Highlights: Twitter Spaces 8/10
Pro bettors Michael Craig, Eddie Walls host 60-minute show via @RASPicks account.
Professional bettors Michael Craig and Eddie Walls hosted a roughly 60-minute Twitter Spaces Wednesday evening. They discussed their own journeys in the sports betting industry, their roles and involvement with RAS, various gambling topics, and also mixed in some college football talk.
Some of the highlights are below. You can listen to the full replay here.
(Note: Eddie appears about halfway through.)
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What do you think is better, focusing on one or two conferences, or the entire board, when you’re first getting started betting sports?
Mike: I think it depends what your strengths are. If you’re a modeler, and you can model everything, then it doesn’t make any sense to only look at a couple of things. But for most people starting off—and I do think modeling has gotten tougher—I think the lines have gotten a lot sharper too … I think the subjective end of things, using college hoops as an example, I definitely would recommend someone get intimate knowledge of the CAA and the MAAC, focus on those, know those teams really well, know who’s in, who’s out, know the player rotations. That’s another thing with live betting, with player rotations, you can create middles for yourself, lots of good opportunity. You can bet all game long. So I think two conferences or so would be best, learn them well, and everything else will fall into place. If you can get down two leagues, maybe you can add another one. Three conferences is upwards of 30 teams or so, that’s not too bad. When you get into 300 plus teams, that’s when it gets overwhelming.
Eddie: In college football, I would tell everyone to focus on non Power 5 to start off with. The MAC, Sun Belt, AAC, etc. You have five conferences overall, it won’t be completely overwhelming. You’ll miss out on some value early in the season, but once conference play begins, you’ll probably have a pretty good edge.
Do you tell people what you do for a living?
Mike: I tell everybody now because it’s legal. Back in the day, it was always such a taboo thing. Trying to get a bank loan, and telling them you’re a gambler, it’s just not gonna happen. But yeah, people I’m close to have always known for all these years. But people I don’t know as well—like, my son has a girlfriend, I just met her dad the other day—I didn’t say I gamble for a living … So, not everybody. For the most part though, I tell everybody."
Eddie: Yeah, I’m not going to tell the cable guy because then he wants to talk parlays with me and stuff like that.
Mike: My parents would definitely rather tell people that I’m an engineer than a professional gambler. One problem with telling people is, a lot of time the perception is, people think you hit at an astronomical rate. You hit 80 percent and you never lose. People don’t realize it’s a volume game and you’re trying to grind out 53-54% in a lot of the smaller stuff I do.
What are the traits you look for, and what talent does somebody possess, that makes you want to join teams with them or become partners?
Mike: I suppose traits for a successful originator, there has to be at least some analytics. You have to work hard. You have to be stubborn. The thing about what we’re doing, you’re competing against all these smart people, against all these smart books, you have to have a bit of an ego and be stubborn about your opinions in order to succeed as an originator. In terms of working with another person, betting wise or whatever, I think to me it’s a loyalty or honesty type of thing. Just like your Terrell Owenses in the NFL, when things are going good and everybody’s winning, everything is going great. No one has complaints. But when things go bad, that’s when people have a chance to stiff you. So I’d say loyalty. And that’s the No. 1 quality with a friend in life, just loyalty.
Eddie: I think with me, I have an insane work ethic. I have a very large fear of losing. So I need someone to match my work ethic. That’s why I joined up with RAS, because I’ve been partners with people in the past who are very dedicated at what they do, but I’m putting in just an insane amount of work, and sometimes when it’s not matched it makes me feel, ‘What am I in this partnership for?’ So you can’t expect too much out of people, but you have to expect that they’ll at least value your opinion and match your work ethic to a degree.
What are the pros and cons of working with a group instead of by yourself?
Eddie: The pros and cons are pretty simple for me. You have to be pretty cognizant of the fact that you’re working with a group, and you have to wait sometimes for the market, and for limits to increase, and for everything to coincide so everyone’s needs are met. And also, even though I put a lot of work into this, I need opinions from other people. It’s very hard to do this by yourself. We do these think tanks, and they’re great for me, because even as much as I work, I miss stuff, and I end up with biases, especially toward certain coaches who may have fallen off, or certain programs. It’s good to have a second or third or fourth opinion. It’s never a bad thing to have smart people looking at your work and telling you where you’re wrong. So that’s the biggest asset for me as a pro. The only con for me is making sure that I always have my opinion in place, because it can get skewed if you have too many opinions. So you have to be a little bit careful of that. But all in all, I like working with somebody else, especially in preseason, forming base numbers. Because it can get tricky by yourself.
Mike: I’ve used the example before of a college hoops Saturday, having 25 plays, and trying to dwindle it down. It really helps to be in a group setting for that.
The college football market was up earlier than it’s ever been in history, all the way back in May. How did it affect you?
Mike: I never really started college football early. Like, you have this month to month regimen that you do every year. I’m way more disorganized in terms of when I do things. I never bet that early anyway. I would be starting a bit before right now. Usually I go to the beach, read Phil Steele, and just make notes on returning starters and everything, as a starting point, and then I’ll make a sheet with a bunch of point spread and over/under numbers based on last year’s teams. The market being up earlier didn’t do anything for me.
Eddie: It’s tough for me. It was really bad for me actually. Because I don’t like other peoples’ opinions when I’m forming a number. When they’re up in May, I get afraid that I might be forming a bit of a bias just by seeing the numbers. So I actually made sure to not have DonBest on over the summer while I was doing my work. But it hurts, because there’s money being left on the table. But my numbers aren’t anywhere close to being ready by then. So I had to sit back and wait and, you know, if I miss some things, I miss some things. I’m not just going to take educated guesses. So, I get stable with my thoughts before I even start taking a crack at making numbers—they’re not ready to bet until mid July. So, it wasn’t easy on me. I hope it doesn’t continue to be. It makes things very difficult on my end.
Rob Pizzola named Mike the No. 1 person to hang out with at BetBash. What did you guys do? Was BetBash a good experience for you?
Mike: I’ve known Rob awhile. I used to go to the MIT Sloan conferences in Boston. Usually it was about 10 gamblers there. We’d go every year, it was a once-a-year time to hang out. I probably stopped going around 2015. I got introduced to him around 2016 or 2017, we were hanging out with the same people. We got to be friends, hung out a lot. The funny thing with Rob—I love Rob, by the way, if I had a Mount Rushmore of my own I’m sure he’d be on it—anyway, I never knew if he enjoyed hanging out with me, because he’s a quiet guy, stays to himself to a degree. So I was actually surprised he said that. But when I go to those, I do stay up late, and I do drink a lot. It’s just what I do. I was embarrassed to be No. 1, Chris Bruno should always be top on those things. From a story telling perspective, there’s absolutely nobody who can match Chris Bruno’s stories. Just to be listed with him was an honor. But yeah, we had a dinner of six at BetBash. And during BetBash is when I reconnected with Edward. I didn’t even know Ed and the RAS crew would be there … we messaged back and forth, hung out a lot during the weekend, had a dinner … and it turned into this. So, it’s pretty awesome. It was really fun … BetBash is a great networking event. Selfishly, I’d love to do these four times per year. But I think it might lose its luster. So I like the once-a-year thing. I don’t know if that’s how Spanky will do it moving forward, but I think that’s the way to do it.
Has legalization been good for you? What’s the best book you’ve had the pleasure of dealing with since legalization took place?
Mike: Legalization was really good for me. Because honestly, 2017 and 2018 were two of my worst years, because I didn’t … 2016 was really good, but ‘17 and ‘18 weren’t as good, and a lot of the reason was because I had gone through a lot of the outs I had. I didn’t deal with tons of people, maybe six or eight people I dealt with. But the outs I could get kinda dried up. So you would go from being able to bet a nickel or a dime on a college hoops extra game—after giving people their cuts—at noon on a game day … to then, when it’s legalized in 2019 in PA, then 2020 it opened pretty good, you’d be able to get six to eight dimes overnight. So it was a huge thing for me at that time just to have places to bet again, and to be able to bet early. As these books have learned, I think the leash is a lot shorter. I know Sugarhouse was the first book to be legal in PA, it was a Kambi book, I was able to get down for a decent number. But then even some of these other ones, the DraftKings’ of the world, I’m seeing friends getting their DraftKings accounts taken away, they’re not even up money, but they’re betting nickels to dimes and getting accounts taken away. It’s incredible. I don’t understand the philosophy there. In terms of the best legal book in PA, it’s FanDuel to me without question. It’s the only place where I haven’t been completely shut down, and they still take decent bet close to game time. They’re clearly No. 1 here. Our Caesars here, we don’t have the same menus as other states. (But they’re great elsewhere.)
Eddie: Yeah, Caesars, I’m shocked by the amounts they’re taking, and they seem rather pleasant about it (in my state). I don’t know how long that lasts, but I have to give them props. I feel like I spend so much time talking bad about the MGM, DraftKings, etc., situations, that sometimes we forget to give some of these books their props—Circa obviously, CRIS obviously, places like that. There are books out there taking bets and aren’t banning people on the basis that they might be sharp.