{"id":231838,"date":"2022-09-13T17:20:50","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T22:20:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/?p=231838"},"modified":"2022-09-13T18:09:57","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T23:09:57","slug":"his-failure-as-a-teacher-led-to-success-as-a-prop-betting-entrepreneur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/his-failure-as-a-teacher-led-to-success-as-a-prop-betting-entrepreneur\/","title":{"rendered":"His Failure as a Teacher Led to Success as a Prop Betting Entrepreneur"},"content":{"rendered":"

All Pete Smaluck wanted to do with his career was teach math to middle-schoolers. But that humble ambition was turned into a pipe dream by the glut of teachers in his native Ontario, Canada, when he graduated \u2014 even though he had an undergraduate degree in statistics and a master’s in education.<\/p>\n

\"Pete
Pete Smaluck founded Props.cash, a software app that teaches prop betters how to improve their odds. (Image: sportshandle.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So Smaluck, 38, must settle for his fallback career \u2014 running a successful sports betting app company recently profiled by the Washington Post.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

After Smaluck couldn\u2019t land his dream teaching post, he got a job creating interactive data applications for the Hamilton Spectator<\/em> newspaper. He also worked as an engineer for various start-ups, gaining valuable software development chops. But neither satisfied his desire to teach math to kids.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

So he built a software program that did it instead. The program used NBA stats, making it more fun. A typical question might ask how many free throws LeBron James has made if he shot 12 but only made 25%. (Answer: 3.) About 50 teachers tested it and expressed enthusiasm. But COVID had just hit, and they didn\u2019t want to pay out of pocket for the software \u2014 nor did any school boards Smaluck contacted.<\/p>\n

Props to Prop Betting<\/h2>\n

Smaluck and his friends were avid fans of prop (proposition) betting \u2014 placing wagers on the outcomes of sporting events other than the winners, the final scores, or the point spreads. A prop bet can be placed on a football player\u2019s total passing yards, on whether a run will be scored during the first inning of a major-league baseball game, or even on the length of the National Anthem.<\/p>\n

\n

In the last two years, prop bets have exploded in popularity as sportsbooks seeking to differentiate themselves invent more ways to invest in anything that could happen during a game. DraftKings recently reported that more than 10% of the bets it now receives come from prop betting. Bets that were offered only during the Super Bowl or World Series are now offered daily.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

With a few modifications, Smaluck realized that his teaching software could be made to crunch numbers that help prop bettors decide which bets to place. His astounded friends suggested offering it as a paid online service.<\/p>\n

Winning Proposition<\/h2>\n

Now, 18 months later, Props.cash is a valuable industry tool and profitable enterprise employing eight people. Thousands of subscribers pay Smaluck $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year for help on betting better. Props.cash uses color-coded graphs to represent advanced data sets in simple and intuitive ways, much like a math teacher might.<\/p>\n

I never really wanted to be in the gambling space,\u201d <\/strong>Smaluck told the Post<\/em>. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t my ambition. My ambition was always to teach math. But it just turns out that the prop bettor is a student of math. And having these basic tools helps them.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still teaching math at its core,\u201d Smaluck said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not to students.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All Pete Smaluck wanted to do with his career was teach math to middle-schoolers. But that humble ambition was turned into a pipe dream by the glut of teachers in his native Ontario, Canada, when he graduated \u2014 even though he had an undergraduate degree in statistics and a master’s in education. So Smaluck, 38, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":231839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1074],"tags":[82789,82790,82791,82775],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHis Failure as a Teacher Led to Success as a Prop Betting Entrepreneur - Casino.org<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"All Pete Smaluck wanted to do with his career was teach math to middle-schoolers. 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