good stuff, welcome back

would love to hear more about the bolded

Tailed, thanks...

Here is a write up on the arrests from the FBI. It was not fun. I was wagering about $8 million a month. Although not huge, it was big enough to be noticed. I was connected to these guys and had a $1 million line at Pinny.

I was also supplying automated arbitrage software to many here. So I was very concerned that I could be considered “in the business of gambling.” Some clever doj lawyer could argue my software was akin to a slot machine or gambling device.

I was 40 years old with daughters and had had enough. It’s a young man’s game. It was a cool life though. At one point during all this I was living in Siberia (Novosibirsk) hanging with Russian gangsters. I am quite lucky to be alive. Heck, I knew 5 Dimes Tony, as he taught me the ropes a bit when I started. And they killed him.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/ne...s-betting-ring

thanks utah, will read up on that stuff


it's amazing how many posts from people involved in this stuff over a decade ago all lead to 5d tony

what are your thoughts on all the arbitrage stuff out there now and their influencer marketing

johnny utah wins thread

heard 5d tony was killed but never read the story, which is wild

infinite money glitch? sign me up

utah, to clarify: did you go from living in siberia with a $1mil line and supplying arb software to -- post pinny raids -- living life on the straight and narrow (besides picking off low limit bovada props) as a family man?

Mostly yes.

I don’t have a dime in action anywhere. I just catch myself looking at lines by habit. I don’t even know the limits on those props anymore. It used to be $50. But they should not be dismissed because it’s a free couple thousand a month. It used to be anyway. And they are just fun.

The million pinny credit line didn’t really do much as pinny was ultra sharp. I would sometimes just arb stuff off there. But I also had millions at places that do not advertise or that were derivatives of places like bookmaker. My Vegas partner would settle up with them at the Bellagio or such places.

In 2010, I had brought a stunning Siberian woman and her daughter here. I dated the woman in Siberia for six months and saw how she and her daughter lived in extreme poverty. I went all white knight and wanted to give them a better life. One reason I quit gambling is that I didn’t want to go to jail and leave them in such terrible shape after bringing them here. I also had a daughter with the woman shortly she arrived. Just the IRS implication had left me at great risk, and then the arrests and the raid on one of my partners hit.

The story of those three, Olga, Anya, and Natasha, turned out to be incredible and worth everything to me. They all live wonderful lives here and make the most of it. I am still very close to Olga even though we are no longer together. And I am super close to my daughter Natasha. Most nights I am taking her to wrestling, Muay Thai, or jiu jitsu.

So in the end of everything, my journey in pro gambling ended with a win. And that is rare.

I do law now although I am not a lawyer. I just learned law and found a lawyer partner. We are defending a group in an oil rig investment gone wrong that lost $250 million of small investor funds. Lots of innocent people got wiped out. And we are prosecuting a medical malpractice case where our client died a gruesome death (we represent the trustee of the deceased). We either get millions or nothing. So there is still plenty of gamble in my life.

Hi. I do not know what is out there today at all. But I would not trust it. The dude in the video is silly. We had arbs fully automated almost 20 years ago. Stuff has to be way better today. There is no need to sit at a computer.

We built in a full bet sizing and bankroll management system so you could bet full kelly, half kelly, or whatever you wanted. You could arb or simply place the action on the errant line (smarter). We also built in humanization and errant line detection to prevent looking like a computer and to prevent angering the sites, which was my introduction to 5D Tony as he called me and screamed at me for 30 minutes for hitting an obviously errant line. Then he calmed and told me how things work being a pro and how I was expected to act. Then he gave me a lot of free plays for pointing our errant lines to him that I detected.

I also assume the sites have gotten faster and better at updating their lines. Even 20 years ago, most arb opportunities were so fast that a human without software could not detect them. We had a 3 second standard for retreiving a line, placing it in the db, comparing it to find the arb, and triggering the automated betting sequence. And that is not particularly fast. Pinny was always a problem as they used to limit how often you could read their feed (no idea what they do today). So we set up large blocks of IP addresses from places around the world and we would rotate the ips to pull the line.

From 2005 to 2012, I had multiple high level developers working fulltime building and maintaining the software. It is not easy. So I would not trust anyone based on this alone.

Also, you can't really sell or license arb software as it would quickly cannibalize itself. Too many people would be trying to hit the same arbs. Either too many of your subscribers would miss out or you would alert the sites and bring attention you did not want. The way I solved this was by licensing to a select group here. We didn't all hit the same sites or same bets depending on betting strategy. The software detected around 300-500 arbs a day (maybe more. I don't remember, but it was at least that many). So there was enough diversity to never be a problem.

I would post a graph of the results of my first 4,800 automated bets over 51 days when I was proving out the software. The bet size was only about $500 then. The return over the 4,800 was approx $40,000 or 2%. But I don't have posting priveleges to show here. The chart is wild as it clearly highlights the demon known as standard deviation. While I hit our theoretical 2%, I was actually at $50,000 at bet 1900. This means I lost $10,000 over almost 3,000 bets where I had a positive EV. By sheer dumb luck, you can run bad over thousands of wagers. Everyone knows that, but even today it is still weird for me to see.

Probably more than you wanted to know about arbitrage and arbitrage software

I used Utah's line spider off and on between 2010 and 2011. I checked my betting records and it looks like I didn't differentiate between the stuff it auto-bet for me and the stuff I was picking off myself manually. I was paying around $x,xxx/month for the service so I'm sure I was able to justify those costs or I wouldn't have continued it. But I wasn't really killing it or I would have continued using it far longer. I believe I ended up losing several of the more valuable outlets for it and discontinued using it. It wasn't a huge winner for me, but it paid for itself and was just another opportunity to diversify and make money. I'm sure others did very well with it. While it was a little clunky and very much a DIY piece of software, it was quite revolutionary at the time. Now there's products like Pinnacle Odds Dropper available to the general public.

Hi Tom!

I remember you! Good to see someone from those days still around. I don't remember my results by year or how I did in the last years. It was always pretty solid. I didn't have privy to what you bet or how much. Standard deviation can be an absolute killer. As noted above, I had a losing streak of over 3,000 bets even though it evened out over 4,800 bets to an excepted 2% return.

I would assume software today would absolutely crush what we built. And I would assume the sites got much tighter with their lines. I think that was happening in the 2010-2012 timeframe. It's so long ago though that I don't remember.

All aboard the Trump Train, ladies and gentleman. Get on or get run over because this man will be our next president

Time to bring back The Well for Utah...

To keep this on topic, do you have any more ideas on how supernatural beings may further intervene in the election that could influence our betting?

Oh, ****. Sup Utah?

Kamala back to +120 for nominee after being +500/600 past several days. Must be the Schumer news of telling Biden it's best you step down

i think it's the biden ronaids news that's moving that needle

Tour’s over for Biden. Covid is an excuse (seriously who the hell gets covid anymore?). This and the dems have moved their nomination back a month, Schumer and Schiff telling him to step down, a call with them all telling him to step down, donors with holding 90 million to the Biden Super PAC. It’s over. He’s gone.

Trump is winning regardless of who it is. RNC is so united like never before. DNC is gonna be utterly sad. They should just cancel it.

gmc, there's 786k active cases of rona right now in the United states

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

that's 0.2% of the population actively sick with the disease

i got again recently, someone in office, even going to bed at 8 each night, is still going to have an insane amount of contact with people every day


kind of wild you'd chalk it up as fake - especially since there's so many people involved in the whitehouse that there's no way they could fake covid to a graceful exit and not have it leak

Does having covid = actively sick? I didn't know people still tested.

that's just people who got tested through the medical system and it thus got reported

when i got it, i wasn't sick at all but it still forced me to cancel my travel plans as I was planning on visiting and staying with a bunch of different people

the people i got it from were fairly sick but never needed to see a doctor or anything - i only tested because i'd been spending time with them just before their symptoms popped up - otherwise i'd have never known i had it

the three of us all went uncounted because we just used at home testing kits and managed it on our own

There’s too many other factors going on all at the same time beyond just covid to make me buy it. You can’t continue without any support or any money backing you in a Presidential race.

assuming it's fake but he'll never get caught:


what do think is more legacy tarnishing, a guy who drops out due to undisclosed health/family reasons, or someone who drops out due to covid of all things


and then consider the strong chance that would eventually leek

every single president very much has on their mind that people are going to be discussing them long after they are dead - they all want to leave behind a certain legacy - at this point, that needs to be front and center on any considerations of dropping out and how to go about it


biden may be well over the hill, but his team which would be running point on "excuses to drop out" are certainly smart and capable people

It's this for sure Biden getting covid isn't going to cause him to drop out and even at his age he only dies from it 1 or 2 percent or whatever

Will be interesting to see if Schumer publicly backs Biden now or not. If not it's definitely a problem for Joe but at the end of the day only he can decide to quit

Schumer is insane if he thinks Kamala wins more often than Joe though in a general

Definitely slightly less confident than I was even when the price was +240 during peak hype still think Biden is the fav to be the nominee but obviously the Schumer stuff and Biden getting Covid make it a small sweat again

What a ridiculous market it's flipped so many times now

He isn't going to drop out because he got covid.

He got covid because he might be forced to drop out.

Dropping out shouldn't hurt his legacy that much. Resigning from Presidency will.