The Well: youtalkfunny - Page 3

youtalkfunny · #21 05-30-2007, 09:09 PM

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How old are you?

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I'm 40.

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Did you ever see The Runner with John Goodman? Is anything in that flick accurate at all?

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Remember the part where the guy crapped his pants while on a date with Courtney Cox? And he couldn't conceal it from her? And she still agreed to go on a second date with this guy?

Well, that was the most realistic part of the film.

(Actually, runners do exist, or at least they did in the '90's. And they do, from time to time, disappear with big chunks of money, or pocket money if they think their boss was going to bet it on a loser. Beyond that, forget about this movie. I did.)

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How come no sites are able to duplicate what Pinnacle has done?

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Because it's not easy.

When you put a bet on the board, the goal is to offer a line where both sides are -EV for the bettor, and +EV for the house. There's no way to know what that number is, you can only give it your best estimate.

Ever see the range game on The Price is Right?

See the shaded purple area? You want the price of the item to be within that window.

In bookmaking terms, going from a 20-cent line to a 30-cent line gives you a much bigger window, and makes it more likely that the break-even point of any particular bet is within that range (ensuring that both sides of the bet are -EV).

Pinny uses an awfully small window, yet they still manage to avoid offering +EV bets to everybody. It takes talent to do that.

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This goes along with the above question, how are square sites so square? Can't they employ 2 people for $200k a year and save that much in a month?

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Square sites had to spend a ton of money on advertising to get the squares in the first place.

The small offshore book I worked for skimped on advertising, and relied on free posting forums, and word of mouth from the players. In other words, we had sharps, and they told their sharp friends about us. We had almost no squares, so again, it's not hard to see why we didn't last a year. We had some very talented bookmakers and oddsmakers, but we were booking to the wrong crowd, and never stood a chance.

Square sites are making plenty of money as is. Why would they want to change anything?

youtalkfunny · #22 05-30-2007, 09:16 PM

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In which sports and events did you find the books had the best winrates? Not just in terms of gross profits (I'd be shocked if NFL wasn't the clear winner in this regard) but in terms EV per bet. Which sports were the worst? Did this differ at all from B&M and online?

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Baseball was tough to win at, but that was much more a function of the 10-cent line, which wasn't used in anything else.

I don't think there's much difference at all among the sports, except for the line that was attached to them. Our hold percentage was naturally higher on NASCAR's 30-cent line, than the NFL's 20-cent line. You'd have to divide these by prices, not sports. The NFL and NBA were interchangeable, percentage-wise. Same thing with golf and tennis.

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On a totally different note, aside from the Super Bowl, heavyweight title bouts, and March Madness, what sports-betting events would specifically draw lots of tourists to Vegas.

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I think every NFL weekend, not just the Super Bowl, draws tourists.

youtalkfunny · #23 05-30-2007, 09:23 PM

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What's your favorite Roxette song?

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The unplugged version of "Things Will Never Be the Same" on the Tourism album.

(Boy, did we drift off-topic.)

dankhank · #24 05-31-2007, 03:30 AM

i don't know how much you want to say about the offshore book, but i am curious what life was like for you that year. i've lately thought it would be pretty cool to have a good paying, high responsibility job at an offshore book.

what country was the book in? what was life like there?

is there any difficulty with paying taxes and doing other things in the united states, but living/working offshore at a gambling site?

i also wonder how an offshore book operates. is there like one guy on each shift who moves the line for each major sport happening at that time? what do the other non-ticket writing, phone call taking, employees do during crunch time? yell in the linesmaker's ear?

youtalkfunny · #25 05-31-2007, 05:35 AM

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i don't know how much you want to say about the offshore book, but i am curious what life was like for you that year...
...what country was the book in? what was life like there?

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For me? I worked five days a week, six during football season, usually 8-10 hours/day. The office was air conditioned, had satellite tv, and high-speed internet (not as common in 2001 as it is today). My time off was spent with my wife and kids.

We were in Curacao. Everyone always asks, "Where's that?" I tell them, "It's the island next to Aruba." Then they all nod, as if they have any idea where Aruba is.

My wife hated living down there, which really ruined the experience for me. I don't blame her. You have to be REALLY flexible to adjust to life down there. If you go to the grocery, and they're out of milk, getting upset about it will do no good. If Burger King is out of Whoppers, you can panic, or you shrug and order the chicken sandwich.

This stuff rolled right off my back, but it ate her alive.

Of course, she may have been grumpy because she had no job, and no friends. She was stuck in the house with three babies all day--a house with almost no air conditioning, by the way. You can't afford to air condition a house (electricity is really expensive), so a small window unit in the bedroom is the best you can manage.

The locals don't think 90 degrees is that hot, so they just leave the windows open and enjoy the breeze. My wife is one of those people who doesn't feel safe when the windows are open, and being in a strange, poverty-ridden country did nothing to make her feel "safe". So no open windows while I was at work. We took the tv out of the living room, and moved it into the air conditioned bedroom, which became her prison cell for a year.

I was the only American down there who brought a wife and kids along, so unlike my compatriots, I was supporting a family, running the air conditioner all day, paid for five-times as much laundry to be done, the list goes on.

Everything on that island arrived by plane or boat, so nothing was cheap. A $7 pack of diapers cost $22, and I had three kids in diapers! At least one on baby formula. I'm buying all the American brands that I'm familiar with, and paying through the nose.

All this complaining about my situation is what pissed off my friend, who called me ungrateful. But if somebody asks me, "...i am curious what life was like for you that year," how else can I possibly answer?

The single guys (and ALL of them were single, except me) loved the life. They didn't need a big house, a small apartment was fine. They didn't have huge utility bills, and they didn't need to pay a landscaper to come out and cut the grass and manicure all the plants and trees. And they sure as hell weren't going broke on diapers, and listening to the venting of a wife who's been stuck in the house for a year with crying babies and one room of air conditioning.

No, the single guys had no nut to cover. The company paid the rent and provided a car. So the single guys had a very social nightlife. Lots of drinking, whoring, and partying.

The industry has evolved a lot in its 15 years or so of existence. It's very possible that the "standard deal" of salary+rent+car+bonus if the book does well, is no longer standard. But it was when I was down there.

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i've lately thought it would be pretty cool to have a good paying, high responsibility job at an offshore book.

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Hope you're single.

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is there any difficulty with paying taxes and doing other things in the united states, but living/working offshore at a gambling site?

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Well, the chief difficulty was that the Dutch government withheld 1/3 of my paycheck each month. I wasn't expecting that when I got there. We got paid once a month, and I was usually broke for most of that last week.

Maintaining US citizenship was not a problem at all, but then again, I never spent a full calender year without a US address.

As far as US taxes go, there are special rules for "foreign income", which I can't remember that well. I think when I demonstrated that the Dutch had already raped me, and that I made <$80k/yr, the US tax code told me, "OK then, you paid enough already, don't worry about us."

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i also wonder how an offshore book operates. is there like one guy on each shift who moves the line for each major sport happening at that time? what do the other non-ticket writing, phone call taking, employees do during crunch time? yell in the linesmaker's ear?

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We were a small book. We never had more than 4-5 phone clerks working at one time. 95%+ of the bets we took came via the website, not the telephone. The only bettors who used the phone were the lonely guys who wanted someone to talk to.

We were expecting to grow, so there were close to 20 cubicles for phone clerks in our office. They were arranged like a classroom, facing the "front". The front is where the supervisors would sit. There was always one or two supervisors on duty when the office was open.

My desk up front faced the clerks. I had three monitors on my desk: one with my bet-taking software (and internet surfing during down time), one with the Don Best screen showing us up-to-the-second line moves around the Caribbean, and one which displayed every bet we accepted, as it came in.

There were a few sales desks nearby, where salesmen manned the phones to answer questions from people who somehow found our phone number. And there were two separate, smaller offices. One for the big boss (to whom I reported), and one for the accounting office (two desks, and two girls who handled all deposits, cash-outs, payroll, etc).

There wasn't much communication between the clerks and the supervisors at crunch time. They just wrote the bets as fast as they could. They would sometimes need a big bet approved by a supervisor, but that was it. "Account number 8643 wants the Colts -6 for three dimes."

"Take it!"

New001 · #26 05-31-2007, 09:29 PM