The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – AI Guru Steve Westfeld Shares How AI is Revolutionizing Sports Betting

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

AI Guru Steve Westfeld Shares How AI is Revolutionizing Sports Betting https://leans.ai/ Show Notes About The Guest(s): Steve Westfeld is an AI guru and the founder of Lean's AI, a leading AI sports handicapping firm. After losing $75,000 in a sports handicapping scam, Steve used his expertise as an AI developer to create an AI sports prediction algorithm to recoup his losses. This algorithm eventually grew into Lean's AI, which consistently beats the sports books in major American sports. Summary: Steve Westfeld, founder of Lean's AI, joins Chris Voss on The Chris Voss Show to discuss his journey from losing $75,000 in a sports handicapping scam to creating an AI sports prediction algorithm that consistently beats the sports books. Steve shares how he used his background as an AI developer to develop the algorithm and the challenges he faced along the way. He also explains how the algorithm analyzes data on thousands of games to create win probabilities and cover probabilities against the spread or over/under lines. Steve emphasizes the importance of transparency in the sports handicapping industry and how Lean's AI provides subscribers with all the data and performance metrics of the algorithm. He also offers advice for new sports bettors, including starting with low amounts and managing emotions. Key Takeaways: Lean's AI analyzes data on thousands of games to create win probabilities and cover probabilities against the spread or over/under lines. The algorithm looks for discrepancies between the true game analytics and the lines set by Vegas to identify betting opportunities. Lean's AI provides subscribers with transparent data and performance metrics to help them make informed betting decisions. Starting with low amounts and managing emotions are key for new sports bettors. The volatility of sports betting requires a long-term perspective and patience. Quotes: "We've created an algorithm that analyzes thousands of data points on every game in American sports." - Steve Westfeld "The algorithm is trying to create a win probability for each team and a cover probability against a line." - Steve Westfeld "We provide all the data and win-loss records of the algorithm so people can see exactly how it's performing." - Steve Westfeld "AI takes the emotion and bias out of betting and analyzes pure data and analytics." - Steve Westfeld "Start with low amounts and pace yourself to avoid getting emotionally invested and affecting your normal life." - Steve Westfeld

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Thanks for joining the show, as always.

Without you guys, we couldn't do it at all. And please refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, 4Chess, Chris Foss, YouTube.com, 4Chess, Chris Foss, the big LinkedIn newsletter, the LinkedIn 130,000 group over there, and all that crazy place we're on the internet. Today, we have an amazing gentleman on the show, and as always, we're bringing you the

smartest minds, the CEOs, the billionaires, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the people who bring you their stories of life and their learnings of life, their learnings of life, something like that, and share it with you so that you can improve the quality of yours in Baskin, what we like to call the chris foss show glow uh today we have uh steve westfield or westfeld on the show with us today he is an ai guru we're talking about his stories and i think you're gonna be amazed because he's got some interesting stories steve westfeld is on the show with us today uh he lost 75 000 in a sports handicapping scam fortunately for steve he was an expert ai developer who now had a chip on his shoulder he would spend the next year while working a day job creating an ai sports prediction algorithm

to get his money back and it worked uh steve it sounds like this should be a movie steve was able to recover most of his losses from the scam before being blacklisted by three sports books for winning too much i hate when vegas does that too at that point steve decided to start selling data from his algorithm to subscribers and boom leans ai was was created. Lean's AI has grown into the leading AI sports handicapping firm and consistently beats the sports books in the major four American sports. It's learned hundreds of active subscribers, or now has hundreds of active subscribers and has achieved incredibly fast growth from a transparent approach to the

algorithm's performance and the success of the AI algorithm. Steve is now one of the world's leading authorities in AI sports analytics and sports betting trends and strategies and loves writing in third person. Welcome to the show, Steve. How are you? Hey, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. There you go. I like that end bit there. He writes in third person. I talk in third person myself sometimes. I have six personalities, so it's actually just one of them. So welcome to the show. Give us your dot coms again so we can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, the website that our platform is is called leans.ai, L-E-A-N-S dot A-I. And that's kind of the central place for everything that I've got going on right now. There you go.

So this is an incredible story. I mean, I guess it's just a matter of time until AI is being utilized in so many different ways that it can beat sports betting. So there you go. Tell us, well, give us a 30,000 overview of what happens at leans.ai yeah so so we've created an algorithm that analyzes uh thousands tens of thousands hundreds of thousands millions of data points on every game uh that's going on in american sports so uh basketball we do nba and college basketball football we do nfl and college football and then hockey baseball um There's one other sport I'm forgetting because there's six of them. I mean, you name most of the ones that matter, really.

Basketball. Yeah, all the big sports. We analyze data on every single game that goes on every day, and the algorithm is what it's doing is it's trying to create a win probability for each team and then a cover probability against a line. So against a spread or against an over under line. And then, so it's analyzing all these games and what it's looking for is places

where the true game analytics don't match where Vegas has the line set. And when the analytics are pulled one way or another, so maybe there's a 54% lean one side of a spread, we call that a lean, and then we sell that data to our subscribers. And so we've tried to create a really transparent approach where we provide all the data that the algorithm,

all the win-losses that the algorithm has done so people can see exactly how it's doing and what it's good at and what it's bad at. And then we also do a 30-day free trial so people could sign up and try it out totally free for 30 days, see how it does, get a feel for it, and then decide if they want to continue after that point. There you go. A, using AI to beat the man or beat the bookie, I guess, technically. So tell us about this journey and what got you down this road. Were you always into sports betting?

How did you end up losing the money and what led you up to that? I'll jump back even before this. I realized I was a gullible person when I walked into the mall. This is probably 15 years ago. And I was trying to buy a pair of socks and I walked out with a water bottle and a year supply of hand salt from the dead sea. And I, I was,

we've all done that though. I was thinking back on it. I was like, man, I can be so gullible sometimes, but this, this stinking slick salesman in one of those little mall kiosks, he starts out, he's like, hey, nice shoes. Tell me, do you moisturize your hands?

And then goes through the whole gamut of wash your hands in this bowl and you see the black water come off. And the next thing you know, you're spending $150 on hand salt to the Dead Sea. So that's my propensity. And I fell into exactly the same thing with sports handicapping. So when sports betting was legalized in my state, I think it was 2020 or 2021. I was brand new to it, really didn't know much about it and was just checking it out. And I discovered the sports handicapping market kind of by accident, where I was just looking for picks or for data on how the experts thought games were going to trend. And I found this firm that it sounded too good to be true, but I didn't know that at the time because I was brand new into sports handicapping

and sports betting. So I subscribed for their initial service. It was a couple thousand bucks to kind of get their entry level picks. And it did really, really well for like two weeks or three weeks. And I was winning a lot of money and I was like, holy smokes, there's something to this. You could just pay these guys to get their data and then you could basically make a living at this. So they, you know, of course they knew they were on a hot run. And so they brought in their sales guy and he, he pulled out all the stops on selling me on, oh, there's this exclusive club. And it, you know, there's only a dozen people that we even give access to. And it's, it's insider information and all, you know, all of whatever, whatever words they wanted to use.

Sounds like the movie lines from the movie, the grifter. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I didn't know any better and I was already up and I was already winning. So I, um, decided, you know, it was, I had money set aside and I was like up and I was already winning. So I decided, you know, I had money set aside and I was like, you know what, if this continues and if what they're claiming is true, I'm going to be in great shape here. So I went ahead and paid. I think it was all said and done.

It was close to $75,000. It was hovering right around there for their... Was that just to get in the club or was that to do the vetting too? That was just to get in the club or was that that was betting too that was just to get in the club so i was just for access to their data but i i'm an engineer i'm a scientist and so you know i you don't just drop that kind of money so i i ran all kinds of math and all kinds of calculations based on what i had seen from kind of their their three-week run and what they were claiming. And I was like, I'm going to make this back in like a year and a half. And then everything is going to be

profit after that. And so I drop all this money and, and, you know, they're claiming to win close to 70% against the spread, which, which in hindsight is totally insane. Like it's, there's way too many variables for that to even be close to true, but that was her claim. And so the winds stopped coming and it started doing bad and it started hovering in the mid 50% and then closer to 52%. And then a couple of years in, it ended up basically being kind of a 50-50 type of deal, which is just ridiculous to think that I had spent all that money. And so I had to figure out a way to get my investment back. And so I was like, I can do this stinking better than these guys.

Like, I'm smarter at analyzing data and combining data into algorithms. And so I built this algorithm that we've since labeled as or we've named Remy. And we started Remy back in the fall of 2021. We were coding on it a long time before that, and added on more sports and then started adding in more data. And long story short, we found out that Remy's pretty dang good at predicting the outcomes of games. And so along that journey, I started winning enough to where I had sports books start, I don't want to say blacklist, but they started capping how much I could wager. So I could wager 4,000 or 5,000, and then I could wager 1,000, and then I could wager four thousand or five thousand and then i could wager a thousand

and then i could wager five hundred and then i could wager a hundred and then i could wager ten and obviously if i'm if i'm playing ten dollars or one dollar it's not even worth my time to do to do anything with it and so that happened with with um three different sports books and i realized i was like at some point point you run out of sports books because they realize you're pretty stinking good at this. And so I decided to start selling this data on our website. And so we created Lanes AI and here we are. There you go. Now, the company that originally sunk you for 75 grand, did you ever get back at them with winning on their book or? No, no, I was out that money. Um, and it's just, it's one, it's one of the things I actually,

I still deal with in, in the industry where I'm at now is most of the sports handicapping industry is full of crooks and full of cheats who will say whatever they want to say. They'll claim whatever statistics they want to do. They'll claim whatever statistics they want to do. They'll take screenshots of whatever winning bets that they had. And they only present the glamorous parts of the picture, which is, you know, and it's an alluring thing to be a part of. And so I decided with our company, I was like, we're not going to do that. We're going to publish every single past pick that we have,

win, loss, or otherwise, so people can go back and they can see how it's doing. And a lot of times we'll see people come on and they'll email us and they're like, it's refreshing to see someone who's actually honest with this because the whole rest of the industry is just a bunch of crooks that are trying to take people's money and making realistic

claims about how good they are. Yeah. It's interesting how the gambling business would be so seedy. Yeah, funny how that works. There's not a history of that, going back to mob bookies. And so now you're transparent, you open up to everybody, and now you're kind of playing the game back on them. So I love this idea, you know, AI, you know, everyone's always like, Hey, what do we do with AI?

There's so many different things, you know, but I love this idea of how it can be played, uh, against the, against the man or against the bookies or, you know, um, is there any chance that, uh, are you able to use this in any of the sports books for anything? You are. You are. Yep. Yeah. Cause we're, we're not doing anything that's against their terms of service and we're not

doing anything that's live betting and it's not, there's no like live algorithm betting or anything like that. It's, it's all done earlier in the day, long before the game start. And what, what happens in that the advantage that we've created is that a lot of times people think that vegas is trying to uh pick pick a line that they think is going to be the outcome of the game

so you know pick the denver nuggets to win by five points what what they're actually trying to do is split money so if they can get equal money on both sides of that line. Then they take their juice or their 9% on spread bets and they walk away with 9% regardless of the outcome of the game. And so what happens is people start betting and their emotional, emotional betters and they start pulling lines one way or another. And all of a sudden you get an instance where the, the line that Vegas is trying to keep to split money is different than where the true game analytics should be.

And in that gap or that lean to one side of the line is where we've created our entire advantage. That's crazy. So did you grow up and study to be an engineer, to be a data engineer? Software engineer. Software engineer, yeah. So this is right up your alley. And you're just like, I understand how this stuff works and I can build a better model. And I love how...

Go ahead. I was going to say that the other thing that is a huge, I guess, thing that we've uncovered is AI takes the emotion out of betting and, and by, by transitive takes the bias out of it. So if I'm watching a game and I'm, or, or I'm looking at two teams and I'm trying to maybe place a bet on one side or the other, I'm using like my own history and my own experiences and my whole own kind

of track record to place that bet. And it's all biased one way or another. And like, I don't, as a human, I don't have all the information. I don't have accurate memories sometimes of when this bet was a good idea and when this bet was a bad idea and the whole thing is biased and so the ai is able to strip the human emotion out of it entirely and just look at pure data pure analytics and like it's it's not omniscient it doesn't know everything but based on the data it does know we've we've seen that over time it tends to be more accurate than an emotional human better there you. Yeah, because when you judge not using logic and reason, you judge on emotion.

I mean, you're fallible. And then AI can scrape so much data on a massive scale in comparative analysis, I guess. Yep. You just probably can't even compete with the human brain at this point. Yeah. One of the challenges we have is we're using data to try to predict human behavior. And it's such a catch-22 because humans can kind of do whatever they want, but at the same time, they tend to be very repeatable.

And so the saying history tends to repeat itself. If you put humans in the same environment, like on a court or on a football field, and then you put them under the same or in baseball outs you've constrained this whole experiment to a very very repeatable type thing and so it it's amazing how often um trends tend to just repeat themselves again and again and again within this kind of confined thing called it called a sport wow isn. Isn't that amazing? And AI can probably see it and gather it and analyze it and compile it far better than we can because it can just suck in so much data. And then unemotionally. Yep.

And it is so good at identifying non-intuitive trends, and that's another big advantage. And it'll pop something out sometimes that just doesn't make sense at all. And when we give the data to subscribers, we tell them, we're like, we're not telling you how to bet. We're not telling you what to do. You are getting this data and you can do whatever you want with it in your own strategies, but here's what it is. But sometimes it'll pop up stuff that just does not make sense at all and you're like that has to be wrong and we've actually had to put um you know safeguards in place in our

company to make sure that people aren't like vetoing the algorithm because sometimes it it is shocking how it will think something's going to trend one way and everyone else is like no there's no way that's going to happen and then it ends up trending that way wow it's wild i wonder if we could call games like like last night my readers versus the chargers had this fucking crazy blowout game that i'm just like you guys decide to start playing now game 15 or whatever like fucking it's so hard to be a readers fan man for the last 20 years um yeah i mean can it predict stuff like that it just seems like an anomaly wow yep well well no so i'm sorry so last night remy had a 54 chance of that game going under so under uh i think the line was 34

and a half so it was a really low line but you look at it and the previous week, you know, Oakland got completely shut out at home and the chargers put up whatever, seven or 10 points against the Broncos, whatever it was. So anyway, yeah, it's not right. And one of the things that is probably the hardest for us to communicate is it's like, if our algorithm is wrong, 45% of the time, you're doing fantastic as a sports better, which is crazy, but it's all against the spread. And so I think in order to cover the juice that Vegas takes off of spreads and over under bets, I think it's like 52.4% you have to win. And so if you go from 52.4 up to 55%, that's 3% where you have a margin. And then, you know, you think about the tilt Vegas has on a roulette wheel where it, you know, that, that empire of Vegas was built on 1% here and 1% there and 4% here, you know, and it's a slow advantage. And so as soon as you have a system that can kind of take that advantage back from the house it it's fun i'll bet yeah and uh you

know i've lived in vegas for 20 years 20 plus years um i've known my share of gamblers um you know and they they always they they always claim to have a system. They're always like, yeah, I got a system. And I'm always like, yeah, what is it? And they'll tell me. I'm just like, that sounds like it's a turd of shit. These are guys who are carrying around a two-inch thick receipts of all their losses

so they can write them off every year. And they always tell you when they win. Hey, Chris, I won $4,000 on the Royal over at the bar and you're like oh yeah so that's great you're going to pay me back the money you owe me now and everyone

else you borrowed from for the last three months and but what's funny is they never tell you about the losses they're always emotional they never count the losses and you're like but didn't you lose $20,000 last week on that But what's funny is they never tell you about the losses. No. They're always emotional. They never count the losses. Yep. And you're like, but didn't you lose 20 grand last week on that? No.

No. Yeah, yeah. I'm up four. No, you're not up four from the math. You told me you're down 50. Yeah. Yeah. So what?

You won four grand on the thing, man. You're still fucking down. It's not even. Yeah. Yeah. We would go to like uh you know you can go to the bars there and they have the table gamblers who are sitting at the bar and you know they serve you free drinks and stuff and but you have to pay for like lunch and

so we we'd we'd pay for lunch and it was fairly expensive and you know they give you free drinks and so my friends would be like this is the best deal ever you know you get you get food and if you if you gamble right you you get the free you get a free lunch and i'm like i don't know about all this and so uh i i tried it a couple times i i'm like i'll put 20 bucks in the can and see how it works out and sometimes i walk away like that uh that 20 hour lunch and it cost me like 50 bucks i'm like and they're like but you don't understand i'm like no i think i do i understand math run a business i've done p and l accounting i understand profit and loss but you on the other hand are degenerate so there you go um but yeah this is i've seen that all through that everybody's got a system but you're right a lot of emotional a lot of emotional low low data betting. One of the things I've seen is if you talk about parlays,

which I assume most people know what a parlay is, but it's kind of stringing a series of picks together, three, four, five, six, seven, eight picks together. So they all have to win, and then you have a huge payout. So those are super attractive to sports bettors because it's i can you know i can bet five dollars on this parlay and i can win two thousand dollars or something wow and so depending on how many teams are in there yeah what happens and and the line that i've heard more often than not is i was i was one game away. Like if this team had just covered

or if that team had just covered. And even in that statement, say you have an eight team parlay and you win seven out of eight, which is still crazy good. You're not even considering the three teams that shouldn't have won but did on a fluky thing or whatever.

You're just focused on the one team that didn't win and kept you from your $2,000. And that's exactly where Vegas wants you to live on Parles. They want you to be one loss away, and it's just this psychological of, oh, the next time I'll get this other thing or that other thing. And it's a fantastic way to light money on fire. There you go. I mean, what's the old lines from casino you know the longer we can get you to play yep the more the more you'll eventually lose you can you can get on a hot streak i've seen i've done it and uh you get

on a hot streak and you're like hey i'm i'm rocking well but uh you know i i i've had so many friends that were gamblers that walk into a casino and their eyes glaze over and they become in a trance. Yeah. And I'm like, hey, man, are you still here? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like looking around the thing and I'm like, hey, man, look at the opulence of this casino, you know, at the Bellagio or any of the beautiful casinos. Look at the opulence of what went in here. Do you know who paid for this?

Losers. Yep. Yep. People who lost. So, yeah, I'm thinking, just looking around, I'm thinking the odds are against you around here. No joke. No joke. They love what they do.

Yeah. You know, so I love the AI, you know, is serving, you know so i i love the ai you know is serving you know because there's all this stuff like what do we do with ai people are writing books and doing all sorts of stupid shit with it yeah god knows what stupidity yeah and but here it's being turned against the bookers against the man against the vegas you problem with Vegas, the thing that always bugs me is if you win too much, they'll kick you out and ban you. Yeah, I almost get sick to my stomach

when I think about that because they are absolutely willing to take every free consent you have to line their own profits, but as soon as you start doing good against them, they will cut you off like it's nothing. Oh, yeah. I've been on blackjack tables with guys who are really good and the pit boss will come up

and try and get them off their their run and try and get them off the table and they'll be like you do you want i remember one guy was sitting with them and and it was late at night he was just running the table it was crazy i was doing blackjack i mean he'd be all in one second next hand nothing you know it was just crazy i don't even know what mean he'd be all in one second next hand nothing you know it was just crazy i don't even know what system he was on yeah but uh the the pit boss came over and was trying to get off the table hey would you like to free dinner and would like a hotel you know we know you're running hot we'd love to have you come back tomorrow and play some more and he was just trying to do everything you know what the guy said to him was fucking balls out he was you

know that motorcycle that's in the lobby you're giving away he goes yeah he goes give me the motorcycle and i'll quit playing the table fucking balls dude oh and i'm just sitting there playing blackjack going i'm i don't know what the fuck is going on and the guy's like oh yeah you know we can't do that but i can't do that he goes okay well leave that. He goes, okay, well, leave me alone. I'm going to keep playing here. I'm going to keep fucking running your dealer here, man. And he did. And he just kept hammering him.

And the pit boss kept coming over. He goes, give me the motorcycle, and I'll get off the table. And it was just the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen in life. It was slightly different, but when i was playing a lot but before i started getting banned i had become a vip at a lot of these sports books and so they you know they want to give you all all the perks and all the benefits and oh can we take you to a suite at this nba game or whatever and so at one point I had got gotten one scheduled. So it was me and three friends and they were taking us to as to a suite.

And it was, it was a nice, I've, I've been to a lot of suites. This one was unlike any I've been to. It was, it was only the four of us. And they were like these,

these giant comfy chairs that you sit in. It was like, It was unbelievable. So we had this thing on the books. And like four days before, they realized that I was winning too much. So they stripped my premium status. And I texted my rep. And I was like, hey, man,, my, my VIP status here. And of course they're not giving me any answers as to why it's like, are we still good for the game

Tuesday? And he's like, Oh yeah, we're good. So, so we showed up at the game and by this time they were limiting me to like $20 a bed or something. And I was like, dude, I was like, I cannot lose my money back to you if I'm going to have these restrictions. And he's like, he's like, dude, I was like, I cannot lose my money back to you if I'm going to have these restrictions. And he's like, yeah, he's like, you've been doing good, but no problem. I'll get it taken care of. I'll get everything raised. And so I kept, we went to the game. We had a great time.

I kept winning. I kept betting. I emailed him back a week later. I was like, dude, I'm still limited to $20 a bet. Like, what are you doing? And I have never heard back from him. Never talked to him. They just ghosted you, basically. Yeah, they're just like, all right, this guy's won too much, so see ya.

Yeah, it was, you know, people can play well, but I think, what is it, Atlantic City has it so that if you're winning, they can't kick you out, I think. Oh, I'm not sure. Yeah, I believe they have the opposite rule of Vegas, has it so that if you're winning they can't kick you out i think if i oh i'm not sure yeah i believe they have a they have the opposite rule of vegas where if you're winning they still have to keep taking your bets so but you know i mean there's always the point where you're gonna make a mistake i suppose uh so what advice do you give to new sports bettors uh don't keep your day. Uh, yeah, I, I, some people, or one of the questions I get a lot is how do you, how do you become a professional sports better and make a living from it? And I,

I would say, I think it's possible for a short period of time, but at some point you run out of books. Like if you're really that good and you're winning that much money at some point, you'd run out of books and they, cause they just, they all cut you off. And so, and you can only, you know, you can only play that for so long. So I don't think it's a good, you know, it can be fun for a while or for a couple of years, but I don't know that that's a, a huge, um, income generator long-term and you can have, you know, you can just have a freaking bad streak where you, you know, everything's right. You've got the analytics behind you and you just have a bad run and where you, you know, everything's right. You've got the analytics behind you and you just have a bad run and you wipe out half your bankroll or, or, or more on a

bad two or three week run. And that can really, really set you back. Um, but I, what I would say is I would just, it's the best possible way to start would be to start at incredibly low amounts like because they'll even let you bet less than a dollar so you can put in ten dollars and you could play for a year betting two cents here and four cents there because the thing is is everything's scalable and so or maybe put in a hundred dollars and you know if i'm betting 50 cents here and 20 cents there and 10 cents there and i do it for a whole year, I'm still emotionally invested and I'm still in the process. But if I lose, I'm out a hundred bucks, big deal. Yeah.

But if I win, I've created, you know, and I've created a system or I'm using a system that's winning. Well, like that's still going to be around the next year. And then I could start to up it from a hundred bucks to maybe i put in a thousand bucks and see how see how that goes so i would say start off with incredibly low amounts and um it i i would just the other big thing i've seen too is just just pacing and like making sure that it doesn't affect your normal life because it it's super fun but it also can be addicting watching freaking North Dakota state at Bemidji state, you know, by 32 and a half, like nobody cares about that game other than the people, the, you know, the people that have money on it. And it's a, it's a huge time suck away from like your life and your family and your job and whatever else. And so being able to bound, bound it and

just say, I mean, I'm only going to bet this number of games per day, or I'm only going to bet a couple days a week or whatever to create, or I'm just going to bet and not watch the games because it can definitely be addicting. a system too. It's like emotion can be your friend, but over the long term, emotion is probably more your enemy in the sense that we talked about just bias and not remembering all the facts one way or the other. So trying to find a system or a good handicapper that can kind of show the ropes on one way or the other, I would say it's another great way to start out there you go and if you my advice would be to if you have an addictive personality don't gamble like get get see a fucking therapist yeah like i lived in vegas for 20 plus years man i've seen what degenerate gambling addicts do um in fact when i first moved there, I remember passing it. I came from Utah where you could pass checks. This is back in the 90s. And it was like, buy gas, write a check.

And I moved to Vegas and I got hired to be the CEO of this mortgage company that we're going to build by these investors. And so we signed the deal, and they gave me a check to start it off. And so I went down to the bank, and I hadn't opened an account there or anything yet because I just moved to Vegas for it. And I was trying to cash their check at the thing, and it really wasn't that big. It was just a starting stipend, like here's some money to get settled. And they ran me through hell to cash that check. And I was like, what is going on?

It's a fucking check. Like, this is your bank. You know if they have the money in the bank because it's right here. What the fuck? And they go, well, you know, you don't have an account with us. And, you know, they had to call the guys. It was kind of embarrassing. I was like, what the fuck?

And they go, well, are you from here? here and i go no i'm from utah and they go they go oh she says she says what we have here in the state is a lot of degenerate gamblers and they'll steal checks and and do everything and she goes the one thing about gamblers is addicted gamblers is they don't die of the addiction they're doing like if you do meth cocaine heroin, heroin, alcohol, it will eventually kill you. Addictive gamblers live forever. That's true. That's good to know, man. I've had so many

of my buddies date some chick and she's like an addicted gambler. She wants to go to the casino every weekend. She'll blow her whole paycheck and she'll be like, do you have any money? He's like, honey, we've got to pay the casino every weekend. And then she'll blow her whole paycheck, and she'll be like, well, do you have any money? And he's like, honey, we've got to pay the rent and everything. She's like, just give me a few dollars. I've had them steal their bank accounts, checkbooks.

Oh, buddy. Yeah. So if you're addictive, you might want to stay away from it. I totally agree. What are the best sports to bet on? I was going to joke that my Raiders probably might not be the best sport to bet on. Unless you want to, I don't know, bet them short or whatever it's called. That's a guarantee.

Yeah. Well, one of the most interesting sports that I have been asked to create an algorithm for was cockfighting in Philadelphia. That's still done well. Apparently so. I had somebody reach out on the support email and they said, hey, do you have an algorithm that can predict cockfighting? I have a live stream.

I have an OnlyFans that that does that but it's completely different and you may not want to run an ai thing on it right yeah i have not perfected the cockfighting algorithm uh but yeah as far as sports so one of the interesting things is um what we've tied into this this con we we call it fidelity. I'm sure there's other terms for the same concept, but it's basically the scoring mechanisms of the game. And so if you look at hockey, for instance, hockey might have five goals scored in a game or six goals scored in a game.

And if you have somebody that scores a goal at the last minute and kicks it from five to six, then there was like a 20% chance of that scoring play change in the outcome of the game. Basketball like NBA might have an over underline of 235. And so if somebody goes in and knocks in a three pointer at the very end, then you take three divided by 235. And it's like a 1.2 chance of a single scoring play

changing the outcome of a game so basketball 1.2 chance hockey 20 chance and hockey's fluky anyways with you know with puck bounces and hitting the pipe and deflections in front and whatever else so so hockey is like 15 times more volatile than basketball, just based on the scoring mechanism of the sport itself. And so what we found out is, is, uh, basketball in particular seems to be the most repeatable because there's so many points where things just get averaged out amongst it. And it's the and the fidelity of the scoring mechanism is so much smaller than hockey, where it's just like a bouncy puck, and it's changed the outcome. And soccer, which we don't do yet, although we've got a lot of asks for it,

is even worse than hockey because you can have a 2-0 game or a 0-0 game or whatever. But the market's huge. I mean, the global market's like you Google AI sports picks or whatever and we're number one on Google. That's not just in the US. That's all over. And so it's like there's a huge football soccer following

that's also looking for AI sports picks. And we don't have that yet. So anyway, it might be coming, but it's scary because it's so hard because the scoring is just, there's not a lot of goals scored. But it's probably, you know, just throw enough data in it, maybe you get consistency. Yeah, I think so. I mean, that's the other challenge we have too, is it's

just like, you know, we're very much looking for long-term, long-minded clients with our product. So we're averaging things over months and years as opposed to like a day. And so it drives me nuts, but we'll have people go and they'll sign up for the free trial and they'll have a bad day and they'll just like go write a bad review or something. And it's like, dude, okay, first off, you don't know anything about sports betting. And second off, like you got to at least try it for a month or for two months or for three months, because this is very much like it's a streaky thing. And like, you'll have good streaks and you'll have bad streaks. And over the longterm it's, it'll,

it'll average out to, you know, what we've seen so far, it's like 55%. And so, um, I would imagine the same is true for hockey is it's just like, you can have a bad run here and a bad run there.

And, and if we got the algorithm tuned up for that over the longterm, it would be okay. But it's streaky, man. And it's emotional too, right? You win,

you, you win a day and then you lose four days in a row and all these people are upset and disgruntled and whatever. And it's like, dude, we're, we're looking for like monthly and yearly clients who are willing to ride this thing through because it, you know, at the end of the end of the day, streaks happen and fluky things happen

and stinking penalties and bad refs and whatever else, and you get a run of those, and it hurts for that day. Yeah. I mean, it'd be cool if somebody could do this to the stock market because that's really just legalized gambling when it comes down to it. Exactly. It's very similar. Now, I'm looking at your website, and you guys have posted a transparent live scorecard.

I'm seeing net units after Vigorous, and it's a monthly breakdown. It shows a monthly plus or minus. It looks like you guys have had three down months, but the rest have been up, and you're up 187.5 for the year to date. Tell us what that means. Yeah, so we calculate units based on a formula that's called the Kelly criterion, which has been around forever. It's a mathematical formula that calculates probability of win and payout odds into optimum percentage of bankroll. And so traditionally it's 1% it's one unit equals 1% of bankroll. We obviously say in all of our content, this is not a recommendation as to whether or how anyone should wager. This is just what the mathematical formula says the optimal bet could be based on this win probability.

For a lot of people, that's too aggressive. Like you can see one of the months, like April, we were down 64 units. So if I had a $1,000 bankroll, I would have lost $640 following Remy's picks that month, which a lot of people, if I was doing 1% of bankroll equals one unit, which for a lot of people, that's too aggressive. So what we'll often see is they'll do a half a percent equals one unit or a quarter percent equals one unit. And it tames out the volatility a little bit. But long story short, throughout the year. So, and actually this is, this scorecard is only through November. So through December to date, we're now up 213 units after Vigorous.

So what that is, is it, it, it calculates a flat minus one 10 juice on spread picks and over under picks on every single pick that goes out the door. And if someone was playing the 1% equals one unit equation, what it would mean is $1,000. If I started with $1,000 bankroll, I would have profited $2,100 throughout the year. So I would have more than doubled, or you can think of it as a percentage too. So it would have been plus 213% over the course of the year

is what the units are. So anyway, it's been a fantastic year. One of the things we're trying to work on is the volatility. Like March was up 142 units and April was down 64. And so I would have rather seen March up 80 units and April down like five units, as opposed to those big swings. And so we're trying to,

to figure out why, I mean, we, you know, April was the first time that Remy had seen the pitch clock. And so with, with MLB, the pitch clock introduced all of these variables into baseball that Remy had never seen before.

And, and, you know, things with stealing bases and all kinds of just different odd things that threw it off for about a month and then it came back. So, but anyway, yeah, that that's what a unit is. And it's, you know, obviously I can't guarantee how the algorithm is going to do in the future. Um, but I can say that it, you know, in 2023, it had a really good year. Oh, wow. There you go. Uh, well, that's, that's awesome, man.

Uh, it sounds like a, it sounds like a really good deal on how the whole thing's playing out for you, man. Uh, it's crazy uh so i mean are any of these companies i mean is vegas just gonna have to i don't know they're gonna have to figure out how to counter this stuff i mean is it possible it seems impossible i think the only way to counter it is to start is to blacklist individual bettors or to limit how much an individual better can can wager because it's you know like i'm not the only one doing ai sports picks there's there's more coming everyone's got their own flavor on it we were we were kind of the first we i mean we were starting we were

working on this back in in 2020 and so you know as long before chat GPT or any kind of like the, the buzzy AI stuff was out. And so we actually got a jump on, um, search results and rankings and some of that. But yeah, at some point it's just like, it's legal. You know, we've, we've spent a fortune on our attorneys trying to go through everything that we're doing and everything we're offering subscribers to make sure that we're above board and we're transparent. And there's like, there's nothing that the casinos can do that I'm aware of other than either buy us off, which we haven't got an offer yet,

or try to limit individual betters and just say, you know, you've won too much from us. You can only bet $10 per game, which is exactly what they freaking did to me. That is crazy, man freaking did to me that is crazy man that is that is freaking crazy man drives me nuts well i mean the best way to win it sounds like is to create your own ai company that uh can advise other people on how to win

for the money so i think you made the right bet there finally so there you go uh so thank you very much for coming the show give us your final pitch out to people for on board with you try you out how they can uh learn more about you guys yeah so one of the things that that you'll notice in the sports handicapping industry in general is that most of the time they're uh the sports handicappers are asking for a huge amount of money up front trust trust on our picks, trust us on our whatever. And that's why most of them are scams and grifters. So what we've done is we offer a 30-day free trial. You can sign up and just check out Remy's data for a month.

Remy will release between three and 10 picks or liens per day, and they get emailed direct to your inbox and then you can choose if you want to use that data in your own betting strategies or not um and then from there if you want to continue after the 30 days then it's 2.99 a month for access to remy i wish we could bring the price down a little bit but ai is incredibly expensive to develop and maintain and keep fed with data and all of that stuff. So unfortunately that's where our price point is right now. But yeah, it's kind

of check it out for 30 days and see if you like it. And if Remy's helpful, then come on board with us after that. And the website is leans.ai. Or if you type in A-I Sports Picks, A-I Sports Betting, we're going to be one of the top ones that shows up. That is crazy, man. That is awesome, though. Bring the power back to the man. That's it. That's it.

Back from the man, yeah. Yeah, bring it back to the average man, the everyday man. There you go. You could have used this back in the day when there was mobsters running the stuff. Of course, they probably would have just found you. Yeah, found you and killed you.

Thank God we made that illegal. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Steve, it's been fun to have you on the show. Yeah, thank you so much. I really do appreciate it as well. There you go. And thanks for...

And hey, you know what would be cool, an AI thing, is if you could make it so an AI predictor could tell people if their marriage is going to work or end in divorce. Don't tempt me. Don't tempt me. Don't tempt me. There you go. Thanks for tuning in to my audience.

Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, linkedin.com, 4chesschristmas, youtube.com, 4chesschristmas, all those crazy places we are on the internet. Thanks for tuning in.

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