This MASSIVE SCANDAL Will Change The NBA Forever | Presented by Kalshi

00:00 - Jason Cooper (Host)
coming up in today's episode of circle back yeah, I think this is a real thing and usually you know when there's this much smoke, there is some fire. 

00:07 - Joey Knish (Host)
It's just proving where and how the fire started I can't believe like, like I know people like the typical sources and some of the outrage of like people just want to yell to the clouds over espn or get mad at anything here. But yeah this is yeah, I got three 12-inch TVs on the wall, yeah you know what this is a cell phone. 

00:28 - Flup (Host)
Jason, that's a cell phone. 

00:30 - China (Host)
How do you manage this conundrum here? 

00:36 - Flup (Host)
I give up Tuesday and Wednesday night football for them and occasionally Friday night football. 

00:39 - China (Host)
Find yourself, Kanishq, because you were very wrong about Micah Parsons that came out of my mouth. 

00:42 - Joey Knish (Host)
It hit me, that wasn't really what I was going for. You were very wrong about Micah Parsons. That came out of my mouth. It hit me like that. That wasn't really what I was going. I think there was a time in the, you know, the Cowboys heyday where he was like he was kind of in like an Al Davis disciple of like, was way ahead of the curve, you know, in some of the stuff they did with the Cowboys back in like the 90s. And then you know, in the last 20 years or so it's kind of fallen off the rocker. 

01:06 - Jacob Gramenga (Host)
So disclaimer the content presented in this show is intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions expressed are those of the host and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of any individuals or organizations mentioned. Statements made about public figures or entities are based on publicly available information and are not intended to harm or defame any person or business. This show relies on fair use of social media posts, which are presented in good faith for the purpose of commentary and criticism. Viewers and listeners are advised to form their own opinions. 

01:57 - China (Host)
It's Circle Back here on the Circles Off channel. It's part of the Hammer Betting Network and it's presented by Calisheed. This is the show where we cover the latest and the greatest stories on gambling twitter and sports twitter. Today, we're going to be joined alongside by joey kanish, of course, who's always here on the friday show. Chris deer gets right below me and then the fourth chair today will be mr china maniac china. Happy to have you on the show. How's it? 

02:20 - Jason Cooper (Host)
going. Everything's going great. Two mountain de in. I'm ready to go. Electric episode coming up here. 

02:28 - China (Host)
Buzzing off the Mountain Dews and, as people can see if you're watching on the video below my name, I don't take vacation. I don't take vacation because Jacob's not here today. I'm filling in for him. Hopefully he's having fun on his vacation, on his fourth vacation. 

02:39 - Flup (Host)
Did you not take a vacation last or like time off last week, and there was no Tuesday show? I mean what? 

02:45 - China (Host)
Well, I'm not on the Tuesday show, so technically I didn't take the vacation. Right, it was the Tuesday crew that took the vacation, not me. I was happy to fill in, but no one else wanted to work. So what am I supposed to do? Hey, how about this Comment section? Let me know if you want a show done just by myself. Maybe we'll see if we can make that happen next holiday weekend. Anyways, Kanish, you want that. Are you a fan of that or no? 

03:06 - Joey Knish (Host)
I'm a fan. I mean, it sounds like we should name it the Hammer Daily and have it coming out every day. So yeah, I could see it. 

03:13 - China (Host)
There we go. Thank you for the promo. For those who don't know, this episode is releasing on Friday. Today is the inaugural episode of the Hammer Daily at noon Eastern time over on the hammer hq youtube channel. You can find that link in the description. You can check me out. We're talking sports, all kinds of sports. Um, talk with a bunch of people, four guests per episode. It's gonna be great. Condition is gonna be joining me throughout the week as well. I think chris a couple times. It'll be great, great stuff. Um, anyways, let's dive into the show, because enough dilly-dallying. 

03:37
Here we have, like some of what feels like the biggest and most exciting sports news of the entire offseason, coming out right before the start of football season. It comes from Pablo Torre Finds Out, his podcast and he I mean he dropped an absolute whopper of an exclusive news piece here. He said Kawhi Leonard signed a $28 million endorsement deal for a no-show job with a fraudulent tree planting company funded by $50 million from clippers owner steve balmer. According to documents obtained by pablo tory, it was to circumvent the salary cap. An insider source says uh, there's a lot to cover here, um, and I really recommend, if you haven't watched this episode of pablo tory finds out. You should do it because there is a lot of context needed. I'll try and like layer in some, but yeah, like initial thoughts on this, where I mean we have potentially an owner using an outsized resource to circumvent the cap Kanish. We'll start with you. Do you have any thoughts on this? Have you watched the episode and are you fully caught up with what's happening? 

04:43 - Joey Knish (Host)
I mean, I've seen some things. I've seen cuban's response. Um, I would say it probably was some type of incentivized uh procedure of we're gonna get you an endorsement deal, type of this. Is it a gray area like that they're in in terms of actual cap circumvention? Probably. I would think this, you know, like from a strategy perspective, we can be like oh, we've got this company where you know we'll, uh, we'll invest in you. 

05:10
He didn't do any. That's probably the more of like the red flag, the guilties. He did absolutely nothing for it. Um, but is this that different from, uh, you know, phil knight, you know recruiting players to oregon, then you know signing them to Nike. For a minute, I don't know. It definitely is what I would call questionable and I'm sure the NBA will look into it. Also, pablo Torre is on a heater in terms of investigative journalism, so I love kind of what he's doing here, but I just don't know how you prove without a shadow of a doubt that this was like salary cap circumvention, even though from an outside, looking in, it definitely appears it has those, those tea leaves. 

05:54 - China (Host)
Yeah, absolutely. And like I mean Pablo Torre, he has on his desk in the episode like thousands and thousands of papers that he's like scanned through to try and find any information from these documents, because the company that they're talking about is a company that actually filed for bankruptcy, so a lot of their I believe that's what happened and a lot of their stuff went public. So he was able to scan through all this stuff, connect some dots and eventually connected Kawhi Leonard to this organization and Steve Ballmer to the organization as well. Flop. Do you have any opinion on this? Do you think that this is a common occurrence that we don't really see? Because we've seen plenty of players take, um, let's call it discounts, just to either stay with teams or move teams, like most recently, we saw a lot of people shocked about the jalen brunson signing, uh, with your new york knicks that you're wearing right there, um, and they were like, hey, that's like a lot less than he would have made. So, uh, I wonder maybe, if something was happening there. Any thoughts, thoughts on this? 

06:44 - Flup (Host)
Honestly, my first thoughts were this felt like it was a reach and like lots of the public wants to dunk on like a billionaire because they're not very popular by the common people. And then I see like Mark Cuban defending it and it seems a little weak and everyone has incentives. Like Mark Cuban obviously wants Ballmer to not do this because it looks poorly on NBA ownership which he's a part of and the public wants it to be because like it kind of goes with the narrative that the league is rigged and it's funny and it's interesting. From that point of view I kind of lean towards what what Joey is right now. 

07:21
From the outside, looking in, it looks like it is salary circumvention and I recall the Minnesota Timberwolves did something about this, I think a couple decades ago, where they promised that one player signed a one-year deal and he re-signed for a substantial amount more. They would Larry Bird's write him and give him over the cap and that league found out and fined multiple first-round picks for this. So it has happened before and there hasn't fines given out before. Now proving it like Kanisha is going to be very difficult, because I don't think Bomber is that stupid to make it this obvious, but if it took this amount of investigation journalism. Maybe it was this hard and maybe the guy pablo just did a great job, so it's been very interesting to see this. 

08:12 - China (Host)
We'll wait and see what goes on yeah, and I believe the player you're referencing was joe smith, who signed three years. 

08:18
Uh, one year contracts for three years that are really low aav and uh ended up signing that to get that bird right secured. I believe the fine for the it was the Timberwolves, you said it was five first round picks essentially sent them to the shadow realm for the next couple of years. And yeah, like, the biggest piece of evidence here from this from the, from the Pobletori video and release, was that he was able to get an accountant who worked within the company to kind of share what happened. And that's where the smoking gun is for this story. I quickly want to try before I throw to you, I want to just quickly bring this up um from the los angeles clippers. He reached out to los angeles clippers. He said uh for a statement and the clippers uh organization said neither mr ballman or the clippers circumventeded the cap or engaged in any misconduct related to aspiration, which is the company in question. 

09:08
Any contrary assertion is provably false. So I think that's going to be the problem there is proving this to be true. It's going to be very, very tough. I also wanted to bring this up as well. Pablo, ever since Bill said he wasn't a real journalism, absolutely locking in China. What do you make of this story, like are you as invested as we are in this? Is is like do you think this is a real thing? Do you think there's a smoking gun here, uh, or is this just kind of no chance? 

09:31 - Jason Cooper (Host)
I think this is a group. 

09:32
Anything's gonna happen yeah, I think this is a real thing and usually you know when there's this much smoke, there is some fire. It's just proving where and how the fire started. Um, I just don't understand. I understand why teams want to get a competitive advantage and they'll do everything they can to do it. But when these franchises are worth hundreds of millions, billions of dollars and these owners are worth billions of dollars, just pay the contract and go over the cap and pay whatever the luxury taxes are, I just don't understand why they don't just do that. It's almost like when you see these professional athletes who have hundreds of millions of dollars and they hand it off to somebody blindly and they just do something dumb and they wind up broke. It's just I don't understand why they try to do this stuff and get away with this type of stuff. 

10:20 - Flup (Host)
So China, you might not know this, but there's an obvious reason why they're doing it. So, china, you might not know this, but there's an obvious reason why they're doing it. The NBA has, in my opinion, a very bad rule that you're only allowed to pay players a certain percentage of the salary cap. I think this number Jason correct me if I'm wrong here was 30% for Kawhi Leonard. So the contract that Kawhi signed with the Clippers is capped at 30% of the salary cap. So Ballmer could go over the cap, could pay him, and that's what he did and he paid that. But Kawhi wants more as incentive to join the Clippers, as opposed to a team like the Lakers or the Spurs or any of these other teams. So he pays him outside, which is against league rules, and that's how he gains his competitive advantage. It's not that he's doing this to not pay fines or avoid fines or anything like that. He's doing it because it's against league rules and it incentivizes him, kawhi, to sign with the Clippers. 

11:12
And I think this is, I think this rule that caps a player value is really problematic, because we're in a universe where when, when, when, when be signed to Supermax. It's going to be, I think, the same amount that Cade or Cade Cunningham signs. And I mean I'm not saying Cade is a bad player, but I'm saying that Wemby is worth significantly more than him and they're capped at getting paid the same. And if you're the Pistons you have to pay Cade, but if you're the Spurs you also have to pay Wemby. They're getting a much better deal on Wemby. They shouldn't have this cap. Pay players whatever they're worth and pull a hard cap. It would make the league much more competitive. And then, if you see anyone doing stuff like this, I think five first rounds for what the Timberwolves did for Joe Smith Smith is excellent. Make it brutalizing If it comes out that just it decentifies them for doing it at all. 

12:07 - China (Host)
Yeah, and I also find it ironic that the lead that the country that it was like, built on capitalism, has, the it's like one of the only majors, like the major sports within that country, loves their hard cap, loves the equality between these teams where they don't want one owner to reign overall. You were going to say something, but go ahead owner to reign overall. 

12:23 - Flup (Host)
Um, you were going to say something yeah, I mean, I think hard caps are really good for a league because it it now makes the league very competitive, like, yeah, look in baseball, my opinion is stupid. I mean, has there ever been a world series winner with a with a bottom half in in spending? I don't even know like can you see, royals? 

12:42 - Joey Knish (Host)
yeah, I guess I think there's been some ray ray's team or maybe a marlin's team on there. 

12:47 - Flup (Host)
But but you know, I think it's like 80 or like a top five. 

12:51 - Joey Knish (Host)
Yeah, it's just obscene, that's just you get your the european football example where you have, you know, each major league only has a few big clubs that spend everything. A lot of the teams lose money so people don't want. I mean it becomes like an uninvestable product. That's more of like a point that it does. So I agree, I think the, even even in the capitalist america, the hard cap um makes makes a lot of sense in terms of just the league viability I mean, look at the nfl. 

13:17 - Flup (Host)
Even the browns or the titans, which are bottom dwellers right now, in four years both of those teams could be super bowl contenders and wouldn't surprise me. I can't say that about like a bottom four team in the mlb. If they don't spend the money that they're just not going to win, they're not going to be competitive. So it's. I think the hard cap is a beautiful thing and it makes the league very competitive, very good. And capping players is problematic because if you just basically bink a lottery pick, that's how you win, which is kind of stupid. It should be about like organizing how you spend your capital, etc. 

13:51 - China (Host)
Etc uh, let's, let's circle back this conversation to the uh, like, the accusations themselves. I want to ask all you guys this question because I kind of had. We had a discussion about this in office yesterday when this news dropped um, what would be fair, um will be a fair punishment if this stuff was, let's say, not provably true, but there's reasonable doubt that uh, maybe I don't know what the best way to put it is, but like if it lays in the gray area, we can't prove it's true, we can't prove it's, uh, provably false. What would be a fair punishment? We discussed that, like, the amount of money that they paid kawaii leonard should be fined, the amount of money that balmer paid should be fined, and then, uh, somewhere in the area of three first round picks, so like kind of in that middle area. Um, so let's say, let's go with 50 million dollars and fine to the owner and uh, three first round picks. Is that too crazy? Is that too much Flop? We'll start with you, because I can see you shaking your head. 

14:47 - Flup (Host)
Well, I thought I didn't realize you're going to add the three first runners. The fine to Bomber is whatever he's worth it. 

14:52 - China (Host)
It doesn't matter, but that's part of the reason you do it, right yeah On the WNBA. 

14:57 - Flup (Host)
He would probably pay a $500 million fine if first round picks, he doesn't care about that money. The first round picks is more interesting. And when you say not provable, I don't like punishing, because what if he just got unlucky and was in a bad situation? So if you can't prove it, I I wouldn't punish it. If it's not provable, I wouldn't punish it. If now, if it's like, okay, it's 60 likely that he did something, but you're not 100 sure, then you can punish, like with one first runner. But if it's just like you think maybe he did but you're not 100% and you have a suspicion, then I wouldn't do it. But if you're like you can put a percentage on it and say, yep, he did it, he did at least something sketchy or did at least something for certain, then I would. I think a firster, maybe two firsts, is reasonable, and if you can prove he did it, five firsts minimum, maybe even 10. Just send him. 

15:53 - Joey Knish (Host)
So easy 10? Just do it for a decade. 

15:58 - Flup (Host)
You cannot have this happen. It kills the league you cannot have this Kanish. 

16:03 - China (Host)
What are your thoughts on that? Do you think you agree with that? Let's say Flop. You gave a great example 60-40. As it feels right now. Based on the information that I've looked at, I'm more leaning towards the side that this is true than it is false. So let's go with 60-40. True to false Kanish. If that's the case, do you think whatever amount of dollars fin 50 million dollars plus three first round fakes is that too harsh? 

16:23 - Joey Knish (Host)
if that's what the league uh conclusion is no, I think, actually on with I think it would be a massive fine and then a few first rounders and then maybe they come up with some I don't know salary stuff, that that they can't do or they can't exceed whatever apron and uh, you know as to it. So they throw in a few other additional stipulations. But again, I think you're gonna have unless you have kind of somebody from the inside that's willing to basically roll on ballmer here, it's going to be very, very tough to say this was like objectively, a hundred percent true that he did that. So we'll see what happens. But um, I just think it's gonna be tough to say without a shadow of a doubt that this was. But maybe I mean I don't know if that again the nba isn't a court of law. 

17:07 - China (Host)
So if enough owners want to hold balmer to the stake over this and pressure silver in the front office, they might punish him anyway yeah, yeah, but also it's interesting because balmer is obviously the most powerful of all I don't know about powerful, but definitely the richest of all the nba owners. So you would think that he has some form of power and sway uh within the league and that's maybe not someone you want to um like. Lead the wrong way, uh, china. You, you want to, you want to weigh in here. Do you think where, where I kind of land uh with um, with it being 50 million dollars, three first round picks on a 60 60 chance that they did try and circumvent the cap, do you think that's fair? 

17:46 - Jason Cooper (Host)
I think, whatever the fine was what you said for Joe Smith, it should exceed that, because there's already a precedent and people already know what they should be expecting in a situation like this. So at the end of the day, yeah, I mean I would just there's going to be no gray area. They're going to conduct a massive investigation and it's either going to be yes or it's going to be no, and if it is yes, they're going to get the book thrown at them and they deserve it. 

18:12 - China (Host)
I agree with that. It's also again like the biggest piece of information coming from this Pablo Torres story is that one person who worked for the company and was inside and was in their accounting office and kind of revealed everything. So if they're willing to talk to the nba, who knows, who knows what's gonna happen, maybe they get like a little duffel bag on their front door saying, hey, don't talk about this to anyone else, but uh, anyways, uh, before we move on, a couple more tweets that I wanted to mention here. Um, because of course it's pretty interesting to see a guy get a no-show job, but I don't think the Clippers have realized they've been paying Kawhi Leonard all this time to also have a no-show job $50 million a year, to be exact, and that's exactly how much they're paying for Kawhi Leonard, so that on top of the $25 million, a lot of money not to show up at all. And then also this is what we mentioned earlier the Mark Cuban tweet at Pablo Torre, which just kind of talking about how this happens a lot of times in sports, where owners invest in companies and then those companies then do brand deals with players on those teams. But again, there's a little bit more nuance here, as discussed uh further. And then, uh, careful what you say on the internet, because a quote tweet, someone quote tweeted mark cuban's tweet and says mark doesn't want anyone to question what happened with dirk nowitzki from 2014 to 2016. Uh, dirk signed a three-year deal. I think it was like 25 million ish, when he could have gotten around a three-year deal 90 million dollars if he signed elsewhere. So a little interesting uh stuff there, maybe. Maybe that's why mark cuban's really against his stuff. And then also, finally, a little bonus thing right before we went live, um, mark cuban tweeted at pablo tori asking to join uh, his podcast, or sorry, pablo tori asked cuban to join his podcast. Mark cuban ended up joining. They talked for almost three hours. It was very interesting to see. 

20:11
But let's move on to the next topic, because it's time for football season. And listen, we talked about this topic. I think it was a month ago. I was on the show with Kanish and Chris and I forget who the fourth person was. But here we are. We talked about Red Zone going to ESPN and of course, they found a way to mess it up because, according to Dove, dove Clayman, scott Hansen confirms that NFL Red Zone will now have full commercials this season, not just overlay ads. He says the new intro will be seven hours of Red Zone football starts now, instead of seven hours of commercial free football starts now. What happened to the sport we love, uh china, I'll let you start with this. I know you're a big football guy, so how do you consume football? Do you often watch a lot of red zone, or is this like not even affecting your process and what you're viewing? 

21:04 - Jason Cooper (Host)
not affecting me whatsoever. I'm one of the, I'm in the minority, I am not a red zone guy. I do not enjoy it. I would rather watch one game and just you know, see how the game flow goes, see how everything unfolds. I want to see all the key situations. Just non-stop scoring to me is too frenetic. And I think, with this, the commercials. Why can't they just integrate the commercials into the broadcast? Maybe pop them up, show a commercial? Well, they have a couple of boxes with action going on at the same time. But if they're going to full-fledged commercials, I think for the hardcore Red Zone guys this is going to water the product down a lot. 

21:40 - China (Host)
So they actually are not going to full-fledged commercials, as per Ari Marial. I probably should have mentioned this earlier. Ads are coming to NFL Red Zone. Here's more detail. They will appear in a double-box format. Viewers will be able to hear the ad while audio excuse me, the ad audio while Red Zone continues to run in the other box. The plan is to space out a limited number of ads throughout the seven-hour stretch. Per Richard Deitch on Twitter. The NFL says hour uh stretch. Per richard uh dyche on twitter uh. The nfl says this has been contemplated and tested over a year and has nothing to do with espn, this does not seem that bad at all. 

22:12 - Flup (Host)
If it's no, yeah, this is okay. If it was full-fledged over, yeah right, that would be way worse. But this is, look, it's gonna be knowing that you can't hear, but like it's, it's, it's whatever. 

22:22 - Joey Knish (Host)
If it's, you can still see yeah, I, I can't believe, like, like, I know people, like the typical sources and some of the, the outrage of like people just want to yell to the clouds over espn or get mad at anything here, but the fact that it's going to be in a double box, you're still going to be seeing what's happening on the thing, just not hearing the audio. I don't think this is uh ben, people were, you know I tweeted earlier today. People were, you know, in the comments getting uh, getting salty about it. But I I don't think this is a big deal at all. I agree, if it was a full, you know, two minutes where you don't see anything and then they got to catch you back up, they don't have to do that. It's basically it's not a a total overlay where you can still hear anson, but I can still see what's happening on the television. 

23:04
So I don't I this to me is a whole bunch of thing over nothing, um, and I think the program will be totally fine. So and people just want to like again, it was come maybe nfl, you know, with the whole espn deal, getting it over there, kind of, you know, nice little. Well, this has nothing to do with espn, but the cat's already out of the bag. Everybody's dunking on ESPN. The lead gets a free pass here. So yeah, I mean I'm a red zone guy, but this is like people yelling, the sky is falling and it's a minor inconvenience. 

23:35 - China (Host)
Of course Go ahead. 

23:37 - Flup (Host)
I'm actually more on China's side here. I typically like to watch the Jets get brutalized in the first half and then I'll turn on red zone in the second half and get tilted. But I really like watching one game and then maybe red zone on another screen, and I don't even have red zone on always. This won't affect me too too much. 

23:56 - China (Host)
Okay, well, I feel like that's the correct take to have, and Kanish, of course, as per usual, you are in the wrong here. As per at Coley Mick on Twitter, he mentioned, the correct Red Zone take is that if you watch Red Zone, you actually don't like football. Thank you, and you're welcome, which I fully agree with. Listen, it's 2025 now. If you're watching football on one TV, the one o'clock slate, what the hell are you doing? Get multiple TVs. You can get a couple TVs for like $200 a pop, and if you're betting on the games, you want to watch all the games. It's very, very easy to do. Insert the meme of the worst person you know just made a great point, because Jared Smith on Twitter said if you're upset about commercials on Red Zone, it probably means you haven't figured out how to create your own Octobox which also means you don't have time for you uh, very easy to create your own octobox. 

24:51 - Joey Knish (Host)
I will say, though, this tv setup is absolutely horrendous. Are you watching anything on this? No, like I don't know. The people who got like 8, 10 like this would scramble my brain into like eight different pieces here. Maybe that's a me problem, but there's no way I can focus on anything that's going on here. It's just like my eyes would be darting everywhere. I'd have a migraine by like 130. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know the people that do these setups. I can't do it. 

25:09 - China (Host)
I'm like a two tv guy, max yeah, well, this is also a two tv thing, because it's just octobox it's just octobox, but yeah I mean, come on, if you really know ball, you know to put your tv side by side. Also, the way he's hung it up here, I mean, they're not even in line, which is like throwing my brain for a loop. So I don't know about that one. This is almost as bad as my TV setup that I used to have earlier last season, so that was. 

25:32 - Joey Knish (Host)
Yeah, this is yeah. I got three 12-inch TVs on the wall that. 

25:38 - China (Host)
Yeah, it's you know what. 

25:40 - Flup (Host)
This is a cell phone, jason, that's a cell phone. 

25:43 - China (Host)
Here's the thing I have an updated setup and I'm happy to share it with you guys. In fact, I want the viewers to share their TV setups for NFL Sundays for the 1 o'clock slate. You can tweet us at CirclesOffHQ hashtag CircleBack. I want to see how you guys do your setup because I have a new setup now. I think it looks great. You can find it on Twitter. You can find it on the Circles Off Twitter account. Just remember, go follow us if you're there as well. It does a lot for us On socials at Circles Off HQ hashtag Circle Back, if you want to get in on the conversation. 

26:17
I've kind of glossed over this now, but I mean, hey, it's Friday, that means Thursday night football was played and football is so back and we can see Spanky, who has been in this gambling racket for over 25 years and for him the excitement at the start of the football season never gets old. I know for one. I'm personally excited, hoping to have a fun football season Flop. As a former winner of Circa Survivor last year, how excited are you for football season to be back? 

26:44 - Flup (Host)
I'm very excited because that means I can play Survivor again as well as watch the NFL both two of my favorite things and I'm hoping to see the Eagles dominate. The Cowboys this year Got a little Eagles spread and I'm probably going to be using them for Survivor, so hopefully it goes well for me, and I'm watching the show thinking, wow, Fluff is a genius, as usual. 

27:04 - China (Host)
Perfect. I also have Eagles in Survivor as as well. Hopefully I'm not in a corner crying with my only two entries gone because the eagles lost. 

27:13 - Joey Knish (Host)
Um well, how about them cowboys, after they got rid of that bum parsons? Uh, nothing would make me happier than a week one upset. Uh, so I, I love to see it. 

27:23
Love to see you two on the other side uh yeah, I will say just from a again, I'm more of a college guy than NFL guy. But this is the time of year, from a selfish perspective, where, like people that have given me accounts in the past, follow up. You know I'm hearing from you know the BPH book that even though we love Kelsey, you know hearing from you, know some people that are everybody's coming out of the woodwork at this time of year. So it's a good business time of year. I will say that. 

27:51 - China (Host)
Yeah, things are very busy and, as Sleeper HQ tweeted out on their account thank you, it's a meme, thank you for saving my life and it's the NFL logo. It's just. I'm literally just a football league. Chyna, I know you bet on football quite a bit. Are you a fan of, fan of the nfl being back? Or is this just a signal of like, oh shit, time for everything to ramp up, time to get busy now yeah, I'm with kanish here. 

28:16 - Jason Cooper (Host)
I'm more of a college football guy and I love watching all the big, good primetime games every week. But every year that I get busier and busier and busier as a professional, better I don't look forward to it as much as I used to the last. Just over the last 10 days I feel like I want to put my my head in a fucking vice. So I don't know, that's that's where I'm at. I'm excited it's back, the weather's getting good, but again that just means more and more and more work. 

28:42 - China (Host)
So, yeah, that's that's where I stand yeah, and the best part is more and more work, uh, and as the years go on, you tend to get more and more down, and that's where Kalshi is coming into play here. As we see, for the Friday night football game, kansas City at Los Angeles Chargers $1.5 million in volume already. 

28:59 - Joey Knish (Host)
Right now Games at 60-40 favor towards Kansas City here, kanish you got to play for us what's going on the week which is no longer widely available Chargers plus three and a half Juiced I think I got it at minus 115. Favorite play of week, one, which you probably can't get as of this recording, so I'm going to pass post that one. Okay, Steve Fisnick, I released that to clients over the weekend. But yeah, I don't know, there's some cheap threes out there and I would say they're live baby. 

29:35 - China (Host)
All right, I love it. I'm just trying to see if I can find it on CalSheet right now. What did you say? The three and a half? 

29:42 - Flup (Host)
They have three and a half, but it's a minus 131. Yeah, just a little bit more expensive, just a little bit more expensive than that. It's a little steep. Well, I mean, does price even matter? It takes 16 cents. That doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things right, you don't pay juice on the winners, you only pay it on the losers. 

29:59 - Jason Cooper (Host)
Yeah, but as quickly said yeah, price doesn't matter if you're just making predictions anyways and you're not gambling so why did I even include the price? 

30:10 - Joey Knish (Host)
I just hey, plus three and a half it's a winner. 

30:12 - China (Host)
Take you up to minus 180 all right, you can find all those markets over on calci. 

30:18 - Flup (Host)
Uh, and a quick reminder you have the um how much liquidity you can bet right now, because I think that's rather than looking at the total volume. 1.5 million is very impressive, the. I think they have like hundreds of thousands of liquidity, which is just like crazy good. 

30:32 - China (Host)
Yeah, if I knew how to find that, I would find that for you, Chris. Maybe you can find that for me, because, yeah, unfortunately I cannot find that I'm very green to using CalSheet because of course can't use it, yeah. 

30:44 - Flup (Host)
So I mean you can bet right now. Yeah, you can bet 100K basically on either side right now, which at a one cent stride, which shows you how liquid the market is, and it's very impressive that they're able to do that, of course, and that's for the Friday football game, and I'm sure closer to game day, as we get, it'll be increased even more as we get closer. 

31:06 - China (Host)
And a reminder, of course, if you want to do that, if you want to bet a hundred K on Cal, so you can do it right now. All you have to do is click the or click the link in the description or scan the QR code on screen. If you use that link or if you scan that QR code, it helps support the show. So if you're planning on betting on Cal she, if, if you're on high liquidity, kalshi is the place to go for that reminder, click the link in the description at any point throughout the show. Or if you're watching on YouTube, scan that little QR code in the bottom right corner. It'll take you right there and you're doing us a big favor by helping support the show. All right, let's stick with it. It's almost like a football-themed episode because we're talking a little bit about player props. And this next topic comes from Big Buck Hunter and he's talking about player props in 2025. He was listening to a podcast Establish the Run podcast who listen? I'm a fan of. I think they make great content If you listen to them for player props, it's a different story. I think If you like fantasy and those things and just enjoy football, I think they're a good listen. But he says, listening to the latest Establish the Run podcast about how to beat NFL player props in 2025. And he said it sounds like. He said sounds like I will need to wait until Saturday for limits to go up and most of my action will be on FanDuel. Very good, very relevant information for 2025. 

32:28
And, of course, for those who don't know, was Big Buck Hunter being facetious? Of course he was, with the response yes, coming from him there. What are your thoughts on? I guess? I mean Establish the Run is kind of a tout service kind of. I guess they are a tout service, but they also do a bunch of other content as well. They kind of fall into a gray area for me. They make good content, I would argue, outside of their tout service. Chris, you seemed like you had an opinion on this to begin with, as you were laughing as I was reading it. 

32:59 - Flup (Host)
I didn't know. You included the part where he's clearly being sarcastic Because I was reading some of the comments and people were like, wow, great Thanks, henry, and I was like he some of the comments and they thought like people were like, wow, great thanks, henry, and I was. He's being sarcastic. Like doing that, like waiting till saturday for limits to go up is suicide, like I don't know what you're thinking. So I found it very funny. Um, I think established run is very good. I use them for their fantasy services, but I would never recommend paying paying for a tout service. I don't care who they are, I wouldn't do it. And as Henry's joking about, if you're waiting until Saturday and you're only betting, probably across the fan duel, you're probably doing something wrong. Earlier in the week is always better. If you can get your size, that you're willing to, and if you can't get your size, well, you probably don't need to listen to me. 

33:52 - China (Host)
Yeah, fair enough. Um, also like, if you use them for fantasy, I would probably ask for a refund based on the fantasy team you drafted for our hammer fantasy league. Uh, that was just feel I feel bad for them because that's a terrible endorsement on their part if anyone's seen your fantasy league, our fantasy team in our league. Uh, china, any thoughts on? Um, I guess uh established a run's take on this and big buck hunter saying maybe you know it's not the best to wait till saturday for those to go up and bet strictly on fendel yeah, it's not the best strategy for the high majority of people like we've been betting this stuff for the past three days getting decent fills. 

34:26 - Jason Cooper (Host)
But I will say this the, the biggest nfl prop better that I know waits until sunday and he bets on fendel at noon, an hour before kickoff. 

34:35 - Flup (Host)
So but there's only so many of those guys that are out there that can do, yeah, yeah, but don't do not try to do that if you, if you're trying to do that, you're going to get crushed like china's talking about exclusively the best yeah, fair, fair enough. 

34:48 - China (Host)
Uh, kanish, do you fall in line with the best? Are you sitting there on saturday waiting for the limits to go? 

34:53 - Joey Knish (Host)
yeah, I mean not china's talking about me, I didn't want to. 

34:56
I mean I, I I'm blushing over here, but you know you didn't want to say the name, but uh, I mean, listen, I, I agree with, uh, like buck hunter, this, the nfl. 

35:06
There was a time and some I know, you know china will know what I'm where you could literally blanket, but I'm gonna call it. It's probably over five years ago now. Maybe seven, eight, nine, ten years ago you could just bet under on every fucking prop every week and make money like that's how inefficient the prop market was for in night and day, from you know, seven, eight, ten years ago to today, where, uh, I mean the nfl prop market, you know people used to. It used to be like, oh, props, easy, you know, able to be now the nfl market, specifically, especially when you get in the weekend. Uh, I'm not going to say it's, you know, as sharp, as sharp as NFL sides and totals, but it is no longer an easy plug to just, you know, log in and spam unders or any of that stuff. So, as a lot of different factors, the game has changed significantly. 

35:58 - China (Host)
Yeah, fair enough. I mean that's that's about it there from the established to run prop discussion, but we'll go from, we'll call them. Don't want to call all tout services bad, but an okay tout service to a really bad one. We have henry locks picks on twitter with uh hilarious logic because he's advertising his tout service. He said these nfl props all hit in week one last season. They're gonna hit again this week. I mean using last year's data, against different teams. Some of these players with different coaches, different coordinators, different situations, uh injuries a factor, all those sorts of things. I mean how dumb can we be with these things like these are? This is some of like the not low content on gambling twitter. 

36:42 - Flup (Host)
Chris, go ahead especially in, like you know, for this thursday night game. I mean, has the cowboys changed anything part of their defense? I mean, like nothing really matters. Yeah, you can just take the last year stats, it's no big deal it's crazy. 

36:54 - China (Host)
Yeah, that seems like to be what he's implying and, uh, one of the players he mentioned was baker mayfield. I wonder if anything's changed from last year. Maybe I don't know, a receiving core left tackle, new offensive coordinator seems like. Maybe it's probably the same situation. Um, but maybe that's like some information that many people don't know about, uh, as, unless you went to a certain seminar somewhere and then you know that, how important that certain stuff is. I mean, like, when you see this stuff on on twitter, china, do you like kind of like audibly gag at it and laugh at it, or is this just something you just mute? 

37:24 - Jason Cooper (Host)
move on yeah, just kind of mute and move on. Maybe I'll take a quick poke at it just to laugh, but he's probably got a million views on this tweet, if I had to guess. And at the end of the day, yeah, whatever happened last year, week one, it doesn't matter. Last week's data matters, the week before's data matters, the week before that's data matters. None of this matters, but I'm sure this guy got a shitload of views out of this. 

37:50 - China (Host)
Yeah, absolutely. I believe he has like I think it was something along the lines of 200,000 followers too. So if that's what it takes to get 200,000 followers, I guess I'm doing Twitter completely wrong here. Kanish, are you tailing these props at all, or? 

38:07 - Joey Knish (Host)
no, I mean, I don't think these are going to get you paid after today, but apparently it can get you a bunch of followers. If that's what the goal is, then you can do the what's my guy? The Sal Vitri trends. That's all you got to do, baby. Lay out 10 meaningless trends in a row in a thread every day and before you know it, you'll have 100K followers. 

38:29 - China (Host)
Yeah, and doing a little digging on his account, it looks like just like, honestly, one of those AI slop accounts where his Twitter picture is an AI image. Every single graphic he tweets out is an AI image. It's just slop on slop on slop. But hey, he seems to be earning off it, so good for him. But if you ever come across him on Twitter and you're not, you're thinking maybe I should buy his stuff. I would probably lean towards not buying his stuff. There Could not be a lot. Maybe he's making all this stuff himself. But yeah, that's what I see, that's what. I might be wrong. 

38:59
But yeah, let's move on to the next one. Again, more touts, more touts, and you can have your opinion on touts if you want. But this one is coming from Bdunk975. In a now deleted tweet he says I know it isn't easy, but make yourself a goal of winning $50 to $100 a day and withdraw it, that $50 or $100 and put it away. Do that for a whole year and you'll have $18,000 or $36,000 if you save $100. Set goals and do everything to reach them. I mean, if only it was this simple knish. 

39:32 - Joey Knish (Host)
Tell me why I don't just set my goal to make ten thousand dollars a day, set it aside for a year and I can retire for life I mean that's, that's, you know if you're, if you can get that variance winning and losing out of there and just have winners every day a set amount. I mean this is a fine strategy for like budgeting. You know, if you work like you know a normal job and you put away, you know 50 a day or whatever that equals in your paycheck every Friday or every Friday. Like you know if you're doing corporate, you want to put away this. 

40:03
No joke is, when I was first first first starting out and trying to supplement my bankroll, I did something along those lines of take out a percentage to kind of like build the bankroll along with betting. But in terms of like actually betting, then, especially if you have this idea in your head that you need to have a certain amount per day, that's going to lead you to like oh, I'm down 200. I need to be 100 to stay on schedule. I'm going to chase, I'm going to bet this, I'm going to bet this. This is just like classic, you know, like kindergarten level. You know thought process here as to how to. You know how to go about it, but from actual budgeting standpoint, okay, from sports betting, from sports betting, never how it's going to work. 

40:45 - China (Host)
Yeah, it's crazy that he's telling us to just win. It's as easy as that Just win every day $5,200, and you can save it all up. I find it funny that he deleted his tweet. Dkdfs tried to get him with the hashtag circle back on the response, but in response to deleting the tweet and he ended up blocking DKDFS, so it seemed like he didn't want to be dunked on, but be dunked. 

41:13 - Jason Cooper (Host)
He just got dunked on by joey k. Any more thoughts here from chris or china? Yeah, uh, this reminds me of the people that used to come into the casino and play poker. We'd be in a 2040 limit game with six of the worst players ever, and then you'd have like some guy come in and be like all right, I won my 800 bucks, so it's time to go home. Meanwhile, there's a table of fish just sitting there. It's like you just got to get the money when it's good and that's it like I don't know, like a pretty bad tweet. 

41:39 - Flup (Host)
Yeah I think the biggest thing is they missed the variance part of it. Like I remember um on circles, uh, circles off um, you know, bet stamp johnny, um, he had. A really thing is like you look at the ev you generate per day, not the actual money. Money and that's what I try to look. I track how much ev I generate every day and the traders. That's what you should try to be increasing now. And even that it's hard to get to a set amount because sometimes the market's better for you, sometimes it's not, like there's going to be, even in an nfl season, week three versus week four. I might make different amounts than expected value because, like the markets are different situations. But if you, all you want is that number to go up as much as possible and don't worry about the actual results, because there's also a follow eventually yeah, no, that's a great way to put things, um, and a great way to cap off, uh, that little tweet there. 

42:28 - China (Host)
Finally, we're leaving off, we're going to leave the touts behind, but we're going to talk about another. Um, let's call it a big story here, uh, because we've seen it a couple times. Uh, on twitter, on instagram, drake has been posting a ton about calcio for almost the past year. Uh, and danny funt here on twitter, at danny funt is is kind of making his claim on and commenting on. He said incredibly tacky that Drake posted gigantic bet slips. Incredibly shady that steak almost certainly free rolls those bets. He's not risking his own money. And incredibly lame that the media breathlessly covers Drake's bets, promoting steak and reckless gambling in the process. 

43:05
I love the sentiment here and this comes off the back of Drake betting on the US Open, which is happening this weekend. The finals are happening this weekend. Yannick Sinner to win the US Open, staking $300,000 at stake over there. But, yeah, do you guys agree with this sentiment? Because, a little bit of investigative research? 

43:25
Dj Academics, who isn't the best investigative reporter, but he's pretty in tune with the rap industry, agree with this sentiment? Because a little, a little bit of investigative research. Uh dj academics, who isn't like isn't the best investigative reporter, but he's very pretty in tune with the rap industry. Uh mentioned that drake has a I think is getting paid 180 million dollars to be sponsored by stake, to have stake in his bio and to appear on one twitch stream every month to promote stake. Um, so I wonder if he's being free rolled here as well as getting paid that money? I feel like probably not, but maybe he is. Who knows? Um, how do you guys feel about uh drake and and the promotion of stake, using him as a promotion vehicle for stake and the media covering it? 

44:01 - Joey Knish (Host)
uh kanish will start with you I mean this is basically, like you know, portnoy, with draft kings there, where you're getting even if they're not free rolling his bets, they're giving I mean, just when I look up you said 180 either way like 100 million dollars a year for the sponsorship. Even if you're not free rolling them, that you're giving the guy 100 fucking million dollars a year. So what does he mean? Like if he's out there posting you know 50, 100 million dollar bets, that like I don't, it doesn't even matter, he loses. You know he could lose. 

44:27
Uh, you know, whatever go 45 on the year, he's still gonna net. Even if he's down 10, 20, 30 million dollars betting on the site, they're still gonna net him 60, 70 million dollars. So it's one of those that I mean, whether they're free rolling his bets or not, they're paying him so much money for the deal that it's like that got you. I mean, unless he's like I don't know going michael jordan style, like how could he even lose that much gambling on their site? So yeah, it's just one of those like, uh, it's a great deal if you can get it. 

44:59 - China (Host)
I'll put it that way absolutely and we'll take a look at uh his some of his losses. He should, uh drake shared this. I think it was in early june. Um, just his past in wagering, past fortnight, past week in wagering and he said, got to share the other side of gambling. Losses are so fried right now. I can hope I can post a big winner for you all soon, because I'm the only one that has ever seen a max. These guys max once a week. I mean that's basically nonsense, but the moral of the story is that the big thing is how much he's lost within that month of eight million dollars and if he has 180 million dollars to you 180 million dollar deal, I mean he can happily lose eight million dollars in a month. Um, uh, chris, any any final opinions on drake here? 

45:40 - Flup (Host)
yeah, I think people that post gigantic, gigantic, uh bet slips, especially for people that are like sponsored and people they represent represent, are ridiculous I hate these people. 

45:50 - China (Host)
It's always a red flag, yeah yeah, especially, uh, I'm just waiting to see when actually, I'm not even gonna say this when drake angle shoots, uh, complains about it on twitter after. But uh, yeah, I guess that might not. Uh, might not happen for drake, because I don't think he's smart enough, uh, to angle shoot and take advantage markets like that. Speaking of taking advantage of markets and trying to be an advantage gambler, this next topic hits home for you here. Advantage gambler has to be up there for the highest paying low status job, low status in quotations. 

46:22
This tweet is a quote tweet from what's the lowest paying high status job and the highest paying low status job. It's interesting because flop, that wasn't meant to be a dunk on you, because you used to work in the in the financial field and uh, your big wall street guy, you know, like very high status job, also made a good amount. But you ended up saying, no, I'm gonna leave that all behind, I'm gonna bet on sports and I'm gonna win. Betting on sports and I mean the status change is definitely a big, big hit, but I can imagine the monetary change was probably the whole reason why you did it. So maybe, if you want to share a little bit about that, yeah, that's true. 

46:56 - Flup (Host)
It's very funny because I just had an experience this past weekend. I was out with a vacation with my wife and uh, so I was talking with this old lady and they're like, what do you do? And I was like I'm a professional gambler. She turned to me like are you serious? And like you could tell. Like she thought less of me as a person because, like I'm a professional gambler, which is like, honestly, at this point I don't really care. 

47:16
And a lot of my family members thought I was crazy quitting such a great job. I mean, who wouldn't want a job? Um, working for like a family office and whatnot. But for me it was all about the money. Yeah, you get paid nicely, but a lot less. I think people think and it's a lot more hours. You need to work many years to get to a point where you can make a lot and it's not even guaranteed where you know. For me, sports right now. I thought this was kind of like a gold rush. There's, we're in the gold, like the early era of sports gambling in in the united states, and you can make a significant amount of money and I'm hoping to capitalize on that. So hopefully I don't need to work anymore after a few years and then then I can get maybe a high status job if I really want to do anything with my life yeah, fair enough. 

47:58 - China (Host)
China, I know you. Uh, you've been a poker player for a long time and switched over, started betting on sports as well. Um, what's your opinion on, like, I guess, job? Is that something that, like, you've dealt with before? I'm sure you have when dealing with other parents or colleagues, or colleagues, friends, when you're meeting new people at an event, like, is that something you have to deal with? Uh, one sec, go ahead all right. 

48:22 - Jason Cooper (Host)
Yeah, prior to being a poker player, I mean, I I was. I was a cook in a restaurant for about 10 years, so, like I don't know, I had no other choice. It was just like I'm doing this or I'm gonna be able to do nothing. But at the end of the day, you meet people, you tell them what they do and they look at you like you're a worm from rounders. I mean, that that's what people picture in their heads when you say hey, yeah, yeah, I'm a professional gambler. It's like nobody believes it. It's pretty incredible. 

48:48 - China (Host)
It's pretty crazy, but it's also like, almost better. The less people that believe it, less people know that it's a thing. It kind of leaves a little bit more room for you, leaves room for everyone at the table to eat, because the more people add to the table, the harder it is to eat knish. You don't have to come across as a uh, professional gambler. You don't have to tell people that, because you're a corporate knish over there. Is that the? 

49:09
best you're at venues is that. Do you tell you? Does your girlfriend know what you do on the side or no? 

49:13 - Joey Knish (Host)
I'm still contributing productively to society, unlike our other panelists here uh, and helping you know, move the world forward. But uh, I will say one it's just an area a lot of people don't understand and when that you try and explore, it's just it's very tedious and annoying to explain it to people. Uh, that like don't really like understand and they want to ask questions but they still don't get it. And so it's like this long form, especially like girls I've dated when they've explained any, it's like, oh my god, it's like I don't know. It gives me a fucking headache. 

49:45
Where I said I, I'm pulling out my internet, do here, but uh, like I, I just I don't really like talking about it unless it's somebody that's in the industry, like we like talking about it here. 

49:56
You know where people are talking about where. If it's like some normie, that's like you know I've when I've told people that I've worked with the corporate job in the past, like some of the things I've been like my boss right now who makes you know, uh, more than like a you know quarter million dollars a year and plus bonus. He bets like five dollars a game like that's like, like that's the kind of like risk profile that you're getting from people is like these people you know they could be making hundreds of thousands in the corporate world and but you talk about a bet for them. That's more than like $20. It's like what? Like when I'm talking about, oh, you know, I had, you know, 180k in risk liquidity over the weekend, or, like you know, a fluff bet, that's like you know, or like I'll you know, flip, that that's like you know, one that people be like, but you know it's like, oh, there's, you know anything. 

50:44 - China (Host)
So it's just, it's a little hard to get past, uh, with normal people yeah, fair enough, it's very tough to to deal with and also like it's hilarious that that's the kind of brand of people who exist where they make so much money and their their risk tolerance is so low with that stuff. I always hate to see that guy. If I have friends who bet dollars on games and like we'll be spamming my chats, freaking about about every single play, I'm like my brother in Christ, you have a dollar on the game. Like, is that really that? Is that really that much of an added value for you? If it is fine, so be it, but for me that really wouldn't be. He sends American, so anyways. 

51:19
Last little thing before we get into your comments, reminder if you want to get in on the show and comment below on YouTube, we'll get to those comments a little bit later. Or you can join the conversation Hashtag circle back. If you see a tweet that we want to, you want us to talk about, you want us to mention on the show? Hashtag circle back, we'll, we'll. We scroll through every single. If you think we should talk about anything, we want you to be part of the show, so do it. Tweet us, tweet us. Hashtag circle back. We'll talk about it here on the show. 

51:45
Last thing we want to get into before the comment section, then the chopping block is a little bit of a life pro tip. We're in football season now. We're in the swing of things College football all day Saturday, nfl all day Sunday. We're going to be entering an NBA season soon, nhl season soon and there's a lot of time on the weekend that we want to spend in front of a TV. Us guys who like betting on sports or just watching sports in general. This comes from Sharp Clark, nfl. He said life pro tip for married men in football with wives and partners who are not, with wives and partners who are not into football. Pick college football or NFL, enjoy it fully and give the other day, saturday or Sunday, fully to your partner. Go on a hike, have a spa day, get brunch, hang out with the kids, whatever. Could not recommend more. I'm going to throw to you China for this one, because you have a partner, you have kids. How do you manage these weekends? 

52:42 - Jason Cooper (Host)
He's pretty spot on here. I mean, if you do this seven days a week, it will cause some strain on your relationship. So the way I manage it is I work until 5, 6 o'clock every day. I go home every day. Saturday I'm in the office, I'm watching a little football. Sunday I kind of just don't watch the NFL as much anymore because I can't. I have to put that time into my family and I know if I don't then my family is going to fall apart. 

53:10 - China (Host)
So it's just common sense, it's just how it's got to be Exactly, and I want to do a quick little plug here for the Hammer Daily. Every single Friday I'm going to be combing through the 1 o'clock slate, the 4 o'clock slate, the night game on Sunday and also the Saturday slate of college football games. I want to try and find the people the best time to hang out with their partner, find a slot when there's not a lot of marquee games on, find a slot where it's maybe a little bit easier to step away from the TV for three hours, either maybe get brunch or maybe go get dinner, or maybe go for a nice three-hour walk with the wife or the kids or the partner, whoever it is. So if you want to check out the Hammer Daily, you can find it in the link description over on the Hammer HQ YouTube channel or on Twitter at the Hammer HQ. You'll find us there. Subscribe, I got you guys covered. Flop, you have a wife, you have a partner. How do you? 

54:02 - Flup (Host)
manage this, uh, this conundrum here. I, I give up tuesday and wednesday night football, for them, occasionally friday night football, but this is kind of true. I, I, you know, for me it's usually like saturday I'll give up a little bit because I prefer nfl more. But another pro tip is getting a dog, because then they're now obsessed with the dog and not you, great, great, uh for me. So, um, they can take the dog on walks and everything like that. So that's how I've kind of managed it, but unfortunately, and I think if in a few years from now, if I get kids or whatnot, I'll need to change my strategy a little bit yeah, you're still, uh, still young. 

54:40 - China (Host)
Fluff, you got, you got. You got a little bit more time for that. The dog's gonna cover you for a long while. Uh, knish. No, I don't know if you have a girlfriend. I feel like we haven't really talked about this, but how do you manage with uh, with, with responsibilities and college football and heck, even a halftime show you got to work for for saturdays? What's going on? 

54:57 - Joey Knish (Host)
well, that's why you don't see, uh, any ring on the you know this finger, any kids in this house. Because, uh, honestly, for a long time and I did have a, when I was in the like, the grind of the all grinds, really getting going, starting to make money I did have a relationship fall apart because I, I mean, I was on like I would work all day, come home and run like you know, do the like whatever, I could move around casinos and then spend the rest of the night in the laptop and we never saw each other. We drifted apart, and that was it. And I still have to, you know, remind myself of getting some uh, balance in life, just for my own sanity, uh, which is, which is questionable at times uh to, you know, to to give it. So I will say, though, if you're like, as china's saying, married with kids, I think it adds even another layer. 

55:45
If you're like really getting going, I my counter to what sharp Clark said is like, if you're really trying to come up, or you're in your you know 20s or you're, you know, kind of like fluff, trying to, you know really like go, uh, go global, that's not necessarily an option all the time, depending on how successful you want to be in betting. If it's just football like, if you're just like a football fan, you want to pick one. The other day I gotta spend with the fame, like, get it. If you want to actually like, come up in betting and start getting there and scaling stuff, sometimes those are sacrifices you just got to make yeah, that's a great point there. 

56:20 - China (Host)
Great point. Let's move on to the comment read Got one from last episode and for those who missed last episode, it was Isaac on the show and Mark Horn 8451, said great show guys. I'm sure he's great, but how did the Capri Sun drinking B-boy get to be the spokesperson for responsible gambling? Chris, I know you and Isaac are friends. Any thoughts on him being a Capri Sun drinking B-boy? 

56:48 - Flup (Host)
I like to rag on Isaac a lot, but he's actually a great person and he's very good for this. He takes this very seriously. He might not display some of the same things that he holds true, but that's because he doesn't have a problem with himself and I know he takes his job very seriously, so I think it's well deserved also, I don't think any of us would have picked up the capri sun thing if he didn't mention it. 

57:09 - Joey Knish (Host)
Like I mean, like I'll be like guys did you see me drinking capri soda, but I don't, I don't know, I'm not paying it, I wasn't like looking at you just drinking a capri sun. So uh, but yeah, I, I agree he does take this to a serious level and I think is a good person to have in that realm. 

57:26 - China (Host)
Yeah, and we have a great fourth share today as well. China. Any thoughts on the Capri Sun drinking B-boy Isaac? Did you like his episode last week? 

57:34 - Jason Cooper (Host)
Well, the episode I thought was fantastic Came across great and, yeah, I think these guys both nailed it. I don't have much to add there fair enough. 

57:43 - China (Host)
Uh, you, I think you've been a great fourth guest today as well. Let's move on to the next comment section. Uh comment comment from the comment section joy cake cooking today. It is so obvious when he prepares for the show. Nice job, guys. You guys are really good at talking. I'm not talking at the same time. Jacob does a great job conducting the flow. Well done. The show just keeps improving. Keep it up. I wonder if uh miss smith 0043 here. Uh says the show keeps improving, because I was doing the last three weeks before, uh, the last two weeks, and then we see a big ramp up and improvement there in terms of flow. 

58:14 - Joey Knish (Host)
It's the little things there, mrs smith. Uh, we love you baby. Yeah, uh, kanisha, are you prepared for? Were you prepared for this show. Is that? It's the little things there, Mrs Smith, we love you baby. 

58:22 - China (Host)
Yeah, Kanisha, are you prepared for this show? It's a little earlier than normal. 

58:26 - Joey Knish (Host)
Yeah, I was going to say you got me a little earlier and so you know what. I gave it as much time as I could, which is the six or seven minutes before we got on recording to look at the stuff. 

58:36 - China (Host)
No different than any other week. All right, let's get into the last comment here. No different than any other week? All right, let's get into the last comment here. Another joy k comment, uh, from lala kcj. Um, joey k's uh take that jerry jones is always ahead of the curb is a hot take. I was not prepared for this morning. 

58:50 - Joey Knish (Host)
Defend yourself because you were very wrong about my comparison that came out of my mouth, it hit me like, uh, that probably that wasn't, that wasn't, that wasn't really what I was going. I think there was a time in the, you know, the Cowboys heyday where he was like he was kind of in like an Al Davis disciple, of like, was way ahead of the curve, you know, in some of the stuff they did with the Cowboys back in like the nineties, and then, you know, in the last 20 years or so it's kind of fallen off the rocker. So, even though I'll still defend the deal to the death rocker, so, um, even though I'll still defend the deal to the death. 

59:24 - Flup (Host)
Uh, I do like the whole jerry jones. Ahead of the world. Are you backing up on a backtracking, on a take? Are you backing off? You're not what is going on? 

59:31 - Joey Knish (Host)
that maybe the old jerry got it back together again. Hey, you know, after 20 years of mediocrity maybe he came back and said, no, this guy, get this bum off the team. 

59:40 - Flup (Host)
When you see that when the Eagles lose and just like steamroll the Cowboys by like 30 today, maybe 20 only you'll be sorry, you'll be realizing how wrong you were. 

59:53 - China (Host)
Oh man, you're scaring me right now. Flop, because those are my only two survivor entries. We can't let that go. China, go ahead. You were going to say something. 

01:00:05 - Jason Cooper (Host)
I was going. Only two survivors injuries. We can't let that go. China, go ahead. You're gonna say something I was gonna say the only curve jerry jones is ahead of is the curve right where the train's coming around the track. 

01:00:09 - China (Host)
Boom, that's about it. Yeah, and uh, the only other curve he's fallen off of is the age curve because, uh, yeah, it's, it's, he's old. This is a bad joke. Anyways, let's move on to the chopping block. Pretend like I didn't say that. Um, uh, what's up? What's up first on the chopping block, silver's favorite session. 

01:00:23
Oh, we got, we got someone who doesn't know the rules. We always preach to read the house rules, because that's super important when you're betting on sports, but what's almost even more important is knowing how the rules of the sport works, because we have big board bets here at sgp, underscore, vic, one of the largest touts, uh, in the industry in terms of earning. I don't know how he still gets subscribers, but he does anyways. Um, he says, make it, make sense, 30 yards to two yards. And he is talking about, uh, I believe it was lenores sellers who, uh, I think he ended up covering this anyways, which kind of sucks, but anyways, lenora Sellers who ran for 25 yards. And for those who don't know, lenora Sellers is a quarterback for, I believe, south Carolina. 

01:01:09 - Joey Knish (Host)
Yeah, South. 

01:01:10 - China (Host)
Carolina Ran for 30 yards and then, guess what? He got sacked and lost all those yards down to two yards. For those who don't know, if you don't watch college football, a sack counts for rushing yards in college football and I'm like dk dfs is just saying that's what happens when a qb gets sacked. I mean, that's pretty embarrassing to tell on yourself like that kanish, you're our, our, our ncaa football guy here along with china. But uh, can I tell you, go first on this one well, yeah, I mean, like, what do you like? 

01:01:41 - Joey Knish (Host)
it's obviously like in the cube in nfl world the qb sacks don't come off the qb rushing total in college it does, um. So this is just one of those like, make, make it make sense. Uh, yeah you're, you're telling on yourself, uh, out loud. They're pretty rough scene for, for the old dick china. 

01:02:00 - China (Host)
Is this? Uh, is this? Is this the most embarrassing thing that someone can do to himself if they're out here being being a? 

01:02:05 - Jason Cooper (Host)
tout. Yeah for sure, definitely embarrassing. I mean, it's the rules, the rule, and I wish it was like this in the nfl as well. Just add another element to the handicapping that you have to factor other stuff in. And when guys go over, sometimes you know the last two drives. A couple of years ago I had Caleb Williams get sacked by Utah for about 65 yards. On the last two drives we win the bet and just for the record, we were on under Lenore Sellers 58.5 last week here. 

01:02:38 - China (Host)
Wow, all right, that was a solid one for you. I think I was on the wrong side of that, but uh, yeah, uh. 

01:02:45 - Flup (Host)
Flop any opinion here on on this only that, I was sad to watch my team, virginia tech, gets slaughtered by south carolina rip rip, rip, virginia tech. 

01:02:57 - China (Host)
All right, let's move on to the next. Uh, part of the chopping block here we got Kirk Evans and this one's going over my head, so I'm going to need you guys to fill in the context here. He said bet New York Liberty minus six. Today, sabrina questionable and thought she had a legitimate chance to play. Play had tons of resistance all day. It was around minus six and a half. She got ruled out. Pulls up minus six. This bet was either good or bad or see results. You did a twitter poll here 36.4 voted for bad, 32.7 uh voted for good and 30 percent of people are cowards and they just wanted to see the results. Um, who wants to lead here? Uh? 

01:03:31 - Joey Knish (Host)
I want to lead because I was on the valks and, uh, it was an outright winner and we shoved it right in kirk's face, uh, so it felt good and uh, hopefully, you know, on kirk sammer, he can write a little bit more because, uh, the wmba, you know, the market isn't for him, uh, so, bad bet. 

01:03:50 - China (Host)
You lost head to head versus joey k and friends, uh, and you lost badly hey, that's gonna be two weeks now where he's backtracking on a friday for kirk sammer, as he did last week for the Micah Parsons trade. 

01:04:02 - Joey Knish (Host)
He was probably calling this for knowing Kirk. He was probably calling the sports book to get avoided when Sabrina didn't play. 

01:04:08 - Flup (Host)
All right, that's my strategy. 

01:04:09 - China (Host)
Yeah, not his. He usually does the opposite. He was like can I bet more? I feel bad for you guys. Anyways, china, you're up next. 

01:04:23 - Jason Cooper (Host)
Any opinion on good bad bet. Good bad bet, indifferent. Yeah, I think it's a good bet. I mean anytime you think you have a beat on whether something's gonna happen and maybe it's gonna help you beat the closing line. I don't know how many points this sabrina here is worth, but I mean you don't? 

01:04:30 - Joey Knish (Host)
you don't think the resistance all day means that there were people maybe with more knowledge than you in terms of her status could have meant that? 

01:04:38 - Jason Cooper (Host)
yeah, I guess if you yeah, yeah, you put in the resistance. 

01:04:41 - Flup (Host)
The key here is it was around 6.5 before she got rolled out and closes 6. Half a point is worth around 8 or 9 cents and then you get the steam benefits. So if you bet 6 and it closes 6.5, you made a breakeven bet, but you also got the free roll of her. Potentially being right and knowing who Kirk is he's very good at predicting injuries I would gladly back Not that great, apparently. I would gladly back someone like that on a basically a break-even bet that they might have some angle that, hey, sabrina is going to get rolled in. 

01:05:21
Now. The real question to me so I did vote this was a good bet too the real question to me is if someone like myself who's not an expert in the WNBA, or a random person were to bet this with the same logic, is that a good bet? I actually still think it's a good bet because the fact that it was six and a half before the injury news came so clearly there was. It was not a hundred percent that she was in or out, because it moved off of the off the news, so you need to be directionally correct there. 

01:05:51
And, as I said before, because it was six and a half before, it's, at worst, a breakeven bet, so it can't be bad. It's just a question to me is is it breakeven or is it good? And I would say it's good. If you're thinking about this logically and taking it, you're probably going to be beating the market directionally at some degree. 

01:06:11 - China (Host)
The question is how good this bet is is up for debate. All right, fair enough. Good point there, kanisha, any rebuttal? 

01:06:16 - Joey Knish (Host)
Are you happy with it? I'm a results-orientated analysis guy Valkyrie's outright. 

01:06:21 - China (Host)
All right, there we go. Valkyrie's outright. We'll see the retraction on Kirk's hammer. 

01:06:26 - Flup (Host)
Can I say you actually met the Valks here, Legitimately, we did seriously get the Valks Okay. 

01:06:32 - Joey Knish (Host)
I didn't know any of this background story until seeing the tweet. But we did have the Valks. 

01:06:39 - China (Host)
Good stuff, good stuff, all out. But uh, we did have the valves. Good stuff, good stuff, all right. A couple more before we head out here. Um, we got cbless. 

01:06:45
Someone was tracking cbless, uh, and I don't think he realized it because he was tracked for 365 days from pick'em zone. 365 days of tracking cbless, net loss minus 105 000 dollars. Uh, number one he doesn't know how to track his own bets, see image three. We'll go to that in a second. Number two he claims that a member in his discord tracked him and he's up 47 units this year. He's off by at least 20 units. He lost 56 units from september 1st to december 31st. I will say that's not as bad as steve's physic who lost almost 60 units in that time frame, according to computer bob maybe I'm wrong, I don't know Non-investigative journalist. 

01:07:26
Here I have no journalistic integrity. But also, if you see on the screen there's a picture that says T-Bless fraud, but allegedly this is not us claiming that he's a fraud. Here is the tracking numbers with the last calendar year Down 35 units on around 2,000 units risk 1,000 picks minus 1% ROI, 48% win rate. And then the last little bit here is how a little bit more in-depth on how CBuzz doesn't really understand how to track his bets. You can go check that out on Twitter if you're interested in that. Are you guys shocked at all by this number of down minus 1.64% ROI, 48% win rate rate down 35 units, uh, or do you guys not really care about this whole sea blood situation? Trying to start with you, I'm not surprised at all. 

01:08:10 - Jason Cooper (Host)
I mean, it's like I say all the time 99.9 percent of touts don't win, and all they're doing is flipping coins and just paying juice. So the you, you know the proof's in the pudding. 

01:08:24 - China (Host)
Comes down to almost exactly the juice there. I believe Flop, you wanted to touch on this quickly. 

01:08:30 - Flup (Host)
Yeah, don't buy picks in general. It doesn't matter who they are, it doesn't matter how good they supposedly are. There's so much things that is worse for you. You've got to pay extra VIG, et cetera, et cetera. Not surprised at all. Cc was down bad. It was obvious from the start. 

01:08:48 - China (Host)
All right, and let's close out the show with this one here from Patrick E Vegas. With four days till the deadline, circus Sports, circus Survivor is beyond 14,000 entries. As the NFL contest boom continues. I had a friend who was just there yesterday flew into Vegas just to submit his entries from director of sportsbook operations at Jeffrey Benson. To me it's pretty similar to the World Series of Poker and the boom it saw with the Chris Moneymaker effect. It's the world's largest football contest, are we all? Maybe we can all just give a nod to our heads. Are we all in Circus Survivor this year, or Millions Kanisha? Are you in? 

01:09:23 - Joey Knish (Host)
I am not. Millions are you can issue? Are you in? I'm not, oh you didn't join. 

01:09:24 - Flup (Host)
Why can I ask? Why not? 

01:09:25 - Joey Knish (Host)
uh, because there's people, there's killers like me in here and you can't handle the heat us too. Us too, who are combining entries with 30 to 60 participants, therefore negating the edge to anybody who's doing, you know, single or a couple of entries. There's collusion in the contest that should be not be allowed and I hope they void those entries going forward oh my god, you just can't handle it. 

01:09:47 - Flup (Host)
Get out of the. I mean, this is ridiculous. 

01:09:49 - Joey Knish (Host)
You're scared declined and I hope they, those entries are not only voided but no refund issued. If, sir, I asked jeff benson, I said is this okay? He said okay. 

01:10:00 - Flup (Host)
I asked the tournament director is it okay? He said yes, so put your complaints in where they belong, okay Kinesh. 

01:10:08 - Joey Knish (Host)
I've got an email into Derek Stephens. 

01:10:10 - China (Host)
All right, sounds good. Chino, you wanted to comment in on this because you also don't have an entry. 

01:10:15 - Jason Cooper (Host)
Yeah, I don't have an entry on this either. I was thinking about popping in a few, but I either. Um, I was thinking about popping in a few, but I just never really had time to get down there while I was at bet bash, so I just never signed up. And uh, kanisha and I did try to put grp in. He declined, I think. Three or four entries from both of us, both of us on this. But one bone I do have to pick, which, with this circus survivor is I don't think it should be a winner. Take all, they should space it out and pay some places there, maybe a top five or something like that. What? 

01:10:47 - China (Host)
do you guys? What are you shaking your head at? 

01:10:50 - Joey Knish (Host)
chris, 300 people all working together and miles to beat it. 

01:10:54 - Flup (Host)
I can't. You guys are complaining. Okay for the people listening. This is all fake. They're china and kanish are both scared. They know that there's killers like me in there that have won this before and they don't want to fight. That's the real reason. This complaints of breaking it up is because they're scared, and scared money doesn't make any money. 

01:11:12 - China (Host)
That's the real reason put your egg in one basket and watch the basket closely. 

01:11:16 - Flup (Host)
Right, chris and I think, um, china. In all serious note, while breaking it up seems like it could work. The problem is, I think the allure of this is you bet a little bit of money, like a thousand dollars. You can save that for a few months and then go and pay one entry and you have a chance to win a ton of money. That's what makes it. The chris moneymaker effect was part because he turned the 40 ticket into the 10k and then won it. He won, he turned a little bit to a ton. That's the whole alert to it. So if they break it up and they make it, you know, maybe, like you win a cap, that 500 000 like midway through or something like that, or they pay like the top 10 or something like that, or they pay like the top 10% or something like that it's just going to devalue the real allure, which is winning a lot of money with a little. 

01:12:06 - China (Host)
Yeah. 

01:12:07 - Jason Cooper (Host)
They can still pay out a ton of money. Even if they paid a top five, I mean, the first prize is still going to be enormous. So I don't know. 

01:12:14 - Flup (Host)
I feel like, if you get that, Well, I mean last year there was eight winners for what it's worth, I mean last what it's worth. I mean last year there was okay, so like, and it's going to be very hard to make it 20 weeks as a solo winner I, I, if I had to guess, the over under number of winners is probably gonna be like nine and a half or eleven and a half, something like that for this year. So there's gonna be a bunch of winners, you, you have to pay, like at week 17. But then the problem with that is it, you could, like we saw last year I think think there was like 2% or 5% of the pool after four weeks left and then, like there was a kind of not a lot got chopped for the next couple weeks. Then it started getting chopped. So it's really hard to pay out subsets rather than a winner-take-all. 

01:12:55 - China (Host)
Yeah, I can see that as well. Any more from you, shana or Kanish? Good, I'm good, it just sucks that we gave Chris the last word on that subject. This freaking guy. Anyways, that's about it from us here at Circleback. Thank you again so much for tuning in. 

01:13:09
If you like the show, do us a favor. Hit that like button. It goes a long way for us in the algorithm. If you want to get in on the conversation, do us a favor as well. Comment in the comment section down below. Uh, make sure you're subscribed as well if you want to see more content coming your way, because now I believe, starting weekly, we're going to be having uh, along with our monday show and our friday or sorry, tuesday show. On our friday show we'll also be putting out something midweek around, uh, wednesday. So keep an eye out for that. Some new stuff coming out there, variety of stuff, and hopefully we can get you guys some interviews too that you've been asking for Circles off interviews that you've been asking for for a long while now. Make sure you join us next week on Tuesday. The original crew Kirk Evans, rob Jacob and Jeff Feinberg will be there, and then that's about it for us. Thank you guys, so much for joining in. We'll see you on Tuesday.