynamic where the tout has very little to lose. The risk is almost entirely offloaded onto the customer. It's like hiring a financial advisor who says if your portfolio tanks, don't worry, I'm still getting my subscription fee. Who's that relationship really benefiting?
06:34
Now let's talk about marketing, because every tout is selling a product, and with sales comes marketing. That in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. Everybody markets. The problem is in how it's done. Here's a classic red flag it's the middle of football season, but the tout is advertising their NBA record from last year or a hot run they had in baseball. Why? Because if their current football record was strong, that's what they'd be promoting. The fact that they're reaching for another sport tells you all you need to know.
07:05
Another big one cherry picking streaks. You'll see the flashy graphics nine in one run, 12-3 in our last 15. But what they're not showing you is the full season record. If the overall results were great, that's what would be front and center. Highlighting a tiny, tiny sample is a manipulation tactic. Anyone can go 9-1 in a short stretch. Even the Toronto Maple Leafs win a playoff series once every 20 years. Stuff happens. If you're ever considering paying for picks, don't just look at what they're advertising. Ask yourself this what are they not showing me? Because if they had a truly great track record, that's exactly what they'd be selling.
07:47
One of the most important things when evaluating a pick seller is going to be transparency. If you can't go somewhere and see every single play they've released, graded at the number that they gave out, that is a massive red flag. Full record keeping should always be public. If it's not, there is no reason to buy. You're just taking on unnecessary risk. But it's not just about whether they keep records. It's also about their behavior.
08:13
Changes in betting patterns will tell you a lot. For example, you'll often see this Tout goes on a bad streak and suddenly they ramp up their volume. Instead of three plays a day, now it's eight, nine, ten. Why? Because they're trying to dig out of a hole. And remember, it's not really their hole, it is yours. They've already collected subscription revenue. You're the one taking on all the extra risk. The opposite happens too. Sometimes they start hot. Let's say, five or six weeks into the NFL season they're crushing it. Now, all of a sudden, that volume shrinks from five plays a week down to one or two. Why is that? Because they're trying to lock in a profit that they can market later. Hey, we went 10 and four in the NFL this season. That sounds great, but it doesn't tell the full story. These changes in volume aren't about making clients money. They're about managing the optics, and if someone is more focused on protecting their sales pitch than protecting your bankroll, that's not somebody you should be paying for picks.
09:15
Another thing you'll notice with touts is what I'd call a lack of bankroll integrity. When they start losing in one area, they often pivot into something else just to pad the record. Take NFL sides, for example. If a tout is struggling there, suddenly you'll see them release props or even some extremely obscure market stuff. The surface it looks like they're winning again, but it's not apples to apples. It's a lot easier for hundreds or thousands of people to get down on an NFL side than it is on a player prop that moves after one or two people hit the screen. It gets even worse when they start counting off market numbers. That's when they grab a line at a book that's just hanging the wrong price, like DraftKings is at plus seven when the entire market is at plus six and a half, then they grade it as a win. That's not handicapping, that's just exploiting a stale line. There's tons of services that scan the market and tell you where those numbers are. Some of them are even free. You don't need to pay a tout for that. So what's really happening here is they're not treating their record like a real bankroll. They're just trying to make the numbers look better and in the process they're selling you results that aren't even close to replicable in practice. And then you've got the new wave of touting using modern bets like same game parlays.
10:38
Some of these guys are inflating records off of one big score. Here's how it works. Someone fires off 100 SGPs at one unit each. They lose them all. They're down 100 units, but if they hit one, that pays 300. Suddenly they're up 200 units.
10:54
On paper Looks incredible on a sales graphic, but is that one win skill or is it just luck? Think of it like this If your friend played the lottery every day of his life and eventually hit for millions, technically he'd be up money too. But would you actually think he had an edge over the lottery? Of course you wouldn't. The same principle applies here.
11:15
Now let's talk about the gap between what a tout can do and what a client can actually follow. Most pick sellers don't think about the client's reality. They think about their own record and their own ability to get bets down. Picture this a tout is down 50 units on the year. That's half of a bankroll. Suddenly they start cranking up the volume to 20 or 30 plays a day. If you're a $100 better, who used to risk two or $300 in a day, you're now staring at two to $3,000 in action. That is not sustainable for most people and it usually happens at the worst time when the tout is already losing.
11:54
Then there's live plays in theory, great bets in practice, almost impossible for you to tail. Lines move every few seconds, even if you're sitting at your desktop with books open when the tout bets, and what you get will often be different prices. Overnight releases create the same problem. Off-market numbers create the same problem. The tout might secure a good price at two in the morning. Most of the clients are asleep, so, yes, a tout might personally win doing these things. The clients usually cannot replicate it. If you cannot get the same numbers at the same times with the same limits, you are chasing a shadow record that you will never match.
12:34
So after all of this, what is the takeaway? The blanket advice you hear don't buy picks is good advice for most people. It exists to protect casual bettors from all the traps we've just walked through. If you don't know how to audit records, if you don't understand line movement. If you can't evaluate whether you're even betting the same number as the seller, you're going to be at a massive disadvantage.
13:01
Now I will admit there are exceptions. There are some legitimate handicappers out there, but they are rare. They're not the ones flooding your social media feed with cherry pick streaks. They're usually quiet because if you're truly beating the market, you don't need to sell picks to strangers on Twitter. The problem is, even if you find one, their lines will move before you can get them and they could stop selling at any point because a betting group discovers them or they just decide to go out and bet on their own.
13:28
So here is the simple rule If you can't evaluate a seller across all these dimensions transparency, market impact, incentives, bankroll integrity and whether you can actually replicate their bets then you should not be buying. It's as simple as that For 99% of bettors. Following the blanket rule will save you money. It will save you frustration and a lot of wasted time. And if you ever do consider an exception, make sure you know exactly what you're getting into. That's the bottom line. Don't buy picks is a safe rule of thumb. If you ever make an exception, know the traps, check transparency, impact, availability and whether you can actually get the same numbers. I do want to hear your stories down below. Comment with the experiences you've had buying picks. What worked, what burned you? Who'd you buy from? What did you learn? If this helped smash that like button down below, subscribe here on Circles Off for more honest sports betting content and share this with a friend who's thinking about buying picks, so they don't have to learn the hard way. Until next time, happy betting.
