Looking Stupid Sometimes is +EV | Ep 52

For you know , when I first thought about this episode , I thought , okay , this is going to be good for people who are losing or break even , and helping them , you know , get into a place where they can suddenly flip the lights on and start winning .

But , as with many of these , this is also a note to myself on things that I need to continue to do , on mindsets that I need to put myself in to win . I think it's applicable to all of us . So what is this episode about ? It's about being okay with being judged .

Now , this is obviously a skill that can serve you in life , but I like to keep everything in at least the frame of gambling on this show , and I'm going to talk about a situation in golf Sorry , it's going to be golf that summarizes this feeling , this judgment feeling .

So if you're playing golf and you have a three-foot putt , you might be thinking don't miss , don't miss , don't miss .

Now you expect to make a three-foot putt , you know , or people expect you to make a three-foot putt , like 98% of the time , right , if you have like a 25-foot putt , nobody expects you to make it and your feeling over the ball is much less anxious , whereas a three-foot putt you're just thinking , wow , if I miss I'm going to look like a jackass .

People are going to judge me , they're going to think I'm mentally weak . They're going to think you know that I suck , that I am a head case . All of this , right , and that's over the three-foot putt .

And you take a stroke at the three-foot putt , that might be a little shakier , have a little less conviction , because you're putting there to not miss , to not be embarrassed , to not be judged by other people .

Whereas if you put the 25-foot putt , you might have like a pretty free stroke where you're just trying to hit a good putt because no one's expecting you to make it . So you get up and you just do your best to hit a good putt . And the other difference is in execution .

That comes from being in a state where you're fearing judgment and being in a state where you're just trying to do a good job . We want to be in a state of trying to do a good job as much as possible in betting , because the decisions you have to make so many correct decisions , betting , and so few wrong ones cause you to be a losing gambler .

So now let's shift this to gambling , and I think it's very , very relevant for gambling , because most people in your life are losing bettors . Most people period are losing bettors , and these people will say lots of nice things to you if you bet like them .

And if you don't bet like them , they will be very happy to rag on you to tell you what you're doing is wrong , because it does make them feel , most likely , insecure about their own betting right . So think about just your average person who bets on sports , who might think they're trying to win , but they're not actually trying to win . What are they doing ?

They're betting a lot of overs , they're talking about narratives , they're talking about last five trends , and if you bet like them and you say , oh , I'm betting this because the last five times they played this team so and so went over , and they'll be like , yeah , great , I'm doing that too , of course , so and so is going to crush this team , and they'll be

your best friend , right ? They'll be your best friend all the way till you're broke and you lose all your money gambling . So what you have to do is you have to decide , like am I here to feel comfortable both with myself and with other people around me who are telling me oh , that's a good bet , that's a good bet , but I lost .

But that was a good bet , that is smart bet . Of course you bet LeBron James over , you know . Of course he always kills the pelicans or something I , you know , I don't know . But there is this massive community of shitty betters out there that are ready and excited to commiserate with you .

As long as you bet like that , as long as you don't stray too far from the pack , as long as you do the things that they do , so that they can tell themselves that they're good betters too , because you're doing them , everybody's doing them , so they can't be too bad . They can't be judged , because I actually don't know if they care about winning or losing .

They probably just care about being judged . So they do what feels comfortable , what everybody else is doing , because if you lose , well , it's not your fault . You're doing what everybody else is doing .

You're doing what feels comfortable , right , and that community out there is so ready to welcome you in and make you feel warm and secure in the knowledge that it wasn't your fault .

You know you can all complain about the sports being rigged by Vegas and talk about getting together to call the FBI on Godel and DM players for being shitty players , without ever acknowledging that you can take their unders . That community exists and people get trapped in it .

They get trapped in it because it feels comfortable and it's easy and there's no judgment . There's judgment from us , like the small percentage of people who are actually winning betters , but like we're such a small percentage and we're just nerds , so like who think a computer can make a bet or something like .

That's all you have to say if someone comes along and tries to teach you you know something remotely resembling profitable betting , right , so you can be in that community or you can win right now the first iteration . Here I'm talking about that community of like clearly losing terrible sports fan betters .

You know this is like your uncle telling you at Thanksgiving how he likes to buy points and you know you should always Kick a field goal to put points on the board , never go for two . I don't know . Just , you know what I'm talking about , right , these are like the clear losing gamblers . But now what if I ?

What if I replace that community with a community that Believes that sports books aren't able to be actually beaten and they'll always know more than you , and that the only way to win is to Do some form of arbitrage or devigging ? What if I replace those two communities ? Because it's similar .

If you step outside that second community , which is a community that , like a lot of us are like , quote unquote in , you will also get shamed . You will be told that you're crazy to think that you could ever be the sports book when in fact , the biggest winners in sports don't believe this at all .

But it's convenient to believe that again , it's soft and it's comfortable and it's warm . It's a warm space where somebody Goes out and tries to use their brain to make their own project predictions or do any type of originating or talk about you know X , y , z Player , and give a reasoning for a bet . You're immediately shut down .

You're told that you also suck and that you don't understand math . This happens a J far right , and then J far comes on the show and a lot of the smarter people in that community reach out and we're like , wow , we actually we were , we were wrong . So the point is not don't get stuck in the first community , it's , don't be afraid to look like an idiot .

Don't get stuck by feeling okay with yourself because everybody else is doing something some way , this one way . So if you do it that way , then you know you Give , shift it the blame off yourself Onto oh , everybody's doing it like this .

Oh , I heard so-and-so say that you know sports books have millions of dollars so they certainly can't be be beaten , and this person that's you know , talking about this player getting subbed out , or you know this Certain unique situation . While you don't think that's priced in , you , idiot , you know like , and , and that's a fun , it's fun .

It's fun to be part of a community and when people do something that's different , it's friends , the community , right , and I think that happened with J far . And what the point of this is ? That , like , you have to sometimes just like , do something different and be okay with being judged for and being okay with failing publicly , right .

And If you're in that community , the first community where there's no winning betters at all , and it's this like sports is rigged . We only like to take overs on superstars and bet like last ten . Then Maybe move to the second community .

The second community is objectively better , which is like the plus EV sports books are never wrong community , which is , you know , a step up . And then there's probably a third community , like I'm probably in a community right now I don't even realize it where I'm like . Well , the the whole like plus EV crowd is , is not ?

It doesn't really truly understand how this game works . I'm probably in this third community that I think I'm so unique and I'm not right . Like I'm probably in a community of like-minded people who Do some type of originating and mix some type of whatever together , and we'd like to hear ourselves talk on podcasts and blah , blah , blah .

The point , though , is that you have to be okay with looking stupid . You have to . You have to be okay with experimenting , and you have to be okay with questioning yourself , and you have to be okay with understanding that , to make the big dollars , you're going to have to stick out a little .

You're going to have to go against the grain , because , if you think about even moving from the first community of super casuals to the second community of plus EV . The person who makes that jump to the casuals looks like is a total lone wolf . They're the black sheep . Oh , you think you're going to use a computer . You think odds tells you about tennis .

You think that computers know about playoffs , whatever it is . And we've all heard this right and you look wrong . But you're right and you go make more money . You're like , wow , that's awesome . So to take that step , you did have to go against .

You had to go out on your own a little bit and you had to look silly to your friends , the people that you talked to , because if you're in that first community to take the jump to being in that plus EV community , that's a big jump and that takes a lot of self-belief and kind of ability to go out on your own to make that jump .

Then there's a next jump . What's the next jump ? Well , the next jumps to go from sports books are always right . We just use the odds and the only way is to use odds from sports books to win . And if you try and do anything on your own , it's dumb because sports books are multi-billion dollar corporations .

You go from that community to being like well , sports books are like OK at their jobs . Their whole job isn't trying to be sharp , because you talk to people who work at sports books and you realize they're not trying to be the sharpest betters in the world , they're just trying to do something that works . What are the goals of a sports book ?

Oh , it's not to be the sharpest at making Australian table tennis lines . They actually just have those up because some Australian VIP needs to bet that . Oh , that's how this game works . Ok , so they're not omnipotent . So I'm going to go try and find something that doesn't get me . It doesn't have such toxic account health as like dvigging and RVing .

And then there's probably another jump that I haven't made yet . After this I'll come back and redo an episode and that you know . But the jump from plus EV to realizing it like plus EV as it , as this concept of the sports books are always right , and there are these huge corporations that can't be wrong and they know more than you .

To jump from that to the next step also makes you more money , but you have to do it , obviously in a smart way , because the people who make no money also think that , but they're wrong .

So again , you're going to be taking a step away from your community of this plus EV dvigging community , to like , oh you know , maybe I can go find a situation where a sports book might be wrong and it doesn't have to be off market . I could just bet into the market .

But the market could just be wrong , right , like you go from having to bet off market to just being able to bet into a market where each sports book has the exact same price and you still feel comfortable betting into it . And maybe the next level is just start a sports book , like that's the obvious thing to do , or something be a market maker , right ?

So certainly haven't gotten there yet , but maybe that's , you know , maybe that's like the people who are like well , you know , I know a lot of syndicates eventually become basically like market makers .

So , you know , maybe they had to take a step and realize , well , you actually want to be the person , you know , offering the bets , providing the service or whatever . It's stupid to just originate and bet your numbers , like .

I certainly don't know if that's the case or I don't think that way myself now , but just being open to thinking about what that next step could be and being able to , you know , give it a shot and look stupid if it doesn't work .

It is very important because I think each big jump that you take embedding comes from kind of going against the grain a little bit .

It's just against your current grant , which is , you know , a group of betters that aren't as successful as you want to be , and then to hop groups , to hop from group to group to group , I think you have to go against kind of the core tenant to the group , right , you have to think differently and you have to be able to do something that might gain you

some criticism from the group . So anyway , I think that's really important and this is really really important for the people who are kind of stuck in group one of the super recreational betters , it's very important to move from that group to at least the you know , small winners .

That's very , very , very important because if you're in the first group , you're losing money gambling and that doesn't really do much for you . So I hope this is helpful to people . Thanks everybody again for

oh . The other thing I wanted to say is sorry , but this is actually kind of an unprecedented time because of discords right Now . I think a lot of the discords are just kind of like fall into the same group of fall into one of the categories of sharp betting or their square or whatever .

But there's plenty of discords out there , run by very sharp people who are happy to have you in and talk to like-minded people and discuss sports betting . And it's not necessarily like when I was coming up in poker . Everybody was pretty guarded and you made a couple of friends and those were the friends you talked to .

It's very open right now with kind of the rise of social media and especially Discord . So if you're looking to kind of hop groups or to kind of meet with people who are in that mindset that you do want to be in Discord is a great way to do it . There's plenty out there . You can feel free .

I mean , ours is free so you can start there but there's others that are pretty cheap and provide good services along with being a community of winning better . So let me know if you have any questions and I will see you all on the next episode .