Circles Off - Ep 164 - Frank Frijoles

Podcast Release Date: 2024-07-25
Podcast Link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2uHCzuKW8vUpk9btEBi4Fh
hagrinBPR Review Date: 2024-08-01 08:48:50
Rating: 7.25

Notes:
Bias - Have seen the Twitter account for years, but no real interactions in the many years. Kirk Evans as co-host for this one.

Summary - I really enjoyed this one, Frank seems extremely locked in, someone who clearly understands the subject matter, is very articulate and since he mentioned he's been networking more these days, seems fairly obvious he'd be "an adult" in the room (in a sea of "non-adults") so probably someone worth reaching out to. (Think the can of beans really threw me off, my expectation for this pod was extremely incorrect.) Was a short pod, would like to hear more - hard to do an entire betting life in an hour.

4:20 - Frank episode starts. Background story - March madness pool, blackjack, card counting, poker boom, bought 2+2 books, went to the forum, finally gravitating towards sports (played rugby in high school!). Interesting, talks about how The Greek would carry some rugby lines, always good to hear from people who were around those days. Starts w/NCAAF, stumbles into arbitrage, 2+2 sports forum, moves to what is considered top-down now, Wong teasers were still a thing, 8:00 - Sports Interaction back then were super square with major sports with very offmarket numbers. Does some pleaser bets (rare to hear about these) which worked much better in basketball especially college where a Saturday in college might give you very robust round robin opportunities. (Sidenote - just really enjoying this one so far, you listen to a lot of these background introductions you get a feel quickly, very clear Frank is on the right tail, hope the pod continues this way.) Learns a bad networking lesson - shared an edge with an SBR mod (Elihu) and a month later the book nerfed the odds twice and then out of business (!!!). Worked more alone after that (understandable), but has networked more recently & successfully.

11:25 - For the less sharp bettors, you definitely want to listen to these 30 seconds or so and digest 1) how the WA (widely available) is this "source of truth" 2) understand what the distribution should be 3) how informative the Pinny dropdown can/used(!?) to be to get yourself bootstrapped with understanding some of the basics. Frank flies through this explanation in 30 seconds, but this is part of the foundation and you should understand this concept.

12:20 - Funny PlayUp story about their insane limits on his account and their offmarket numbers so no impetus to do much more at that particular time. (good example of know when to focus on the Golden Goose and get what you can because it will not last forever). Originating rugby still, talked about an old Rugby World Cup edge with roster depths and scheduling (you can take an approach like this with the ever growing soccer schedules that are running players into the ground). NCAAM is 70% of his volume, NBA playoff origination, rugby more a "passion".

18:50 - Legal Books: Lives in Colorado, great bonuses, CO had over 20+ books at one point (consolidated since), Circa in CO so legals a positive for him. 20:00 - Kiosks: Approached to be in VIP while jamming a kiosk which did open a door for him to some nice limits for a bit (since dead). But, the point is "every kiosk has their own intricacies so you need to play around with them" - diff deposit limits, to win amount, to risk amount, the host casino has some input, rapid fire capability (voucher scanning), some have internal limits you can hit and trigger, etc. (this was a very good section).

30:00 - Old Edges: Gave an example - at a major sportsbook, they dealt say 1st half total 80, spread pick, Team A 40.5, Team B 38.5 +100 on over. (So this one he correctly calls "systematic". The example is illustrative of how there's a basic, systematic analysis that you should be doing every so often. For myself, I know that I am going down a similar road looking for systematic issues in SGPs since that was a blind spot for me). Cricket edge - coin toss/lineup announcement & knowing how the market would likely digest that news and being faster.

38:25 - Hedging: "You're expected growth is always less than your expected value if there is money at risk." Very simple, well explained. "Expected utility - that isn't really something you can calculate, maybe someone wants to spend all that time, but there are better things you can be doing." So this was the first thing where my initial reaction was I'm not sure I agreed, but that's because of my own life experience & how much I *have* actually thought about these issues. However, I think he's likely correct, I'm probably an exception & Frank could probably easily argue that even *if* people did think about their expected utility and developed some extremely guesstimated utility curve for themselves, the entire discipline of behavioral finance says they won't adhere to this function. So, Frank is correct despite my initial visceral reaction.

44:00 - Two networking partners, a third guy, poker friend "probably the only poker guy I would ever trust with money"

50:00 - Kirk's +EV - "Post things that might be controversial and smart people will come and tell you how you're wrong." Frank replies "there was a guy on 2+2 that used to post things that were wrong to bait smart people to reveal small edges". This is actually a very good social engineering tactic that works well against egomaniacs ... of which gambling twitter has many. You do run the risk of turning these people off instantly w/the 1st attempt at this approach so you lose access to these people forever - use it sparingly.