Mardi Gras And Currencies

A little something different today. Before we dive in, I will have some more 'NHL Blocks' picks up once the playoffs start. It's been pretty slow for me betting wise lately. I've been using Draft Kings almost exclusively, really betting only when I have some sort of bonus or free bet. I sort of ran out of steam with Blocks, to be honest. It's a weird market where I price something like 50 guys each time I look at it but only end up with a handful of bets. They're profitable but I don't love the hourly rate on it. {By the way, if anyone wants this model I'd let it go for less than a grand. I like building models more than betting these days so if anyone wants some ready made models, hit me up on X @poogsBLOG} All my NHL models ended up like that. Lots of data, lots of ice time to look at (5 on 5, PP, penalty kill). I don't love capping props at the ends of seasons either. Too many weird incentives with coaches benching guys and some teams not really trying. (When I was doing this full time though it was the opposite. Ends of seasons would often give me decent edges, similar to pre-season. The difference is that I was super plugged into the leagues and the news. I just don't really have the time nor the will for that anymore but if you're an aspiring sharp, the very starts and very ends of seasons should be a busy time for you). I always tend to do better with props in the playoffs for all sports, so be on the lookout once they start. I sprayed big time on the Masters, somewhat regrettably. It was a great tournament to watch and DK made sure to pump out all kinds of live hole bonuses on which I ran pretty bad. At least I know I'll have this account for the upcoming NFL season though which is good.

Today's post is going to be somewhat two-fold; part trip report, part post about currency.

I mentioned it very briefly on here before, but I went to Mardi-Gras during the year I was in Las Vegas, which was early 2011. I know it's quite a long time ago and the details might be fuzzy but surprisingly, I feel like I do remember a lot about that trip. Some of it was so surreal and different from anything I was remotely used to, so a lot of it was seared into my mind.

I departed Las Vegas by myself and met my best friend there at the time (the same kid who lived in Detroit and whose place we stopped at for a couple days on our trip out to Las Vegas). He was with a friend from grad school and we stayed at his friends house which was right in the middle of everything. So it was mostly three of us, me, Joe and Zack. Joe and I had been friends for decades and Zack fit in immediately. 

The main thing of Mardi Gras is the parades. All kinds of people, mostly women, would be on these huge floats and they'd toss out beads to the people in the crowd. This is where the beads mostly come from (kind of like the mining rewards for bitcoin). You could bring your own beads but if I remember correctly, that was sort of looked down on. You were expected to EARN your beads. Work for 'em. 

Since it was so long ago, I can't really go through each night and what happened and where we went, so I'll go through the highlights, the overall theme and feelings I had and tie it into the currency thing. You'll see.

-The general vibe of Mardi Gras was dirty, cramped, alcohol soaked fun. It was nasty and real but there wasn't a feeling of violence or trouble in the air that you sometimes get at big events. It really was just one gigantic, sexed up outdoor party. Tons of outdoor music. All of a sudden out of nowhere a full marching band would just appear and do its thing down the street, which was pretty cool. You could walk right out of a bar with a drink in your hands down there too which added to the outdoor party feel.

-I had my first encounter with 'shot girls' on this trip. A big thing at Mardi Gras is these bright neon shots in test tubes. All the bars had them, you could get flights of them and you'd see people walking around all over the place with them. I was walking through a bar and suddenly feel a test tube going INTO the front of my pants. Next thing I know, these two girls were on top of me, feeding me test tube shots before I even knew what was going on. It's naive, I know, but I had no idea these girls were working. I'm doing shots, they're doing shots, they're being poured into my mouth, I don't even know where they were coming from. I think I'm flirting with these girls! It all happened so fast and as I sort of go to walk away, they start grabbing me and are like 'you owe us $100!' (I have no idea what the amount was but something like that.) I'm genuinely perplexed for a second before it hits me; 'oh they work for the bar. They're working lol'. I honestly had no idea. We start arguing a little bit, my friends emerge and a little bit of a crowd starts to gather. This is not good. I remember they held my hat hostage for a minute. I cut my losses and gave them some cash, I don't remember exactly what happened but they kept wanting more and more. I think I refused to pay for the drinks they had. I don't remember the details exactly but I remember walking away feeling like I got hustled bad and that it could have been a lot worse. They must have made a killing doing that. The shots probably didn't even have any alcohol in them. It was a good lesson for a young, somewhat still naive kid.

-One clear memory I have was standing in a crowd and suddenly a STUNNING women emerges from above on a balcony, all by herself. She starts doing this little dance/strip tease thing and people start going wild, yelling for her to take off her top. So she takes off her top, and then her bra. Everyone down below is firing beads at her and practically frothing at the mouth. This woman was beautiful. She turns around and starts taking off her pants! Just as she's about to get fully naked on this balcony, the balcony door opens, a mans arm comes out of it and yanks her back inside to the chorus of many disappointed boos. 

-One day we were out and about and we decided we wanted to check out the city while the sun was actually out. We were walking around, in and out of different places, and the biggest thing I remember from it was how unbearably slow everything was down there. And I do mean everything. The service, the way people talked, the way they moved. I feel like even the dogs moved slow. It was like watching a video on .75 speed. I'm from Boston and everyone says we're all sped up here so the contrast was shocking. And I've been all over, I know most places are slow compared to the Northeast but this was on a different level. It's funny at first but eventually it gets old. It's one of the main reasons I don't think I'll ever live outside of the Northeast.

One of their big specialties down there was alligator so I decided to try an alligator sub. I'm not kidding when I tell you that it took an hour and a half to get this sub. And certainly it was busy but not THAT busy. And the sub was god-awful. It was super chewy and tasted like fried rubber. I didn't even finish it. That same day, it rained hard for a couple hours and the whole entire block was completely flooded. This was only a few years removed from Hurricane Katrina and I could not believe how unprepared they were for a couple inches of rain.

-The main thing that I remembered though, the single biggest takeaway I had from this trip, was the complete and utter transformation of peoples relation to beads. Now keep in mind, we're talking about cheap, plastic beads that you could probably buy a thousand of for fifty bucks. For these few days on these specific couple streets, these things may as well been gold. I'm not even exaggerating. When they would get thrown from parades, people would POUNCE on them. Think of a home run ball going into a crowded bleacher section. I can still remember grabbing a string of them at the same time as someone else and the string breaking and them flying all over the place. Men would fight tooth and nail for them in hopes of exchanging them for a quick look at some random boobs later on.

But if you thought the men went feral for beads, wait till you hear about the women. The beads became a sort of barometer for how hot the women were. You'd see really good looking women in skimpy clothes almost literally drowning in beads by the end of the night. And they loved it. It was some weird form of peacocking for them. Another image I have burned into my mind is walking down the street really late at night and seeing this really short, downright stunning woman walking towards us, all by herself. She was tiny, absolutely gorgeous, and covered in beads. I mean she could barely walk. She was more bead than woman. And I'll never forget the look of confidence and satisfaction on her face and the STRUT with which she walked, and deservedly so! People got out her way. This little 5 foot nothing woman, all alone just peacocking down Bourbon street, drowning in beads like some sort of God. There was smoke all around her and a chorus of cherubs playing trumpets in her wake (not really but you get the point). It may be the single defining image of that trip for me.

-Another interesting thing was where the 'line' sort of officially got drawn by the police. There were obviously cops all over the place but they mostly just hung back and watched. Sometimes the girls would get a little crazy and try to flip the script by offering beads to guys to whip out their dicks. A group of them asked Zack, and right as he started unzipping his fly, a cop came out of NOWHERE and grabbed him and told him he'd get arrested if he did. So the rules were clear; naked women were fine, if not heavily encouraged. Naked men; absolutely not. Everyone seemed to be just fine with this arrangement.

But the beads turning into real currency thing always fascinated me. You'd get these hilarious interactions where a woman would flash you out of nowhere, expecting beads. Usually you'd comply but not always. You'd be surprised at how many women have boobs that you don't want to see. It really was an interesting case study in supply and demand. The beads were in such demand, to the point where it outweighed even the demand for boobs in some instances! I'm telling you, for a 48 hour window on a couple blocks, the beads were priceless. You'd get women asking for beads for free and you'd have this sort of jokey, weird negotiation. "One boob, really quick!" I know it sounds gross now but it was like being on a different planet. Everyone knew the score, especially the women. No one was hurt or exploited. It was like a weird, bizarro little economy of boobs and beads. Everyone would be looking for them on the ground like they were gold bars. You had to manage your supply very carefully, too. You might be tempted to give em all out early but then you'll regret it later. Conversely, if you held on to them too long, you completely miss out and you're left with worthless pieces of plastic at the end of the night. It was hilarious at the end of the trip when we still had a bunch of them leftover and realized obviously we had to throw them out. It's funny when that switch gets flipped and you snap out of it, like 'oh yea, these are shitty little nothing pieces of plastic on a string. Last night I was ripping these out of someone else's hand and this morning I'm calmly placing them in the trash'.

I think it shows how currency, really, at the end of the day, is not real. It's not really a thing, it's a substitute for something else. It's a way for a need to be met. It also showed me the real meaning of subjective value. An object can be almost worthless one day, very valuable the next day, and back to worthless a day later. And different things are worth different amounts to different people. I don't know, I'm not explaining it great but you get it. 

Besides the bead thing, the main thing I would say about Mardi Gras is that it was a blast and absolutely worth doing once for a young single guy or girl, but exactly once. I would never go back again. I distinctly remember the flight home, tired and hungover with a layover in Houston. On the flight from Houston to Boston, I was sat next to the single fattest woman I have ever seen on a plane in my life. I was in the window seat with the middle seat next to me empty. The plane seemed to be full so I was really happy thinking I had lucked out with a nice spacious peaceful flight home. And the very last person to get on was a woman so fat that she was being pushed in one of those fatso scooter things. The second I saw her I knew I was fucked. She wedged herself into the seat, put her gigantic bag of Swedish Fish into the pocket in front of her, and I was smushed against her and the plane for the next 4 hours. It was literally like a comedy movie. You could barely see me. I remember having the thought that if the plane went down I would be okay with it, lol. I was spent. 

That's about it for today. Not my best post, I know, but they can't all be home runs. I will definitely have some sports betting stuff up soon, some picks at some point, another book review, some stocks and bitcoin stuff, and a big post about aliens. I have a few things swirling around in the noggin. 

Bye for now, thanks for reading!

Tariffs, Trump, Stonks, Crypto And More. A Big Look Around.

Bit of an old school type post today as we will be taking a look around the macro/political situation of the world, figure out what the hell is the deal with the tariffs, talk about Stonks and crypto a little bit plus some more things.

First off, tariffs. Where we all pretend that sophmore year of high school WASN'T the last time we ever remotely had tariffs on the brain. So let's zoom out a bit, start from the very bottom and go from there. What is a tariff, exactly? It is simply a tax that a country puts on an imported good. Pretty simple. The goal is, generally, to punish imports which will, in turn, incentivize consumers to buy goods that are made in their home country. Which will eventually incentivize producers to produce goods inside the country that is imposing the tariffs, which will hopefully have all kinds of trickle down effects. 

So we all know the basics. Trump imposed sweeping tariffs pretty much across the board and all hell broke loose across the financial markets. So what is going on exactly? Why would Trump do something so wildly unpopular? We've all seen this tariff move get destroyed by pretty much everyone; it's of course fresh meat on the bone for the left. The libertarian right and academic economists on both sides just automatically hate tariffs. But I think some of their thinking is short sighted and flawed, so let's take a look at both sides.

The anti-tariff crowd is against them for one simple reason; it's a tax that, in their mind, hurts the consumer. By artificially imposing higher costs on a trade partner, we force them to raise their prices which will hurt the American consumer in the end. Tariffs also stoke unnecessary tensions with other countries, who might impose tariffs of their own, starting a trade war. 

In a vacuum, these people are mostly right. But nothing happens in a vacuum and the tariffs can hurt importers and even consumers slightly and STILL be the right move, IF the consequences of the tariffs have enough of an effect to off shoot the damage done to imports. For example, let's say a tariff on imported cars raises costs for importers to the tune of 20% of the sale price. The academics will tell you that this cost will simply be passed on the consumer, and cars will now be 20% higher. But if imported cars could be sold for 20% higher, than why aren't they 20% higher already? I promise you, companies are all already selling their products for as much as they possibly can. Cars made in America will have a sizeable competitive advantage, which is obviously the point of tariffs in the first place. So if, as a result of the tariffs, a lot more cars get made in America, what are the trickle down effects? You have more people employed here, obviously, which has all kinds of trickle down effects of its own. More people have more money and more work means more work. You have more raw materials needed, extracted, treated, moved, more tax revenue, more money staying in America and more foreign money coming in. So maybe the net effect is that all cars go up something like 5-10% in price, but millions of good, real, needed jobs are created. The 'grad school is my job' egg-heads love to look at that 5-10% increase in price and say 'SEE! IT'S BAD!' But they aren't considering the entire picture because the entire picture can't be exactly quantified.

The anti-tariff argument is everywhere and is easy to find, so let's dive into a pro-tariff argument. The best defense of tariffs that I have seen uses Great Britain as an example.

 *Little history lesson coming up. Some of this is copied and pasted from a Substack I like. It's worth reading yourself but it's a bit long and meandering at times. I've included the major parts and cut a lot out. The TLDR version is that England had tariffs until the 1860's, once the Liberal Party came to power. They didn't like tariffs. Once they got rid of them, a ton of Englands factories disappeared, along with the working men with the know-how on how to build things. When WWII came, England had to spend nearly all of its gold to buy planes and tanks and trucks for the war, all of which would become obsolete in a couple short decades. When the War ended, England was left broke, without any gold and without factories and industry. Read on for more detail or if that's good enough, skip the next few paragraphs.* 

(you can read this link too for a good in depth look at the decline of England and more on tariffs)

In the mid 1800's, England was at the height of its powers. Its factories pumped out goods sold for immense profits around the world, and its only remote threat was America, who was in a distant second place at the time. Its navies absolutely ruled the seas and its society was more prosperous than it ever was or ever would be. From 1850 to about 1900, England set the standard for what a nation could and should be.

Then came the decline. Very, very slowly. But decline it did.

"First there was the Agricultural Depression, which wreaked havoc in the countryside and hollowed out all levels of country society, from the now near-starvation laborers to the increasingly impoverished lords.

Next came the wealth taxes, death taxes, income taxes, and regulations of Churchill, Lloyd George, and Asquith of 1909-11. These further hollowed out traditional society and pushed increasing amounts of wealth and power into the hands of financiers.

Then came World War I, a war England had no reason to be in but which drained her of her best men, her wealth, and her imperial vigor nonetheless. At the end of it she had nearly a million men dead, over a million and a half wounded, and a country on the precipice of self-immolation.

By the time the Empire was at its greatest extent in the 1920s, a hollow victory given the increasing despondency and impoverishment of the population, England was somehow in a worse position than she found herself in when the war ended. Namely, Churchill’s botched attempt to return to the pre-war gold standard further obliterated England’s export industries and led to a class war of the sort the 1926 General Strike epitomized." 

In the early 1850's England's politics were dominated by two parties, the Tories and the Whigs. One thing that they agreed on was being in support of tariffs. However, eventually a third party was created and rose to power in the early 1860s; the Liberal Party. A major plank in its platform was to do away with tariffs. Just a few years later, Bismark united Germany, and on Britain’s doorstep sat a budding industrial behemoth that produced steel and coal on a scale commensurate with its size.

"England went from being the leading industrial producer to one gradually edged out by other countries, namely America and Germany. 

Then came World War II. With its industries hollowed out, England was unable to produce the implements of war. Planes, tanks, trucks, AA guns had to be bought from mostly America, and it had to be paid for in gold. So England pretty much emptied its gold reserves and shipped it off to America, as ships filled with war equipment made in America went the other direction. 

In the past, England would have been able to produce its own weapons and thus keep its gold and other assets in the country as the wealth of the nation. Such is what it did during the 7 Years’ War, the War of American Independence, and the Napoleonic Wars. So, though those fights proved expensive, they weren’t the ruination of the country. Its assets were intact.

Not so with the world wars, particularly the Second World War. By then, decades of Liberal-minded policy meant that English industry, once the envy of the world, had been opened up to the world and thus ruined by it. As such, the factories, mills, and works on which it once would have been able to rely weren’t there, and thus every drop of wealth left was packed on a ship and sent to America. Now it resides in Fort Knox, where America holds everything from sovereigns and Brittannias to pieces of eight and doubloons, the accumulated treasure of centuries shipped here for obsolete tanks, trucks, and planes the country that had once accumulated that gold had made itself unable to produce.

That became a public problem when World War II came: those car factories that would have existed had they been protected by tariffs would have built the planes and vehicles necessary for the war effort. But because of Ford and Churchill, they no longer existed. They went out of business, were sold off, and the employees that would have worked there and known how to make such things non-existent. So instead of producing what it needed, England bought what it needed from America and bankrupted itself in the process.

Thus ended the empire. Left broke, unable to produce what it needed, swamped by foreign goods, without productive industry to tax to pay off its debt, and in the throes of class war created by the tough economic environment of free trade (a problem McKinley saved America from with tariffs), England was a basket case in 1945 and remains one today. The empire dribbled away, the wealth never returned, and now what was once an industrial power that ruled a quarter of the world is a service economy full of real estate owned mainly by Arabs and the Chinese"

*End of history lesson*

So that's a pretty good defense of tariffs, in my opinion. If you look at trade in a vacuum, that is, only looking at trade and not considering anything else, tariffs do seem like a terrible idea. And I think that is the way a lot of economists think; almost like it's a term paper to turn in. It's the academic-ization of everything. They point to the US doing a little bit worse overall in trade and conclude that they were right. But you have to see the whole picture, obviously. The idea behind tariffs is that we more than make up for what we lose in trade by making our country a lot stronger overall by producing and creating things here. That's how I see that side of the argument, at least. Again, we'll see.

It's obvious why a hedge fund or a Wal Mart would hate tariffs, but I think the regular American Joe is a bit misguided in their contempt for them. It's kind of a big wealth transfer, for once this time going from the top down. The stock market lost something like $8 trillion in value as a result of the tariffs being announced, but more (good, real) work being done in America means more money to the hollowed out middle class. That's where that stock market money will mostly end up. Less investment in a horror-factory in China with slave labor and anti-suicide nets, more investment in a new factory in Ohio. Less of an absolute race to the bottom where whichever country can pay its 'workers' the least and invest the least amount in its infrastructure while still churning out a barely sellable product wins. Also, the climate people should love this. Instead of a tiny plastic container of fruit being picked in Brazil, packaged in Argentina and then sold in New Jersey, now it all gets made in America. Think of the reduction in plane, ship, train and truck rides.

I'm obviously no tariff expert, but neither are you. The old libertarian in me hates any new tax on principle, but I have been slowly shedding my libertarian skin for the past 5 years or so now. I'm willing to see how it all plays out. Trump has earned that, at least. 

Speaking of the stock market, this feels like a great dip buying opportunity. I've been adding on to my positions pretty much as much as possible the past few days. I do think it'll probably keep going lower for a little while, but who knows. There does seem to be some indecision in the market. Everything has the floor fall out of it and then pumps the next day. The general sentiment is that institutions are selling and retail is buying which is never a great feeling. I think that if you've been thinking about entering the market, watching from the sidelines, now is a good time to get in. Be greedy when others are fearful. Even if the tariffs are a disaster, they won't last forever. Not even close.

Crypto has actually held up generally well, considering. Bitcoin dominance continues to be the big story this cycle. The BTC/ETH ration is .019 right now! That means ETH is historically cheap compared to BTC. So you can get some good discounts on alt-coins right now if that's your thing. 

Really hard to tell where we are right now in the BTC cycle. It doesn't feel at all like we topped out at $108ish K, but it's also hard to feel like a 3x bull market is right around the corner. If this last top was the top, we might be looking at a much different BTC market going forward. Less volatile with less insane blow off tops, but also not so brutal lows. I'm pretty zen about it all now though, I just stick to my plan, DCA, and buy more on big red days. 

Random stuff

-White Lotus wrapped up season 3 a couple days ago and what a disappointment! This season sucked in general but the finale was really bad. That's a great show in general though and I'll be watching season 4. I think they should do a snowy/ski resort next time.

-I've been reading a lot lately, even a couple modern, really good sports betting books, so I might do another books review/list.

That's about it for today, check back soon, I'll have some sports betting stuff up next.

BTC price: $77k

BTC marketcap: $1.53T

Overall marketcap: $2.44T

BTC dominance: 62.6%(!)

Total cryptos on coin marketcap: 13.42M

Pick Results

 Nick Seeler u2.5 Blocks +105 L

Jacob Middleton o2.5 Blocks +135 L

Officially at -.42 units after 6 plays. I'll get us in the green soon. I've been tinkering around with some MLB props so I might have some of those up too. It feels ridiculous not to, again considering how many different prop markets Draft Kings offers. I've noticed my rewards and little bonus offers have started drying up so my days there may be numbered. I've been doing pretty good on Blocks overall but still betting tiny amounts so even if I do get the boot eventually, I don't think it'll be anytime soon. 

I tend to lay relatively low in the 'NFL offseason' on books that I really want to stay at. I remember when I ran my book, we would basically never even think about cutting people off during NFL (unless they were having payment issues). The entire NFL season is like a complete whirlwind for a sports book. You're just looking to get as many people as possible in. The offseason is when the sharp guys would kind of expose themselves and we would think about if we even wanted certain guys action. Other bookies I've talked to/worked with often said similar things. If you have a really good PPH account and you're hammering away every day during the MLB season, you're going to really stick out. Just something to keep in mind.

Check back soon, I have some time today so I may have some more bets up and I should have an actual post up by this weekend.

Bye for now!

Couple More Free Picks

Just a couple more free picks for today. This isn't at all going to become the new format or anything, just a little something in between posts. 

Nick Seeler u2.5 Blocks +105

Jacob Middleton o2.5 Blocks +135

I'm getting a bet on Nick Seeler unders almost every time I do these. That happens a lot with modeling/betting. It's (hopefully) finding some kind of market inefficiency and not a model bias. I remember when I made my first player vs player NHL points model, I had a bet on Claude Giroux just about every single night. Which makes sense since in his prime, Giroux was an elite playmaker and filled the stat sheet with primary assists. Assists are 'easier' to get than goals but the goal scorers tend to get all the attention, so a highly skilled playmaker could be a source of hidden points. It was important to separate primary from secondary assists as this somewhat shows that it was a repeatable skill and not simply running good or playing with better linemates. 

That's it for today, I should have a new real post up sometime this week.

Talk soon!

Pick Results

Another nice little win last night.

Under 2.5 Blocks for Nick Seeler -120. W

So we're 3-1 and up 1.58 units so far. I am happy with my model and the results so far with this market. I've been slowly tweaking and adjusting my model as I learn and think more about it. I was reading a post from a fellow sharp whose newsletter I get, and one of his 'edges' he mentioned was getting plays from sharps or other originators who didn't really understand how valuable their plays were. Made me stop and think a little bit. I've been so gun shy with props over the past few years, going back and forth between throwing in the towel and thinking about capitalizing on my edge a lot harder. These plays are for sure +EV and I'm betting peanuts on them. It's something I might reconsider my approach to. I don't know. Anyway, I'll definitely be posting some more plays here and there, hopefully right through the NHL season. I don't think I'm betting enough money to even get noticed by Draft Kings but you never know. So make sure you check back regularly, I don't post on X when I make a strictly 'picks post' like the last few so bookmark me and drop by everyday.

Talk soon!

Free Pick

 Another quick free NHL prop pick for tonight.

Under 2.5 Blocks for Nick Seeler -120.

That's all. Up .58 units so far through 3 picks. I'll probably keep doing this and tracking it like this. I have a real post coming up soon too.

Don't forget to follow me on X: @poogsBLOG

Talk soon!

Picks Results

In the interest of full disclosure and before I forget, results from my 3 picks:

Ryan Lindgren u1.5 blocks -120 W

Brandon Carlo o1.5 blocks -142 L

Jake Mccabe o1.5 blocks -182 W

Nice little .58 unit pick up. {Unless otherwise noted, anything I post is to win 1 unit if it's a favorite or risking one unit if it's a dog, which is standard.} I'll probably do this here and there and these picks are for sure +EV (they better be at this point in my life) so make sure you bookmark me and check me out from time to time. I post on X (@poogsBLOG) when I make a new post but I'll be sneaking these little picks-posts in here and there too. (By the way, make sure you use bookmarks in general. That's something that apparently not everyone does. I find it's a great way to sort things on your computer. Make a bunch of different folders and when you come across something good, like a blog or a substack or maybe a good tiny little site with analytics, you bookmark it and save it for later.)

Check back soon, I'll have a real post up in the next few days.

Free Picks!

 Little treat today for any of my regular readers. I'm not even going to post on X that I have a new post up so this is a little 'reward' for anyone coming here randomly.

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I had made a new model for 'Blocks' for NHL players. It's a nice, small, fairly obscure NHL prop market which historically has been my bread and butter. I have about 3 weeks of sample and so far I'm doing quite well in it. Well today I'm going to give out my bets for tonight. There's only two games on the board so not a whole lot to choose from, but I see some fairly decent edges on these bets and I figured hey, why the hell not. So here's what I have tonight:

*Obvious disclaimer: these are NOT 'locks'. There is no such thing. I'm only sharing with you, for free, a couple bets I made today, all on DK. Do with them whatever you want. If you are a regular reader here, I honestly do appreciate it.

Ryan Lindgren u1.5 blocks -120

Brandon Carlo o1.5 blocks -142

Jake Mccabe o1.5 blocks -182

Lots of chalk and a couple overs which isn't typical but there ya go.

Check back soon, I'll probably do this more often.

The Colorful Characters In The Underground World Of +EV Sports Betting

Little bit of a Part 2 on my last post. While writing it, I was brought back in time and thought about all the different people I've worked with or for or against in my now almost two decade sports betting career. So many bookies, agents, dirty-agents, sharps, middle-men, wanna-be's, etc. They were all unique and I like to think I learned at least a little bit from every single guy (and one girl, actually). So today I'm going to go through and write a little bit about all the whacky characters from my 15+ years of advantage gambling, specializing in 'face to face' PPH accounts. Obviously I'm not going to use any real names or anything that could remotely reveal anyone, not that anyone would know (most of) these guys. And I'm not going to talk about anyone I'm currently working with, not that that list is long or anything. If you're into this world at all, I think you'll find this interesting and a lot of fun. Even you aren't, I think this will be a really good look into the nitty gritty of the PPH ecosystem and a look at how people work with each other in a completely unregulated and mad max-ish system.

The first guy that really got me going in the PPH world was a friend I had named 'Jay'. I talked about him in my "My Time As A Semi-Pro Gambler" post. He was a true hustler, super out-going and charasmastic. People just seemed to gravitate to him. He was a "former pro poker player" (mind you, we were like 22 at the time) and a really terrible sports bettor. He definitely had a degen streak in him which will come into play later. We met during college through my poker home game and he was really the one that got me interested in sports betting in the first place. He was kind of a bookie but he was one of those kids that just could not hold on to money. It would burn through his pocket. He seemed to know every single local bookie though and had all kinds of accounts, all of which were lifetime losers. So you can probably figure out how this went. He got the accounts and dealt with the bookies and picking up, and I made the bets. It was glorious while it lasted. Eventually though it all became too much for him, having lots of cash on him that wasn't his. He had to go away and we had a pretty bad falling out after he used my money to pay off a bookie after he lost a ton of money trying to martingale horse racing. The degen in him was always there and was always going to wreck him. That was honestly a good lesson to see up close and so early on. He'll come into play again later.

I met quite a lot of people through Jay. Once you get your foot in the door, it's really up to you how hard you want to push it. Another quasi-friend I had in this group was another kid we'll call 'Jon.' He was a wanna-be bookie taking action on the phone and I quite literally put him out of business. He used to give out NHL lines and make the totals -110 both sides! (Unders on 5.5 in the NHL are typically lined at like -250 or something like that). I beat him so bad that he had to stop taking action and could only pay me on a weekly payment plan. A lot of these guys were very slow to cut me off because they literally have never cut someone off from winning too much in their lives. I don't even think they thought it was possible. When you're an old-school phone bookie, all you're really doing is chasing people around for money that they owe you. EVERYONE loses to you. Everyone. The idea that someone could be a winning player isn't anywhere remotely on their radar. They just think that you're getting lucky and you'll give it back eventually. Jon eventually squared up with me and was really interested in what the hell I was doing. He was actually kind of sharp. He'll come back into play later.

Next up was an older guy that one of my friends worked with at a car dealership. (I got a few accounts this way. Car dealership guys were some of the absolute softest bookies I ever came across. And, to be honest, some of the stupidest guys I ever met). This guy was no different. I didn't have him long at all, maybe only a month, but I remember distinctly he gave out a CFB line of Alabama +6 when the market was +2. He paid me no problem though and passed me off to another, bigger bookie. The car guy was very small time.

This other bigger time bookie was the real deal. I was moving up the ranks fairly quickly, now that I think about it. This guy, we'll call 'A.C.', was the first real-deal, respectable, old school type bookie that I came across. I had to meet him in this seedy, dark little bar in the middle of the day and I remember he took my drivers license and copied down my name and address for me to get the account. I wasn't scared at all though, I actually liked it. It showed me he was serious and I probably wouldn't have to worry about getting stiffed. He looked the part, too; pretty much exactly what you'd expect a real old school bookie from New England to look like. Big, scary looking, tattoos. The kind of guy who never ran 'because he didn't have to move fast for anyone'. He was the former head of security for a huge Boston rock band and he looked exactly like that and booking were his jobs. I beat him up pretty good and he was sharper than most so he knew to cut me off. I took a little bit of a gamble the last time we were to meet and I tried to turn him dirty. This was my first time attempting this. I told him something like 'you've seen what I can do, I do this full time, if you can get me accounts you can have a percentage of my weekly action.' It took some coaxing and explaining but he eventually agreed to try it out and off we went. We worked together like that for years, him getting me accounts and me betting. Having a guy like that out there collecting for me was a goldmine. I knew I'd never get stiffed. I still remember the very last time we met, he owed me a good chunk. As he paid me he said 'a lot of guys would have kept this.' He was a good dude and that really was a great partnership to have, especially early on. Eventually thought we burned through everyone he knew and it fizzled out.

Another guy I had around this time was a similar guy to A.C. but not nearly as scary looking. 'Jim' was another guy I met through Jay. He was an older guy with a family and was fairly high up in the ecosystem. He had agents under him who will come into play later, but for some reason I don't remember, I dealt with Jim directly. And to this day, I will say that this guy had the softest accounts I ever got in my life. Barely any parlay restrictions, props completely divorced from reality (and tons of them), big moves on local games, whacky team totals, you name it. And he was solid in that I didn't have to worry about getting paid. I destroyed this guy and he kicked me out, but I kept finding ways to get back on his accounts. This was the only time I ever came close to really getting in trouble with these guys. I went through someone else, probably Jay, and got back onto one of his accounts through an agent of his. 

This guy was a real wanna-be. He looked the part but he was one of those guys that seemed to think that looking the part was the most important aspect of it all. He was clueless though and he let me stay on way longer than he should have. This was the guy that tried to copy my correlated parlays into his own account, and when they rejected them, he finally figured it all out. I got stiffed on the last week and that was actually the main event that led me to move to Las Vegas. I felt like I had out-grown the whole PPH world, which was a badly misguided idea in retrospect. Anyway, I made a big stink about getting stiffed that last week and some threats went back and forth. There was talks of 'sit-downs' and 'the mob' but it was all nonsense. One of the biggest lessons I took from all this is that these guys are mostly all phonies. They've seen Goodfellas and The Sopranos and honestly, that's about it. They didn't even understand bookmaking, really. That wasn't a great situation though and it's funny looking back at how ballsy/stupid I was for a naive, still really green kid. 

Up next is the one and only woman to enter the fray, 'Kay'. I was trying to bang friendly with this girl who knew what I did and apparently knew some kids in a neighboring town who took action. I got an account from them with her as the de-facto agent. And this went horribly. They cut me off a couple months into betting with them even though I was down! I guess they had a clue what they were doing and saw what I was betting and decided they didn't want my action anymore. In the world of PPH betting, this is a no-no. It's the equivalent to hitting and running in poker. It's not 'against the rules' but it's frowned upon. This was bad because it made me look stupid to Kay who thought I was some sports betting savant and who I told was about to make a bunch of money. But the worst part was that I had made a few big MLB future bets on this account. When they cut me off they obviously changed my password so that I couldn't access the account anymore. It was right at the start of the season, too. So they cut me off, I'm pissed but whatever, I move on. Months and months later I hear from Kay that suddenly I owe these guys money. The futures bets settled and they lost. This was another sticky situation. It was a pretty clear freeroll to me. If the futures had won I would have NEVER heard from them again. I wouldn't have even known as I wasn't keeping track of everything the way I do now. But even if I did they would not have paid me. They pretty much said as much. I didn't want to pay and again there was some back and forth, veiled threats. I couldn't really explain it to Kay though and if I didn't pay it would make me look really bad. She knew a lot of the same people as me. I tried to negotiate to pay only a chunk of it but they wouldn't hear it. I ended up paying them and still to this day this whole situation irks me. It's the only time I was sort of 'had' like that in my career.

Not everyone I came across was a bookie/agent, though. Later on, I started meeting and partnering with fellow sharps and would give them accounts I couldn't use, or sometimes share them. One guy I dealt with was this weird guy I 'met' online. He seemed to be the real deal and was apparently a guy who could beat straights. I was always looking for a guy like this to share accounts with because the biggest red flag for my betting was that it was almost 100% props. Having a guy bet straights on an account of mine would provide me some cover at least, plus I had a piece of his action too. But man did this guy turn out to be a dud. When we first started talking about sharing accounts, he kept going on and on about me not copying his bets. This was his big thing, by far. He did not want me copying his bets. I had no problem with it as I didn't plan on doing that at all but man was he paranoid. He ended up being a pain in the ass and just took loss after fucking loss. I don't really remember but I don't think he was even beating the closing line most of the time. I know edges are a lot smaller on straight bets and you can easily run bad for weeks, if not months, but you combine that with how annoying he was and it just didn't work. I told him to back off a few accounts that I was afraid of getting stiffed on a couple times and he lost his mind. And he would not stop accusing me of copying his plays, which were getting killed. It was really strange and I was happy to get rid of him.

Another sharp I worked with was a guy I 'met' on the old forums. This one went a little bit better. This was actually really early on, before I even knew what correlated parlays were. I let him use one of the super soft accounts I got from Jim. This sharp told me he would bet straights and I'd use the account for props. What he was doing though was betting hockey correlated parlays, and not even NHL ones. This was one of the first times I had even heard of/seen CP's. He was on one of the accounts when everything went tits up when the wanna-be guy cut me off and stiffed me for the last week. Some of that money was owed to the sharp. I didn't cover it though which I technically should have. He had won a ton though up until that and he was fairly understanding. This was when I was just starting out and if that happened today I would have covered it. I thought that he kind of took a shot at me though. He knew what he was betting and he knew that I really didn't. If you're hammering away at obscure KHL correlated parlays and are way up, you really can't be too shocked when you get cut off and stiffed on the last week. He left the partnership with more money than when he started so all in all it was fine, though I will admit it wasn't my finest moment. If he had to go back in time though, he would definitely have still taken the accounts. The PPH world can be messy.

The funniest/weirdest account/agent I ever dealt with was this guy 'Keno-Bill' I met through Jay. I talked about him in one of my older posts but not in great detail. Jay had an account with this new guy Keno Bill. I saw the account and was absolutely licking my chops. I wanted my own though, I think this was when Jay was starting to get sloppy. Jay set up a meeting for us and I walked into this little hole in the wall dive bar where this guy Bill ran the Keno games. (By the way, Keno is maybe the single worst possible game you can gamble on. The house edge is somewhere in the 30% range. Never, ever play Keno). I can still remember walking in there and seeing him for the first time. He didn't see me though, so I sat there and watched him a little bit, trying to get as much info on him as I could. He was like the mayor of the place, chatting everyone up, friendly but a little full of himself. Perfect. One random thing I still remember; while I was watching him waiting for an opening to approach him, I saw him blow his nose and get boogers all over his hand. When he met we had to shake hands and I remember feeling like I had radioactive material on my hand. We chatted for a bit and he gave me an account and on the way out I booked it into the bathroom to wash my hands. I can still picture the old dusty arcade game right near the bathroom. It's weird the stuff you remember. This account ended up being an absolute goldmine, maybe the best I ever had. The account itself wasn't particularly soft, for those days anyway, but he let me bet forEVER. I couldn't believe how long he let me stay on there. And he couldn't hide either as he was posted up at that keno place all the time, so I wasn't worried about getting stiffed. This was also when I got the idea of getting a percentage back on losses. I had a bad stretch starting out, losing something like a month or more in a row on this account. And I paid him every week no problem. Once I heard of the percentage-off deal, I approached him. I said something like 'I have another account and the guy is offering me 15% off my weekly losses. I really like your account though so if you can match it, I'll stay with you'. He must have thought I was a whale because he ended up giving me 20% off of weekly losses. If you know anything about betting, you know how absurd that is. I could be a break even or a slight loser and still come out way ahead. Well in the months that followed, I absolutely crushed him. Week after week. Even the rare losing weeks were softend with the 20% rebate. Every week I thought for sure I'd go to log in on a Monday and the account would be closed. But it didn't happen for a long time. Finally, when it did, some real hijinx ensued. One day, after another huge week, I go to log in and the account is off. Bill is not responding to my calls and he still owes me a good chunk. I'm going crazy, calling different people, trying to get a hold of him when I suddenly get a call from a random number. It's Keno Bill's boss, the head bookie. Apparently he had been away on vacation for the last month and went crazy when he got home, seeing how much I had won. He kept giving me the sob story about how Bill was now buried in make up and 'wasn't going too good'. He was incensed at me for winning. And he had a wicked feminine voice with a lisp and everything, and he kept talking about his mother? I guess they lived together and ran the book together or something. It was surreal. At one point he said something like 'ya know, back in my day, when a guy won a bunch in a week he'd tip his agent 100 bucks.' And I shot back 'I lost a ton in the first couple months and no one ever 'tipped' me.' And he said exactly, and I'll never forget this in his weirdo Mark Harris voice 'ok ok ok, let us forget this and never speak of it again.' After we hung up, he called me back and started ranting again ABOUT me. He thought he was calling Bill and called me by mistake! Still to this day I kick myself for cutting him off and not letting him go on, just to see what he had to say. I ended up never seeing or hearing from either guy ever again. Keno-Bill disappeared from the bar he worked at with the last couple weeks worth of money he owed me.

I had another car dealership old guy who was a little bit of a dummy but was more solid than the usual car guy. We got along pretty good and once he cut me off, I flipped him into a dirty agent. He got me accounts for a while until it dried up. He was amazed and what I did. 

Eventually me and 'Jon' hooked back up and he started getting me lots of really good accounts. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he was going through a tough addiction thing and apparently owed money all over the place. He started getting sloppy and started shorting me here and there, rolling it over until the next week. One week I won big and poof, he disappeared. I tracked him down and got a little bit out of him plus an excruciating payment plan that fizzled out. That turned into a bit of a sticky situation, too. Sometimes guys will just be down BAD. They owe money to all kinds of people, they can't make any money and even when they do, they can't hold on to it. So what do you do in a situation like that, exactly? It's easy to think and talk about what you'd do, but reality is different. He wasn't ducking me, he was just beyond broke. This kid was my friend at one point, I was doing really good back then and he was down and out. So how hard did I really want to lean on him? At one point he had his mom giving me money for him. That didn't feel good, even though it was my money. I got what I could and moved on which is typically what happens in situations like that. It's not like the movies. 'We're not makin a Western here.'

Last one I'll get into here, just because it was so weird. At the very beginning of all of this, before I sort of switched teams, I ran a book with Jay, taking action from absolute deadbeats. One of our customers was this group of Albanian guys that Jay knew from some bar. I think it was their bar, actually. They were always just hanging around, all day, every day. They seemed like absolute whales and we were happy to take their action. The way they bet was bizarre and to this day I still don't understand what happened exactly. During the MLB season, they used to take the four or five biggest dogs on the board and max parlay them. Like, every single day, for months. And they CRUSHED us. They weren't getting good numbers on the teams and our parlay odds were normal, if not slightly worse. We actually put a max win on parlays and they would still bet them, even though their wins were capped. So we were getting way the best of it, or so it would seem. They just won, week after week. It made no sense. I guess it was just a good streak but man, I don't know. Eventually we gave them to another bookie we knew and they won a HUGE amount the first week he took them. Like, a really big amount, way bigger than we could have paid. I don't even know what we would have done to be honest. My life could have taken a whole different turn if we waited one more week to cut them off. (Fun/scary little nugget: Jay knew roughly where and when they were going to meet to settle up for the huge week, and Jay and one of his friends floated the idea of robbing them. Thank god I heard about it and talked him out of it, not that I think they would have actually gone through with it. Jay got weird towards the end. Stay away from pills, my friends.)

That's about it for today. This is only a snapshot, really. I've had many other partnerships that were a lot less dramatic. A lot of them are just silky smooth, barely any bumps in the road. Those are the best and mostly where I'm at now. The ones that blow up or are bizarre are the fun ones to think and write about though. Nowadays it's a lot less frantic and I barely deal with anyone anymore. I'm always in the game though.

Thanks for reading, check back soon!

On Working With Others, A New Model/Prop Market, A Crypto Check-In And More

 One thing quickly before we jump in today. I want to clarify something I said in my last post about the average home being cheaper today than in 1900 when priced in gold. I got it from a blog I read and in that blog, they don't really show their work. They show a graph from the Fed but it's a little hard to read and it doesn't let you click through it. It stuck with me for a while after I read and wrote about it so I decided to look into the data myself.

First off, when you're looking for historical information, sometimes you have a tendency to think that the internet just sort of sucks up all the info itself. You forget that an actual person has to literally type all this stuff in. I've run into this issue when making models for sports, too. It's a lot harder than you might think it is to find the average price of a home in America in 1900. Everything is divided by region and they're kind of all over the place. The best I could find though was an actual ad for homes in a newspaper, and I got the following prices: NYC: $3500-6k, Boston $2k, San Fransisco $2-3500k, and Philadelphia $1500. I thought about keeping it to one city but that isn't really fair since you might just be capturing the growth rate of one individual city. Using a couple different sources, I deduced that $3k is a reasonable estimate though. In 1900, gold was selling for $20.7/ounce. So an average home would have cost roughly 145 ounces of gold. Today, the average home price is somewhere around $500k. It all depends on location, of course, and we're treating all homes as equal, which we know isn't exactly right. But if we use $500k, we know that gold goes for $2885/ounce today, so that comes out to 173 ounces. We could drill down into this and try to get a number per square foot in, say, the top 10 cities based on population, but I think the point stands. It may not be completely accurate to say that housing prices have decreased when measured in gold, but it's about break-even. Which is extraordinary when you consider that when priced in dollars, going from an average of $3k to $500k is a 16,667% increase. Over sixteen thousand percent. And the worst you could possibly say about the price in gold is that it went up by maybe 50%. That is all inflation.

It's like you're heating a home that's missing an entire wall. The heater is the collective manpower and brainpower of the greatest country on earth, so the house stays hot and most people don't even notice the missing wall. And there's a whole bunch of people standing right outside the missing wall, getting heat for free. And they've been there for so long that they start to think that they deserve the heat, simply because they aren't capable of building their own heater (if they could, they would have by now). Not only that, they've convinced a lot of the people in the house who are paying for the heater that these people standing outside deserve it, too. Whole industries have sprung up where people sell heat to the people on the outside in exchange for a kickback of a little bit of heat for themselves. As more heat spills out of the house, more energy has to go into it to keep everyone warm. Now, in 2025, the people who are paying for the heater have finally started to notice the missing wall and the hordes of people standing near it, getting heat for free. That is really inflation in a very simplified nut shell. 

I could go on and on but we're going to change gears here today and talk about sports betting, namely the PPH world. Getting back to basics.

I have said many times that when it comes to advantage gambling, almost everyone approaches it differently. You have the top down approach, the bottom up approach, and everything in between. And even the people who only do top-down (pure market capping) can do it in all different kinds of ways. Same thing with bottom-up, which is another word for originating, which is exactly what it sounds like. Originating plays, usually through models but not always. And as we've discussed on here before, even just the modelers, who I would count myself as one, solve problems and come up with +EV plays completely differently. We all basically end up in the same place but the paths to get there are seemingly endless.

However, there is one constant that I always see anytime I see an interview or read something about these guys. And that is that real +EV players work with a lot of other people. I honestly can't think of one guy I've ever heard about or read about that was a true lone wolf. And the reasons are obvious. With there being so many different ways to skin this cat, you get all kinds of people who specialize in one thing or another that when paired up with the right person, can amount to a very profitable combination. For instance, one guy may have access to a multitude of soft PPH accounts. On his own, this guy can't really do much. Access is great but you gotta know what to do with them. Now say you have another guy who is a great modeler, can originate all kinds of plays on his own, but doesn't have access to many or any good, soft sports betting accounts. Well, you pair these guys up and it's like putting a key into a lock. That is just one example but the combinations are endless, and they don't have to be between only two people. You might have on guy who crushes straight bets, one guy who crushes props, and one guy who gets them accounts. It's kind of a beautiful thing if you think about it. 

I have had many, many partnerships over my sports betting career. Most don't work out but the ones that do more than make up for it. They don't always end well. In fact, they almost never do. But that's ok too. It's not shocking when a partnership ends, the miracle is that it ever worked at all. A lot of sports betting partnerships are between people who have never met face to face, moving a lot of money between them. It takes an enormous amount of trust. 

The basics of the PPH world ecosystem is that you have the originators, or the bettors, on one side, and you have the guys who can get accounts on the other side. Most of these guys are 'dirty agents', or agents working for a bookie. The agent has a foot in the door in the PPH world and can usually get all kinds of accounts on all different kinds of skins. The bettor makes a deal with the agent where he pays him a percentage of his winnings. It's really a classic kick-back scheme. The agent usually has so many other losing customers that he's still making money for his boss and himself, while also pocketing his little 10 or 15% from the bettor. I've actually been on both sides of this arrangement. I'm way more of a bettor looking for accounts, but I've also got accounts myself and either given them to other guys/groups for a piece of the action, or shared them with them. Or both, usually. (Which is a whole world to itself. I've been on accounts that had more than 3 different groups on them, all with different deals/percentages. Imagine the accounting, every single week).

Which brings me to my main point in all this. When I first started this blog, half the reason was that I was looking for partnerships for new accounts. I did get quite a few offers but nothing really came of it. And every once in a while, still, I'll get comments or messages from people looking to partner up. I haven't been great at replying to them so I just want to say to anyone who has wrote to me, I have read every single message. The truth though is that I'm really not looking for anything new anymore. I just don't do it enough to justify going through the whole process. When I was doing this full time I was constantly on the look out for any kind of partnership, anything that might work out. That was one of my main skills, having a foot in the PPH world and having access to all kinds of soft accounts. But I've been largely out of the scene for a little while, and even people looking to give me accounts, while I do appreciate it, it's just not worth the headache anymore. Also, I have no fucking idea what telegram is. Or discord. I've heard of them, I have a general idea of them, but I'm not going to find you on there. I'm a little bit more old-school than you might think. If anyone ever really wanted to contact me, the best way would be through my X account, @poogsBLOG. But by and large, my partnering days are behind me. If you have something really juicy I'll certainly take a look, but I assume that most people reading this know what to do with a soft PPH account themselves anyway. 

In other somewhat related news, I found a new prop market to delve into and the results have been encouraging so far. Normally I would never post publicly about something like this but I don't really mind anymore. I've found mostly that the guys who can beat this stuff are already doing it. I was scrolling through Draft Kings a week or so ago, just looking at the different little prop markets they offer. I know I keep saying this but it really is astounding how many different markets DK offers. Some really obscure stuff and tons of it. There is simply no way they can accurately price all these different markets. One of them I came across was 'Blocks' for NHL players. Which is exactly what it sounds like, when a player blocks a shot. It caught my attention and I began to think about it some more. First off, there is absolutely no way DK has a team of people pricing this prop. I mean, who is even betting on this? They must be just be taking a players season or career average. I bet it's one single guy at DK that I'm up against. (By the way, if you're new at this, this is how you beat sports. You aren't going to beat straight Team X vs Team Y matchups. Look for really obscure, low-limit stuff. The more obscure and low-limit, the better. Worry about being able to get enough money down when that problem arises. I have found that that problem will actually kind of solve itself if you're really beating a market. Accounts will find you.)

Anyway, I tinkered around in excel for like an hour and I came up with a simple model for it that I think is profitable. It has been so far but the sample is small. The logic behind it is sound though, I think at least, and pretty simple. The first thing I do is pretend I don't even know what the sport being played is. Think about really what a blocked shot is and what affects it. Well, to block a shot, you need the opponent to first shoot a shot. What is a shot, exactly? In NHL terms, a shot is any shot attempt ON goal. We want to zoom out more and we're looking for any attempt AT the goal. This brings us to Corsi, or 'shot attempts'. If you can predict how many shot attempts the opponent will take, and the rate of which a player blocks said shot attempts, well, buddy, you got yourself a little model. At least the beginning of one you can keep adding to and trying things out with. Stuff like this is easier than you might think and just trying at all will put you ahead of the average bettor. I might post some bets from this market and track them on here but we'll see. And if this market suddenly sharpens up or disappears, I'll know my reach and what not to talk about here. But I think I've largely made too much of that notion.

When I first started really getting into stuff like this, the knock was always 'yea the low-limit stuff is easy to beat but you'll get limited/shut down fast and will have nowhere to play'. Well here I am almost two decades later, still getting down on some of the most obscure stuff imaginable. Yea the bet sizes are small but I know how to stay in action. I think that because I took action before I became a bettor myself, I know what it's like to be on the other side of the coin. I was that guy for a while. I know what it's like to look over players' betting histories and what you think about when considering not taking a guys action. 

You can't completely hammer a guy/account. If you have a really good week or two, go easy for a week. Throw in a small favorite/over parlay on the Monday Night game. Make a couple square looking straight bets that probably cost you less than $10 in expected loss. Don't make him come to you to meet up, go to him. Make settling up easy for him. Have a little small-talk, get to know the guy. When you get a dirty agent, let him in on what you're doing a little bit. Make him feel part of it. They love shit like that. I've worked with guys who are terrific modelers, super smart guys but they lack a certain sixth sense. It's hard to even come up with a word for it. But over time I've developed a sort of feel for when I'm about to lose an account. It can be as subtle as the way the agent texts you, or even when he texts you. How he acts when you meet up. Sometimes you have a good month or two and think you're about to lose the account but you get the sense that the agent isn't even paying attention. It's a feel that I didn't really understand I had or how valuable it can be until way later in the game. Business is always personal, you really can't forget that. There's a great line in Mad Men that always stuck with me. "Pete, you know how often in this business it comes down to 'I just don't like that guy'". The people who say 'hey it's not personal, it's just business' are usually people not actually doing any business.

In other news I'm sure you've heard, Trump made a big announcement about a 'crypto reserve' and the markets pumped a good deal afterwards. They've since corrected a little bit with BTC bouncing from $85k to $95k and now sitting at about $90k and falling. I actually made a nice little sell at $95k yesterday and am slowly buying it back now at these slightly lower prices. "Announcements" are, to me anyways, good times to make a quick sell and buy back in later. You almost always see a big pump, a big re-tracement, and then a slow climb. The market had been fading for a few weeks leading up to yesterday. It feels a little bit like $108k was the high and now we're heading for a bear market, but the technicals don't show that at all. I still think we're square in the middle of a bull market and will see at least $150k this cycle, if not $200k, but I'm not married to that idea. Even at $100k, we were nowhere near over-heated. We still haven't broken out of the accumulation zone in Ben Cowen's logarithmic regression model. 

But like I've said before, I've mostly taken myself out of price predictions for BTC. The bottom line is that the number goes up. Just zoom out. It's done the hard work and it's here to stay. I read somewhere the other day that BTC currently has about 3-5% adoption so far. So about 4 out of 100 people own or use it. Which is the same with the internet in about 1990. There's countless articles and charts about it if you just google 'bitcoin adoption'. But the bottom line is that we are still very early and I'm sticking to my plan to DCA every week and keep it in cold storage.

Every cycle, it seems, has its own little narrative. The 2016/2017 cycle was really the first time BTC penetrated mainstream news when it broke $10k. Then you had the 2020 cycle where, for some reason that looks more and more ridiculous every passing day, NFT's really took center stage. This cycle has sort of been the BTC-ETF/alt-coin reckoning cycle where we've seen Bitcoin dominance continue to grow. I was always worried about Ethereum and other alt-coins over taking Bitcoin but the opposite has borne out. The ETH/BTC ratio topped out at about .15 in 2017 and has been slowly falling downward ever since with a big dead cat bounce in 2020. It's at .025 right now. (All that means is that you could have traded one 'eth' for .15 BTC in 2017. Today, you'd get .025 BTC.) Which makes sense if you think about it. The vast majority of alt-coins are useless, if not outright scams. The NFT stuff was absurd and I said so in 2020. Compared to the bells and whistles of a new shiny alt-coin, Bitcoin is boring and unsexy. But in 2025, the shine has largely come off the alt coin market as a whole and we're seeing money flow out of the risky alt-coins and into Bitcoin, not the other way around. 

I have a friend that I secretly use as a small top-signal. He's a super normal, respectable, charismatic people-person who has does quite well for himself in his own little niche. This is the guy you picture when you think 'normie'. And he follows crypto and the news in general from afar, like I imagine most people do. When we were hanging out in 2021, right before the bubble burst, he was all of a sudden interested in crypto. He's like a solid 5 years behind the cutting edge and I think a pretty good barometer for the public as a whole. And you know what he's talking about now? AI. Just something to consider. (He never actually invested in crypto which was probably a good thing. He always asks me what to buy and I always tell him the same thing: buy Bitcoin. But he just can't. He wants the next thing. The shiny new alt-coin. It's a good lesson.)

That's about it for today. I will definitely have some more posts up soon. Thanks for reading!

BTC price: $87k

BTC marketcap: $1.73T

BTC dominance: 60.2%

Total cryptos on coinmarketcap: 12.2M