Risk of Ruin
Audio documentaries about risk takers.
Risk of Ruin
You Can't Beat the Lottery*
Mr. Doppy became an advantage player hustling the video poker game Ultimate X. Since then he's gone after online sports books, credit card points, and also a state lottery.
Mr. Doppy's Twitter account: https://twitter.com/MrDoppy
Support the show links: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YTMUqap_Z0D9832cOl5wYxUs16Byr6xx-iAZzrRL3VU/edit
Email the show: Risk of ruin pod at gmail dot com
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/halfkelly
Hey folks, just a quick note before we start the show. I've never run ads just because the ROI from having to coordinate with advertisers seemed pretty low. That doesn't mean there will never be ads, but so far it's kind of not worth my time. However, there is a way you can support the podcast if you want. In the show notes, there's a link to a document that contains referrals for credit cards. These are all cards that I have and that I use for various point hustling and travel hacking stuff. We just got back from a 16-day trip that took us through Singapore, Australia, and Thailand, and there's no way we would have done that without the credit card points. In the same document, I've also included some podcasts, websites, and other resources that are helpful for picking the lowest hanging fruit. So if you want to sign up through my link and you'll get a bonus and I'll get a bonus, that's fantastic and very appreciated. Anyway, hope you enjoy the episode.
SPEAKER_01:And I mean, I think that people usually play these games for fun and they're playing them with the expectation to lose and they're just not adapting to the fact that they may not lose. They may actually win if they do this a lot. Or there are people who are very superstitious. Like I had customers at one of the stores where I bought tickets who would see me there and they would say, the promotion is rigged. They just set up this really good promotion because they're going to rig it all. And then you're going to buy all these tickets and not win. And I would say, it's been months. It's not rigged. What part of this not being rigged don't you understand? You guys are buying on the square and I'm sitting here in the corner blasting a bunch of lottery tickets at a huge edge. This game is not rigged. If they were stupid enough to do this promotion, they're not smart enough to do it and rig the promotion. There would be people who would see me, who would understand exactly what I was doing, exactly the game that I was playing, and they would still insist on buying tickets with a 30, 40, or 50% edge because they thought that that game was more fair than the game that I was playing. It just boggled my mind because under no circumstances would I ever walk into a store and see someone doing what I was doing and just walk away. I would think about what that person was doing maybe for the rest of my life until I figured it out. And so to think that the strangers who see me and think I'm weird, that's fine. That's one subset. But the other subset who knows the game, who sees me there every day, and is still convinced that they're better off with a Powerball ticket, I just don't understand that subculture. I don't get that mindset at all.
SPEAKER_00:You're listening to Risk of Ruin. I'm John Reeder. This is episode 36. You can't beat the lottery. One of the most relatable things that's ever been said on this podcast came from Jeff Ma, the former MIT blackjack player, who said that The never-ending search for EV is ultimately exhausting, which is like right in the center of the bullseye. Because this stuff might require analyzing 40 plays to find the one that works, and then double-checking the math, and triple-checking the math, and keeping track of buy-ins and cash-outs, and passwords. Also, what's the difference between free play and a bonus bet, or a risk-free bet, or promotional chips, or a deposit bonus? And maybe if I would have done something different, I wouldn't have gotten backed off so quickly. But what if there's someone else out there hitting this harder than I am? Maybe I should go harder. Or maybe they're a greedy pig, and they're going to get shut down. And then one day you find an account that you forgot you had, and that's kind of good. Except, how many other times has that happened? So, that's actually not good. And it's always much easier to say, screw this stuff, and go back to binge-watching The Vanderpump Rules. But the advantage players we have on the show are made of different stuff. Some of them seem to actually enjoy the mental grind. And maybe some of them have been building up the muscle for this kind of thing their entire lives. The guest for this episode goes by Mr. Doppie. He's done everything from slot hustling, credit card points to the lottery, and also online sportsbooks. Every one of those plays requires a high level of attention. But Doppie has spent a lifetime focused on working through a particular pain point. that he had. He's been training to focus and problem solve and expend a lot of effort in the process pretty much always.
SPEAKER_01:My first exposure really to expected value, I think, was because I stuttered. And, you know, speech is a huge part of life. It's totally inescapable. And I just always had a calculator in my head, even as a child, like, Okay, it's the end of the class. And so we each have to read a paragraph. And there's seven minutes left and eight paragraphs. And a paragraph is taking 30 seconds. And our teacher is going down one row and then down the next instead of up and down the road. And what does that mean? What does that mean for me? And what's the probability that I will have to speak? And then as I got older, it was more about like, okay, I'm going to stutter when I order my meal here. And so I really want the salmon. But if I can't say salmon and it takes me 40 seconds, it's going to make everyone here uncomfortable. So should I say cheeseburger if I can say cheeseburger instead of salmon? And all of those calculations are actually just me judging, you know, the expected value of speech versus not speaking. And so I think like that was probably... My first exposure to expected value. And as I thought about it, I just thought that was interesting. It's kind of related to what I do now, right? And I mean, my speech was so bad when I was 22 that I couldn't use a phone. Like people, I would call places, people would hang up on me. It was terrible. It could take me 30 or 60 seconds to say my name. And so my entire life was about the avoidance of speech. And if you have to avoid speech but function, then you have to be really creative about what are the other ways that you can get around ordering food? Like, what are the ways that you can, you know, be in school? Like, I didn't go to class for the first two weeks of the semester at every class that I went to in college and grad school because that's when we might have to introduce ourselves. And so then I have to solve a problem, though, because now I'm two weeks behind. So I have to figure out a way to get the notes and do all those things. And so, I mean, that was very unhealthy and very stressful. But I do think that it unlocked a part of my brain about how do I solve these problems? Because if you have so much anxiety about speaking, you'll do anything to avoid it. And so I had to solve problems by figuring out other ways to function as an adult that had a really hard time communicating. And so I think, you know, in general, I mean, I absolutely hate it. I still hate stuttering. It's awkward all the time when it happens. But I think that it did probably unlock parts of my brain that I'm now in a better position to use and take advantage of. I
SPEAKER_00:just want to provide some detail so you can understand the challenges that DAPI has faced. In high school, he ended up in the classes for students that weren't expected to go to college. But he went to college and has had a career in finance, including passing tests that are known to be very hard to pass. But Dobby's big wins have come in gambling, although they started as small wins.
SPEAKER_01:Basically, I was always trying to find an edge. And even before I was vulturing Ultimate X, I used to go to the El Cortez because they would have a tax... refund rebate promo where you could get 5% back on your taxes and so like I would always go in the springtime and I would overpay my taxes so that I could show up to El Cortez with a bigger cash refund check and I don't even know how I found that I think I was like couponing and stuff but then by searching the best way to use coupons I found forums and in those forums people were talking about Vulturing Ultimate X or like posting pictures of Ultimate X. And so that was a brand new concept to me. I had no idea that there was a video poker game where someone could pay for a benefit and then just abandon it. And so once I saw that that was a thing, I live about five minutes away from a casino and they had like 16 versions of Ultimate X and everyone had like 40 games on it. And there wasn't really a lot of competition. There was a little bit of competition, but I could get down there and back in 40 minutes and I could make 75 bucks a day or 100 bucks a day. And so I was like, well, that's not a bad hourly. So I'll just go do that.
SPEAKER_00:Doppie mentioned one of the prototypical machines to hustle, which is called Ultimate X. If you get, let's say, a full house in one hand, the next hand will have a multiplied payout. And some players just get up and leave that multiplied payout without clearing the screen. And then when there were other
SPEAKER_01:hustlers there, I just figured that I could do a better job hustling than they could. If I made a Google doc about tracking their schedules, because there was one guy that looked like he went there after work. So I was like, okay, well, if I can figure out what his work schedule is, and if I beat him by five minutes for five, 10 or 20 days in a row, he's going to give up. And if he gives up, then there'll be more value here. And so I think it was, some of it was about the play and some of it was just about wanting to compete and feel like I was doing something better than someone else was. And so I made a spreadsheet of all of the hustler schedules. And then I would also track all of the regular players. So I know if it's this old lady that smokes a lot of cigarettes on Tuesday night and she plays$5 spins or whatever, She's going to leave at midnight. And so I was just trying to figure out ways that I could do it better. But that was the only play that I knew. But I did improve on it. I mean, I think here at the end, it was probably worth like$150 a day. And it started at like$75. I mean, I think that something that appealed to me about The Ultimate X or slot hustling early on was that it was finally a job where the amount of time and energy I put into it was correlated with how much money I would make. And so as someone who stuttered and had a hard time finding a job, I was like, this is a meritocracy now. Like my income will be directly related to how hard I work and how creative I am about finding ways to optimize these things. And so I think that that was really important to me too.
SPEAKER_00:Doppi was happy to pick up orphan money from slot machines in the casino. And he's also happy to pick up money that credit card companies offer. He says that he got into points hacking for the same reason lots of people do. It was a cheap way to travel. But he also got something else out of it.
SPEAKER_01:I was also kind of angry at the big finance companies, because I had applied for lots of jobs in finance, and I never really got them, and all my interviews were disasters. So I was like, you guys think you're smart, and you think you can establish all these rules that are going to stop people from being able to earn lots of points? Well, challenge accepted. Then I'm going to find people who are... Find people and forums who have figured this out. And then I'm going to figure out ways to put my own spin on it and try to optimize it. And I think early on, I was buying tons of gift cards and then trying to figure out, okay, if I buy a gift card from my grocery store, can I use that gift card to buy some other gift card? Because if I can, then I can use it as a store of value and I can wait to time it until there's two X gas points. And if I buy a gift card from that store, For Target, is Target going to permit me to buy other retailer gift cards with that gift card? So if Target is 2X, am I going to be able to extract even more value from this? And so just, you know, it was kind of something that I needed to do to get flights, but also it was something that was kind of comforting to me because I felt like, It was proving to me that I could solve these problems. And then it was just about winning. It's like a maze. And I just considered it a challenge. And I always wanted to try to find ways to beat it. I can remember when Chase Pay was a 5% category. And it was difficult because no one took Chase Pay. But Samsung phones could use Samsung Pay as Chase Pay. So then I bought a cracked Samsung phone on eBay for like$50 and I would be at the cash register using two phones to get the Samsung pay to pay at the terminal. And I just thought that was really clever and like that was enjoyable to me. So it wasn't always about the points. It was just about feeling like, oh, wow, this is fun. Like I'm beating someone at this game.
SPEAKER_00:Some of the lengths that the credit card hustlers go to in order to get some freebie or some discount are end up bordering on absurd. I mean, once you're engaged in FuelPoint's arbitrage and you're dealing with the reality of taking delivery of the gas, you know, absurd is in the rearview mirror. I would
SPEAKER_01:always just look at jobs as like, what is my hourly? You know, if I can stop at a gas station and buy gift cards and make$140 an airline, I'm miles on an after-tax basis. Like, that's a great job to have. And sure, that job only lasts five minutes, but it's fine. And then I would get all this free gas. and stuff. And then there were years when I would be standing outside in the winter and I'd be spilling gas, like all over myself, my girlfriend and she'd be like, what are we doing? Like, what are we doing? We don't get out. Uh, no, no. Like you just get an auto siphon because then you don't have to pour it yourself when you put the gas can on your roof and you start the auto siphon. And now the gas just magically goes into your car. And so then once I figured that out, I was like, oh, this is even better. I don't know if you ever
SPEAKER_00:stop to think about the role that serendipity has played in your life, but I always find it kind of shocking that absent a few unlikely occurrences, my life would be completely different. In Doppi's case, becoming an Ultimate X vulture led to a series of random events that changed his life.
SPEAKER_01:So there was one day I went down to go check the slots in the Ultimate X machines and one of the regular hustlers was playing in Ultimate Texas Hold'em. And it just didn't make sense to me because I thought that he was sharp and I couldn't figure out why he was playing this and he was betting kind of big. And I was surprised. So I was like, this just doesn't make sense. And I thought maybe he was just like square, but he knew about Ultimate X until I walked by the table and I paid a little bit more attention to it. And it was clear that he could see the whole card. And so as soon as I saw that, I just thought, I can't believe it. Like, I can't believe that I was here six months ago and I thought that Ultimate X was the only play. And now... There are slot plays, and now there's a really valuable Ultimate Texas Hold'em game. I just couldn't believe it. And so I found the basic strategy for it online, and I started to play it. And then I remember there was a weekend when my mom came to town, and she was always interested in this stuff. So I was like, why don't we just go down there, and I'll show you that there's a sloppy dealer, and you can see his haul card. And so she just stood behind me as I sat down. And on the very first hand, she said, was that Jack of Spades or Jack of Clubs? Because she had seen the card. I was like, oh, that's bad. You can't do that. So I just tried to play it off. And thankfully, I don't think anyone else heard it. And then I was around for a while until I was there when it ended. There was a guy that was just His chair was pushed too far back. He was leaning too low. He was betting table max. He was betting for himself. And so that had ended. And then once it ended, I saw the other Ultimate X Vulture that had been playing it like a couple weeks later. And I said, yeah, it's really sad that that game ended. And he was just amazed that I had seen it. And I was like, well, yeah, I saw it because of you. I saw it because I was looking at you. And it didn't make sense that you were playing it, and then he and I became friends, and then he introduced me to a couple other guys that were doing other forms of advantage play here. One of the guys that I met, because we all went out to eat, and we basically said, look, we have a UTH game here, and we're all kind of strangers, but we are going to ruin it if we fight over it. We're going to ruin it if we waste each other's time driving down there to play it and someone else is already on the good seat. So how about if we just take turns? How about if we agree on hours and ways to play this that will help us all and save us all time and money? And then we did that. And then one of those guys was like, oh, and by the way, I found this stupid thing with the state lottery and it's worth$35 an hour, but that's below my hourly. So if anyone wants to do it, then you can just go ahead and do it.
SPEAKER_00:The title of this episode is, You Can't Beat the Lottery, because as a statement, it's generally true. Nearly all lottery games will be terrible for nearly all players, nearly all the time. But some small percent of the time, the game might be beatable. For instance, there was an example a few years ago where a team of students from MIT beat a game called Cash Windfall. It had a jackpot that would build until it offered positive equity. So these guys would monitor the jackpot level, then when it reached the right dollar amount, they would buy lots of tickets. Actually, maybe you've heard of the recent movie, Jerry and Marge Go Large? Well, that was based on another group that hit the same game, and both groups reportedly made several million dollars. And here's another way that a game could be vulnerable. Imagine a pick-ten lottery game, sort of like Keno, where you win increasing payouts for 5 correct or 6 correct, etc., And just assume that the pay table on this game is horrendous, such that on a normal day, you're playing into a house edge of 40%. Right, if you play that game enough, it would eventually take all of your money. But what if they offered double payouts on Tuesdays? That might be interesting. If they double the payouts in a game where the player normally only gets 60 cents of every dollar back, now it's returning 120 cents of every dollar. Or... what if they offered buy-one-get-one-free tickets? If you change the cost of the ticket or change the payouts, then the expected value of the game changes too. Doppi doesn't want to say exactly which game or promotion he played, but he can talk generally.
SPEAKER_01:You know, they had a game that usually has an incredibly high house edge. I mean, some of these games have a 30, 40, or 50% house edge. And so... I don't think that people are drawn to them because how are you going to overcome that? How are you possibly going to beat a game with a 50% house? And so I think it was just, you know, there are situations where there are promotions and they're beatable, but the question is they have to check a whole bunch of other boxes. Like they have to be beatable. They have to be, scalable they cannot require a ton of money for someone like me right so those were the factors like having a suddenly having a high edge on something that didn't swing a lot and then just knowing that they weren't expecting me to show up
SPEAKER_00:for most gamblers these games offer an escape and a brief dopamine hit but Doppi's interest in the game was completely different he didn't want an escape he wanted the grind He went into it expecting that it could be like the other games where he had focused his attention.
SPEAKER_01:My first thought when my friend told me about this thing that was worth$35 an hour was, I'll go make$35 an hour. And it's something that is brand new to me. Like, this is a new game in the same way that... Slot hustling was new to me in the same way that playing carnival games was new to me. I was like, oh, this is a new thing. I'm going to go beat a state lottery. It's going to be fun. And so I did that. And then the first day I stood there for a couple hours and I bought as many tickets as I could. And then I went back the next day and I was very fortunate. I was very, very fortunate because the store owner was the guy that was working in the store. And he said, you were here a day ago. I said, yeah. And he's like, you bought a lot of tickets. I was like, yep. And I'm going to do the same thing again today. And he said, oh, well, I can help you buy tickets over here too. And I said, oh, really? And so what I did not realize was that he could also buy tickets at a separate machine at the same time. And then it just became a question of how can we buy faster? Like what can we do to buy faster? And then what can I do to cash faster? Like what are the improvements that I could make to this situation to buy more and more tickets?
SPEAKER_00:An interesting thought exercise is to put yourself in the shoes of the marketing people that run casinos or run sportsbooks or lotteries and try to figure out how to increase sales. What would you do? I mean, what does any business do? Start discounting? Offer special days where you get some benefit for showing up or give away freebies? Now, take your list of marketing ideas and try to run them through the filter of whether you've created an exploitable loophole for Advantage players. I mean, one of the things that warms my heart is that every time DraftKings CEO Jason Robbins shows up to a Wall Street conference, he complains about Advantage players hammering his promos. It's really great. But that's the job of a growth marketing executive in an industry where the thing being sold is essentially a cash equivalent.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I think that what their assumption was that they were trying to grow this particular game. And they felt like the best way to grow the game would be to give people more experience playing it. And so if they... can do a promotion that increases sales, then more people will play it, and then more people will get addicted, or more people will enjoy it, I should say. And then more people will play it. And so I think that they knew that they had an expected loss on the game. I just don't think that they knew that someone could buy tickets all the time. I don't think they expected that. And I think that's the difference. They probably had a marketing budget, but That's based on assumptions about their customer base. And their customer base, in my opinion, and I've spent a lot of hours buying a lot of lottery tickets at convenience stores, is that their customer base wants to buy$5 worth of lottery tickets. They want to buy the Powerball. They want to buy whatever smaller game is available on a daily basis. And that's it. So the idea that a person could just stand in a store and buy tickets for hours and hours a day, I just don't think they expected that.
SPEAKER_00:These edges could sound like they're secret information. And, you know, the only people that know or hear about them are a select priesthood of advantage players who guard the information and approve its dissemination to the chosen few. In reality, there was a billboard for this promo. It was huge. And it was right across the street from Doppie's house.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it's so funny because I live on a busy street and I live across the street from a billboard that is very bright. And so it keeps me up at night and it shines into my bedroom window. And they used to advertise this promotion on that billboard like it was the Seinfeld episode with the Kenny Rogers roasters. And I would go to bed seeing this and I would know that 100,000 cars a day drove past this billboard. And I would think it's got to be over. Like someone else has to see this. And they didn't. And I mean, thankfully for me, they didn't ever see it. I mean, my friends and I played it, but I don't know really of anyone else that found
SPEAKER_00:it. This will seem like a tangent. but I'm going to try not to stray too far from what we're talking about here. But, you know, indulge me a little. The phrase, the house always wins, really bothers me. And it bothers me in part because I have a problem with authority, and in part because I try to imagine who it could possibly help. And I can't think of anyone. I can't think of how it could be useful to accept some paternalistic maxim about how casinos are just entitled to win. Even if you wanted to warn someone, about the likelihood of losing at some gambling game, it seems to me that it would be a lot more useful to explain how probabilities and payouts work. And replacing that actual work with a reductive maxim is like saying the world is full of dumbos who aren't worthy of learning. Okay, I said I would try to stay on topic here, so let me bring this back to what Doppi was doing. He and his friends refused to make any assumptions about the game, and that's where they ended up finding the value. So, you know, do the work.
SPEAKER_01:It was basically in two phases. The first phase was very cheap tickets. And my friends were not interested in that because their hourly was so much better that they just didn't. And then when it became more expensive tickets, then they were interested. But we each acted with our own bankrolls and we operated independently. But we shared information about some of the software bugs and some of the things that were happening. Like following, I think it was the second week, they sent inspectors to every store that that we bought at. And the inspectors showed up and they just wanted to make sure that someone wasn't stealing lottery tickets. And as soon as they saw that they had all the cash, then they were fine and they left. But we did realize like, okay, there's some degree of like eyeballs on this. You do a spike in sales or something else. So we would talk about information like that. And we would talk about ways to try to scale it or to cash faster and those types of things. I mean, it seems to me that all of the work is in the optimization. It's not in even finding the play. Because like I said, I mean, when we found this, we didn't think it was that valuable. But there's so much work that goes into understanding the way that the software works and then understanding the systems that are in place because there's no cash out infrastructure for these games. There is none. If you go to a grocery store, they'll be like, I have$500 for you. That's not going to help you if you're buying... Thousands and thousands of tickets a day. There's no cash out infrastructure and some of the tickets expire and there's lots of other constraints. And then you have to worry about banks because you're making large cash transactions. Are they going to think you're structuring and CTRs and SARs and all of that types of things? I mean, you need to have that. Like, you basically need to have skills to understand the entire system here and how it operates. And without that, I don't know that these games are beatable. And look, I'm talking about it now because it's been years and years and I've never seen another one that's beatable. And even if one came up now, I don't think that the hourly is necessarily going to be as good as some of the other things that are out there right now.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe the most amazing thing about this play is related to the power of compounding. Just think about the fact that money in the stock market might compound at an average of whatever, let's say 10% per year. Unless you start with a lot of money, it's going to take a while to get rich. But imagine finding something that allows you to turn over a 10% edge every day and where you could do that with an uncorrelated portfolio of tickets. Even if you start with just$10,000, after a few months, you'd be a millionaire. And to be clear, eventually you'd run into problems getting the entire bankroll in play. So that was Doppie's job. Take this edge and then figure out how to bet as much as possible every day.
SPEAKER_01:Pretty much every day, my bankroll would be constrained and basically back to zero. Then I started to accumulate a lot of tickets that I was unable to cash because I just didn't physically have enough time to cash the tickets. But any ticket that I could cash, I would immediately reinvest it to buy more tickets because the return was so great. So, I mean, there would have probably been a point when I was constrained by my bankroll, but I was mostly constrained by trying to churn over this volume of tickets because every day I'm buying lots and lots of tickets and then every night I'm scanning them on my phone on the app trying to figure out which ones are winners so that I can go back and buy more tickets the next day and so it's you know it was the I mean I think the paying parole was constrained at first but after a couple weeks I would say that I'm more constrained by the volume of tickets and so my house is just tubs and tubs of these tickets and they're printed on cheap paper and they fade with sunlight and they expire you know so there's lots of other constraints that made me fearful but on a practical basis and on a daily basis i was just trying to turn this over as fast as i possibly could You know, I think from the very beginning until the very end, the dollar amount of tickets that I bought increased by about 12x. And that was just purely on figuring out ways to buy faster and to buy more quickly. And then suddenly I was having cash issues. Like following the first big weekend with my girlfriend, I told her, I said, I need all of the money that we have to buy lottery tickets. And shockingly, she said, okay. And then like after that first weekend, I had like$87 in cash that was not in these tickets. And that was my entire liquid net worth was in lottery tickets. And so I... I had a problem because I needed to turn over this cash really quickly. And so what's the best way to do that? How can I get more money? What can I do? And so all of those types of optimization, I think, were things that I didn't expect. And I think there were ways in which I was really fortunate because these games have caps on what the payouts are for a specific drawing or game. And so... If this had gone viral, then someone else could have seen it, and if they saw it, then we would have gotten paid a prorated amount of the tickets.
SPEAKER_00:You might be noticing a pattern here, which is that although this thing was lucrative, it was the very opposite of glamorous. Right,
SPEAKER_01:so a typical store on a typical day, probably there six to eight hours, and then at night, I'm just... Caching and processing on my own to start it all over again the following day. But the store owners were critical because it was the store owners who gave me insights to the software and insights to the ecosystem and also highlighted to me what their incentives were. So I think that some of them got special bonuses based on sales growth, which makes a customer like me ideal. And then also figuring out like they get paid on commission. So they're going to be incentivized for me to buy tickets. But it was pretty much, I mean, a typical day for like all those months, you know, I'm probably working 16 or 17 hours a day, just basically either buying tickets, cashing tickets, or trying to just handle the process of the cash that is coming along with it. Now, early on, I was recycling tickets. I was not really cashing. But then towards the, or then following the promotion, I now am in a rush to cash. And so that's just more about, okay, I need to find stores that will give me lots of money. And then I need to talk to people at my bank and make sure that I'm following all of the laws related to making large cash transactions. And I had lots of bank interviews and talks about it. I mean, I paid all my taxes. I got really good legal advice, but That part was the stuff at the end that I had to manage that was still related to the play.
SPEAKER_00:I take no small amount of delight in the fact that Doppie's play happened in a place that normally makes markets for Slim Jims and Budweiser Tallboys and Hot Cheetos and Newports.
SPEAKER_01:Host customers in general would make fun of me. There were parents that would grab their kids and say, stay away from this man. And generally, yeah, that was my experience. And it was really fascinating to me because that was one of the only times that I felt like it's okay that I'm getting picked on right now because I think I'm doing the right thing. I think this is the sharpest thing to do. And that sense of confidence was really weird. But I think that people in general just didn't understand it. And so I told my friend's parents about it because I knew that I was going to do it with her. And I had to sit them down and explain. And I said, look, this is the math. This is why it's going to work. Like, you have to trust me. And I think they understood the practical part of the promotion. They were worried that we were going to get robbed because they're like, you guys are in the same stores all the time with the same amount of money. And then some other people just, they never believed it. And I think I have, not friends, because my friends believe it, but there are acquaintances now or people that I interact with who would get wind of it, you know, in some way. And they just don't believe that it could possibly happen.
SPEAKER_00:I've talked to Advantage players who have made millions of dollars exploiting FreePlay, and even after they got rich doing it, their friends still said things like, well, you gotta know when to walk away. So people just really do not understand the difference between playing with an advantage and playing with a disadvantage. Things like expected value and variance aren't super straightforward, and if you think they are, try to explain them to someone that doesn't think a lot about this stuff, or try to do what Doppie had to do. He had to explain these things to a couple of guys who knocked at his door because they were sure he was some kind of money launderer or other criminal.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I mean, I think that stuff was one of the big challenges in explaining it to the federal agents that came to my house, because about a year and a half after this thing happened, I had two special agents at my doorstep and having to explain to them, like, no, here's why I was doing this and explain it. And look, they're very smart guys, but they're not gamblers. You know, so what's the correct way? to frame that and explain it, right? So basically I just said like, every time I buy a ticket, I make a certain amount of money over a big sample. And like, this is why. And I had a Google doc on my phone and I was like, these are all of the combinations of outcome. And if you average all of those outcomes, you will see that the value is greater than the cost of the ticket. So I should just buy as many as possible. And it took a while. I mean, I talked to them for like probably about an hour. And I think it wasn't until about 40 minutes in where they finally were like, oh, wait a second. Like, I think this all makes sense. Like, you just found an edge when you were buying these tickets. I'm like, yeah, that was
SPEAKER_00:it. Doppi once sent me a picture that I'm going to try to describe to you. There's a coffee table. And on the coffee table are piles and piles of lottery tickets. They're sort of organized into stacks held together by rubber bands. The tickets cover the entire table, and they're about a foot high. Maybe there are 30 stacks of tickets, and I have no idea how many are in each stack, but maybe a few thousand. So this coffee table is piled with 50 to 100,000 tickets, something like that. Oh, and then sitting behind the stacks of tickets is Doppi's girlfriend. I have a picture of her,
SPEAKER_01:and it's in our house, and there's just stacks of lottery tickets that are basically dwarfing her. And... You can't tell if she's smiling. I always tease her that she looks like Mona Lisa in it because I think she's questioning some of the choices that she made in her life that led up to that moment. And then when she finally cast our final ticket and we were all done, I don't think I've ever seen her with a bigger smile. So I think she was very grateful to participate in it. And she didn't enjoy it. I mean, it was a lot of work, but now I think she's happy that she did it. And I don't think that she really doesn't get that excited about it anymore. Like, I still think it's funny and I think it's interesting and it's something that I think about from time to time. And she just really doesn't. She's just not that into it anymore. She's like, it was cool and I appreciate the money. Thanks. And that's basically our mindset, I think.
SPEAKER_00:I will admit that some part of this podcast series is sort of taking real stories and then turning them into parables that are meant to be helpful for listeners. You know, there is some level of mythology being created here. But one thing about myths is that the hero, after conquering the big evil, never has to wake up the next day. They don't have to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. But we all have to do that. Whatever achievements we collect, they're never just conveniently located at the end of the story. So what is next? This is not a small problem. And try to put yourself in Doppie's shoes. If you're grinding away at Ultimate X, there can be a part of it which is the sole cleansing benefit of hard work. Maybe you could call it the Calvinist grinders mentality, but it would be nearly impossible to be unaffected by the lottery score.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe the toughest part of it was that I had a license to print a bunch of money. Like every day. I just felt like I had a license to print money. And so when that ends, it's very difficult to accept a job that pays a smaller hourly and accept a job where some days you work for eight hours and you lose or some days you work for a week and you lose. And so that I think was maybe the toughest part of all of this, which I was surprised by is that sense of entitlement. Like I just get to walk into a gas station and make thousands of dollars today. And that warps your brain. That warps my brain a little bit. And it was a difficult adjustment to get back into, no, you didn't actually deserve that in the first place. And now you have to go back to things that are harder and things that are more volatile or other types of jobs that are tougher just in general. And I think that adjustment, it didn't really bother my ego as much, but it just bothered the way that I framed problems. You know, I just kept thinking like, wow, I used to make so much more money than this. Being in a position where I was made fun of and not caring was maybe the most valuable experience out of all. Because as someone, because I used to stutter very severely. I did 10 years in speech therapy. My speech is wildly different now than it was then. But as someone who was picked on a lot, especially as a kid, that experience of being made fun of because I'm buying all of these lottery tickets was hilarious to me. And it's not an experience that I could have had, I think, in another way. And it's changed the way that I apply that framework and those feelings to other situations where I can kind of find ways to validate myself and be more comfortable. But I think at the same time, I still feel really misunderstood because it's not something that other people will really acknowledge as an accomplishment. I think that some people just think it was luck. Some people think it was a scam. Some people just can't understand it. So while I may have a sense of accomplishment and pride about it, I still think that I feel kind of misunderstood in general. And then, really, I don't think it updated my personal iOS that runs in my brain. And that's one where I feel kind of inferior and kind of insecure. And so I think, okay, well, I found this one thing one time, but now I have to find something else. And I can't really enjoy the money or spend some of the proceeds of it because what happens if I never find anything like that? What happens if my income falls a lot? I have to protect this one thing that I found one time. And then it's fascinating because then I find online sports books and online casinos. I find ways to make you know, a fair amount of money. And then I think, okay, well, you found two things, but you found those things because you were maybe a little bit ahead of the curve, you know, or in the early population to take advantage of them. And you can't stay ahead forever. So you still can't enjoy it. You know, you still can't relax. You still don't have the feelings that you have. And I think it's interesting, um, to put the focus on feeling like I would be successful if I had X amount of dollars or if I did Y amount of things, and then to do those things and still feel the same way, it kind of highlights the problems and the fact that the solutions that I thought didn't solve those problems. And so that part was really fascinating to me. And it's something that I'm still processing. And there was a time about a year ago where I found this thing and I made like eighteen thousand dollars about and I sent a text over to my girlfriend and I was like, hey, I had a good night and I made like eighteen or nineteen K. And her response to that was I am going to go get a soft pretzel. And that just really like I think it's funny, but it just highlighted to me like I'm not spending this amount of money, like I'm not enjoying the fruits of what I'm doing. because in some ways I don't feel like I've earned them. I don't feel like I'm worthy of them. I still feel like the same guy. And even though I thought that some of these successes would solve my problems, they really just highlighted that my problems can't be solved by those things. And so I think that that's been an interesting part about it.
SPEAKER_00:Doppi's AP career has been an actual career. He started with very modest slot plays, then played some table games, and then found the lottery game. He was also fortunate that by the time the legal sportsbooks opened up and started throwing marketing dollars around, he had a bankroll to play with.
SPEAKER_01:The sites just want a lot of action. And I think there was a period of time where they looked at action as a means to expand into other states. And I think that they were actively taking steps to... try to inflate their handle. And I think they knew people who would be willing to do that. And so I think, you know, three or four years ago, it was easier because they were incentivized to get sales, basically. And now it's gotten tougher. And so now I think they do expect you to take swings. And, you know, I finally have a bankroll where I can take swings. And I think that's the whole key. I don't think the guy that shows up and bets player and banker at Baccarat is going to have any luck. I think they're not going to like that guy. And so it's about having the stomach and seeming like you like action and trying to stay alive. And the problem is that you don't know where the line is until you cross it. And so, I mean, I've been cut off at a lot of sites and like stuff. I think it obviously gets harder. Um, But I mean, I think that there's still some fairly
SPEAKER_00:good money to be made online. But I've sometimes thought that a decent alternate name for this series would be simply pay attention. Lots of the stuff that our guests talk about is the result of just being observant.
SPEAKER_01:I got most of my information by going on trips with these companies where I would talk to the other players that I knew weren't sharp. And I would figure out exactly what they were doing and what was the offers that they were getting. And I would study how they interacted with their host and how they sweat the game we were at. And so basically, I wasn't creating this framework on my own, but I was observing it in person. And then I was just trying to pick up little elements that I could copy and apply to my own playing style. So I think... Yeah, I mean, I think talking to other players that aren't sharp is maybe the best way to work on your own image because they're at this event because they're the most desirable players. And so I don't know if that's because they bet same game parlays or what they do, but if I can ask them what they do, then I can probably apply little bits of that to what I do. and hopefully stay alive just a little bit longer.
SPEAKER_00:Some edges get killed because they attract a lot of competition, and then some edges get killed because the casino realizes their mistake, but nothing lasts forever. Although, Doppie always tried to figure out how he could milk things a little longer.
SPEAKER_01:And that's how these promotions or these spots end, is that someone who actually cares about the company figures it out. And that was always one of my favorite things with the online sports books and the online casinos. When I would talk to hosts, I would ask them, so do you expect to be a DraftKings in five years? Because if the answer to that question was no, then I didn't think that they were drinking the company coolie. And I thought that their interests may be more aligned with mine. And if they said, oh yeah, you know, this is the best company I've ever worked for. Now I know what their opinions are, and I know that they're more probably incentivized to protect the company assets from guys like me. And I think a lot of these promotions and credit card points and stuff are the same way, right? So you just have to think about the incentives of all the people in the system that might alter your ability to do this play at scale.
SPEAKER_00:If you think about a normal job, there are all kinds of situations where it's pretty helpful if people overestimate your abilities. It helps to get hired. It'll help you get a higher salary. And then by the time anyone figures it out, you're already in. In gambling, there are a lot of situations where it's pretty helpful if people underestimate
SPEAKER_01:you. Funniest part to me about the online sports books and stuff is just that my entire life, especially when I used to stutter a lot more, is all I wanted was to be respected. All I wanted was for people to think that I was smart and for people to respect me. And then I found a job, which is basically social engineering, these online sports books and casinos where the entire goal is to make sure that they do not respect you or your intelligence or your or your or your or your power. And so that is just really, really funny to me that after all those years of wanting to feel like I was respected, the best way to take advantage of these online sports sportsbooks is to groom yourself and your persona in a way that they do not respect you. And so I think as someone who has a decent idea about how to socially engineer those things, it's funny because I could never, ever socially engineer myself in a professional setting in finance to look smooth or sharp, but I could definitely do the opposite of that. And I think I've done a pretty good job of making sure that when I interact with these sites and these hosts, they think I'm fairly stupid. I
SPEAKER_00:wanted to offer a brief comment about the information that gets shared on this show. The point is never to get every last detail of a play. I wouldn't ask that of the guests, and I also don't think it's helpful for listeners. Ideally, we want enough information so that the listener can try to piece things together, but they don't get the full answer key. Doppi said that there are some things he shouldn't talk about, But he also realizes the power of his story to inspire others.
SPEAKER_01:We all benefit from information sharing. Of course, you know, the most successful gamblers that I know, they all work with other very successful gamblers. And so what is the line at which sharing information is good and sharing information is bad? And what I would say about talking about it is it's a little bit like it is just is just that risk is like energy. It can't be created or destroyed. It can only be transferred. And so if I wait years and years and years and I don't ever talk about this, then I don't expand my network. I don't get to meet sharper people that know sharper plays and that can help me make more money. But if it comes back, then maybe I would wreck it. But again, I think a lot of it is proprietary. But it is a constant struggle of like, what's the EVE? about talking about something even very, very, very, very, very vaguely versus the EV of being quiet. And I think that those are all things that are important and those are all risks that I try to manage, right? So like I waited for this for years to talk about this, but I also understood that when I listened to podcasts like Gambling with an Edge and Risk of Ruin, I learned so much and I got excited and I got motivated and I was stimulated to think about gambling problems in different ways. And so I really benefited from all those episodes. And so it would be great if I could produce a similar episode where maybe someone looks at something in a different way. I feel like there is a sense of community here. Yes, we're all competing for the same amount of money, but we're also all, you know, trying to share information in a way that helps each other without ruining plays for someone else and I also think like here you know like stuttering is a really big part of my life so if I come on and I talk about this then I have a chance to like advocate a little bit about stuttering and talk about my experience and so all those things I think go into talking about things publicly and sharing information and I don't know I mean I was always terrible when it came to to to being able to network and finance. I would like to think I've done a fairly good job in the AP community, but all I can really do is just be myself and try to be honorable and try to do the things that I think are appropriate when it comes to information sharing. And I'm obviously not, I don't think that these plays, I don't think that state lotteries are something that are going to be beatable again at scale for me, probably ever. And so, you know, but, but, but of course, I mean, that's my judgment and someone may have a difference of opinion. And if they do, then I'm open to that.
SPEAKER_00:I actually met Doppie once at a gathering of advantage players in Las Vegas. It was a collection of the most interesting people you can imagine. There were, of course, some guys who had gotten rich with horse racing syndicates and also dozens of former card counters. But the crazy thing was that in this room, you would hear people talking about about some very specific kind of roulette wheel, and they had heard that it might still exist in some faraway country, and they were running off there to check. So it was this entire room full of smart people with this really esoteric knowledge of how gambling games work and how they can be beaten. And Hoppy fit right in, in that room full of folks who had won millions from casinos.
SPEAKER_01:The one thing that I would say about gambling is that it's given me a lot of freedom in my life. Like I would say that's the most important is that it's given me freedom to work when I want to work. It's given me a decent income and it's given me, you know, freedom to travel or to do things or to meet people or whatever. And I definitely would say that the people that I've met in the Advantage Play community, generally speaking, Uh, I feel like I've found my people, you know, like I think about one of my first ever road trips and we were in the car and I was so excited to go do this thing. I just couldn't believe that I was with these guys and that we were going to go play this thing. And we all slept in the same room and it just felt like summer camp to me. And it was really like sweet and really special. And, um, I think that even now, when I talk to other successful advantage players, it's not really about the play. It's about that sense of like, we found a way to do things on our own terms. And that's kind of where the value is. And the best tips I've gotten from other gamblers are absolutely not to play this thing or to do this thing. They are 100% a joke or a philosophy or something that pops into my head when I actually need it. And I just, you know, so I do have a consulting job in finance. I'm certainly be open to jobs in finance going forward. But I mean, I would need it to be a job that I cared about and a job that was as fulfilling as this has been for me, both personally and professionally. And I've had a lot of good experiences and a lot of good memories. And those things are are really, really valuable. And I didn't think that jobs like this existed, you know, and I care a lot about finance and financial edit and financial education and literacy, which is ironic because the best decision I ever made was to buy a bunch of lottery tickets. But I do really care about those things. And if I had a job that I felt could be as fulfilling as being a professional gambler was, then I would certainly pursue that.
SPEAKER_00:You can also follow us on Twitter at HalfKelly.