Speaker 1: Check it down man, Now down there, it's the Beating
Speaker 1: the Book Podcast. Gil Alexander's time for another in our
Speaker 1: series of sports betting profiles during this global pandemic. Today
Speaker 1: on the heels of so many who have been kind
Speaker 1: enough to give us their time and provide insights on
Speaker 1: the show during this strange time and all of our lives.
Speaker 1: It's Joe Peter. Joe Peter, author, Wall Street Guy, if
Speaker 1: you will, UH, someone who has had flirtations with all
Speaker 1: kinds of things sports betting related, and we'll get to
Speaker 1: some of those, including what I feel is perhaps the
Speaker 1: biggest story around the sports betting industry that never got
Speaker 1: told over the last few years in Las Vegas and beyond.
Speaker 1: Joe was right in the mix with that. He's got
Speaker 1: all the insights, uh, and just all the different ways
Speaker 1: that he's been pulled into the sports betting arena, whether
Speaker 1: he wanted to buy design or not. Fascinating guy, super smart,
Speaker 1: always a friend of the podcast. We're happy to have
Speaker 1: him as part of our series here today. Enjoy Joe
Speaker 1: Peter on The Beating the Book Podcast. It's a numbers
Speaker 1: game with your host, Kill Alexander. You want those unis
Speaker 1: who believe in Ana Lives. It is a numbers game
Speaker 1: on a Tuesday. It's Gill Alexander series except Channel two
Speaker 1: of four, Visa dot Com, the Visa app, Bobo Slinging Game,
Speaker 1: plus How you doing. I hope you're staying safe, hope
Speaker 1: you're doing well. On the show today, Uh, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about baseball's latest ridiculous fifty game plan. If that's gonna
Speaker 1: be a thing, not a formal offer, but a default offer,
Speaker 1: if you will. But today is a Tuesday, and for
Speaker 1: those who have been keen observers of this show during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, Tuesday's pretty much reserved for betting profile series
Speaker 1: that I've done. If not, now when our chance to
Speaker 1: sort of get into the minds of really influential people
Speaker 1: in the business and from all angles. Alan Boston has
Speaker 1: been with us UH for the series. Rufus Peabody, Dr Bob,
Speaker 1: Captain Jack Andrews Dink, Allen Dnkinson, Ray Marino. UH, Spanky
Speaker 1: was here last week. Today it's an old friend of
Speaker 1: mine who is fascinating in so many ways, UH, and honestly,
Speaker 1: with him, I hope to reveal the biggest untold story
Speaker 1: or story that could have been if you will, uh
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas the last three or four years. It
Speaker 1: ended up having a conclusion, but something was simmering under
Speaker 1: for a big betty company for so many years. That's
Speaker 1: just one aspect of him, but as a Wall Street background,
Speaker 1: a major accident in his life that changed his life
Speaker 1: and uh steered him towards this industry. If you will, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's Joe Pete. Everybody, how you do a Joe, Good
Speaker 1: morning to you, thanks for spending the time. Good morning, Gil.
Speaker 1: It's You're right. We are old friends. It goes back
Speaker 1: I think to twenty uh eleven, maybe now or maybe
Speaker 1: preseason when we first we met for tacos in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Where did we meet for tacos? I don't even remember this?
Speaker 1: Where do we mean tacos? Taco Licious down on the
Speaker 1: chestnut that's Taco Licious which now has a different chestnut location.
Speaker 1: We didn't. That's right, we really were. Um. By the way,
Speaker 1: Joe for those who will listen to Beating the Book
Speaker 1: podcast for many years, UH and a numbers game obviously
Speaker 1: the author of Trading Basses, which we'll get to. A
Speaker 1: Joe Peter's Master's Tour Guide from twenty nineteen, which is
Speaker 1: a whole another thing that that's the thing that makes
Speaker 1: you so interesting, Joe, is there are so many tentacles
Speaker 1: uh to this next hour with you, and and you
Speaker 1: know not to sound like James Lipton, uh from inside
Speaker 1: the actor's studio the late grade James lifted. It should
Speaker 1: be mentioned, but we always started at the beginning. Um,
Speaker 1: where did you grow up? Did you have a financial
Speaker 1: background in your family that led you to Wall Street?
Speaker 1: And what were your first experiences with betting? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: now I grew up outside Philadelphia. My father was a
Speaker 1: professor immigrant. Uh. And as an immigrant and with a
Speaker 1: uh first name Erminia, which immediately announced his sort of
Speaker 1: foreign presence. Uh. You know, his parents didn't speak English,
Speaker 1: and and so one of the things he did to
Speaker 1: try to be American was adopted baseball. So this is
Speaker 1: in the error of uh the thirties and forties. So
Speaker 1: he grew up in Philly, so he adopted Phillies of course,
Speaker 1: but he loved Joe DiMaggio obviously as an Italian American
Speaker 1: sort of representing the sport, and so that was passed
Speaker 1: on to me. Uh. As far as financial stuff, not really.
Speaker 1: He did teach me to read the stock tables on
Speaker 1: a summer vacation. I remembered down at the Jersey Shore
Speaker 1: and that became I then became somewhat obsessed with that.
Speaker 1: And you know, like the title of your show, it's
Speaker 1: a numbers game, and I was. I was fascinated by
Speaker 1: the numbers. UM went to as far as Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was in the the parlay cards. UM. A body of mine. Well,
Speaker 1: I happened to be lucky because in in in uh
Speaker 1: home room in high school. His his last name was
Speaker 1: paven Uh which sat right in front of me, Peter,
Speaker 1: and his dad was known as Aggie the bookie and Aggie.
Speaker 1: So he would come in with these parlay cards and
Speaker 1: you know, I couldn't get enough of those, and I
Speaker 1: uh that that really that got me sort of hooked
Speaker 1: on on the game UM. But it wasn't as problem
Speaker 1: back then. You know. I remember going to college. I went,
Speaker 1: you know, and then I sticking with the numbers. I
Speaker 1: went down to Virginia Tech to become a c P.
Speaker 1: A met great graduating accounting and UH then moved up
Speaker 1: to d C where I was a tax advisor UM
Speaker 1: with with some famous clients. I I think I've said
Speaker 1: this to you. I don't think I've said on the air,
Speaker 1: but one of my former tax clients was Paul mana
Speaker 1: Fort who was now in jailed for, among other things,
Speaker 1: tax fraud. Um. But that that was the That was
Speaker 1: the type of of rich and famous clientele that was
Speaker 1: in uh d C at the time. But I remember
Speaker 1: betting on sports then again, you know you had the bookie,
Speaker 1: whether it was Legs or Tony or Aggie, Um it
Speaker 1: was it was the score of a lot, the score phone, right,
Speaker 1: that was the man calling the score phone was such
Speaker 1: a big deal. I can still hear those recorded worces
Speaker 1: that yeah, that yeah, that that was a So that
Speaker 1: was sort of but it was always a hobby, right I.
Speaker 1: I you know, I viewed it as something to try
Speaker 1: to crack. But I understood the entertainment aspect of it too. Um.
Speaker 1: So there was never a I never there was never
Speaker 1: a stigma around it to me because like I said,
Speaker 1: I viewed it as part of the entertainment industry. Um.
Speaker 1: And But my professional path then was to get to
Speaker 1: Wall Street. After being an accountant for so long, I
Speaker 1: wanted to get to Wall Street. And you know again
Speaker 1: similar game, right, it's a you know you're trying to
Speaker 1: allocate capital based on incomplete information, which is you know,
Speaker 1: sort of sums up sports betting as well. UM. So
Speaker 1: I ended up get got a graduate degree, ended up
Speaker 1: going up to Wall Street, and now I was really
Speaker 1: my colleagues were my people, UM, these were. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize how well established the New York City uh sort
Speaker 1: of uh betting market was. Um so now you've got
Speaker 1: people to talk to all day about it, and it
Speaker 1: uh it became, you know, much bigger part of my life,
Speaker 1: Like you say, fifteen years into that career. So I
Speaker 1: guess that was twenty ten. Now, UM, I did get
Speaker 1: injured in New York. Um, I got as you said,
Speaker 1: there was an accident. I got run over by an
Speaker 1: ambulance while I was a pedestrian. UM. And that laid
Speaker 1: me up and had me in a wheelchair for a
Speaker 1: little bit. And that's when I had the um, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of percolating my mind. Was this idea that the
Speaker 1: critical reasoning overlap between asset management and sports betting, UM,
Speaker 1: and then the moneyballization of baseball, they were all related
Speaker 1: to me. I saw overlaps where one industry did something
Speaker 1: better than the other two and and you know, you
Speaker 1: can find something for for points for all of them,
Speaker 1: and I had the idea to put it into a book.
Speaker 1: And that's how Trading Basis came about. Uh. I had
Speaker 1: never written anything. I got very lucky. I was fortunate
Speaker 1: that the movie Moneyball came out in the I guess
Speaker 1: fall of eleven, just as I was pitching the book
Speaker 1: to publishers, and it had a good elevator pitch because
Speaker 1: the elevator picture was very understandable. It was, um, Moneyball
Speaker 1: meets Bringing down the House. So there you have two
Speaker 1: books that were successful books. They were both well the
Speaker 1: money Ball wasn't a memoir, but it uh um, it
Speaker 1: was easily understood by the publishing industry. And you know
Speaker 1: that that was that was fortunate because and then because
Speaker 1: the movie was doing so well, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of publishers wanted a piece of it. Um. So that's
Speaker 1: that's how the book came about. Um. And the book
Speaker 1: came mount. Yeah. And then it gets interesting, this is
Speaker 1: how I met you. So the book gets written in eleven,
Speaker 1: uh submitted early twelve for early publication, and the publisher
Speaker 1: liked the initial manuscript, you know, very much, and they
Speaker 1: said we're gonna need an apologue though for because if
Speaker 1: you know, for people who haven't read the book, it's
Speaker 1: essentially it's a chronological account of eleven really starting with
Speaker 1: my accident, um, and so the and it goes into
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of stories. It is a memoir,
Speaker 1: so it's it's my stories of Wall Street, it's my
Speaker 1: stories of growing up um in a baseball family, and
Speaker 1: how you know, the fan, the fandom of baseball is
Speaker 1: in there. And then of course in the betting and
Speaker 1: the we get to twelve and they said, we're gonna
Speaker 1: need an apologue for twelve. And they said, we have
Speaker 1: this idea. We want to kind of run it by you.
Speaker 1: What what would you think about going to Vegas with
Speaker 1: the marketing budget for the book and betting on baseball,
Speaker 1: um legally, so that you know, we could we could
Speaker 1: tell that story. And I thought, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: that sounds like a baseball betting fund, Tony. Um, that
Speaker 1: sounds like a great idea. And so that I called
Speaker 1: up family and friends, UM, and that's where I met you.
Speaker 1: UM called a family and friends and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: my degenerate buddies, if they know I'm going out there,
Speaker 1: they're gonna want to be this, and so one one
Speaker 1: could say we were entity betting when we weren't supposed to.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know something that that would. I always
Speaker 1: likened it. My I rationalized it to the guy who
Speaker 1: collects um lottery ticket money from his bowling buddies to
Speaker 1: cross state lines and uh, you know that on the
Speaker 1: the lot of where it's in a state where it's legal. Um,
Speaker 1: let me step in here for a second, because you know,
Speaker 1: we we glossed over something that you know it was
Speaker 1: was a cataclysmic event in your life, and that is
Speaker 1: the getting run over by an ambulance. We just you
Speaker 1: can't really say that sentence and then just go on,
Speaker 1: Um you were, I mean you had been through a lot, right,
Speaker 1: you were at Lehman Brothers, I believe when the financial
Speaker 1: meltdown happened, and that was just its own you know, uh,
Speaker 1: just the nine eleven of that industry, if you will.
Speaker 1: And so you had and gil Gil I worked in
Speaker 1: I worked at you know, the wealth Fancial Center on
Speaker 1: nine eleven two. So that right, uh, yeah, it's yes,
Speaker 1: I it was a very eventful fifteen years. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but go on, well, no, no, no, no, what was
Speaker 1: your by the way, what was your nine eleven experience?
Speaker 1: Real quick? I mean, how was that that day? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was surreal. Um. Our building was attached to the
Speaker 1: North tower via footbridge. Um so, I you know, walked
Speaker 1: through that lobby every morning in about a quarter or
Speaker 1: seven um so. And and I actually had a window
Speaker 1: desk to the west Side Highway, and I remember the
Speaker 1: first explosion, the first plane hitting. I actually looked down
Speaker 1: from my window because I thought maybe it was an exploit.
Speaker 1: I thought a car accident or so I looked down
Speaker 1: and did not see this sort of the impact um
Speaker 1: For about three or four seconds um so, it was
Speaker 1: still unclear what happened in the North tower with you
Speaker 1: just see the gaping hole and the smoke starting to
Speaker 1: build up. So there's a lot of confusion about what
Speaker 1: was going on. I thought it was a gas line,
Speaker 1: A great person, you know, that was just my guests.
Speaker 1: There's an explosion up there, um and then you you know,
Speaker 1: you start hearing the reports was a small plane. Um.
Speaker 1: But we're still at the windows, and then we see
Speaker 1: the second plane come in. It was at forty minutes later,
Speaker 1: I think it was um and then you have no
Speaker 1: no question at all about what's going on. Um, and
Speaker 1: that was left the building and actually never walked in
Speaker 1: that building again. Uh we yeah, And I lived I
Speaker 1: lived on eighteenth Street at the time, so walked uh
Speaker 1: uh stayed down there. And the people who know Lower Manhattan,
Speaker 1: their Studenson High School is was just north of the
Speaker 1: North Tower. H and at that point it wasn't so
Speaker 1: built up, so there were actually parking lots and baseball
Speaker 1: fields and tennis courts right on the west side Highway.
Speaker 1: So stood there out in sort of the baseball fields
Speaker 1: for quite some time watching um and uh that that
Speaker 1: that was, you know, that's that's seared. It's uh that
Speaker 1: that was. That was tough. I mean you live, so
Speaker 1: you live through then, and so many people, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone in New York has a as a nine eleven story,
Speaker 1: and one more tragic than the previous. So you you
Speaker 1: lead the entire New York experience. So you lived through
Speaker 1: nine eleven, uh, two thousand eight Lehman brothers, and you
Speaker 1: write extensively about Lehman Brothers in your book Trading Basis
Speaker 1: how a Wall Street trader made a fortune betting on baseball, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I think was the second subtitle to
Speaker 1: that book of a not mistake, And wasn't there like
Speaker 1: a not necessarily in that order subtitle. My subtitle, which
Speaker 1: was on the hardcover was a story about Wall Street
Speaker 1: gambling in baseball, not necessarily in that orders right. And
Speaker 1: the when the paperback books rights were sold from my
Speaker 1: publisher to a different publisher. They in the publishing industry,
Speaker 1: the publisher really owns the cover, the outside of the book.
Speaker 1: You own the words inside. So they changed the subtitle
Speaker 1: to make it a little more uh dramatic. I was
Speaker 1: never pleased with it. Um it to me, that wasn't
Speaker 1: the story, um, and fortune is such a I guess
Speaker 1: relative word. Um. I would never have characterized that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's publishing and uh the stories inside but so yeah
Speaker 1: and so again. So you live this in it just
Speaker 1: just the quintessential New York experience. Uh, one tragedy of
Speaker 1: after the next, one of a different kind uh than
Speaker 1: the other. And then you have your own personal one
Speaker 1: with the literally and you know you glossed over it,
Speaker 1: but you were on the ground and we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to go to break here, so I want to pick
Speaker 1: this up right after the break, Joe. But you were
Speaker 1: literally on the ground in in New York City looking
Speaker 1: down at your mangled leg um, And you know, I
Speaker 1: get chills even sort of saying that, because we all.
Speaker 1: I mean, when I ruptured my achilles, right, there's that
Speaker 1: moment where it's all surreal and it's all happened to you.
Speaker 1: This was I mean what I what happened to me
Speaker 1: is nothing would happen to you like your leg was
Speaker 1: just destroyed, and this is where it transformed. As you
Speaker 1: point out, you what if I apply these principles to
Speaker 1: my first love of sports betting. I want to get
Speaker 1: into that summer of when we when you did the
Speaker 1: betting there, and what your biggest takeaway from your experience
Speaker 1: for half a baseball season was in Las Vegas. From that,
Speaker 1: and then move on to what I think is the
Speaker 1: biggest single story, untold story in all of Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: and Joe was front lines for that has to do
Speaker 1: with a big betting company coming back right here on
Speaker 1: the numbers game at beast. In these sports betting now
Speaker 1: it is Gil Alexander live in San Francisco, San Francisco,
Speaker 1: rather doing betting profiles throughout the pandemic. So interesting that
Speaker 1: Joe Peter is right across the city for me, uh,
Speaker 1: west of where I am, and you know, we'd have
Speaker 1: to arrange to even meet each other obviously at these
Speaker 1: very strange times. But going through his story, and it
Speaker 1: just gets more fascinating, uh from here, as if you
Speaker 1: hadn't lived through enough. By the way, was the use
Speaker 1: of the word mangled appropriate when you look down at
Speaker 1: your leg when the ambulance hit you? Yes? And and
Speaker 1: you and I being of similar ages, and we certainly
Speaker 1: remember Joe thisman. I I viewed it as a Jim situation.
Speaker 1: I was. I was there for the Joe Heisman game.
Speaker 1: By the way, Yes, that was not fun. By the way,
Speaker 1: if you want to, if I can recommend anything for you,
Speaker 1: the East six the East sixty episode on Alex Smith
Speaker 1: is just a site to behold. I can't watch it,
Speaker 1: could not, will not be able to think about that. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm recommending it to the wrong person, but anybody out there, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can tell you. By the way, and here's a
Speaker 1: ridiculous detail. But for some reason, my my dumb human
Speaker 1: brain wants to know this. What intersection was this in
Speaker 1: New York City? Oh gosh, West Broadway and Uh, Church,
Speaker 1: I think down So it was right. Uh, it was
Speaker 1: right at the corner of at the time where the
Speaker 1: proposed mosque was going to be. Um. So it was.
Speaker 1: I lived on Murray Street, right, We had an apartment
Speaker 1: on Murray Street for my work in New York, and
Speaker 1: it was just a blocks out. That's a West Broadway,
Speaker 1: and I think it was Church, which was a block
Speaker 1: south of Murray And uh. Because of the location and
Speaker 1: because of the police presence UM that was around there
Speaker 1: at the time, I was attended to very quickly um
Speaker 1: by by some city personnel. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it was a very uh, it was a sick It
Speaker 1: was an intersection therefore that had cameras all over um
Speaker 1: and the f d n Y claimed that there was
Speaker 1: no footage of the accident. When it came to uh
Speaker 1: discussed the legal ramifications. Yes, yeah, okay, so uh you're
Speaker 1: you're convalescing. You're like, hey, I can apply my Wall
Speaker 1: Street principles to the love of my life baseball betting.
Speaker 1: I love that as a child. It produces the book
Speaker 1: Trading Spaces and as you say, uh, a great case
Speaker 1: study for them that they were like, look, let's let's
Speaker 1: put this into action for the epilogue of the book,
Speaker 1: go to Vegas and uh put this to the test.
Speaker 1: And so you go there, and I was with you
Speaker 1: for much of this. I know you stayed. Uh, you
Speaker 1: stayed to your little kitchen at place at Trump over
Speaker 1: there and you uh, you did this every day and
Speaker 1: in the end. Um, First of all, was it a
Speaker 1: winning or losing proposition? Let's get that out of the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was not. Gil. The period I was there was
Speaker 1: July four through the end of the season. I had
Speaker 1: had a great twenty eleven twelve got off to a
Speaker 1: good start, and July in the first five weeks July
Speaker 1: through the second week of August, uh was brutal. I
Speaker 1: remember it was highlighted by the very first night there
Speaker 1: with Sabathia and Rivera blowing afore nothing lead and which
Speaker 1: should have told me something. And I think it was
Speaker 1: July one, and later in in I think later in July.
Speaker 1: The low point might have been the third week in
Speaker 1: July when the nationals blue and Strasbourg on the mound
Speaker 1: blew like an eight nothing lead to the braves and
Speaker 1: that was that. That was that was the low point.
Speaker 1: So it's a very brutal rough three and a half
Speaker 1: week start. UM the got me in a hold that
Speaker 1: I didn't get out of for so which maybe, of
Speaker 1: course feel bad for the outside capital that had come
Speaker 1: in UM, and which is obviously why I don't like
Speaker 1: the title of that book either, because that was something
Speaker 1: that was never emphasized. What was really I was trying
Speaker 1: to emphasize was the building of a model UM and
Speaker 1: the like we said, the critical reasoning overlap between these
Speaker 1: UH pursuits. Yeah, I can remember a night or two.
Speaker 1: I remember once when a usually mild manner Joe Peter
Speaker 1: got into it with other people in his sports book
Speaker 1: over the outcome of a game. They had no idea.
Speaker 1: How much was writing on it for you, oh, Dan Strailing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he got cold man, he got called up. This is
Speaker 1: this is where I'm telling because I don't think i've
Speaker 1: I think we've talked. We said it, we should tell
Speaker 1: this on the air sometime and and never did. But
Speaker 1: I'll try to make it quick, Dan Straili. This was
Speaker 1: probably August, late August, I believe, got called up by
Speaker 1: the A to make his first start, and at the
Speaker 1: time I was using a lot of minor league analytics
Speaker 1: from one of the original Baseball prospective guys play Davenport
Speaker 1: and the Numbers did not like dance trailing and it
Speaker 1: was so they were playing Toronto that night and the
Speaker 1: thing opened. I think that at the A's of like
Speaker 1: uh minus one and I'm I'm piling on Toronto. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what, Joe, I hate to say that, I gotta,
Speaker 1: I gotta take a break. I want to tell the
Speaker 1: Dance Raili story. And I wanted to get the biggest
Speaker 1: takeaway from because I think the bigger point is your
Speaker 1: biggest takeaway from your Wall Street background of how ridiculous
Speaker 1: you found the sports betting industry in Vegas, obviously pre legalization.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that, and then the biggest story ever
Speaker 1: to coming back on a numbers game at Visa with
Speaker 1: Joe Peter right here on these Sports Betting Network with you, Alexander.
Speaker 1: A numbers game proudly brought to you by man scaped
Speaker 1: dot Com and Escape dot Com is the tools for
Speaker 1: your Emily Jules. You get plus three shipping with the
Speaker 1: code of Visa and man escaped dot Com. That's off
Speaker 1: at man escaped dot Com with promo code v s
Speaker 1: I N It's Gill Alexander Joe Peter kind enough to
Speaker 1: uh join us today on the show. The author of
Speaker 1: Trading Basses and Joe Peter's Tour Guide presents a twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen Masters preview. My goodness. We'll get to that eventually too.
Speaker 1: But let's get back into this story here. This is
Speaker 1: from This is your summer in Las Vegas betting baseball.
Speaker 1: This will start out as a very funny story but
Speaker 1: will actually lead into the broadest point that was your
Speaker 1: biggest takeaway of that summer. Yeah, so, as we were
Speaker 1: talking before the break, Dancetrail is making his debut've I'm
Speaker 1: modeled pretty hard a getst dad to fade him, and
Speaker 1: Toronto is an underdog that night, I think it opened
Speaker 1: like minus one five plus one, and I start putting
Speaker 1: money on Toronto and and as can happen, you you
Speaker 1: you get some limits um and you know, and then
Speaker 1: you wait and then you you can go back to
Speaker 1: the counter. But meanwhile, in the two hours before the
Speaker 1: leading up to the game, the gods keep going up
Speaker 1: on on Oakland. So it's price for me and Toronto
Speaker 1: is getting better and better. But by the same token,
Speaker 1: now that's making my my um expected as I calculated
Speaker 1: it eggs higher and higher, which is demanding to put
Speaker 1: more and more of the funding, until it eventually reached
Speaker 1: a a two percent play, which which meant it was
Speaker 1: gonna be about a play. Um so that's what I
Speaker 1: have on on the game, maybe at a blended rate.
Speaker 1: And you're right, and I'll let you come back to that.
Speaker 1: The way I had to bet that I found aggravating
Speaker 1: in that I was being limited and then they would
Speaker 1: make the price of better as I'm sitting there. Um
Speaker 1: so yeah, well, and and that was just that's not
Speaker 1: the way we work on Wall Street when we pray stocks,
Speaker 1: and and there's a much more efficient way to do it,
Speaker 1: and we can get to that. But so yeah, so
Speaker 1: and of course Dan Stailer is in trouble all night
Speaker 1: and but yeah, he's stranding guys that you know, some
Speaker 1: eight percent clip or something, and I think it's four
Speaker 1: to entering the night and I'm just sulking, like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm very quiet. I'm sinking in my chair. I'm at
Speaker 1: the west Gate and it uh. I can't remember who
Speaker 1: the closer was for Oakland at the time, but it
Speaker 1: was again a guy that I did not like, and
Speaker 1: it was clear he was hanging sliders. You could just
Speaker 1: see it, and I'm like, somebody's gonna jump on one,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, one runner on two outs, somebody tied
Speaker 1: it on a hanging slider and and drilled it into
Speaker 1: the left field, and I must have come out of
Speaker 1: my seat five six ft in the air, and so
Speaker 1: it's tying the game at four and because I could
Speaker 1: see it coming, and I just exploded and and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I made some sound. And there was a
Speaker 1: group of like six guys to my right and they
Speaker 1: they're looking and the one guy goes, guy has ten
Speaker 1: dollars on the over and if the only knew that
Speaker 1: set me off, that's when it just then it was
Speaker 1: essentially me verse eight guys and that that game ended
Speaker 1: up going in the fift or sixteenth inning, um, And
Speaker 1: so it was like the it was. It was a
Speaker 1: terrible experience. And and of course Opened won the game
Speaker 1: in like sixteen innings, So yeah, it was it was
Speaker 1: Coca Crisp threw out a guy in like the thirteenth
Speaker 1: from uh deep and left field. It was. It was painful, um.
Speaker 1: But so what it what it was representative of was
Speaker 1: the thing that I remember most from that summer, which
Speaker 1: is from your Wall Street background. Again you're like, this
Speaker 1: is so primitive the way they do business here. Explain that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have something on Wall Street we call sales trading.
Speaker 1: And you know there's traders who are your market makers,
Speaker 1: and then there's people who are trying to uh there,
Speaker 1: you know, salesman brokers, you can call what you want.
Speaker 1: We call them sales traders. And what there there's an
Speaker 1: art to sales trading and and what it is, it's
Speaker 1: it's an attempt to bring buyers and sellers together and
Speaker 1: find that price discovery. UM, hopefully maybe after the market
Speaker 1: maker has stepped in and started by maybe committing some
Speaker 1: capital and so to me. And this happened over and
Speaker 1: over in the summer, whether I was at the Win
Speaker 1: or this night happened to be at the Westgate. UM.
Speaker 1: I did almost all my business there. And the third
Speaker 1: one was The Venetian, which was a Canter book, which
Speaker 1: was my first introduction to Canter. And we can get
Speaker 1: into that and later into something in the summer Riviera.
Speaker 1: UH turned their book over to William Hill. That was
Speaker 1: William Hill's first outpost in Vegas. UH and that was
Speaker 1: not surprisingly a bad experience, but it was what used
Speaker 1: to bother me was I would be limited on a
Speaker 1: bet and I would be sitting there and they knew me.
Speaker 1: You know, at this point I'm in every day and
Speaker 1: the odds would go up essentially at a better price
Speaker 1: than I was trying to get when they were limiting me.
Speaker 1: And I didn't understand why nobody was ever saying, hey Joe,
Speaker 1: come here. You know, we were you know, either we
Speaker 1: got somebody on the other side like how much would
Speaker 1: you do here? You know, And that's the art of
Speaker 1: sales trading. It's knowing your customer, it's opening them up
Speaker 1: two so that you can put together a bigger trade.
Speaker 1: And I viewed that as a huge opportunity, especially if
Speaker 1: whilst if, if the state and the industry was trying
Speaker 1: to attract the entity betters. To me, one of the
Speaker 1: reasons they were never going to succeed is they didn't
Speaker 1: know how to handle entities. They didn't know how to
Speaker 1: sales trade in my parlance. Um, So that that was,
Speaker 1: you know, among that was one of my observations the
Speaker 1: industry that summer UM and I think that was the
Speaker 1: other thing you asked for. My takeaway was it's a grind.
Speaker 1: I mean that that was a grind. Um. Cantor was
Speaker 1: the only one that that had anything that resembled mobile
Speaker 1: batting at the time, which is kind of funny story
Speaker 1: in itself. But that led me because I tried to
Speaker 1: get to know everyone. That led me to meeting a
Speaker 1: few times with Liam Madus, who at the time was
Speaker 1: the CEO of Cantor, and I became fascinated with their
Speaker 1: business model. Became fascinated with their business model, which again
Speaker 1: I don't want to run into a break and get
Speaker 1: that started, but essentially, UM Joe's experience that again from
Speaker 1: the walls read background, realizing some of the inefficiencies uh
Speaker 1: in how Vegas. Uh sports books do businesses. By the way, UH,
Speaker 1: that part has not changed to this day. It's not
Speaker 1: as if that model has been adopted in any way.
Speaker 1: UM sports books are going to do with sports books do.
Speaker 1: But it it, it got you fascinated in in the busines,
Speaker 1: this operations. And then maybe maybe this is a stretch
Speaker 1: to say this, but lad Jodah, I kind of wanna
Speaker 1: take over in a certain way. UM, those are my words,
Speaker 1: not Joe's. We'll get into Joe's involvement, Uh, with the story.
Speaker 1: The biggest story that has been untold I would say
Speaker 1: in the three years of Visa and the biggest story
Speaker 1: that has been untold um mostly because most people didn't
Speaker 1: know about it. I did, but there was never a
Speaker 1: story to actually go on air with. Was the sale
Speaker 1: of CG technology that was out there for a very
Speaker 1: long time for a song was available for a song,
Speaker 1: relatively speaking, Joe's involvement with that and how its origins
Speaker 1: may have actually been in the greatest game Wall Street
Speaker 1: ever played. Joe's got some more. Joe's got some roots
Speaker 1: in that as well. Trust me, this is good coming
Speaker 1: back on a numbers game and Visa these sports betting network.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to a numbers game with Jill Alexander. Don't forget.
Speaker 1: Now is the time to become a Visa Plus subscriber.
Speaker 1: It's free. You won't have to decide what you want
Speaker 1: to do, pay or cancel until at least one of
Speaker 1: the major sports returns. Just gonna Visa dot Com slash
Speaker 1: subscribed to sign up. That's Visa dot Com slash subscribe.
Speaker 1: It's Gill Alexander, it is Joe Peter, author of Trading
Speaker 1: Basses and Joe Peter's Master's Tour Guide, which we'll get into,
Speaker 1: but first this story, which is okay, so you've gotten
Speaker 1: to this point. Uh, you started to meet some of
Speaker 1: the guys over there at Uh it was Cancer Gaming
Speaker 1: back in the day, then it became CG technology. Take
Speaker 1: us from there, and uh explain to us how deep
Speaker 1: this actually got. Yeah, So, as I mentioned that summer,
Speaker 1: I saw, you know, a lot of benefficiencies, and what
Speaker 1: I saw with Cantor was, um, you know, so here
Speaker 1: so here, I'm complaining that there there's an entity betting
Speaker 1: law that that nobody is attempting to take advantage of.
Speaker 1: There is, um there are which would acquire, you know,
Speaker 1: pockets of capital, right to commit themselves to to sort
Speaker 1: of uh to being batting entities. UM. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, you have one UM sports book in Vegas
Speaker 1: and and and let's give them credit, they sort of
Speaker 1: pioneered the outsourced uh the outsourced sports book. They probably
Speaker 1: helped the experience for everybody because everyone had to step
Speaker 1: up their game somewhat when Cantor first took over the
Speaker 1: Venetian and uh what Emerald Legati's Uh, those were good
Speaker 1: experiences for the customer. UM so they they had some
Speaker 1: they had some innovative ideas, and but to me, the
Speaker 1: gold mine that they had was via their parent, Cantor Fitzgerald.
Speaker 1: They talked to the largest pools of capital in the
Speaker 1: United States every single day that they were trading stocks
Speaker 1: and bonds. This would have been such an easy energy
Speaker 1: to tell them about how they were going to launch
Speaker 1: the sort of the the entity betting sales coverage in Nevada,
Speaker 1: and that all would require would be for these um
Speaker 1: you know, for somebody one of these funds to put
Speaker 1: someone in Nevada. To me, Cantor was the perfect conduit
Speaker 1: to do all this. And then also, um, as you
Speaker 1: kind of touched on, I had a hand in, you know,
Speaker 1: the creation of of some derivative like betting products, uh
Speaker 1: markets essentially that were extremely popular on the street. And
Speaker 1: I thought, were you know, it was gonna I thought
Speaker 1: it would enhance the user experience, um if they could
Speaker 1: ever be rolled out you know, legally in a sports book.
Speaker 1: So I viewed at the time, I was like, man,
Speaker 1: Cantor is this is this is an organization that that
Speaker 1: is really well suited to do a lot of things.
Speaker 1: The problem was, as we know, um, you know they
Speaker 1: had the wrong guys in the seats. Uh they uh
Speaker 1: you know you said they changed their name. I kind
Speaker 1: of view it as an airline that changed their name
Speaker 1: after they plow into the side of the mountain. You
Speaker 1: know they Oh, people forget that the name used to
Speaker 1: be Allegheny. Um it's um so. Yeah, they had problems,
Speaker 1: but those problems resulted in the asset essentially being orphaned
Speaker 1: um at the you know, by the financial institution. So
Speaker 1: here you have an orphaned asset that they want to
Speaker 1: spin off and get rid of eventually can and Gerald
Speaker 1: CG Technology. That's right. And you know, because after they
Speaker 1: had run in the legal problems that I think they
Speaker 1: were viewing it as not a core business and more
Speaker 1: trouble than its worry Now me, I'm like, this is
Speaker 1: also on the cusp of perhaps of being repealed, Like
Speaker 1: this is at this timing, couldn't be better. They want
Speaker 1: to essentially give this away. Um. So I put together
Speaker 1: um A. I became aware of it and and you
Speaker 1: know got inside, you know, I was able to as
Speaker 1: a as a serious buyer, you know, was was shown
Speaker 1: the books and signed n d as essentially to really
Speaker 1: understand the business and and I put together the financial
Speaker 1: backing to do it. Um, we couldn't pull it off.
Speaker 1: And as I like I said, because they're nd as
Speaker 1: you know, I can say that there were issues that
Speaker 1: price couldn't remedy in making the sale, just couldn't get
Speaker 1: the the the you know sort of the money backers comfortable.
Speaker 1: And these are professional dcs, UM with some with some
Speaker 1: items and and and it was fair enough I understood.
Speaker 1: So then I tried a different tact, which was to
Speaker 1: uh and and so essentially something for some of those
Speaker 1: items show is it is it as benign as I mean,
Speaker 1: they're not benign, but is it the leastes that were
Speaker 1: part of that or something worse than that? When you
Speaker 1: have lease's guilt, if there's something like that, you can
Speaker 1: usually remedy that with price. Right, Like it was stuff
Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, I can't go be on that.
Speaker 1: But right if it were just something like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is an unfavorable lease, we're gonna have to lower the price,
Speaker 1: and and like if you couldn't agree on price, that's
Speaker 1: one thing. But this was just something that you couldn't remedy. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, some some items there couldn't be remedied with
Speaker 1: you know, with with and one would one would be
Speaker 1: sort of. One thing that venture capitalists are um are
Speaker 1: don't like is they don't like regulation that can change
Speaker 1: without notice. So and to be fair to backers, um
Speaker 1: they you know, so a state anytime the state can
Speaker 1: come in and change the rules. UM that that of
Speaker 1: course it can be that that that can cause some hesitation.
Speaker 1: So you put that with then some items at the
Speaker 1: actual asset um and it just couldn't pull it off.
Speaker 1: So my idea was, Okay, I still want to run
Speaker 1: this thing. Let me try running it as it is,
Speaker 1: you know, put me and so I I went to
Speaker 1: the company and just I I tried so hard. Let
Speaker 1: me run this. This is worth so much more than
Speaker 1: you know it is if we you know, here's my
Speaker 1: ideas for the synergy with the with the financial industry, etcetera. UM,
Speaker 1: perhaps is gonna be passed, There is going to be repealed.
Speaker 1: You've got a technology play. Essentially, this is gonna be
Speaker 1: plugged in play. This is why the vcs were so
Speaker 1: interested in it. They do it as a software play,
Speaker 1: not a you know, not a gaming play. And these
Speaker 1: guys they're really a data company, right. That was the
Speaker 1: course data. That's that's another arm. That's another arm. It's
Speaker 1: a data element, yes, um. And you know because market
Speaker 1: makers we understand. Believe me, when I was a market maker,
Speaker 1: you wanted, well, it's there's just there's ways to run
Speaker 1: that business profitably, even if you are at an informational disadvantage.
Speaker 1: And that is something that Cantor should know as well
Speaker 1: as anyone. UM, So we don't. We don't worry, you
Speaker 1: know about you know, Spanky and Rufus can come in.
Speaker 1: We'll still make money off that. And then Chris knows
Speaker 1: that Let the South Point is an extremely well run book. UM.
Speaker 1: I really like how they approached the business. But just
Speaker 1: all those things combined it was great. But I'm telling
Speaker 1: you Gil that the people at Cannard there were donkeys. Um.
Speaker 1: For one thing, they refused to believe. It came to
Speaker 1: me from the highest levels of Cantor that sports betting
Speaker 1: will never be legal anywhere at Nevada because Sheldon Adelson
Speaker 1: has guaranteed me that. And I was like, you mean,
Speaker 1: Sheldon Adelson that just got clowned by Mark Davis. That
Speaker 1: that guy, that's who you're that's who weird to your
Speaker 1: weather vane. And you know that doesn't go that doesn't
Speaker 1: go through well necessarily, but it it. I couldn't get
Speaker 1: them to understand the potential that was there um and
Speaker 1: it just I couldn't. I couldn't pull it off. And
Speaker 1: eventually they gave away the assets um because it uh uh.
Speaker 1: And it was too bad, because they really did do
Speaker 1: some innovations. Um. You know that they now the problem
Speaker 1: when I say the wrong guy was in the seat.
Speaker 1: It was astounding to be how many people within the
Speaker 1: industry um management turned off just with sort of their
Speaker 1: approach um when they got here. Even I when I
Speaker 1: had an attorney uh to sort of start the licensing
Speaker 1: um for me um he he he laughed because he said,
Speaker 1: you know, we're just kind of talking about some stuff,
Speaker 1: and even he had a story about cancer management and
Speaker 1: and he just keeps and his words were, they could
Speaker 1: have gotten so much more done with the different attitude.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah, we're gonna change that. But that
Speaker 1: was you know, never got to and but that would
Speaker 1: have been fun. I mean I remember you describing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember you describing at the time. As it turns
Speaker 1: out that cannor Fitzgerald hates their own business. They hate
Speaker 1: their own business arm that is CG Technology, And you know,
Speaker 1: it explains a lot for why when PASSA was deemed
Speaker 1: unconstitutional and sports betting was legalized, that we heard about
Speaker 1: draftings and every company under the sun moving in that
Speaker 1: we never heard a whisper, right, not even a whisper
Speaker 1: from CG Technology during that time, and a lot of
Speaker 1: that explains why that's the case. By the way, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you're allowed to tell me this, um,
Speaker 1: but just for giggles, and by the way, just for
Speaker 1: a factual sake, William Hill did by the assets of
Speaker 1: a cantor gaming of CG Technology at the time. In uh,
Speaker 1: that's a vague way of describing it. They bought the
Speaker 1: assets of CG Technology, But that's what's been reported two
Speaker 1: years ago, three years ago. If I had uh twenty
Speaker 1: million lying around, could I have bought the entirety of
Speaker 1: CG Technology? Oh I, I you could have made an offer.
Speaker 1: I think you would have been Uh, you wouldn't have been.
Speaker 1: I don't believe you would have been laughed out of
Speaker 1: the room. Well said, okay, Uh, we'll try to work
Speaker 1: on the technology. I know it's bouncing in and out
Speaker 1: and we uh, we're trying to get every little detail
Speaker 1: at Joe talked about. We'll do one more segment, Joe,
Speaker 1: because I want to come back how you transitioned after this, uh,
Speaker 1: from your entire baseball betting experience, the flirtation more than
Speaker 1: a flirtation obviously with CG technology, and how you transitioned
Speaker 1: to golf and wrote this Joe Peters Masters Tour guide Book,
Speaker 1: which we had you on the air talking about, um,
Speaker 1: the discoveries you made. Tiger eventually ends up winning the Masters.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you had to be uh sort of uh
Speaker 1: fortified by that or at least validated by that. We'll
Speaker 1: get into that transition, uh and maybe even get some
Speaker 1: thoughts on how you feel about baseball saying, yeah, none
Speaker 1: of these agreements come out to come to pass. We
Speaker 1: may just end up playing a fifty game schedule. That'll
Speaker 1: be fascinating. Joe Peter the guest today author, uh former
Speaker 1: Wall Street and uh Wall Street exec and uh find
Speaker 1: out what Joe is doing these days, which should probably
Speaker 1: a master earlier. But we'll we'll talk about that coming
Speaker 1: back right here. On a numbers game at Visa. It's
Speaker 1: a numbers game with your host Ji Alexander believe in
Speaker 1: analys our number two of a numbers gape right here
Speaker 1: at Visa these sports betting network kill Alexander Serious x M,
Speaker 1: Channel two four, Visa dot Com, the Visa Boobo Slate game,
Speaker 1: plus Joe Peter with us still uh kind enough to
Speaker 1: hang out through the break here and Joe, I was
Speaker 1: just telling you off air, you know one of the
Speaker 1: nice things about you know, you try to make lemonade
Speaker 1: out of lemons. And so this pandemic obviously has been
Speaker 1: the most surreal, strange time, uh, in so many ways
Speaker 1: in all of our lives. And you know, we gotta
Speaker 1: do a show. And you know, when this started, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm gonna talk about. You know,
Speaker 1: s VP would say the same thing on Sports Center.
Speaker 1: I don't know what we're gonna talk about, but we'll
Speaker 1: figure it out. Uh. And so one of the things
Speaker 1: that I decided to do was go into this sort
Speaker 1: of Roy Firestone mode for sports betting. And it's so
Speaker 1: you know, because if not now, when right, I'll never
Speaker 1: get the chance to do this in the middle of
Speaker 1: a sports season. But it's been so fascinating because you know,
Speaker 1: you get the originators like Alan Boston. On one end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum, you get the Spanky's of the world.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't even say the spankis of the Worldcau Spanky
Speaker 1: is one of a kind on his end of the
Speaker 1: spectrum in what he does. UM with his network in
Speaker 1: sports betting, you're I don't know if I know a
Speaker 1: guy who does not deal in sports betting on a
Speaker 1: day to day basis that is as much a part
Speaker 1: of sports betting, or probably is more entrenched in sports
Speaker 1: betting without actively being in it as you have been
Speaker 1: over the years. For all of these reasons you did that.
Speaker 1: You did trading bases, you had that experience, then this
Speaker 1: entire canner gaming arc that went on for years, first
Speaker 1: trying to buy them, putting it together the money, than saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, all you don't want this, let me
Speaker 1: run it. Um And so I just find that fascinating.
Speaker 1: That tells me, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: that there's still this itch for you. And I wonder
Speaker 1: if that itch has been scratched for the last time
Speaker 1: or if you think it will come up again. I
Speaker 1: would still like to help innovate the industry with some
Speaker 1: product offerings. UM. I still think I have that to
Speaker 1: bring to the table for somebody. That's what I would
Speaker 1: call the cell side. That that's the you know, the
Speaker 1: the originator side of the counter. So I would uh
Speaker 1: that that is something I wouldn't that sort of back
Speaker 1: Bernard as exploring, because I did go One of the
Speaker 1: other things I did that I didn't mention about in
Speaker 1: the in the CG arc was through you know a
Speaker 1: lot of the people that I hadn't met, our entities
Speaker 1: I had met. I went to just about everybody I
Speaker 1: could that was an existing book to talk about a
Speaker 1: strategic um uh transaction, which is usually needs eminet you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of merger or acquisition. I wanted to team
Speaker 1: up UM and there there was a case where original
Speaker 1: management at CG had burned so many bridges that just
Speaker 1: mentioning what I was trying to do make people learing
Speaker 1: and which was you know, that's take that's they made
Speaker 1: that bed um. I was going to try to change
Speaker 1: that culture. But that was that was certainly an obstacle
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, um, all right, So you know you
Speaker 1: go through this and then and the last iteration of
Speaker 1: Joe Peter that my audience is aware of, and this
Speaker 1: is this is what's been so amazing over the last decade,
Speaker 1: Joe is you've had so many different tentacles. I said
Speaker 1: this at the beginning. Then you go golf. Uh, and
Speaker 1: you do Joe Peter's twenty nineteen Tour guide Master's Preview,
Speaker 1: which is like this pivot where everybody was like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: what's Peter doing? I thought he was the baseball guy.
Speaker 1: I didn't know he was into golf. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: was this was no run of the mill thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: You were you were like, I'm gonna do this the
Speaker 1: way that I do everything, and I'm gonna deep dive it.
Speaker 1: And you got access to something nobody else else has
Speaker 1: ever done, has gotten access to. I should say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. So again you're always looking like, what what
Speaker 1: would the hook for a book be? Because the first
Speaker 1: thing they when you're write in the book, the first
Speaker 1: thing you really should ask yourself is could this be
Speaker 1: a magazine article? Um? And if it could be, then
Speaker 1: you don't have a book. Uh. And so what I
Speaker 1: as I was diving into golf anel that it's and
Speaker 1: I saw a much less explored subject matter than certainly baseball.
Speaker 1: I had what we didn't talk about was. I had
Speaker 1: been writing at ESPN for three years, and I felt
Speaker 1: like I was done with baseball. Um, let me let
Speaker 1: me just step in real quick here, let me just
Speaker 1: step in real quick, Joe, to identify ourselves. It's Gil, Alexander,
Speaker 1: Joe Peter right here in a numbers game at Visa
Speaker 1: and these sports betting at word Series XM channel two
Speaker 1: O fourth. Yeah, I completely clossed over that you wrote
Speaker 1: baseball for ESPN for so many years. Go ahead, I'm sorry, yeah, mostly,
Speaker 1: but some of it was on the main side as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: and just kind of felt like, you know, I had
Speaker 1: been writing those previews now for like seven years, every team,
Speaker 1: you know, seven to a thousand words a team? How
Speaker 1: many more? How many different ways could I say clusterlock right?
Speaker 1: Like I was? I didn't. I didn't feel like I had. Plus,
Speaker 1: the analytics had improved so much. I didn't really feel
Speaker 1: like I had much more to add their. Um, Joe,
Speaker 1: the rubber hit the road when that Hamilton's piece ever
Speaker 1: made the made the light of day. That's the truth.
Speaker 1: There was some bad, there was some ill. I was
Speaker 1: we were we were we Yeah, well I will put
Speaker 1: it like this. We we were there there was a
Speaker 1: there were talks about full time employment. Um. At the
Speaker 1: same time, the timing chess kept being wrong um uh,
Speaker 1: whether it was just hiring freezes, layoffs elsewhere, and then
Speaker 1: when they were ready, maybe something was going on in
Speaker 1: my profession. Um. Chad left um, which which uh you
Speaker 1: know he was a big champion hind there um. But
Speaker 1: the experience overall was great. But I remember when we
Speaker 1: were talking about a full time job, I was and
Speaker 1: it was going to expand much more beyond chalk. I
Speaker 1: remember being told in two different by two different either
Speaker 1: editors of senior producers, et cetera, you know, we we
Speaker 1: need the Bill Barnwell of baseball. And at the same
Speaker 1: time I was told we would like a tone, a
Speaker 1: Bill Simmons tone without the misogyny, right, And so I
Speaker 1: wrote the I So I was like, okay, I'm taking
Speaker 1: that as a marking order, and then wrote on spec
Speaker 1: a preview for the playoffs and and yes it was.
Speaker 1: It was a Hamilton's themed one, um. And it didn't
Speaker 1: get pished at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well I did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean so did I um it uh And yeah
Speaker 1: that that was that to me was exactly what they
Speaker 1: were looking for and on top of that, as you know,
Speaker 1: you know, to to it, it correctly predicted every single
Speaker 1: playoff series in before they were played, so it could
Speaker 1: have been something that they would have you know, constantly
Speaker 1: been going back to. And plus, at this point we
Speaker 1: had been building up a pretty nice viewership in terms
Speaker 1: of paid views and and the video hits, etcetera. For
Speaker 1: the writings, I just kind of felt like, this is
Speaker 1: the this is the staff sort of launching pad um
Speaker 1: and yeah when when that so, I kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: I was like, A, should I be as serious about
Speaker 1: this as uh? And maybe not? And that's when I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, let's turn to something else and and
Speaker 1: golf and you were mentioning, you know, I was talking
Speaker 1: about you need a hook. Well, as I started looking
Speaker 1: into golf analytics, I could tell it wasn't heavily covered,
Speaker 1: which makes it sort of a green field for writing.
Speaker 1: But then I also found on the master's website um
Speaker 1: stroke by stroke data for uh, theen Masters UM that
Speaker 1: was comparable to the shot linked data that all you
Speaker 1: know p g A Tour analytics are based on. But
Speaker 1: because this wasn't owned by the p g A Tour
Speaker 1: or not, and not run by the PJ Tour. They
Speaker 1: didn't have this data. Um So I took it and
Speaker 1: created the book um previewing essentially the nineteen Masters and
Speaker 1: using all the data from and that was fun, totally
Speaker 1: new area, totally new readership. And uh that was that
Speaker 1: was a wonderful time. Um it I was. It was
Speaker 1: nerve racking before because unlike a baseball season where your
Speaker 1: stuff plays out of our hundred sixty two games, UM
Speaker 1: I had, I had a you know, I had a
Speaker 1: unique top ten for that tournament and by and especially
Speaker 1: the winner, having projected Tony Finale to win, and that
Speaker 1: was not that was a true projection. That was not
Speaker 1: a based on the value. This is where you should
Speaker 1: put your money, like this was my pick to win.
Speaker 1: Um and and his eyes kept getting worse as as
Speaker 1: as tea times approached. UM So I was very nervous
Speaker 1: on the eve of the of the Master's UM I
Speaker 1: did have Tiger Woods. Third, I was high down on
Speaker 1: Tiger um you know, just in I didn't really liked
Speaker 1: his futures price by any means, but in terms of
Speaker 1: you know what what I thought his potential and that
Speaker 1: he had I wrote it why he had a real
Speaker 1: chance to win, um and hopefully you know, sort of
Speaker 1: keep some people into some new stuff about that tournament.
Speaker 1: UM and you know how to handicap golf. I think
Speaker 1: it was successful because Rufus had me on his podcast
Speaker 1: and shut me down on two different topics that he
Speaker 1: did not want disclose. That's what that's exactly exactly. Do
Speaker 1: you help different versions of this Joe in the future.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about gil Gil. I dropped the March eleventh,
Speaker 1: which was the Wednesday before the I dropped it the
Speaker 1: night before the players was supposed to tee off, which
Speaker 1: was the Wednesday night that all held broke loose. And yes,
Speaker 1: preview is just in digital format UM. So it's more
Speaker 1: of an addendum. I sort of update any chapters from
Speaker 1: the original book that would be different. For instance, if
Speaker 1: it was data now I have all the twenty nineteen data,
Speaker 1: and if it was twenty nineteen projection now to chapter projection.
Speaker 1: Uh so, yes, that's there. We'll see how relevant it
Speaker 1: is in November. Obviously we're not gonna get you know,
Speaker 1: current form is going to be very different. But as
Speaker 1: I you know, as I put in the book, of
Speaker 1: course history matters more at this event than any other
Speaker 1: by a mile. So you know, we'll we'll we'll see
Speaker 1: how that uh preview goes as as well. But last year,
Speaker 1: as far as any female made my obviously those first
Speaker 1: the Saturday of the Masters was one of the most
Speaker 1: enjoyable experiences I've ever had seeing him, uh play his
Speaker 1: way into the final group on Saturday. Yeah, you're your anticipation.
Speaker 1: No one, Tony Finale had no idea how much he
Speaker 1: were into Tony Fine that day. You were more instinct
Speaker 1: in him than he might have been himself. Uh. But
Speaker 1: but Tiger ends up doing this thing. So a couple
Speaker 1: of loose ends here, uh, some of which is my fault. One.
Speaker 1: Where is that available again? Version? Yeah, that it's not.
Speaker 1: It is if you really go to my if you
Speaker 1: go to my Twitter feed, it's being sold through a
Speaker 1: an online publisher. UM. And I gosh, because it's been
Speaker 1: a couple of months, I can't even you know, the
Speaker 1: link is there in my uh in my Twitter bio. Um.
Speaker 1: And certainly as we get closer to the event, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll come on, we'll do a piece, you know, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But that it's that's the only place it's available.
Speaker 1: This was really too uh too for you know, for
Speaker 1: people who enjoyed the first one. Um, this was like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's the work I would do, and here I'm going
Speaker 1: to dump it into your lap as well. Yeah. At
Speaker 1: Magic rat SF tribute to Bruce Springsteen at Magic rat
Speaker 1: SF is Joe's Twitter. I also interrupted you. You were saying,
Speaker 1: uh rufus shut you down a couple of times, and
Speaker 1: you've got excited about saying something else. Do you remember
Speaker 1: what it was? And then I veered you of version
Speaker 1: maybe maybe come into your head tell us this for
Speaker 1: people who missed it. You uncovered as part of your book,
Speaker 1: and this has nothing to do with anything but just
Speaker 1: an amazing stat. You uncovered the greatest, maybe the greatest
Speaker 1: Tiger stat there ever was in that version. Do you
Speaker 1: remember what that was? Yeah, it was his. It's his,
Speaker 1: it's his plus stroke game streak and uncoverage unfair because
Speaker 1: Mark Brody did write about it first. At the time,
Speaker 1: I didn't know about it Mark Brody of course, being
Speaker 1: the godfather of all of all golf stats. But I
Speaker 1: did tell the story of how I stumbled on it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he nearly had a perfect year where every single
Speaker 1: UM round that he played for the entire and it
Speaker 1: was more than the calendar. It was more than the
Speaker 1: twelve month period. But so he had the Tiger, the
Speaker 1: Stroke Games Street, and that the calendar Stroke Game Street
Speaker 1: his entire two thousand season. The very last round of
Speaker 1: the of the year, which was involved a rama in
Speaker 1: Spain in November bordering a w GC event. Uh it,
Speaker 1: he lost it. He lost that streak of gaining strokes
Speaker 1: on the field. Um And I believe it was that
Speaker 1: it was in the eighties, eighty six or ninety two.
Speaker 1: It might have been eighty six straight rounds. Nobody ever
Speaker 1: gets above like in the teens. It's an unbelievable streak.
Speaker 1: We had fun talking about it. I wrote about it
Speaker 1: in the book. Um I we heard when we talked
Speaker 1: about it on air, Chris the Bear Fleika called in.
Speaker 1: He had the scorecard which I couldn't find, and it
Speaker 1: turns out he went like double triple to finish the round.
Speaker 1: He literally choked. But then it turns out he didn't
Speaker 1: choke because I heard from a guy who was at
Speaker 1: that event, and he was a Canadian guy. He was
Speaker 1: following Mike Weir, who was in the group behind Tiger.
Speaker 1: We're actually won that event. And it turns out those
Speaker 1: greens had baked out, and the seven teams at Valderrama
Speaker 1: slopes from from back to front down with a lake
Speaker 1: in front of the green, and it was apparently near
Speaker 1: impossible with the baked out green to actually put a
Speaker 1: ball on the green. And there is a story that
Speaker 1: I later found, I think from Alan Shupnick, who who
Speaker 1: was in the locker room after tiger rooms last round
Speaker 1: of two thousand and Tiger was taking a club and
Speaker 1: destroying his bag and locker. He was so mad about
Speaker 1: the condition of the course and all those go together.
Speaker 1: And the funny thing is, I still don't think Tiger
Speaker 1: knows that that's what I was. That's exactly what I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, Yeah, like, this is such a it's
Speaker 1: such an amazing thing. We don't know that even that
Speaker 1: he was even aware of that, And to if he
Speaker 1: had known and to have lost it like that, oh
Speaker 1: my goh my god, because you could say, oh, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't care about such a thing. Yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: pretty unbelievable streak Strokes gained, which is the foundation of everything.
Speaker 1: Uh in Joe Opeda's Master's Tour Guide. Uh So, for
Speaker 1: those wondering because I'm sort of bearing what you're doing now,
Speaker 1: and your dog wants to notice as well, what are you?
Speaker 1: What are you actually doing with your life these days?
Speaker 1: What does Joe Peter do on a day to day,
Speaker 1: day to day basis? Now, Yeah, I have a new
Speaker 1: job in the financial industry that I that I took
Speaker 1: last summer. And that's why the book was not a
Speaker 1: full book. Um. Uh it was. It was a new
Speaker 1: role and it it uh, it was just yeah, I
Speaker 1: love it, and it was not going to allow me
Speaker 1: the time needed to actually write a full book. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry about the dog. It's must be long time, um,
Speaker 1: but that's uh, that's what I do now. So I'm
Speaker 1: still in the financial industry and uh and that's why
Speaker 1: anything you know, these other ideas about the industry, um,
Speaker 1: and those are all sort of back Bernard. Yeah, okay, um,
Speaker 1: but you're you're you plan on? I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe you do, maybe you don't. I know that this
Speaker 1: job is all consuming for you, but um, uh, you
Speaker 1: work for who is the gentleman? You work for a
Speaker 1: hedge fund, work for Steve Cohen? Is that who it is?
Speaker 1: As is publicly available on some other sites. Uh, yes,
Speaker 1: I work for a firm. Uh, an asset management firm
Speaker 1: called Point seventy two, which was founded by a gentleman
Speaker 1: named Steve Cohen. That that is correct, okay, UM, so
Speaker 1: let me ask you this, UM, any insight on the
Speaker 1: New York Mets acquisition, because I know that he was
Speaker 1: named when it came to the Mets. Let me push
Speaker 1: the envelope here as they say, Yeah, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, we were certainly excited at the firm to
Speaker 1: hear about it. UM. I don't know anything beyond I
Speaker 1: mean the firm, the the the from what we were told,
Speaker 1: the purchase itself would not have been made by our firm,
Speaker 1: but would have been you know, it would have been
Speaker 1: a family purchase, which means it wasn't part of our business.
Speaker 1: Uh and it but it was exciting. I think you know,
Speaker 1: I was certainly excited by remember I I love the
Speaker 1: overlap between asset management and moneyball, right. I think it
Speaker 1: would have been very interesting to have an owner with
Speaker 1: an analytical UM Wall Street background. UM. I would have
Speaker 1: loved to see if if that would have worked. But
Speaker 1: you know, as far as the details, I read them
Speaker 1: just like you do in the paper. UM. And it uh.
Speaker 1: And one thing, you know, so as far as you
Speaker 1: know not coming together again, I know what you know
Speaker 1: in the paper. I will say that we have an
Speaker 1: expression on the trading floor, um that we say good mess.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe you relate to the counter to put
Speaker 1: it back down. It's quickly good mess. Uh. If the
Speaker 1: reports are correct, and how that transaction did not come
Speaker 1: to fruition A good men? Right, like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: And if you're a selling partner, who you know is
Speaker 1: is uh uh missed out on a multi billion dollar sale.
Speaker 1: And I can't imagine you're I can't imagine you're happy.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine you think. And this segues into your
Speaker 1: next piece on on baseball. I can't imagine you think
Speaker 1: that that asset is going to be worth what it
Speaker 1: was you know for quite some time now. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just I guess you know this is And I'll just
Speaker 1: wrap it up with this, Joe and I'll talk. I'll
Speaker 1: get into the fifty game thing with baseball. But it
Speaker 1: just seems to me that what's the expression just when
Speaker 1: you think you're out right, they come pull you back
Speaker 1: and you just end up through no real design, right
Speaker 1: like you didn't whether it's this job now that happens
Speaker 1: to have this flirtation with buying you know, the Mets
Speaker 1: or whatever it is what we see in reports, Um,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, just the nature of the CG
Speaker 1: technology arc, you just seem to get reeled in in
Speaker 1: a in a very I don't know, the universe. The
Speaker 1: universe just reels you into sports, betting, into sports itself.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm guessing we haven't heard the last from me.
Speaker 1: That's just a hunch. I don't know if I have
Speaker 1: nothing behind that. But I get the sense that you
Speaker 1: also feel that way, don't you like, don't don't you
Speaker 1: think that this is not your last chapter? You know,
Speaker 1: you surround yourself with people, if you like to surround
Speaker 1: yourself with people who have similar interests. Um, yeah, things
Speaker 1: can pop up, right and and uh, I think that's
Speaker 1: the uh, that's the well, that's that's the whole point
Speaker 1: of of networking, right, you know, surround yourself by smart
Speaker 1: people who have similar interests and a lot of times
Speaker 1: you don't know what's around the corner. Yeah, um yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think there's a I think there's more than
Speaker 1: one person listening to this and now and this is
Speaker 1: I'm gonna touch your horn for you, Joe that has
Speaker 1: to be listening to this and has to say themselves,
Speaker 1: this dude is unique, uh and might be the guy
Speaker 1: that I need to run this because there's so many
Speaker 1: now with legalization, there's so many different uh you know,
Speaker 1: ways to uh skin the cat in sports betting in
Speaker 1: so many different positions, so many different uh piece of
Speaker 1: expertise one needs, and so uh you know, not that
Speaker 1: you're not happy doing what you're doing, because I know
Speaker 1: it's it's bigger than most things, but that that occurs
Speaker 1: to me as well. Joe Peter, author of Trading Bases,
Speaker 1: still available where all books are sold, A great book
Speaker 1: about modeling, and then about his history, about a summer
Speaker 1: of and then Joe Peter's tour guid nineteen Masters, but
Speaker 1: now in a digital version. If you want to stay
Speaker 1: for five minutes, Joe, we could do the fifty game
Speaker 1: Baseball because I want to get your thoughts. Can I
Speaker 1: do that five more minutes? Well, let's do it, Joe Peter.
Speaker 1: I radioed him. I said, hey, would you mind stay it?
Speaker 1: After the break? Coming back on a numbers gave it
Speaker 1: visa these sports betting that welcome back to a numbers
Speaker 1: game with you, Alexander. It is all Alexander, Joe Peter
Speaker 1: hang out with us. H the Saur Chrisie Andrew still
Speaker 1: to come, uh Joe sad news from the NBA. Wes
Speaker 1: Unselled has passed away West Unselling at the age of seven.
Speaker 1: Four former Washington Bullets great and a guy who was
Speaker 1: beloved by team owner A Poland so much that he
Speaker 1: became the Bullets head coach. He was the Bullets GM,
Speaker 1: he was the Bullets VP and years after his playing career,
Speaker 1: but most notably was the NBA's m v P and
Speaker 1: Rookie of the Year. Uh So he's the m v
Speaker 1: P his rookie season in nineteen sixty nine. Uh ended
Speaker 1: up played at Louisville before that in college, ended up
Speaker 1: winning a NBA championship with the Washington Bullets. He the
Speaker 1: big Ee, Elvin Hayes and Bobby d. Bobby Dandridge led
Speaker 1: the Bullets in nine to the NBA title. I was
Speaker 1: a kid, uh a little kid when that happened. Um,
Speaker 1: And all I can say from those days is, and
Speaker 1: you pointed this out off break, because whenever I bring
Speaker 1: it up, you you made the key point that was
Speaker 1: those were the two years before Burden Magic, when the
Speaker 1: Bullets beat the Sonics in seventy eight, and the Sonics
Speaker 1: beat the Bullets in seventy nine, when the Bullets won
Speaker 1: the NBA Championship. Sports Illustrated ran the story on page
Speaker 1: seventy five. Oh, by the way, the Bullets won the
Speaker 1: NBA champion Think about that? Yeah, defferently before and after? Yeah,
Speaker 1: west un selled. What a great guy, uh passing away
Speaker 1: hit complications? Of course, the fourth complication I was thinking about.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Dan Drakes and Big Eat and then seventy
Speaker 1: five year old Tom McMillan with the gray hair, right
Speaker 1: that Tommy, Oh no, Tom McMillan was after that. Tom
Speaker 1: McMillan played for the Bullets in the eighties. Seventy five
Speaker 1: was the was when the Golden State Warriors and Rick
Speaker 1: Berry swept to the Bullets. Yeah, okay, I can just
Speaker 1: picture that those uniforms and and the mop of gray hair.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yes, r I. P. West On selled all right, Joe, Listen,
Speaker 1: A lot of our time the past couple of months
Speaker 1: has been uh filled with hair. Is the latest NHL planner,
Speaker 1: Here's the latest n The NBA really has like four
Speaker 1: plans a day, it seems like. But baseball, man, listen,
Speaker 1: I've been one of the few people this is a strike.
Speaker 1: I'm not even this has nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: pandemic anymore. To me, this is a strike. This is
Speaker 1: it feels like there's a bunch of owners we in fact,
Speaker 1: we know from reporting that there's a few owners who
Speaker 1: don't want this to get played. Uh. They had to know,
Speaker 1: the owners that their latest offer to the to the
Speaker 1: players last week was going to fall just uh dead
Speaker 1: to the to the players on arrival. But Jeff Passon
Speaker 1: reports yesterday he goes, look, this isn't being proposed officially,
Speaker 1: but there is this thing in motion that if none
Speaker 1: of these other plans work out, that major League Baseball
Speaker 1: is prepared as a default to play a fifty game
Speaker 1: range season that would pay players full pro rated salaries.
Speaker 1: And I've made this room work the whole time. Like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe baseball purists of all people have been
Speaker 1: okay with yeah, realignment d h in both leads like
Speaker 1: they're like any baseball is better than no baseball. And
Speaker 1: I've always been like, what really, what do you think
Speaker 1: about a fifty game season? Joe yeah, the whole thing.
Speaker 1: You're right, they're they're stepping all over themselves. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you say strike, I would term it a lockout more
Speaker 1: than a strike, because I think you're correct and saying
Speaker 1: it's the owners who don't want to abide by the
Speaker 1: first agreement that they struck back in March, right in
Speaker 1: terms of the pro ration. They want to take it
Speaker 1: further from there. Uh. It it is amazing to me
Speaker 1: how disorganized this industry looks compared to the especially basketball.
Speaker 1: You mean, you see you see them working together. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and this does seem certainly when you get a
Speaker 1: guy like Max Scherzer as your spokesman who would stand
Speaker 1: to lose more than anyone except like Derrick Cole right,
Speaker 1: and um by not playing. Um, he's firing heat at
Speaker 1: the owners. So it it it. I am skeptical that
Speaker 1: that anything would happen fifty games. Yeah, it's it's do
Speaker 1: you just make them division games? I mean, I don't,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't, I don't know. It's almost like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're there. It's so hard to kind of wrap your
Speaker 1: arms around what this would look like or how it
Speaker 1: would be helpful. Um, but you know, what are your
Speaker 1: thoughts do you think it's gonna happen. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: fifty games happening. First of all, who somebody's gonna win
Speaker 1: the batting title with a five fifteen batting average and
Speaker 1: somebody's gonna win the home run title with nineteen dingers, right,
Speaker 1: It's like, it says, the whole thing is so ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I'm like, who wants this? Like who would even Not
Speaker 1: only that, the every day and every week that goes
Speaker 1: by baseball will get pushed into this. You know, oh,
Speaker 1: the golf majors in football, like nobody cares at that point.
Speaker 1: Nobody cares, now, Joe, I gotta run, man, I've I've
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I apologize for keeping keeping you over, but
Speaker 1: these commercials come when I at least want them to.
Speaker 1: Thank you always, and best of luck. We'll talk soon.
Speaker 1: We'll talk before the masters