You should only NEED that kind of idle timing if you don’t have enough compression or your cam is too big or you don’t have enough compression.
Very rare that I build something needing that kind of idle timing.
I just did a street BBC that made 640ish HP at about 10.25:1 and all it would take was 20 initial. It might take that or a skosh more in the car, depending on his converter.
His cam was 250/254 at .050 which is less cam than I use.
I’m not saying everyone builds their stuff wrong but when you see initial timing like that we can say they missed somewhere.
Or they have a weird combo.