Jean, Nevada
BennyProfane
Senior Member
Ive still lost track of what day it is, and I cant even remember how long its been since I posted here. I had been hanging around downtown, betting TommyL picks, and just generally contributing as little as possible to society. Ive spent enough time in downtown Las Vegas to where its in my blood, and it will always be a big part of my life. Then I ran into Cutter. For anyone who doesnt know, Cutter is an advantage player who has been grinding away in southern Nevada for about twelve years. I met him years ago when I was a ticket writer at the Fremont. We developed a friendship that consisted mostly of him viewing me as an apprentice gambler that he could teach. He had a system of doing things that was altered after a close friend of his robbed him. He was able to recover from that, and makes a comfortable six figure income doing various advantage play maneuvers at various casinos. He had been teaching me about what hes doing now, and I had been fairly transfixed. Specifically, video poker in southern Nevada is a major cash cow that can be milked by people who know exactly what theyre doing. For instance, there are low denomination machines that pay off at more than 100% if the correct strategy chart is followed. Additionally, there are machines that pay off between 99.5 and 100 but that are accompanied by rewards programs that are very lucrative (I.e., if you put sufficient play in on such machines, the casino mails you free play offers, and the comps you reap from the machines more than offset the house advantage). Cutter told me that he receives between 3-4 thousand a month in freeplay between all the slot club offers he gets mailed. Needless to say, this blew my mind. I had always been vaguely aware that there are video poker machines, but whenever Im in a casino, Im interested only in situations where Im sure the odds are in my favor. (I.e, sports betting, favorable blackjack games, and No-Limit hold em where people dont know what theyre doing). Apparently, its been common knowledge in sharp circles for some time that these machines are easily beatable, but true professional gamblers rarely reveal something like that on an internet message board. I had started playing full pay deuces wild (a game found at any Stations casino, and several other places in Vegas), for no other reason than that I had hoped to get on the track to receiving some of these mailings. Its a low stakes grind that actually gets boring after a while, but I learned a long time ago that Cutter is someone who absolutely knows what hes doing. This leads me to an observation that I had made years ago, but that the last week has crystallized. There are five different kinds of sports bettors.
1) The Recreational Bettor
This probably comprises 90% of the betting public (if not more). It transcends race, class, and social stature. The recreational bettor thinks he knows everything, and usually tells everyone in earshot that The Patriots are going to cover that spread by like 50 points. I used to think that blindly fading people like this was positive ev with effective line shopping alone, and it did work for me for a while, but there is absolutely nothing that can be learned from listening to them, and they should be avoided at all costs.
2) The Intermediate
Harder to define, but an intermediate is someone who plays with less of a house edge, but still is a losing overall bettor. He had a general understanding that one should bet against overrated favorites and knows that you should check a few places to make sure youre getting the best possible line on your bet, but he still lacks an adequate understanding of how professionals bet.
3) The Beyond Intermediate
This is the stage that I believe I am, as well as most of the people who post on this board are. The BI looks at sports betting as an investment, not a gamble, and conducts himself with a constant seriousness of purpose when selecting which games to bet. He also understands Kelly Criterion and never overbets his bankroll. He understands that its imperative to bet openers before the market has sharpened, and understands full well the importance of the timing of a bet. The BI still only has a small advantage (relative to the amount of money being bet. This was pointed out very well in a post by TribeCalledJeff a few weeks ago). A BI will never get rich betting sports. This is written in stone and will never change. Its a grind, and finding small advantages will yield a small profit over time. There will also be long losing streaks that are psychologically difficult to handle. This leads to the ruin of many bettors who are otherwise capable. If anyone tries to analyze exactly why people remain in a particular group for an extended period of time, it is because people construct psychological barriers that cause them to remain there. Without those barriers, there would be nothing but a constant progression from one rung of the ladder to the next. People get complacent. People want to punish themselves. People think they dont deserve better than what they have. People cant handle winning. People cant handle losing. Because of this, they either stay where they are (or in some cases regress) Honest self-assessment is the key to overcoming this.
4) The Pro (The upper 1%)
The pro is someone who has absolutely mastered the BI concepts and who likely was mentored by another professional at some point in his life. Generally, a pro is someone who has figured out how to successfully utilize computers (ie, generating a math model that is original and innovative). They know things that people on message boards simply dont know. Cutter and I have had numerous conversations about this over the years and he showed me the way hes currently betting, which is unlike anything Id seen before.
For instance, more than 99% of the sports bets Ive made have been straight bets (the remaining 1% being either correlated parlays or basic strategy football teasers). What he has been drilling into my head is that betting correlated parlays is the only way (I reiterate, only way) to turn a substantial profit. Its not worth it to make straight bets. We visited a William Hill kiosk on Thursday, and he made the following plays for the following reasons: Ticket One, (parlay) Penn State +8 ½ (first half), Under 62 (first half), Cal +3 ½ (first half). Ticket two (parlay), Penn State +8 ½ first half, Under 62 first half, San Francisco pk. Ticket 3: Penn State + 8 1/2, Under 62, Spurs Clippers under 202 ½. If youre betting at a kiosk, you can put 150 each on such a ticket without it coming up for approval. Then he would just repeat the bet for the same amount until he had gotten enough down. If you try this at a window with a ticket writer (for say $300 a ticket), it comes up for approval and gets denied. Doing this through the kiosk works every time. The positive ev is worked out as follows. Penn State is much more likely to cover the first half line if there is a slow pace, and if theyre able to play defense. (Thats a simplistic way of explaining things, but its the only way I could work it out mentally without seeing the math). The Cal bet was made because Pinnacle had that first half line as being +3, shaded towards the dog. Pinnacle had the San Francisco money line as being -116, and their total on the Clippers Spurs game was 201 ½, with a juice shade towards the under. Such bets (The SF side) have (according to him) a 51.5% chance of winning (in the blind with no handicapping). Its extremely counterintuitive to me that a professional would make such bets, insofar as it would seem obvious that everyone would have to do some handicapping. Ive watched several Penn State games this year, and I would be reticent about backing them at any price. They seem very undisciplined, poorly coached, and they make many fundamental errors. Yet here you had a professional who was willing to back them, without even being able to name one person who plays for them. The explanation was that the mathematical correlation between the 8 ½ and the 62 was so strong that combining them with any over 50% pick yields a healthy theoretical edge. To say the least, its an odd school of thought. There are so many people who do so much work in analyzing subjective and objective factors to pick winners, when its theoretically possibly to throw all that work out and just bet blindly according to the market. Following a poster like TommyL can be profitable if and only if you are parlaying his picks with correlated parlays.
And as a final note, Illinois wound up being ahead 29-20 at the end of the first half.
5) The truly gifted
About as rare as two horned Unicorns and possibly even non-existent. People at the bottom of the food chain think that there is somewhere a secret society of people who have inside information about fixed games, and can pick winners about 80% of the time. No one has ever seen a TG, even though the homeless people at the El Cortez spout off about my friend knows a guy who is a runner for Billy Walters, and he said that the Colts are going to win on Sunday. I even spent more time than I care to admit trying to find psychics and mediums who can predict the outcomes (Im sad to admit this, but it is true, and no it doesnt work). No one from this group would ever read or post on a message board, because they live on an island somewhere, and theyre too busy having sex with their supermodel girlfriends.
Where was I? So I ran into Cutter, and he taught me about Cor Pars, where I told him about what its like to date the hottest, craziest girl in the state of Wisconsin. I even wrote a book about it that know one has read (but you can read it if you click on my signature). He made a fateful suggestion, Lets go to Jean.
Jean, Nevada (population approximately 30), is an exit of I-15 30 miles south of downtown Las Vegas. It has one Hotel Casino, the Gold Strike, a rather large place that gets an odd mishmash of customers mixed of truck drivers, degenerates who cant wait to get all the way to Vegas, and people like me and Cutter. Part of the reason we went there is because Tony BigCharles is there, and Cutter wanted to visit with him. If you dont know who TBC is, I dont know how to describe him adequately (you can google his name if youre curious). Basically, hes an autistic man who blogs about playing low stakes poker and his adventures at the bottom (and I do mean bottom) of the advantage play food chain. As an autistic, he sees nothing wrong with revealing things about himself that are hopelessly awkward. One such thing: he was kicked out of a casino ( I think it was the Harrahs chain for being rude to a slot club desk worker). The incident went something like this: he was trying to redeem slot club points. The woman was Mexican-American. He kept telling her, Gimme whatever I got coming to me. Since English wasnt her first language, she was unfamiliar with that expression, and his weird voice wasnt helping. He thought that the best way to get his point across would be to simply repeat what he was saying in a louder tone of voice. Eventually, he kept yelling, GIMME WHATEVER I GOT COMING TO ME, at a stentorian volume that was scaring everyone within earshot. When this didnt help matters, he told her words to the effect of, If you dont speak English, maybe you should swim back across the Rio Grande to Mexico and then die of AIDS. He was 86ed about two minutes after saying that. Ill admit it. I was slightly curious to meet the guy, for reasons I dont even understand myself. Ive read most of his blog, and it is a window into the mind of a very unique and gifted, but profoundly flawed person. Its like watching an episode of Jersey Shore. Everyone loves a good train wreck.
The drive to Jean went by quickly, and TBC wasnt at his favorite machine when we arrived at the Gold Strike. Evidently, the most profitable AP in Jean is the Video BlackJack machine. I didnt know what Video BJ was, and now I wish I still dont know. Let me describe this abomination to you: a large television screen depicts an animated dealer (a Nordic woman with pale skin, dark blue eyes, 34C breasts), who endlessly says things like Place your bets. Nice Catch. Nice 20, good job.
Here are the rules: its a four deck game (BAD), but there are favorable rules (dealer stands on soft seventeen, you can double after split, late surrender), but the penetration is only about 40% (which is horrific by anyones standards). But, no one watches the game, and the minimum bet is only one dollar. In other words, if youre counting cards, you can bet $1 (or wong out) on Negative shoes, while betting $100 on good counts with no heat. Moreover, the comp rate is 1% of your total action. The math on this is simple. The edge off the top of the deck is 0.3%, but when you factor in the comps, even a bs player is earning +.7 percent. Factor in the lack of heat and the potential for a huge bet spread, and you have a great game. TBC actually lives (thats right, lives) at the Gold Strike despite betting only 10 dollars a hand during positive counts. He subsists on a diet of Ramen noodles three times a day because he claims its too much of a drain on his bankroll to spend 20 dollars a day for the buffet pass.
1) The Recreational Bettor
This probably comprises 90% of the betting public (if not more). It transcends race, class, and social stature. The recreational bettor thinks he knows everything, and usually tells everyone in earshot that The Patriots are going to cover that spread by like 50 points. I used to think that blindly fading people like this was positive ev with effective line shopping alone, and it did work for me for a while, but there is absolutely nothing that can be learned from listening to them, and they should be avoided at all costs.
2) The Intermediate
Harder to define, but an intermediate is someone who plays with less of a house edge, but still is a losing overall bettor. He had a general understanding that one should bet against overrated favorites and knows that you should check a few places to make sure youre getting the best possible line on your bet, but he still lacks an adequate understanding of how professionals bet.
3) The Beyond Intermediate
This is the stage that I believe I am, as well as most of the people who post on this board are. The BI looks at sports betting as an investment, not a gamble, and conducts himself with a constant seriousness of purpose when selecting which games to bet. He also understands Kelly Criterion and never overbets his bankroll. He understands that its imperative to bet openers before the market has sharpened, and understands full well the importance of the timing of a bet. The BI still only has a small advantage (relative to the amount of money being bet. This was pointed out very well in a post by TribeCalledJeff a few weeks ago). A BI will never get rich betting sports. This is written in stone and will never change. Its a grind, and finding small advantages will yield a small profit over time. There will also be long losing streaks that are psychologically difficult to handle. This leads to the ruin of many bettors who are otherwise capable. If anyone tries to analyze exactly why people remain in a particular group for an extended period of time, it is because people construct psychological barriers that cause them to remain there. Without those barriers, there would be nothing but a constant progression from one rung of the ladder to the next. People get complacent. People want to punish themselves. People think they dont deserve better than what they have. People cant handle winning. People cant handle losing. Because of this, they either stay where they are (or in some cases regress) Honest self-assessment is the key to overcoming this.
4) The Pro (The upper 1%)
The pro is someone who has absolutely mastered the BI concepts and who likely was mentored by another professional at some point in his life. Generally, a pro is someone who has figured out how to successfully utilize computers (ie, generating a math model that is original and innovative). They know things that people on message boards simply dont know. Cutter and I have had numerous conversations about this over the years and he showed me the way hes currently betting, which is unlike anything Id seen before.
For instance, more than 99% of the sports bets Ive made have been straight bets (the remaining 1% being either correlated parlays or basic strategy football teasers). What he has been drilling into my head is that betting correlated parlays is the only way (I reiterate, only way) to turn a substantial profit. Its not worth it to make straight bets. We visited a William Hill kiosk on Thursday, and he made the following plays for the following reasons: Ticket One, (parlay) Penn State +8 ½ (first half), Under 62 (first half), Cal +3 ½ (first half). Ticket two (parlay), Penn State +8 ½ first half, Under 62 first half, San Francisco pk. Ticket 3: Penn State + 8 1/2, Under 62, Spurs Clippers under 202 ½. If youre betting at a kiosk, you can put 150 each on such a ticket without it coming up for approval. Then he would just repeat the bet for the same amount until he had gotten enough down. If you try this at a window with a ticket writer (for say $300 a ticket), it comes up for approval and gets denied. Doing this through the kiosk works every time. The positive ev is worked out as follows. Penn State is much more likely to cover the first half line if there is a slow pace, and if theyre able to play defense. (Thats a simplistic way of explaining things, but its the only way I could work it out mentally without seeing the math). The Cal bet was made because Pinnacle had that first half line as being +3, shaded towards the dog. Pinnacle had the San Francisco money line as being -116, and their total on the Clippers Spurs game was 201 ½, with a juice shade towards the under. Such bets (The SF side) have (according to him) a 51.5% chance of winning (in the blind with no handicapping). Its extremely counterintuitive to me that a professional would make such bets, insofar as it would seem obvious that everyone would have to do some handicapping. Ive watched several Penn State games this year, and I would be reticent about backing them at any price. They seem very undisciplined, poorly coached, and they make many fundamental errors. Yet here you had a professional who was willing to back them, without even being able to name one person who plays for them. The explanation was that the mathematical correlation between the 8 ½ and the 62 was so strong that combining them with any over 50% pick yields a healthy theoretical edge. To say the least, its an odd school of thought. There are so many people who do so much work in analyzing subjective and objective factors to pick winners, when its theoretically possibly to throw all that work out and just bet blindly according to the market. Following a poster like TommyL can be profitable if and only if you are parlaying his picks with correlated parlays.
And as a final note, Illinois wound up being ahead 29-20 at the end of the first half.
5) The truly gifted
About as rare as two horned Unicorns and possibly even non-existent. People at the bottom of the food chain think that there is somewhere a secret society of people who have inside information about fixed games, and can pick winners about 80% of the time. No one has ever seen a TG, even though the homeless people at the El Cortez spout off about my friend knows a guy who is a runner for Billy Walters, and he said that the Colts are going to win on Sunday. I even spent more time than I care to admit trying to find psychics and mediums who can predict the outcomes (Im sad to admit this, but it is true, and no it doesnt work). No one from this group would ever read or post on a message board, because they live on an island somewhere, and theyre too busy having sex with their supermodel girlfriends.
Where was I? So I ran into Cutter, and he taught me about Cor Pars, where I told him about what its like to date the hottest, craziest girl in the state of Wisconsin. I even wrote a book about it that know one has read (but you can read it if you click on my signature). He made a fateful suggestion, Lets go to Jean.
Jean, Nevada (population approximately 30), is an exit of I-15 30 miles south of downtown Las Vegas. It has one Hotel Casino, the Gold Strike, a rather large place that gets an odd mishmash of customers mixed of truck drivers, degenerates who cant wait to get all the way to Vegas, and people like me and Cutter. Part of the reason we went there is because Tony BigCharles is there, and Cutter wanted to visit with him. If you dont know who TBC is, I dont know how to describe him adequately (you can google his name if youre curious). Basically, hes an autistic man who blogs about playing low stakes poker and his adventures at the bottom (and I do mean bottom) of the advantage play food chain. As an autistic, he sees nothing wrong with revealing things about himself that are hopelessly awkward. One such thing: he was kicked out of a casino ( I think it was the Harrahs chain for being rude to a slot club desk worker). The incident went something like this: he was trying to redeem slot club points. The woman was Mexican-American. He kept telling her, Gimme whatever I got coming to me. Since English wasnt her first language, she was unfamiliar with that expression, and his weird voice wasnt helping. He thought that the best way to get his point across would be to simply repeat what he was saying in a louder tone of voice. Eventually, he kept yelling, GIMME WHATEVER I GOT COMING TO ME, at a stentorian volume that was scaring everyone within earshot. When this didnt help matters, he told her words to the effect of, If you dont speak English, maybe you should swim back across the Rio Grande to Mexico and then die of AIDS. He was 86ed about two minutes after saying that. Ill admit it. I was slightly curious to meet the guy, for reasons I dont even understand myself. Ive read most of his blog, and it is a window into the mind of a very unique and gifted, but profoundly flawed person. Its like watching an episode of Jersey Shore. Everyone loves a good train wreck.
The drive to Jean went by quickly, and TBC wasnt at his favorite machine when we arrived at the Gold Strike. Evidently, the most profitable AP in Jean is the Video BlackJack machine. I didnt know what Video BJ was, and now I wish I still dont know. Let me describe this abomination to you: a large television screen depicts an animated dealer (a Nordic woman with pale skin, dark blue eyes, 34C breasts), who endlessly says things like Place your bets. Nice Catch. Nice 20, good job.
Here are the rules: its a four deck game (BAD), but there are favorable rules (dealer stands on soft seventeen, you can double after split, late surrender), but the penetration is only about 40% (which is horrific by anyones standards). But, no one watches the game, and the minimum bet is only one dollar. In other words, if youre counting cards, you can bet $1 (or wong out) on Negative shoes, while betting $100 on good counts with no heat. Moreover, the comp rate is 1% of your total action. The math on this is simple. The edge off the top of the deck is 0.3%, but when you factor in the comps, even a bs player is earning +.7 percent. Factor in the lack of heat and the potential for a huge bet spread, and you have a great game. TBC actually lives (thats right, lives) at the Gold Strike despite betting only 10 dollars a hand during positive counts. He subsists on a diet of Ramen noodles three times a day because he claims its too much of a drain on his bankroll to spend 20 dollars a day for the buffet pass.
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Then TBC went to go blog and Cutter and I hit the Vbj machine. It wound up being a frustrating session because I couldn’t win on any of the positive shoes. There were three or four of them where the running count got up to +15, but I lost most of my double downs. Cutter meanwhile continued to do nothing but win. He eventually headed back to Vegas (probably to get a blow job), and I continued playing the machine solo. Sometime around 2 am, TBC came over and started playing. “okay, da wast time I got deawt a fowteen against an eight I busted, but hopefuwwy dat won’t happen dis time ok I’m gonna hit now. Goddamit I busted, I’m stuck twelve dollars for dis session now.” I was able to put up with that for a good three hours, because my losing streak was over. But it’s hard for me to keep an accurate count when I’m distracted (some people can count cards while conversing but I’m not one of them). I use Advanced Omega II with an ace side count, and TBC apparently uses something much simpler. I finally wonged out around five oclock. “Tony it was nice meeting you.” He didn’t respond. “You should write about me on your blog.” “No, I won’t do dat. I’ll mention dat I saw Cutter again.” I went to sleep around 630 am, and woke up a few hours later. In addition to having liberal comps, the price of a hotel room on a weeknight is only 12 dollars worth of comp points. In other words, it’s more expensive to eat a meal at the Gold Strike than it is to stay there. What’s not to love about that? More video games, more VBJ, more bad food at the Buffet, and Billy Joe Hobert won his first game as a Saints quarterback since opening day of the 99 season. It’s been surreal, and I don’t know how I ever left this life behind in the first place, or why anyone would want to do anything else. I’m going back to Chicago in two weeks, and I’m more nervous about that than I’ve ever been about anything I’ve ever done. Until then, I