Circles Off - VegasHorsePools

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hagrinBPR Review Date: 2024-04-30 20:06:31
Rating: 6.75

Notes:
I know absolutely nothing about horses, going to do the best I can with this one. Pretty good storyteller, VHP has been around the block and, while not an endorsement, this seems like a person who you definitely need to introduce yourself to if you go to BetBash.

Ex-trader, bettor, CS Manager for SpankOdds, runs proxy service for Vegas contests. Very good story teller, lots of good old stories for the first half of the pod.

4:55 - "I didn't choose gambling, gambling chose me." Tells a story of building a horse racing rating system on the computer. Would have loved what language this was written in since it sounds like the super early personal computing days (BASIC? MATLAB? Pascal? C? COBOL? Lisp? Fortran?) and if the data was stored in a flat file or some early database. 22:30 - moves to Vegas to be a full-time poker player and the early success ends once he moved. Goes back to a corp computer job, eventually transitions into a trader position while also getting into horses and coding in Python. 28:45 - gives away the output of the horse program and gave it away for free because people would bet it which would move the market in beneficial ways for him (not sure we should be celebrating this, but it was a different era). Turns the info into a subscription model and loses almost all of his followers.

37:45 - Interesting tidbit, most of the huge groups he knows betting horses now, many only profitable due to the rebates (which don't exist in Vegas). (This is likely very duh to horse people, it's a foreign world to me). 39:45 - Negative Show Pools, brings up West Virginia, anything over 89% and mentions 5 horse races with a monster in the race is extremely attractive (edge dead now with the computer players jamming in at post). 45:45 - Brings up this 1.5% dice edge, but was getting 3%+ mailers. 54:50 - "Don't embarrass the trader.", Rob mentions they have had this convo many times. (Covered angle shooting in a Medium post, I still maintain this is a solved issue that can be solved mathematically.)

59:00 - Talks about being "first" in listening to a podcast so that he could reach out to the podcast entities and have a greater chance of being responded to if he is first. I think that's a pretty interesting take because as I have done this account for longer, I can see his approach working (there's a lot to be said about just being first). Uses this to meet up with Spanky who becomes his genie and starts working for SpankOdds.

1:05:25 - Rob brings up Dink, RIP.

1:09:20 - "My access to information and access to people is unparalleled." Gives a story as being a people broker, think if you're looking to make a connection VHP might be a good resource to "have in your network". 1:12:20 - Talks about Dink getting into the Hall of Fame which does seem like an oversight although I really don't know anything about the HoF or the process or who votes.

1:13:30 - "Did you see the Spanky piss jug?" "I pissed in it, we took turns!" Funny line.

1:14:05 - Goes over his trading setup at home. 3 40" screens at the bottom, a second row up top, a communications PC, bunch of testing machines, etc. (I would say that setups are very personal and there's no wrong answer, this would not be how I would do it, but there's no real wrong answer here).

1:17:45 - Tells story about irate customers wanting to escalate to Spanky. "No you don't." Funny line. Says that there is a huge upgrade coming to SpankOdds. Sounds like it's coming in a couple of weeks.

1:20:00 - Talks about his proxy service. Genesis was that SpankOdds customers kept asking about a proxy service, Spanky gave the go ahead. Finds that his networking has exploded. 1st year ran it off Google Forms, a lot of Customer Service. "Circa made a big mistake - shouldn't have limited it to 10 entries." 1:25:30 - Talks about using the proxy service for Euro 2024 contest (let's go!).

1:27:00 - Talks about how Rob brought up how he slandered VHP and "guys with Vegas in their name". A lot of fancy footwork for a few minutes! 1:30:00 - "I bet a little bit different than anyone else does." "Top down doesn't work for him, model based doesn't work for him." Then describes steam chasing, but with someone else's originated fair for what I would call directional correctness. "The key part is to get in before the steam." Yes, being first when steam chasing helps!

1:36:50 - Thought this was really interesting. Mentions "hey can you call me if you see this thing happen to an event" and that "SpankOdds might have this functionality soon". I developed something like this "voice alerts" for myself, but wonder what the advantage of a call would be vs a text or an email or whatever. Wonder if Spanks is going to automate this?

1:39:45 - +EV Advice "I can't be a Giver because a Taker will beat me up." Says who? There's nothing that says that a Giver has to be a pushover. I'm a Giver, you see anyone exerting their influence/will on me and just taking blindly? He developed a 4th personality type called The Mirror so you treat them as you are treated. (This is basically Tit for Tat game theory which is super effective except that optimal strategy requires that you sometimes deviate from Tit for Tat for optimal results.) I think his advice works for people who aren't dominant types - if you're not dominant this approach works very well because it takes all the hard decision making out of the equation. 1:45:45 - "I'm the host here I'll tell you when we're wrapping up." Very funny line.

Really good pod, definitely seems like a guy who is a must approach at BetBash. If you're a power user at SpankOdds, he's a guy to know.