Episode 109: NFL Suspensions, Bet Bash Preview, Flying Cars, and Gift Cards

On this week's episode of Circles Off, we're going to talk about the suspensions in the NFL, and whether or not NFL players should be able to bet on their own games or even other sports. On top of that, we're about one month away from bet bash at Circa in Las Vegas, we'll break down the itinerary, and maybe we would have done differently, and what we think we're going to enjoy the most, plus our plus EV and minus EV plays of the week. All that and more, Circles Off starts now. Let's go. Welcome to Circles Off episode number 109 right here on the Hammer betting network, Rob Pizzola, joined by Johnny from Betstamp, our things. Rob, we've done 108 episodes in the books. This will be 109. How are you feeling about it? Did you think we'd get this far? I did. I'm very candid with, as we always are in the show with the audience here. There was a point around like 80, where I'm like, I don't know how we're going to keep this going, and obviously anyone who's been listening to since the beginning, we made a catastrophic mistake for like the first 10 episodes, where we did like these full educational episodes, where we got to a point of like, man, there's just not enough topics to keep doing one hour episodes on, and we burned through a lot of them, so we started pivoting to guests, and then we did like tweets at Trigger Us episodes, Q and A. We got to a point around 80 where I'm like, how are we going to keep this going? We got through it, and now I have like a million ideas. Like I think we're going to hit like 250 easy. Okay. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. For those of you who don't know, I don't know that they're good ideas, but you know, we've introduced some new stuff, the plus EV minus EV. Oh, I got my, I got mine locked and loaded for today. So do I. I was very triggered by something. Yeah. So for those of you who don't know, I, I used to listen to a lot of podcasts. I still do listen to a lot of podcasts previously. I used to listen to a lot of gambling ones and Rob actually never used to listen to those. So one day, I'm obviously we're, we're buddies, I think we might have been golfing a couple rounds and we're like, hey, we got to start a podcast where like none of these podcasts out there right now are doing like a mix between sharp content and like keeping it super entertaining and they're not high produced. So if we actually do something, we'll start it off with whatever audio, actually get some real video, do some stuff. We got a chance to make a splash. I will say this 108 episodes is a lot. I don't even, I just saw like Joe Rogan got like 3000, obviously, it's over a number of years, but this is for anyone out there who has a podcast, you'll understand the struggle, but holy shit, just gives you a new found respect for people who have gotten like 300, 500, 1000 episodes and obviously, you know, hundreds of thousands of views more than we're getting on a daily basis. But wow, congrats. We made it. I didn't even really stop and think about it at 100, but 109, I'm appreciative. I don't know if you remember this, but I made you put together a PowerPoint deck for me on of, we didn't, we didn't know it was circles off at that time. It was under the working name, which we used for episode one, which was the add-ons of John Rob and Johnny, which has been used by like 48 different people. So we just like scrapped that and we came up with circles off. And honestly, like, it's funny the way that it all worked out because circles off stemmed from is like a pinnacle thing, specifically, not just like pinnacles, the only one that removes circles, but that's, you know, who we're betting with. And of course, they're now our sponsor, pinnacle, now available to betters in Ontario, find out what professional betters have known for decades, pinnacle is where the best betters play. You must be 19 plus, not available to those in the US. And of course, please play responsibly, but I remember I made you put together a PowerPoint deck. I probably still have it. You like pitched me the idea, you're like, okay, listen, like the first half of every episode is going to be like some education, like high level education thing. And the second half is going to be like some actionable, like how to, like, to bet NHL first periods or, yeah, that died quickly. That died. It was a good idea and principle, but then you just start doing them and you're like, no, this, this is not sustainable. So we adapt. We adapt, as always, and we will continue. The way the show is now will probably be way different than how it'll be for episode 300, if we do get there. I went back recently and watched, I believe our first video episode, I could be wrong, but I believe it was episode 39 and it was with Adam Churnoff as our guest. And I watched that episode and it looks like we recorded it in 1998. I know. The quality was terrible. Was it Zach? It was Zach. Yeah. I'm not blaming Zach, by the way, it just seems like he is, but I just the evolution in a year, like look, look at our old channel of like Zach scrolling through it right now. I mean, I did some educational short videos. We had big cheds on, remember cheds, cheds, cheds, but like if you just hover over one of those episodes and you like look at it, it's, it's completely different. And that's one year ago, man, that's, that's a year ago. That is nuts. Yeah. That's, we've come a long way. We've come along. This was on the Betstam channel. It wasn't even called circles. It's true. You know, we do need to do and maybe we get some feedback from the listeners here. When we used to put the descriptions out for the podcast, I used to make them myself. And I was, I'm not that creative. I used to just put like Adam Churnoff joins for a discussion. Yeah. We've kept that tradition. Yeah. But I see other podcasts, they, they hammer clickbait stuff. We do some clickbait stuff on YouTube, but not on, not an audio form. So anyone who watches on YouTube, the episode titles are often different. Yeah. Yeah, they're always different. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was one that was like professional sports are fixed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I did do that. I tried to find it, but yeah, it's somewhere in there. We do click, like we look at what our popular keywords on YouTube, we're trying to grow a business here and get some views. Crazy Ontario lottery syndicate revenge story. Like that. Yeah. That was honestly not even a bad, that was a great episode. Yeah. Highly recommend. But like the Simon Hunter episode is our, our most viewed episode. A lot of that just got caught in like the, the YouTube algo. It's not like professional, professional, professional sports better gets exposed or something like that, right? That's just exactly not if you look at the particular analytics for that episode. The watch time on that is actually much lower than our other episodes, but it has more views. Because it just got caught in like the YouTube algo and a bunch of people who never saw before watched it. Our average watch time is actually like absurdly high on this channel on this channel relative to like industry standard, but that episode was much lower because I think a bunch of people found them like, what the hell is this? I don't know anything about this, but we appreciate everyone for listening today. Show wouldn't be the same. We didn't have the support number nine tradition number nine. Yeah, one of your most underrated players of all time is a number nine. One of my most underrated. Yeah. I love you that he's like, I'll say who it is right now. Yeah. Is he by chance the most underpaid player in the history of his position? That would be the guy. All right. Justin Tucker, number nine, kicker on the Ravens, an absolute steal that Baltimore has him as a kicker. I've said this before, why would you not have the best kicker? It's such an important position in the NFL and you can just get a kicker. You paid $10 million. You're being grossly paid as the highest kicker. Things to be done. It seems like a lot of people who have aspirations to play soccer, like they get us, you know, scholarships or whatever, they might as well just start kicking a football and just become the best at that craft. It's way more like you that they're going to get paid. Like how many people are kicking in the like honestly, like a lot in college, but they don't have the you know if you can make the NFL because some kickers in college are like really consistent and good, but they can only hit from like 43 to 44 yards. You're never going to make the NFL if you can't hit at least from 55. So realistically, there's two things you need. Ability to hit with a big boot, hit from 60 sometimes, hit from 55, hit from 50 and under should be a guarantee. If you can do that, you're the best kicker in league. You're so valuable to a team. You're adding so you're literally adding wins. So like I don't want to I don't want to put down kickers, right? But there's a lot of professional athletes where like me or you, me, you, Zach, anyone, whatever can like train their entire life to play that sport. And I couldn't be a professional athlete in that. Yeah. Tennis golf stuff like that, right? But I'm pretty sure like anybody can train hard to be a kicker and can get to that level. Like I strongly feel that like think about just like you're a daily like regimen in terms of like like weights, you're saying if you started at age of like five and like this, I'm going to make this kid a kicker, my kid, I'm going to train him and then he eventually grows older and wants to just be a kicker and grinds it up. I mean, I mean, maybe I might be talking about out of my ass here, but I feel like that's more of a repeatable like you have to be, you have to have some semblance of athleticism, right? Like Darren Revelle is not going to be a kicker. They're home in there. That's all I could think of when I think of someone who's definitely not an athlete for people who've seen the 40 yard dash, you know exactly what I'm talking about, but he's not going to be a kicker. But for most people, I think you just put them on like even as a teenager, right? It's like, okay, you know, start doing some weights, you know, build up those legs, build up that core, kick the ball for like four hours a day. How much does like clutching plan to this the mental yeah, yeah, people don't. I think that I think though that comes with like just confidence, right? Like if you if you practice that over and over and over and over, you can be very confident in yourself. I think I think the guys that just like fall off a cliff, it's like they lose confidence. Yeah. Fair enough. Who else who else we have for number nine? Well, it drew breezes the most famous number nine like a lot of quarterbacks, a lot of QBs. Well, Paul Merstafford. Romo. Romo. Your boy. Burrow. Course. Yeah. Mr. Hockey. Mr. Hockey. Gordy Howe. Mike Madano. That was him. He was one of the most underrated players. Nicholas Hagman. Nicholas Hagman. Tony Parker was a number nine in the end Paul career off the floor on the board. Paul career. Who is the guy that that absolutely laid out? Scott Stevens was one of the greatest stories in history. Did career like come back in the game? Paul career. He cut it. He cut across the ice. Yeah. He got. He passed it off. It was a complete blindsided. It would have been a three game suspension minute. Three game. That guy would have ticked out of the league. Scott Stevens absolutely lights him up as he's cutting across a boat enter the blue line. He passed it off already though. It's like three seconds late. Korea instantly knocked out. Like unconscious. He's on the floor. He got also thrown into. This is when he's got the big visor that like goes over your mouth and it's and he bogged up. He breathes. So he's actually unconscious on the floor. He's a small guy. I feel as you don't know Paul career on the mighty ducks at the time. He like, you can see the point at which he comes back into consciousness. He takes a huge deep breath out. His visor fogs up. Trainers are all out. Obviously in today's game, you would have been in whatever concussion protocol one billion percent. Yeah. He goes to the dressing room. He comes out again later in the game. Once a puck pass off the wing comes down and puts a nice snipe over the shoulder. A Marty Broder. One of the best goals of all time. This was in the Stanley Cup final playoffs and then the commentator with an obviously epic call off the floor on the board. Paul Korea. That was actually crazy that guy. And then after yeah, like Zach said, he had said he doesn't even remember scoring the goal. He doesn't even remember that he came back in the game and scored. I've not. Listen again, I haven't played pro sports, but I've played with players that were definitely concussed in a game and continued playing. And it's the same thing. It's just like they have no memory of the situation or how it happened and they eventually figured it out. One of the guys, one year we won a soccer finals in penalty kicks and the guy who scored the winner got a concussion in the game. He just went up for a header, went down on the ground. He got up by himself within 20 seconds, but he literally could not remember any of the game up until that point and he scored the winning penalty kick. Does he remember the winner? He does. Okay. So then that's all good. Then we took him to the hospital right afterwards. Yeah. I know it's a different game now. Yeah. He's a good player. You obviously couldn't just to the, you know, it was the finals. Got it. So they fixed up. They fixed up a lot of us. Last week, we, uh, you, you forgot, yeah, you're, I see Zach trying to pull up a guy. He's the rocket. The rocket we're shard. Obviously. Yeah. I'm not listening. I'm not going to name every player of all time. Of course. Of course. We're going to name Rocket Richard because he has the Rocket Richard trophy for the most goals, but we actually blundered last week. We got it. We got to make do number eight. We did forget to mention probably the greatest, if not arguably the greatest goal score in NHL history. Alex Ovechkin. We didn't even give him a name. Yeah. That's embarrassing. We'll rectify that. OV. Sorry about that, buddy. Just date. Just didn't come to me at the time. The grade eight. It was definitely pointed out in the comments on, uh, on YouTube as it often is, whenever we miss someone of note. You see that guy's CLV flow chart that he made? I was going to get to that. So, uh, at Professor 042 on Twitter, Professor Chuck Finley. So last week, we kind of just put out a challenge to people out there, um, not even a challenge, but if you were interested in creating some sort of flow chart, um, for the CLV debate, put one together, boy, did I not expect what we received, uh, in the flow chart of, should I care about CLV? I mean, anyone who's seen the tote flow chart, I was referring to that sprigger put together. It's just very basic. It took me about an hour to consume this in its entirety. I do appreciate the work. It's actually very thorough and makes a lot of sense. Like I was trying to poke holes in it, and I really couldn't overall. It is thorough, but this guy was probably a pretty shitty employee last week, I would say. If he does have a full time job, yeah, no, I mean, this thing was not, this isn't even a day of work, actually, because you, you might be able to put a first draft on a day, but you can tell by the level of detail, which kudos to you, buddy, you came back to this after sleeping on it one night, for sure, and made some improvements, because you know, this is, this is jam packed with data, very thorough. I appreciate the effort. Obviously, check it out. Um, maybe we'll link in the description. Zachl, Zachl toss a link there, read it through, and if you can poke any holes, what I think we're going to do is we're going to, we're going to, we'll let people critique it. And then once those are going, Twitter, there's going to be some critiques. And once those are in, we'll, we'll break it down in a future episode, whether that's next week or a future week on in the upcoming months, 36.5 K views. I don't know what this guy is a professor in, or if you actually, not a professor, look at his thing, like his, what's his bio say? Not actually a professor. Okay. So it makes a lot of sense. So he's an, he's an engineer. So whatever firm or company he's at, got no productivity for the two days of which he was working on this. However, we got the productivity, the gambling community got the productivity. Professor Chuck Finley, we respect you for that. I was about to say that I would, I'd love for this guy to be like my project manager. Like you could tell by the thoroughness that like whatever project you put this guy on, he's going to get down to business and like fully planted from start to finish. That's not how I do things unless he hears someone on a podcast asked for a COV flow. Oh, then it's over. Then productivity goes down completely. Also big in sports in this past week. More gambling accusations, not even accusations, admissions, I would say. So Isaiah Rogers and Rashad Berry, they needapolis Colts, free agent, Demetrius Taylor, as well suspended indefinitely through at least the entire season for betting on NFL games last season. And Rogers got cut as well. Yeah, the Colts cut Rogers and Berry as a consequence of their suspensions. Tennessee Titans offensive tackle Nicholas Petit Freyr. He was suspended six games. That was for betting on other sports while in the facility, while in the Titans facility. So all those suspensions came down at once. That's now 11 players that have been suspended for violating the NFL's gambling policy since 2018. The NFL's done investigation. They say there's no evidence of any game manipulation, match fixing or whatever. I looked at the like I didn't look at all of the individual bets, but apparently Rogers is betting like 20 to 50 bucks a play through down a $1,000 prop bet on the over on rushing yards by one of the Colts running backs, which he won. But the NFL has basically, you know, keyed in on some specific things. And there's like the six rules, key rules of the gambling policy that David pertin put in his article for ESPN, but essentially they are don't bet on the NFL don't gamble at your team facility while traveling for a road game or staying at a team hotel. Don't have someone bet for you or on your behalf. Don't share inside information from the team. And enter a sports book during the NFL playing season and don't play daily fantasy football. That's basically what the NFL is cracking down on. Now it's caused a shitstorm in the both like not not just the gambling community, but like the regular NFL community. And I've seen all sorts of takes on this from this is ridiculous. You know, you know, let the guy bet whatever to there shouldn't be any betting there. You should be able to bet on other sports that aren't the lead that you're playing in. I have a pretty strong opinion on this. I don't want to sound like a communist or anything like this. But I think that professional athletes should not be able to bet on any sport period zero why any sport like, okay, so at the end of the day, what this comes down to is we're now in this era of regulated gaming. I think the biggest threat and risk to that is if it's widely believed that any sporting events are fixed. We're almost we're it's not widely believed, by the way, at any stretch of the imagination right now. But we already see that those talks, right on Twitter. This is fixed. This is that it's been going on forever. But to me, that is the biggest risk for regulated sports betting period. So when people are like the integrity of the game, the integrity of the game, I actually firmly believe that. The minute somebody thinks or watches a play in the NFL in Major League Baseball, whatever. And they're like, this is something's wrong here or whatever. And then you know that players can bet in some capacity. There's too much like open to interpretation. The mind starts spinning altogether. I flat out think if you're a professional athlete, you're being compensated, solid amounts in every Major League. Just don't bet. Like just don't you shouldn't be like, and listen, if I was in the position of being a professional athlete, it would probably it would suck for me if I couldn't bet on on pro sports or whatever. But like, that's just part of the job with a lot of jobs. There come, there's like stipulations for working in that environment or in that industry. And this one, like again, I think the integrity is paramount. So I don't want to be like the no fun guy. But like anything where it's like, you can do this, you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do that. Now, somebody does something that they are legally able to do. It's still in the betting space. They're still like this cloud of like, what if? You know, this guy is betting baseball, like what if he threw one NFL bet in there? What like, it just allows for people's minds to spin. I think I agree with half what he said. Okay. So in terms of like being able to bet on your own sport, it's just so clearly not proper to be able to do that. And for people who say like, well, why can't I bet on my team to win? It's like, just leave it out of the game because look at, so for example, the news came out about a couple of weeks ago that said, A Colts player, it wasn't mentioned that I was Isaiah Rogers, that A Colts player bet on games involving the Colts. And then what happened on Twitter? The most viral tweet was the last game of the season, Michael Pittman dropping a pass that seemingly was an easy pass to catch that he dropped by mistake, by accident, dropped happen and said, imagine it was Michael Pittman who had the under and dropped this pass. And it blew up and people like, wow, wow, wow. It's like, hey, it wasn't even Pittman. It wasn't even him, but that's where people's minds go. So what I truly believe here is there's no room for that to be in the game because the game right now is being fueled by gambling. Rob talked about this multiple episodes ago where he went on one of his most epic rants of all time. Not that many people care about the NFL unless you're playing fantasy or have some sort of like bet on it or pool or fantasy sports. So if we're going to now say like the integrity of that can be called into question. You got to just next that from the game, not to mention. If you start opening the door like, oh, you can bet on, you can only bet on your team's player, props for overs, not unders because you don't want them to tank. It's like, you can fudge anything. Even the over under the game can be, you know, impacted by a specific player who's going to win the game. Typically, you would like to think that these players would be making enough money that they're not going to throw a win. But does that mean they're not going to throw like a cover for a 2019 and a half point favorite first versus last place team? No, no, no real reason. You can get down serious money on that that that trumps what like that is going to be significantly more than what these players are going to be making in that single game. So therefore, if you could make them over a million dollars on a single game and blow a cover. Yeah. Which doesn't even impact your team. You might actually be willing to do that. So all in, like, I'm against NFL players betting on the NFL or for that matter, any football league, any same sport league, right? But once you then go ahead and be like, oh, they can't bet on like basketball. Now I think that's honestly a little much because they're actually not playing in that game. So you can say, oh, but he went to college with this guy who is on the team. Yeah, but so does that guy's buddies who can bet legally. So all in, I think they should be able to bet on other sports in terms of whether they can bet in the arena or not. That's more of a policy from your team. That's like, hey, when you're on facility, we don't want you betting. So at the end of the day, that's like a rule that your employer dropped. You broke it. You got to pay the penalty. Is that stupid? Yeah. Is it stupid that you can bet here? You can't bet in this room, but I can walk out that door, place my bed and that's fine. Yes. But also, you know, you can't smoke in the non-smoking area. Right. Walk over the smoking area. You could smoke. I feel like that's pretty widely accepted at this point. Yeah. So this, I mean, I could get with, okay, you don't bet on your own sport. You can bet on others. To me, it's just a sad state of like society in general where people just draw conclusions, like they basically just stretch the truth and mold it into. So I still think it's inevitably leads to a play happening in a sport, someone drops a pass. And we know that those players can't bet on the NFL, but it's like, well, we know that this guy's better. We know he's bet on the MLB before. Who's to say that he's not betting on the NFL type of system? So then it calls in a question as well. Yeah. If the leagues weren't completely like, honestly, dependent on gambling now and on gambling partnerships as well, then I would say like, whatever. If gambling wasn't regulated, it would almost be whatever. And I'm not saying it's going to ruin the league, it would probably be fine. Just like, I understand it from a business perspective, why are you not allowed to bet on the sport? Well, I get it from a player perspective too, where they're like, well, these are our sponsors. Like, we're taking money from all these sportsbooks to grow the league. How can we not get involved in this? How can we not be able to, and I understand that. But it's at a higher level, again, to me, if I'm running the league, I'm good. The integrity is actually, I know it's lame because we hear it throwing around in like a lot of cases that don't actually make sense a lot of times, right? But the integrity of the league is actually the most important when you're involved with gambling partners. You cannot have people who think on a weekly basis, they're getting screwed over because there's players who are betting on the game. So for me, you take the hardest stance. And I don't feel bad for play, like, you're a professional football player who makes millions of, like, do I feel bad that Calvin Ridley missed an entire year? No, I don't. Candidly, he's an idiot. I'm sorry. I love Calvin Ridley. I'd love to see him play, but there are rules that are in place, and you cannot be dumb enough to violate those rules. So from the player perspective, zero sympathy, even though it's nothing, it's like 20 and 50. No, it's harsh, but it's so harsh of a suspension to miss a year for that. But I think that just shows the severity of how much they take this. Like, I don't, obviously, by the way, if you're telling me like, do I believe someone should be suspended for a year for betting 10 bucks on a game like it seems stupid as can be. But at the end of the day, like, the integrity of the game is more important than that. So they have to just, I guess it's almost in a sense of like, you're getting paid this much money in part because the league has this much viewership, which in part is because people bet and wager on this league that actually is driving the money that you make. Right. So if for whatever reason, you are putting it at risk to now actually like cost us gambling deals or whatever reason any gaming commission says, like the UFC, for example, in Ontario, where they said, Hey, there was UFC match fixing stuff with James Crouse, where he was given out fixed info. We don't believe the integrity of these fights is safe. We don't want people in Ontario to be able to bet on this. And they nix it for the entire market, which costs now viewership and revenue. So if they believe that there's a chance that that could happen in the NFL, they do have to kind of drop the hammer to make sure that doesn't happen. And I respect that and I get it. But it is what it is also like these guys are gambling on NFL literally. No one has got caught gambling from a buddy placing a bet for them. They've all got caught gambling on their own phone app. It's literally insanity right now. This is like, they're going to have that in 20 bucks on their own app. This is going to get caught. The gambling partner has a legal responsibility to report this to the league, even if they didn't want it, they didn't believe it. It's going to a report that you've to KYC your account, you have to submit your ID. They're going to know your Calvin Ridley and then you bet the thing and then they're going to know you bet on the four game NFL parlay with the Falcons in it and saying, one of the point is you guys to do it after Calvin Ridley got this especially this could have been ongoing for further time. Like the end of the day, you have to be especially if you're making large sums of money. They're all making enough money that they shouldn't be betting, they shouldn't be betting $20. I agree. Risking that. But if you're making large sums of money, like you have to know what the rules are and adhere to them. Plain and simple. Same as as like Josh Gordon smoking weed back in the day. The rule in my opinion was stupid. Like weed as a performance enhancing drug, like it was starting to get legalized in spots. I agree that like it's not a performance enhancing drug. Guess what? It's the rule of the league. You can't just go smoke weed and expect no consequences to happen and people that always get in like, you know, Josh Gordon again suspended. What's the league doing? Like they're upholding their rules. Period. You're in violation of the rules. Is the rule stupid? Yes. You know, they should work towards change. Josh Gordon should have been working towards change with other members of the league. The NFL players association saying like, we need this rule gone. It doesn't make any sense anymore. But you can't just like completely undermine the rules whatsoever and not have consequences. And again, you brought up the point of, I don't remember what episode it was. And I talked about how the NFL is very reliant on gambling. They need to take this very seriously and candidly. If it were me, I would not allow players to bet period period on anything that a sports book regulated sports book offers until they're retired. That's it. You're out of the league. That's fine. You know, you can do whatever you want. But when you're in the league, you can't now I saw I saw a lot of things under this one where they where they were claiming like, well, he bet an over. So that at least is not an under. It can't be bad. It can't be damaging the entire, but it actually can. Yeah. I'm not saying that this happened, okay? And it's only a $1,000 bet for Isaiah Rogers. So let's say he bet a Jonathan Taylor over on rushing yards or something like that, right? Who's to say that at some point in the game, Isaiah Rogers doesn't just go over to his offensive coordinator and say, hey, man, they're defenses like you look like we can run the ball. He's not at the OC would listen to him or whatever. But there's a possible, he's on the sideline. A player on the sideline could have influence over other players over the coaching staff. Who's to say that he doesn't get involved in the situation? Now, this is very far fetched. I'm not saying it happened. The likelihood that this would happen is very small. But then by doing that, you're technically influencing the game and how it's playing out. The total of the game, the side, other props, everything. So by betting on something that you're on the field in, you can have an influence on the sidelines. We've played sports, right? You say things to the coach, you say like who, depending on the coach, they might take that to heart. Some might ignore it, but there's the possibility that it can happen. So let me also give you guys another example here. So let's say all the info we were given at the time was, or at least at the time of this recording, all the info we know is that he bet on a cult running back over on his rushing yards and he won the bet. So a lot of people assume all you bet, John and then Taylor over, maybe 75 yards. How is he going to impact that? That's it could literally be as simple as this. There was a few games last year where John and Taylor was out. In the first game, John and Taylor's injured two totals come out, maybe three. One's going to be for Naim Hines, who's the guy who gets the touches in addition to John and Taylor. More of a pass catching back, Rogers may be at the walkthrough and realize, hey, Naim Hines his role is not changing what they did. They grabbed Dion Jackson off the bench. They put him in. He's the guy's going to get 16 carries tomorrow. I will bet Dion Jackson over. It doesn't have to be like, that's the way, like, it's not, I'm not saying that that's even like a bad thing to do. Like if I had, if I had read up, oh, they're going to give more carries to Jackson. I'm allowed to bet that as a, as a better. But for someone on the team, just call so many things into question then on, on influence. The only other argument I've found in this regard that I actually think is kind of, it's kind of a cool argument is people have said, well, if they're not allowed to bet on themselves to perform, then why are they allowed to have performance bonuses, incentives for the season? So, so technically, you are, a lot of players are actually betting on themselves, especially in deals where you have like low guaranteed money, high incentive bonuses. So it's like, you have 71 receptions this year. You get an extra million, you have 81, you get 2 million, 91, 3 million, and a lot of players will have like those type of incentives. So with that argument, I was like, you know what, that actually makes a ton of sense. And there's probably like a good case to be had to either to potentially remove those out of the game because it's like, in the last game, you, you know, incentive week how it is with betting. Like, Gronkowski's probably going to get seven catches on the nose because like, you need seven to get an extra million dollar bonus and Brady was going to get it to him that one year. And then you heard in the miced up, he went over a breeze, I hate Tom, I need one more for my bonus. It's like, let's get you that one more. Right. So realistically, like, that's a fair argument. Fair argument. I completely agree. I mean, listen, it's, it's very convoluted. I can totally understand why an average fan would be like, this is ridiculous. This guy's mostly making $20, $50 bets. But like, what are we doing here? But there's so much more at stake and at play and you, you can't just, I, you can be sympathetic to the player and be like, he's not doing anything that's harmful. But it's always going to, there's always going to be some conspiracy theorist, man of the library guy out there, that's going to be like, you know, who, you know, he's, he's been in on the games. Who knows what else he's betting on? Who else? What other people are it? Causes the crazy to get crazier. And you don't want that to happen. Yeah. And also one additional thing I want to mention before I move on to the last topic is, like, blindly just following the rules that you don't believe in. I don't, I don't necessarily support that overall, just from like an ideology. So for people to say, like, oh, I don't believe in this rule. Like, this is stupid. I shouldn't be doing this. Like, I, I respect, I respect, like, if someone's like, oh, I, I, I smoke weed because I don't feel like it's harmful and whatever. Yep. But at the end of the day, I think you really do have to look at this from a standpoint of where the money is coming from and realize that from the gambling specific, like, you, this makes financial business sense that the players should not be able to bet on the games. It's not some random ass rule, like, for example, the marijuana rule, which didn't really have an impact on anyone and was later abolished. Yep. I agree with you. Check number two. Today is July 6th, just over a month from now. We have Betbash at the circa in Las Vegas, August 8th to 11th. Is it called the Vassarca? Yeah, the circle at circa. At circle at circa. Thank you. This year, Betbash is inducting the first sports gambling Hall of Fame class and includes Billy Walters and Roxy Rocksboro, who I got to meet last year, four open bars, team events. There's some networking. I mean, generally speaking, it was just good times last year. Take it's available at betbash.co. This podcast is sponsored by betbash.co. Spanky threatened me. Did we get a sponsor? I'm kidding, Spank. Of course, we're going to plug a thing. Are you going to be there? I am going to be there. I'm going to try to do this objectively, OK? So Spanky's a friend. I hit him up beforehand. I let him know. Getting a look at the itinerary for the first time in full here and going to give my thoughts on what I think is something to really look forward to and maybe what I would have changed potentially going into this year's conference. So Johnny hasn't looked at this yet. He's finding this all in real time. I scrapped through it real quick, but I haven't looked in detail, so I'm happy to give my thoughts in real time. OK, so we got a Tuesday to Friday event, but this is really Tuesday to Saturday. But is Tuesday even the night is Tuesday even an event? I don't think it's Tuesday last year was like, and this will provide context for anyone who's new this year has knock on to one of these before. But like the opening night cocktail party last year, in my opinion, it was just a quick registration. It was like, go pick up your, you know, whatever they're called, and you land here in identity tag for for the week, see who else is there. But candidly speaking, I think most people just kind of like, eh, went there, registered, and then went off. Is it open bar? It is open bar in brackets, so that might change things this year. That right away is a nice way for you to get, you know, a little bit tipsy before potentially you do like a dinner. I think we're going to be doing a hammer betting network dinner on the Tuesday night with some of our staff. But overall, Tuesday is like the day to get in. And I would say, you know, if you had a long flight, or you're not feeling great, probably want to get like some sleep on Tuesday, because it is pretty hectic the rest of the week, and you're going to be awake a lot. The Wednesday, especially because the morning event on the Wednesday is a speed networking event. So I'll speak from experience on the speed networking event. You weren't there last year. So I'll be there this year. Yeah. I think this is very hit or miss for a lot of people personally. It was a huge hit for me now, without coming across like a complete jackass here, which is what I'm going to do anyways. Most of the people at the speed networking event already knew me, which made it easier to like break the ice. So to speak, it wasn't there was no awkward conversations. It wasn't like no one I sat down with was like just this awkward silence for five minutes. I think I met with 12 different people, and I still talk to eight of them in some capacity. Whether that was people who wanted to work together from a betting perspective, whether that was people who could provide services to bet stamp or the hammer, whether that was people who were, let's even say financial advisors who maybe I didn't I don't use their services, but I still talk with them pretty regularly. I thought this was a really well done event. You do need to be somewhat social, and it'll take you out of your comfort zone a bit. But this is the ultimate to like, and the way it was was done. I was paired with people that were just like really interesting to talk with. But I know a lot of people didn't really enjoy this last year either. But to me, this is where some of the biggest value in bet bash comes from. So you're in. Are you going to be in for what speed networking? Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah. That's like one of the main things for this, of course. Yeah, the only thing I'm honestly, I might be out for is this scavenger hunt. I will talk about that. Okay. Okay. So speed networking in the morning, evening is another open bar. He really went for it on the open bars this year. I mean, I think it's a good move, honestly. I think it's a good move. That's at bar Canada, which is at the D right down the street from circa Thursday. So the problem is my opinion already here, I see stuff that I, so like the open bars before morning events makes the morning event, skippable, you know what I mean? No doubt. It's every single night, by the way. That's what I'm saying. Like I get it. I get why you want to do it. But you now offer an open bar to a bunch of degenerates and then say like, Hey, get up next morning to go do a scavenger hunt in downtown Las Vegas. I don't know what the attendance is going to look like for that. Twenty came prizes. I don't want to dismiss twenty came prizes. For me, if I'm hungover, that ain't going to get me out of bed. Tell you right now, how many came prizes would get you in a bed? I say 100 K. Come on. Yeah. All right. So maybe less, you know how it is, right? Think you've been drinking, you wake up the next morning, you feel like shit, you don't want to go to the scavenger hunt. It doesn't matter how much it is, honestly, honestly, the, you just might be like, fuck, I'm not. It could be a million and you might just be sitting in your bed like, I'm not moving today. Like I cannot function as a human being. I don't know what this is going to be like. It wasn't on the agenda last year. I'm somewhat interested because I'm a little bit competitive when it comes to this stuff and I'm a good puzzle solver. So like, I might do it. Okay. Up next. Are you going to do the scavenger hunt? Like, honestly, probably not, because it's very hard just speaking straight. It's hard for me to take off like four days in a row. I think it is. I think it's working. It's not going to happen. But I'll see what I can fit in and also I got to just like check you with my regular schedule and see what else I already have for those days and what normal stuff. I can't just like, you know, take a full week vacay. It's a pretty important time, especially in August, okay? But I will say I'll be there in Vegas at the time and I'll try to event as attend as many stuff as I can as many things as I can. We got to pull up the sporting calendar for Thursday, August 10th. So the evening event is a circus sportsbook and stadium swim football watch party, open bar and food included. So I believe this is going to be NFL preseason that night, August 10th, maybe, and if you that'll be cool, because there was some event like this. By the way, the stadium swim party last year was great. I had a blast. Talk to Alfonso Strafon. Strafon? Yeah. I spoke with him. I called the phone as well. I don't know how to pronounce his last day. Maybe I may, maybe it's just straffin. Strafon. Strafon. Maybe August 10th, no NFL games, but there is an NFL game Friday, August 11th, Packers, Bengals. So what's the Thursday, August 10th? Watch party. What's happening on Thursday, August 10th? College football? No, week zero is not until like two weeks later. That's like August 27th. I'm starting to see some holes. Okay, wait, wait. What is on that day? Is that yeah? August 10th. Baseball? Yeah. MLB. MLB Watch Party? I guess. Football. I got it synced into my calendar. It's August 11th Friday. I mean, no, no, no, no, no, no. It says stadium swim football watch party. There's got to be something. I mean, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, there's got to be at least one CFL game. Imagine, imagine it's a CFL, if it is, that actually makes it even better. Please tell, there's going to be a CFL game. August 10th. Thursday, August 10th. Winnipeg. I knew it was going to be a bomber at the Edmonton Elks. I knew, I knew it was bomber's Elks, I knew it was bomber's Elks. That's 9 p.m. Eastern. So 6 p.m. Pacific. Banger. Football Watch Party. I was wondering if he was referring to a European football, maybe, and you know what? Honestly, we got to send some messages. Circus got to go like 30, 2010 limit for that CFL game. Imagine. They have to. Everyone's going to be in there. High ability to any of their NFL preseason games. It will. It will be. This one's showing up. It's not coming up in the, oh, there is NFL preseason, Texans, Patriots and Viking Seahawks. Okay. So we got some NFL preseason as well. All right. Good things. Stadium. It's a good thing. More than two screens. So they will fit that bomber's Elks camera. It would be, it would have been really, that, that will be on. They show the CFL games. Guaranteed. 100%. That's going to be on there. Guaranteed. Without a doubt. That's a fun event. I would highly recommend you go to that period. Stadium swim is amazing. You're there with other betters. Talk to Mike Craig last year. Chris Bruno. Good dude. That was good. That's going to be your worst hangover night. Probably because not only are you drinking, but you're drinking in the sun. You're going to be like roasted. What's the next morning? Oh, perfect timing. Another hangover right into the morning events. Expert panels with lunch buffet included might get a GRP wins sighting at this one, like last year, where he snuck into the event. I'm going to be on one of the the expert panels this year announcement coming in the next week or so. But well, if that's not an excuse to not go to the expert panels, I don't know what it is. No, no, no, no. When you find out who the people are on this panel, you will be there. You will, you will be in attendance. I'm not going to tell you're going to get the announcement with everyone else. Matt Metcalf, formerly of circa, is organizing the panels and finalized this one with me. It is going to be a banger. You will not want to miss this panel. Are you the youngest or oldest guy on the panel? I am not the oldest. There are, there are how many people on the panel? There's a moderator and five panelists. Oh, it's already going to be a debacle on itself. It may be an absolute cheat. I know what it is. I know what it is. I know who's on it. Can I guess right now? You can guess, but I cannot confirm. Okay. I cannot confirm. I will not have a reaction. I promise not to. I'll tell you, I'll tell you exactly what it's going to be. All right. The moderator and this just so you guys know if I get this right, which I ultimately probably will get at least five, five of these six correct. So Rob's on. So what's Rob going to be on at that bash, right? Obviously, this guy's going to be on a sports gambling Twitter panel. There's no other way you put Rob in a panel. He's not going to be on a modeling panel. No. F that. All right. So, panelist, so moderator, I'll get to, because I know who it is and I know how Rob thinks. Okay. Earlier in the episode, who do you accidentally mention out of nowhere? Probably because you heard this name this week. Here, give me starting moderator Darren Revelle, okay? Panelist one. Rob Pizzola slots in that one. You know, that's already correct. Okay. Then we have three, two, three, four, and five of the panelists, correct? All right. Benson, Guaranteed, chef Benson's in. Benson, Rob, Rufus P body, three. Then we're going to have to go with one of the guys that, so I would have said digs, but he, earlier tweeted, he wasn't going to betbash. So it can't be him, but it'll be one of those guys. So one of digs, shipper, Frank Costanza, no, not, not that guy, but one of those guys, that's like in the gambling Twitter, cvill troll community. Brett Favre, one of those guys, ag Pete, I don't know who else is. So yeah. And then one more will be, he said, I'm going to, I'm going to be there. It's got to be book it trend, okay? And that's my starting five, starting six, including, wait, did I name six? Yeah. Okay. You got Revella's the moderator. Yeah. Me, Rufus. Benson, Rufus, one of the cvill guys, whoever that might be, and book it trend. It's good guesses. I can't say anything. Don't confirm or deny. Yeah. After the announcement, we'll revisit. Rufusola can confirm regards from regards from regards from Canada. Uh, no, it's as good guesses. I don't know what the other panels are. By the way, I don't even know if this is a panel about gambling Twitter. For all I know, this guy's on like a hockey betting panel. And none of these guys are, I will say you nailed the topic. I know the topic. I honestly don't know how you did that, but you nailed the topic. Okay. If I nailed the topic, you are, you are 100% right? I would have like no interest in being on like an NFL panel or an NHL, like none of that appeals. Yeah. And he's not a book maker. He's not going to be on any of these. Okay. Listen. I already like the confirmation. The rest. It's, I'll leave it. I'll leave it. I don't want to give it away. But if that is a panel that I guessed, absolutely, I will fucking be there at that panel. Guaranteed. Panels to me at any conference, regardless of whether they're bet bash or, you know, the circle jerks that are like the other gaming conferences, they are like hit or miss. They're hit or miss. I hope that there's some Q and A involved because usually the best part of the panels are the Q and A at the end, where people ask questions that like you know that the moderator can't ask fair enough. All right. And then what else we got before we get into the positive negative EV plays the week. Okay. This is a very famous induction ceremony. Open bar and four course dinner included dress code, black tie recommended business smart is required, bro. Business smart is honestly significantly different from black tie. Very, very different business smart is jeans and a blazer and no, no, no, no, it could also just be business smart could just be a dress shirt and like a long sleeve button up. Yeah. And jeans. Okay. I don't again. Nice jeans. I don't want to be disrespectful to people. This is not what I don't mean to disrespect people. But based off of the crowd at bet bash last year, black tie, a tire, I don't think is it. How many of those people do you think go in a tuxedo? The older crowd will like spanky will like rocks, he's being inducted. So he's going to dress up in whatever, but they're the older crowd. And again, I want to think of people in terms of age or anything, but yes, but like to put it into perspective, sorry, I tell stories, I'm very candid about things. Honestly, this guy's not going to get offended anyways, no matter what. Roxy Roxborough invited us to an event at his place prior to bet bash last year. And you know, I message spanky and I'm like, you know, like where's Roxy? He's like, you got it, you got to dress up like this is everybody knows to dress up or I put on like some nice clothes and I went over there, spread a pedia showed up afterwards in like shorts, t-shirt flip flops and just like walked in, had a good time, had a blast. That's how most of the people at bet bash are dressing on a daily and it's not a disrespect. Some people don't want to dress up or whatever, but like, I don't know how many black tie wears. Even I don't mind dressing up. I'm probably not going to go in full, full tux, you know, well, four hour dinner. Tell everyone where they get the tickets. You tell them get your tickets for bet bash three. This year in Las Vegas, Nevada, at circus sports and the D hotel, August 8th through 11th, technically the 12th, though, because the party spills into the 12th August 8th through 12th tickets at bet bash.co. I apparently they're going up. I'll be honest, I don't really like that spanky's doing that. He keeps doing all tickets about to go up, get him now, they're about to go up. I don't love that, but apparently they're about to go up. So get him now. I don't know if they're going up or not. But that VIP legacy club, though, party is a banger, absolute banger, all right, all right. All right. Zach, let's give your positive and negative EVs, plays the week. All right. First one I've got here, positive EV, play of the week, shout out to our friend Francesco Greco. It's the country of Italy. They are positive, expective value. The whole country just as a whole, according to TMZ, the country of Italy has reached out to Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, because they want them to fight in their upcoming duel at the Coliseum. Oh, I would, man, that would be an, it's not going to happen, but that would be amazing. That's my, the country of Italy, the country of Italy, just battle, battle through here. The ministry says, the ministry of culture says nothing formal was offered, sources inside the camps related to Zuckerberg, Musk, and Dana White have confirmed or said that they've contacted and it has been passed on to Dana White. So that is my positive EV, plays country of Italy, just big things happen in there. Sure. I mean, it's obvious you don't want Francesco to murder you when he murders me, so I do get what you're saying. I'm staying on the safe side. He's apparently building an apartment for me to go live in for a bit. He's been sending me pictures. I said, I need a signed contract that he's not going to kill me when I'm out there. And he said, I cannot do that for you, my friend, regards from Italy. All right, Zach, and your negative EV play the week. Okay. So I'm going to throw this one out there and then this one is open to debate people online on YouTube. I want to hear in the comments and then you guys, I'm interested in your thoughts because it started out as negative EV and it turns out I might have been way off on this one. My negative EV was the announcement that flying cars have now been approved by the FAA and are available for pre-order at 300K. This announcement came out less than a week after the ocean gate thing in the Titanic. And I was like, oh, negative EV move. These billionaires just paid 250K. They go down there. Obviously, unfortunate stuff happens at that situation, but I was like, oh, you're going to now introduce flying cars right away. Well, it appears that there's already been $250 million worth of pre-orders released on these cars. So I was like, oh, this is terrible. Like people are going to be really hesitant to do this. Kind of seems like I was wrong, but interested where you guys are, your thoughts and your heads out on those. I did see the article. I honestly don't know where to stand on flying cars because now, like, I saw that and I'm like, here we go. Like when is, when is, when is it too much? But if flying cars are like driven around for like four or five years, and they hold up. You bet your ass I'm going to get a flying car. Well, what is a flying car? Like a regular car that just goes a little above the road, because I have to clarify here. I saw only what I saw on Twitter, but the picture looked like it was way above. So basically, are you like, are you referring to by chance an airplane? In a sense? Yes. So you're saying planes. I saw this and I'm like, I just did one of the shakes of my heads. At the computer for a while, it's essentially a mini plane that can hold two people, two to three people and flies above the cars. Yeah. So helicopter. In a sense, if you want to call it that, I'll, I'll abstain from further comment until I see these things get in the air. But I'm all for reducing traffic and commute to work or wherever you need to go. So I, I would be in, but how am I going to police this stuff though? Like if this is a bunch of flying cars in the air, like, you know, you get an accident and then you hit another car at the bottom. Yeah. Yeah. That's the only issue. How do you know? Like, I don't want to be like the, the guy here, but like, there's a lot of stuff that goes up into the air that like pilots are trained to, like, they're way above this. These don't look like they're going to be above buildings. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, we got to see. Do you follow the road? Just above the road? I don't know how this is going to work. It seems like this is a really bad idea. However, like I mentioned, if there are many years where this is working and like, like, I thought, I thought Tesla self driving cars were a shit show of an idea for a long time. Then people started driving them. They work and now I drive one and it works and I have no complaints. Not a bad, not a bad comparison. All right. Rob. Okay. Now plus EV, move. Afternoon, power naps. I've recently started on the afternoon power nap train. Now as someone who employs other people, I would have, they came to me before and said, Rob, I'm going to be booking off 20 minutes in my calendar every day so I could take a nap. I would have said, hear your papers. See you later. Or finding someone to replace you. However, since starting these, I will say they actually really work. Now you have to keep it short. I did research into this and studied it. I'm a guy that like when I fall asleep, you wake me up like I'm groggy. I don't want to be like bothered. But if you keep it to like 15, 20 minutes, it's honestly for me, the equivalent of drinking like a couple of coffees. I can go the afternoon without drinking coffee anymore because I actually do feel recharged and refreshed. So as someone who used to shit on the afternoon power nap, I will say I highly encourage them going forward. They are very refreshing. And most importantly for me, they've not affected my ability to sleep at night. That's what I was concerned about too. If I throw in a nap during the day, I'm going to have trouble going to bed at night. 15 to 20 minute power nap in the afternoon plus EV. Have you tried the coffee nap? The coffee nap, were you drinking coffee before? Yeah. No. I don't want to mess around with what I got right now. No, but honestly, I'll just go into it now. My positive EV play of the week was legit coffee. I can't, and that's actually hilarious that we're on this. But positive EV play of the week, just coffee in general. What a, what a thing. And I tell you that coffee is the most minus EV thing ever. Why? We, I am, I cannot function as a human without coffee anymore. That's awesome. Do you know how minus EV that is? That's a minus. If I go on vacation and I can't find a coffee within like an hour of waking up, my day is ruined. That's on you. It's maybe it is on me. I mean, it obviously is on me. It's not the worst part about it is. I actually went through like, this is maybe eight years ago, eight years ago. I went through a one month withdrawal getting off of like coffee completely. One of the most miserable months of my life. Like completely weeded out coffee, first couple of weeks, headaches, fatigue, whatever. I got off it for like four or five months. Like an idiot. I tried a decaf one day. I got the taste back and I've been coffee ever since. Person I drink about 35 to 45 cups a day. I will. Not joking. I actually drink. Yeah, actually didn't even hesitate though. This guy didn't even jump. I've seen you at the espresso machine before. You do fire. You do. I drink coffee. Not 35 to 45. I love coffee. Don't get me wrong. I love coffee. Coffee is amazing, but I'm beholden to it. I'm like my slave to the coffee bean. Coffee bean. No, it's a mindset. It's a real problem. No, no. There's obviously caffeine in it in which I guess it's somewhat addictive, but before I get into my minus EV, yeah, I'm all good coffee's all time. Go ahead. Previously in an episode, your minus EV was the cards, okay, gifting somebody a card along. This has picked up a lot of steam on Twitter with Luke, Livedog Luke, posting a full message in response, taking issue with the minus EV card stance. I think this is the actual message. I strongly disagree with your minus EV card take. Here's my box of cards I've been saving for over a decade, looking back at these through the years and reading notes from loved ones who are no longer with us in their own handwriting brings me unmeasurable joy and plus, plus, plus EV. I get it. Totally reasonable take. I feel like people are missing what we're saying because you brought this up and I agree with you. It's not the card itself that is bringing Luke, unmeasurable joy. It's the message and that's all I'm saying. You don't have to go out and buy a $7 card to give to somebody. You can write a note on a piece of, it could be on a napkin, it can be on toilet paper while you're sitting and taking a crap. It could be whatever. It's just the message that counts and that's what I want to get across. You're not beholden to the card itself. You can print that you can fold a piece of paper in half. You can do whatever you can take a cardboard box and you can rip out a corner and write a note. There's a lot of ways that you can give someone a note and what Luke is describing here is the note itself. Yeah. It's obviously nicer in their own handwriting. I'll respect that. You can't get that on like an email or a tax or anything like that. That's fair. It would be nicer to be on like a nice card as opposed to a toilet paper, but the majority of cards that people give out don't even say anything in them other than happy birthday from Rob and yes, or have they're like a really lame joke or some sort of pop up thing that like you're not getting the joy out of the thing popping out of the card. Yeah. But we respect that take Luke definitely respect I completely get this by the way like I'm a sentimental person. I know it seems like I have no heart, but I actually do. I'm very emotional guy. If it's important to me, I keep it. My wife's always like why are you keeping this shit and whatever I'm like because it means something to me. It's valuable or whatever. But the note itself is very plus EV, the card, $7, $8, where does it end? That's where the minus EV part comes in. Anyways, all right. This week's negative EV minus EV is Canada Day weekend, this weekend, fourth of July. I cannot tell you how minus EV it is to buy fireworks. Okay. First of all, if you enjoy fireworks, I'm not going to take that away from you. There are so many ways to enjoy fireworks on the 4th of July or Canada Day that do not involve you actually purchasing the fireworks fireworks in terms of entertainment and entertainment value to cost is about the worst imaginable. Like it's right up there. Like if you want to put on a good fireworks show for like your friends, whatever, half people over, like you're looking at a nickel as as bank, you would say, you can't say $500 or whatever. $500 doesn't even get you a good show. No, it gets you like rockets and you know, like the it's it's shit. $500 gets you a show that you can at least say, all right, I'm going to be doing fireworks and it's not a one thing. Yeah, but like I'll tell you what happens or what has happened in my life every year where me and my friends pitch into buy fireworks. Everybody pitches in. We got a couple dimes. Fireworks happen. Then the wives are like, okay, what's next and we're like, that's it. That was the show. They're like, I don't know, it was more. We got a couple, I'm like, yeah, that's that's a couple thousand dollars worth of fireworks. That's what it's going to get you. And then like their kids are like, oh, more fireworks or whatever. And I'm like, well, you know, this is not a, now I mentioned this at lunch today with Mark, office employee, and he's like, no, no, fireworks are amazing. All the kids, they have so much fun, whatever, no, here's what's happening. You're now creating this vicious cycle where those kids are going to grow up and now they're going to buy fireworks on top of it. And they're going to piss away their money because they had so much fun seeing these colors in the sky. Like you can go, you don't even have to go to the amusement park to see the fireworks. They fire up into the air. You can park at the side of the road in a local park. People pull off the highway or the freeway to watch fireworks like I get it. If you like fireworks, you can find somewhere anywhere. There's other people that will spend the money on the fireworks. Just don't do it yourself. Buying fireworks, huge piss waste might as well take that money deposited into pinnacle, at least throw down a parlay or something like that candidate, the way more satisfaction. Fade the blue jays on Canada day. It is 100% a trend that will go on for the rest of the time. I don't know what it is about the red jerseys. They lose at home every single year, compound that every single year. Honestly, that was a good rant. I respect that. Right. I would say, I don't want to be the no fun guy. I like having fun. I like doing things that I know that doesn't get you much. His argument is this, not even that fireworks aren't bad, they aren't good. It's just like buying them yourself and doing it, it doesn't really provide that good of a show. Unless you want to just buy like 200 Roman, nobody likes the Roman candles. No. Exactly. The Roman candles. Yeah, there's sheep. People are like, I don't want to see Roman candles, you know what he's to do with Roman candles? He's to shoot them at each other. Now, I don't recommend that. Don't do that. My buddy singed his hair off one year. Bad, bad, bad idea. There's also been some fireworks. No, don't, that's another thing. That's another thing. Well, this is another thing with fireworks too. Like, you got to set them up properly. You know, I'm not, it's not hard if you're not experienced. But if you're an idiot, they fall over, they start firing into the crowd. You know, it's, it's minus EV all around. Leave it up to the professionals to run the fireworks shows, go enjoy it with your family. You don't spend a dot, honestly, you can pay the amusement park entrance and you're paying way less, way, way, way less than your family to Disney and get tickets in. And you're paying less than it's going to take to put on a good fireworks show at home. All right. I'll see if I can top that like some heat for that. I likely can't, I likely can't top that, but I have one that's. I'm going to get some disagreement on, but I don't even see how I get disagreement on this one. All right. Negative EV play on the week is buying somebody for a gift, a gift card instead of giving cash. Now, the only ever arguments I got to this are, well, sometimes you don't want to give someone cash. You want to give them a gift card so that they go and spend that and they'll remember that you were the one who, no, they don't remember that. They don't remember that. You want them to remember it, give them the actual gift, right? There's two gifts you can give someone a physical gift or cash. Yeah. That's it. You want to give someone leafs tickets, give them leaf tickets. You want to give them a ticket master gift card, give them cash, don't give them a ticket master gift card. It's ridiculous. You just completely, like, you basically just pin them down to only be able to spend that money at that one place, which maybe they don't want to spend it at that one place. And even if they do, they could just spend the cash there for the same amount of value. And in fact, like sometimes people have a gift card, you get a $200 gift card, $100 gift card. You go buy something. They're like, okay, I'll go check it out. You want to buy something, $86, now I got $14 left. I got to buy something I don't even want for $14. Could have been in my bank like a piss waste, yeah. What a waste. Some gift cards expire after two years if you don't use them or they deduct $5 every month for whatever. That's another one of the biggest scams going in the space. Some other gift cards, you can't check the balance. You could lose them, which is way more likely than just losing physical cash. Obviously, you can lose the cash too, so it's not a foolproof. But you're way more likely to lose the gift card than cash. In addition, what happens when you get a booster juice gift card? I don't even know if booster juice is in the US or not. I think I've seen booster juice in the US. What happens when you get a booster juice gift card, and then you go to booster juice, you're like, oh, are you kidding me out of my gift card in the car? And my buddy, Drew, I don't even have it on me. You literally need these gift cards on you for so many things you can't get on the app. There are certain places where a gift card is almost as good as cash. For example, you live in Canada, you're going to give someone a $20 or $25 Tim card, which is a Tim Hortons gift card. That's pretty much as good as cash. You're going to spend $25 at Tim Hortons between now and the end of the year in some capacity. But also, the cash is still better for all the reasons. People also say, oh, what about a Visa gift card, a Visa gift card, where it's just you can use it anywhere. A, not all places take Visa, two, they charge activation fee, and three, then have to still deal with carrying around that card and having it. Therefore, the very easy solution is, you want to get someone a gift? Yes. You get them cash. You take them somewhere for an experience or a dinner or whatever it might be. Or you get them the physical gift. Because I do believe there's value in getting someone a thoughtful gift. Or even, you know, even like, let's say you got them a nice dress shirt for someone. You're like, oh, you know what? I was, I know it's your birthday. I was shopping. I thought you looked good in the shirt. Here you are. I got you the shirt. Oh, great. Amazing. Put a gift receipt in there. If they don't like it, they go back to get a store credit. So be it. All good. You tried thoughtful gift. But don't just go and be like, hey, I got you a gift card to this place. I'm mostly in agreement with you. Well, first of all, gift cards are mostly just like a money laundering technique. Let's be honest here, right? No, people do gift cards. Well, they do. But like, you know, if you got like a thousand in cash and you want to put in a bank account, you just go get all the Netflix gift card, whatever, just put gift cards on all your accounts. It's way easier. You know, when I was, that's not financial advice for anyone out there. But, you know, that's an easy way to get around too much cash on hand situation. Gift cards. A lot of people do that shit. But the one thing with a gift card is that like, you can force something that you like onto someone else. So when it, like, here's the, here's the use case for the, here we are. Here we are. Okay. Okay. You eat at a really good restaurant and you're like, ah, you know, I got to get my, you know, my brother a gift or something like that. So you can get him a gift card to this restaurant because I want him to come here. I don't want him to just go to the, you can go to the keg. It's a fine establishment. But I don't want him to just go to the keg every time, which is what he's going to do. So I'll be like, ah, you know what, Raphael is Cantina. This is a great spot. Let me get him a couple hundred dollar gift cards. So he takes his fiancee here instead. Now you could also just take him out as a gift. Like you could do that instead, but then you got to coordinate schedules. So that's this scenario where I think that gift cards are valuable, fair enough. That, that actually is, I don't have a, a comeback for that. But for the most part, I agree with you. Gift cards are just annoying. These, these are, you know, they're just annoying nowadays. Yeah. I used to, it's just, I would resell the gift cards I have for like 95 cents on the dollar to get the cash. Like, that was what I would do when I was a kid and be like, I don't want this gift card here. Have it. 100 dollar gift card. Give me 95. Huge plus EV move in my life. I played in one of those like charity golf tournaments once or whatever. That was one of my buddy's construction companies. They needed like an extra person to play in a force and boom, whatever. You get there. You check in. It was pretty expensive. It was like 300 bucks or whatever. You get your dinner around and like a gift bag. And I was going through this gift bag. I'm like, it's all donated stuff. But there was a RW and Co gift card in the gift bag. And like sure, you know what, like I don't shop there a lot, but I'll go check it out. It's more, it's like a men's clothing spot. You can get like dress shirts and chinos and whatever, right? And when I'm back to my car after dinner, all the, the people's golf carts. They're just like parked in the parking lot because these people are too lazy to take them back to the cart return. But most people left their gift bags behind. So I was like, fuck, well, we'll get all these RW and Co gift cards and whatever. I thought there's going to be like 10 bucks on these things. Every single one of those is 50 bucks. I collected like 20 of those in the parking lot. I just got like a whole new wardrobe from a random golf tournament that I went out. So I have a bad, I have a place in my heart for the gift cards because of that personal experience of mine. But what it proves though, if they had tossed 50 cash in there, no one would have left that 100% 100% and someone paid for those gift cards. Somebody paid to put 50 bucks on each one of those. That would have just been money completely wasted forever. Someone would have wasted a thousand bucks. Yeah, they would have gone in the garbage. Literally somebody would have just thrown those bags in the garbage when they did the cart cart return and clean up that night. RP bought a couple shirts. RP at our W and Co. Eric Carlson was the guy in the pictures at the time. The most important thing was playing for the Ottawa Senators at the time. Yeah. All right. This is just out of the organization. One thing that used to happen all the time and this was with my one side of my family. My dad would do this thing like you knew that one side would get gift cash. They had no problem with that. The other side hated giving cash. It's always gift cards. It was like, oh, what are you trying to buy? So like him and my mom are fine saving up for a vanity in the bathroom or whatever. They'll say as an example, they find it at Home Depot. The side won't give cash so they're like, where do you want? They say Home Depot gift cards. One person always Home Depot, Home Depot, Lose, Lose. And then you're like, yeah, Rona, I mean, it's just, you're right, Johnny, like the cash and let's get cash. Cash is just, it's much, it's much easier. Sorry, not not to mention another thing. You guys know as you can tell if you listen to this podcast, I love saving time. Like you also do have to physically go get the gift cards. And yes, you might be able to buy some online, but for the most part, you have to go actually physically get it. Another thing, you give the gift card, no receipt. It's happened to me once. I got a LCBO gift card, 100 bucks. I went to the LCBO, which is the liquor store. Liquor store. I go use it. They're like, this car is not activated. You got scumbed. Either someone scum me, which they didn't, because it was a family member who wouldn't scum me. Or maybe they paid and the store just forgot to credit it. Either way. Oh my God. No Christmas gift for Johnny that that year. Nope. And speaking of scum, 57.8% of you who are watching right now are not subscribed to this YouTube channel. The last 28 days, 57.8%. Take two seconds. Hit the subscribe button. It helps us grow this content. It helps other people find it. And of course, if you did enjoy it, like it on YouTube, rate and review five stars. So wherever you are listening to this in audio form, this has been episode 109 of the Circles Off Podcast. We'll catch you everyone next week.