Circles Off - Ep 171 - Joey Tunes Part 2

Podcast Release Date: 2024-09-12
Podcast Link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3jtLO1iM7kh058YuKs4Zh9?si=6e86ead7358f4c9e
hagrinBPR Review Date: 2024-09-14 09:30:36
Rating: 7.50

Notes:
Circles Off - Ep 171 - Joey Tunes Part 2

2:10 - Tunes starts. Did Episode 27. Joey sporting the Mr T look, 2 pounds of chains, 100k in gold, can probably do neck rolls with it. We sure Tunes isn’t from Long Island?

5:15 - Beating NFL: "Whatever you saw the week before is just totally flip flopped the next week." "Our college football has a lot of variables, NFL we don't get too fancy." 7:50 - "Rob we both trade, we're going no vig on a lot of stuff, this helps us both you don't have to go 52.4%, 51% on 100k clicks is great". (Think this is a point that everyone knows, but you actually hear it so infrequently on sports betting pods (you hear it more on financial trading pods) that it was good for Tunes to mention. Liquidity is king and matching 100k clips, no-vig 100 bets, 51% win% and you can live pretty comfortably). 8:25 - Do you work with originators? "I still have my own Excel model that I created 10-15 years ago that I have tweaked, but I also have a guy who booked in Costa for 20 years that has numbers and they compare". (Like Spanky with the 20 year old Perl scripts that still work).

9:50 - Johnny asks an interesting question - "What do you think the edge is on Tuesday vs later in the week and how much do you think that the edge decreases during the week?" Rob answers first - mentions that they believe they are very good processing information so there's some point in the week where there's some information and the edge isn't based on the timing in the week, but by the information ex Wilson out, Fields in, ATL catches money. Tunes likes the take, doesn't really answer the question. (For me - I thought Johnny's question is actually really interesting, quantifying the size of the edge throughout a football week. I'm lucky enough to talk to a bunch of sharp NFL guys these days, I know there's the #cville group that continues to blow my mind with their ability to project how a week's worth of information is likely to play out and so their edge is much larger in the beginning parts of the week because they are projecting the finalization of news + this is just a mathematical reality of getting CLV consistently. I'm not sure there is a single numerical answer, but I do think an NFL sharp could probably come up with a rough estimate based on their betslip timestamps & then come up with some function for maximizing bet timing, edge size and liquidity available. Very good question by Johnny).

14:30 - Group does very little hockey. Does have a guy with a player level college football model and mentions how with the portal now "a lot of the old tricks like returning players" not as strong of a signal. Mentions for live they have a bot developed last January. 18:00 - Biggest industry changes recently - ubiquitous information, lots of originators now, lots of information aggregators, SpankOdds, etc.

22:00 - "Do you put as much stock into the closing price as you did a few years ago?" "No." There's some explanation that with all these releases happening with people who have major followings, even if it isn't super sharp that just the flow causes opportunities to buyback. Johnny counters with with these opportunities, there will be people shaping that buyback so in fact the closing line is probably pretty good and that there's probably some short window of t (time) where the actual buyback won't be super efficient, but over time, as bettors realize this overreaction on releases exists, we'll trend towards efficiency. 26:30 - "For as big as the market is, the market onscreen is not that big." (Thought this was a really great quote from Tunes, he's absolutely right. I remember coming up the sports betting market seemed like this infinite ocean to me, definitely doesn't feel that way now).

29:15 - "We have to go all at once or it doesn't work." "It's almost impossible to see who is following who, who spied, who has backends." "Hit Buckeye and then someone runs to Cris/Pinny and ruins the market." I thought this 2+ minute burst from Tunes was really the meat and potatoes of how it works at the level he's at. What he's describing is high level "Information Warfare" and even though he doesn't get into too many specifics, for those looking to get to this level, listen to the bits and pieces and then extrapolate out what he's saying and fill in the blanks. I appreciate Tunes' candor with the mentioning of "backends" which is something not nearly talked about enough at this level and the information asymmetry this causes.

31:45 - "I think the touting is more respected that it was 5-10 years ago." If you say so. Tells a story about going to a "tout party" (sounds like the 4th Circle of Hell) and hearing that these guys are making $25k/month and they aren't even betting the plays and are stealing slips. The term you are looking for is not touts, these are "Content Scammers" or better known as "Influencer Scammers". You might think that there's no difference, but there are some very clear differences when it comes to approach, offerings, legality and others. Some talk after this puts us back on the rails about RAS and influence and exactly how you have to handle betting RAS plays in the current day (which isn't easy and also the whole point about scale). 37:00 - Some fun history about using Scores and Odds back in the day. Tunes mentions the hilarious C4C (Check4Change) browser extension that would reload pages on an interval and check for changes and then play a sound. (Very cool non-programmatic solution to this problem. Even back then we were just scraping sites programmatically, but very cool non-programmatic solution to this problem. To give you a timeframe, I think C4C was released some time around 2006-7 so this is a fun trip down memory lane).

43:40 - TG room is 3,162 people now. Rob asks "How big is too big? You're dealing with logistical issues." Has debated it, ultimately just keeping it the way it is, messed with a paywalled website, TG just a better platform. Rob asks about leaks, have tried hunting down offenders, but it's very difficult. 49:20 - The FeedMe plays are good plays, but not the biggest edges. 52:15 - Tunes says something that is obvious, but I am actually not sure I've heard anyone actually say on a pod before - that they are ranking their movers, doing almost an informal KPI on their movers with amount down, settlement ease, etc. Think he brings up a great point and if you were building a large group, 1) what KPIs would you want to track, 2) the weights of those indicators and 3) how would you automate a lot of this.

54:00 - Johnny brings up the hypothetical (after correctly, paraphrasing, "MY NAME IS MY NAME") that what would you do if you keep the money, but your rep is torched. There's actually only one best answer to this question - you don't rebrand yourself, you get yourself a lip/face man and you become the bank/advisor. There are people in our industry who have gone through many brand changes who have, for the most part, righted the ship, but those people despite the rebrand are on many people's Do Not Fly list (you know who you are). The most effective way is you become the bank - it's a common tactic among scammers going for the second bite after the exit scam.

56:00 - "Are you at your peak?". Most accounts right now, deal with a high number of people, even with the different market, great group of guys (has started trusting a few people). (All I can think about is Always Sunny and Dennis with his "Peak? I haven't even begun to peak" rant).

1:05:15 - Interesting point by Tunes here. Johnny raised some hypothetical about honesty with settlement figures and Tunes says this happens enough that they will "point it out BUT highlight it" that hey we did you a favor here. His #2 will sometimes send out erroneous settle numbers to see who is honest and who isn't (which is a very good technique that can be applied in other ways). "We definitely test people."

My summary - I can hear it already from the Peanut Gallery that this grade is too high that there’s a few items in the pod that are problematic. I get it, I heard them to and are mentioned in part above, but honestly, you just have to respect the operation, the scale, the manner in which the business is being done even if you think you’re watching a Jersey Shore Confessional at times. You just have to respect how the business is being done and, most importantly, there’s enough items in this pod that I just haven’t heard elsewhere. Clearly a force in the industry and continues to seemingly get better. If you’re in the betting space, you should probably listen to this one to get an idea of who is moving your markets. Was sad we didn’t get any fine art / Van Gogh questions and Tunes’ thought on Van Gogh’s brush work and impasto.