Episode 10

Shane Mercer [00:00:11]:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Behind the Lines. I'm your host, Shane Mercer. That guy over there is Andrew Pace, the founder of inplayLIVE and a professional sports bettor. And this podcast is all about helping you become a better sports bettor. We're not here to give you any picks or predictions or peer into crystal balls. We are here to help you understand how the sports books work, how the industry operates. And in doing that, we hope that over time you'll learn how to navigate it better and hopefully become a winner over the long term. So with that today we are talking about a very important topic that really applies to winners, but it also applies to anybody, all of you, recreational bettors out there too, who hope to become winners. And what we're talking about is verification. If you've never won a lot of money from a sports book before, you might have never gone through the verification process. But for those of us who have won even small amounts of money, the verification process can be a real pain in the ass. It is a lot of hoops to jump through and so we are going to dive into all of it today on this episode. There's so much to talk about. We got some really interesting stories that I think a lot of you out there are going to be shocked to hear. It's amazing what some of these sports books do. But Pace, right off the bat, give us a sense of what we're talking about when we talk about verification documents. Photos, pictures, more than that. Health documents, maybe.

Andrew Pace [00:01:43]:

Yeah, I think we've touched on this topic in a previous episode. I remember talking about going to a notary.

Shane Mercer [00:01:50]:

Yeah.

Andrew Pace [00:01:53]:

When it comes to verification, what a sports book is doing is making sure that you're a human being, that you exist, so that there's a lot of reasons for it, right? Like valid reasons that sports books verify your identity. They need to make sure that you live in the right places based on the jurisdictions that those sports books are allowed to obviously have players play. They need to make sure that you're not engaging in money laundering activity or if they are audited relating to any type of money laundering, that they can at least point the authorities into the direction of that player. And you can't do that kind of stuff if you didn't actually properly verify your documents. So when it comes to actually the whole regulated sports betting world, this has become something that actually didn't exist in the way it does today. It didn't exist in the same degree over ten years ago, but now a real part of the whole regulated environment.

Shane Mercer [00:02:56]:

Yeah, you mentioned ten years ago, and it used to be that you could sign up for a sports book, deposit some money and start playing right away, and chances are you might win a little bit, but you probably aren't going to pull that money out of the sports book and you're going to keep playing. And then over time, you're going to lose it all eventually. And then you take a break, and then you go and make another deposit down the line. I think that's kind of the sort of standard story for most recreational sports bettors out there.

Andrew Pace [00:03:20]:

Yeah, well, I think a lot of guys that are in there maybe in their 40s or late 30s, they can recall a time where they would bet and they didn't have to send in any documents. And even the world of in the early 2000s playing poker, you just sign up with a username and start playing and even withdraw in a lot of cases. Right, so that just, I mean, if you're into anything related to money laundering, you just lick your chops at that stuff. You could sit down at the table with another player and intentionally lose money to him or her, and move money to new accounts and not verify and then just make a new account. And a lot of the stuff that created the verification process, yeah, it all.

Shane Mercer [00:04:05]:

Sort of stemmed from that idea of it being taken advantage of by nefarious actors to launder money and it was ripe for them, it was so easy to take advantage of. But now when you sign up for a sports book, some may look to verify you before you can even place a wager. I know. Pinnacle regulated in Ontario is like that. I couldn't place a wager until I did the verification process. And their verification process was fairly straightforward, which is show us a license or a government issued piece of ID front and back. Then also take a selfie of yourself to make sure that it is you. And for the most part that's kind of it. Some may ask for a proof of address to guarantee that you do in fact live in the province of Ontario. That's where I'm playing from. But other regulated markets are similar in that sense, where they might ask for you to show a utility bill or to show any kind of piece of mail that looks official, that has your name and address on it to guarantee that, yeah, you do in fact live there. But not all books operate the same way when it comes to this idea of verification. And there's clear distinctions between offshores and regulated books. So first let's start with some of the offshores because I think this is probably where things can get a little murky. And if you've been a sports bettor for a long time, there's a good chance that maybe you've signed up with an offshore. Bodog was one of the very sort of early players in the market. They've had their site and their platform out for a very long time and they're still an offshore book that a lot of people use. But then now there are so many other offshore books out there. So, Pace, you founded this community of inplayLIVE. It's got almost 1000 members. And over that amount of time, you have probably heard some pretty crazy stories when it comes to verification, people trying to get payments and all that sort of stuff. So first, let's talk a little bit about the offshore books. What have you seen and heard on that side of things?

Andrew Pace [00:06:19]:

Well, heard is extensive, and seen is extensive. It can get pretty crazy. But I think that before I actually talk about what I've seen, what's interesting about the topic that we're diving into today, and I think that's really important to establish is that we touched on the need to verify and as you described it, nefarious characters, which made you sound extremely smart. Shane and I almost couldn't even repeat the words, it was so challenging.

Shane Mercer [00:06:50]:

But I try to fake it.

Andrew Pace [00:06:52]:

There you go. But nefarious characters and cracking down on that and then the legitimacy and the actual need to verify. So if anyone's a sports bettor out there and I've dealt with this with the lens that we've had, but I dealt with this with my friends where I had people say, oh, I'm not signing up for that site. They asked me for an ID, it made them feel uncomfortable. So the regulated environment should make you feel comfortable with respect to verification and you should have that level of comfort and that level of discomfort that you might naturally feel relating to giving your identity out to the gambling industry makes a lot of sense. And this potentially is a topic for another time. But the banks feel the same way in this whole process. Everyone puts their back up to the gambling industry at inplayLIVE. We're trying to purify this entire image and actually provide legitimacy in this space. Now, whether or not the gambling sites follow suit with that is a whole other discussion. So the first thing I'll say is that if you are a sports bettor and you've asked to verify your account, that is not necessarily a bad thing. If you're in a regulated environment, that oftentimes will be an element of legitimacy for the site. And the reason why I say that is because there are sites now that we're talking about offshores. There are sites that do not verify that might not be legitimate. There are times as a professional, I love seeing a site that does not verify, because that means that I can get in and out of that site making money without them knowing exactly who I am. But I'm taking significant risk when I do that in not getting paid. Now in not getting paid, I've had that happen to me both in the regulated environment and in the unregulated environment and now, Shane, when you talk about offshores and what I've seen, what everyone needs to understand is almost every sports book, almost every sports book, including offshores. They are regulated. They're just not regulated in your area. So they might be regulated through carousel or through Malta or through the Cayman Islands or wherever the hell it is. And they do have to follow certain practices. And as a player, as a bettor, you do actually have recourse through the regulators in those areas, even though they're not where you're located specifically. So there's lawyers that specialize in helping people with payouts and verification in these areas. And then there's also third parties that are there for the player, companies like eCOGRA that can actually help the player. I haven't had a tremendous amount of help with them myself, but that can actually help the player with respect to these types of issues. Now, we talked about affiliates in one of our episodes and how the betting industry wasn't able to advertise with these offshores and unregulated environments. So they used affiliates to get their branding and their message out. Then that system trickling into this new regulated environment that we're in. The same thing exists for verification. And believe it or not, what's absolutely insane about the verification process, because we just said it exists to eliminate nefarious characters. This is what's crazy about the verification process. There is a way that it is used by the sports books to trick the player to keep their money in their account, to put them on tilt and to ultimately generate revenue for the book and not actually protect the player.

Shane Mercer [00:10:49]:

Yeah, I want to get into some of those aspects of it because it can be very tricky in a lot of ways. And you mentioned a lot of you out there who are listening and watching this are maybe recreational bettors. And as Pace kind of mentioned, you may have been asked to verify on a sports book when you've signed up, and it might have had your back up against the wall going like, wait a minute. They want my driver's license. They want proof of address. They want all these documents. But there's a certain element of it where it's almost to your benefit to verify up front before you've even placed a wager, because the books that don't ask you to verify upfront before placing wagers will ask you to verify if you try to get a payout down the road. And I know that many of us have seen this and experienced this, where you go, you sign up for a book, they don't verify you. They let you deposit. They let you start playing. You win some money, and then you go to pull it out, and they're like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Send us your name, your address, your bank statements, whatever documents they want to request. And now all of a sudden, they've used the verification as a reason to roadblock you?

Andrew Pace [00:12:15]:

Yeah, exactly. There's a whole psychology behind this, and this is where it comes from, the offshore side of things. That's really, again, stemmed into the regulated environment that we can obviously give a series of examples of on this episode of things that we've seen and have happened to people. But I guess the basic psychology behind it and what they're trying to do is if you're a sports veteran, let's say you made a $50 parlay and you actually won, which happens all the time, right? So let's say you won 500 or $1,000. In a lot of cases, what can happen is the player then mentally allocates those funds. So it could be for rent, it could be for something frivolous that's not needed. But they allocate those funds and they timestamp them. And what I mean by that is they might say, I'm getting this money tomorrow, or I'm getting it today, or I have this money for this, and they've already mentally processed that. And then what happens is they go to place a withdraw, and then when they go to place the withdraw and in a lot of cases, you have verified up front, but this is the wall that you now run into. You couldn't withdraw the full amount. So I've seen messages that say you are over the responsible gaming limit, which is the most corrupt message you could ever read in your life. And I've read that in the regulated environment. So you can't withdraw all of your funds because the amount that you're withdrawing is, quote, irresponsible. And I very much know about FinTrack and the $10,000 limit. That is not what I'm referring to. I might be referring to a draw of $3,000 where they say 700 is the maximum, and anything above that is over the responsible gaming limit. What they're doing is they frustrated you in that moment you were expecting to get all of your funds, you didn't get all of them, and then they've remained in the sports book with the hope that you go on tilt and continue to play with your money and get frustrated in that environment. The next that you will get is that they don't pay you at all. They cancel your withdraws, and they ask for one piece of verification. So, Shane, you touched on a number of things that they might ask for. So they just ask for your government issued ID, and you may have already provided it, which is just absurd. And they will say, oh, well, please, they don't give a reason, just please provide a government issued ID. So you do that, and then the first thing they do is any issue relating to it whatsoever that they can call out, they're going to cancel it and say that it was not approved. That process of canceling it and not approving it might take 42 to 70, you know, 72, 48 to 72 hours, sorry. And they're trying to get you to play during that time frame. So a reason that they might not approve it is the edge of the card was covered by your thumb or the photo didn't show the entire card, or you didn't provide an image that was clear enough. Those types of things are the reasons that they might decline it. Then if that gets approved, they slow roll you. So rather than ask you for everything that they require up front and again, you may have already verified, like you said, she, you may have already verified up front, but now they want more proof of different things. So the next thing that will come through is proof of address. Same process, right? If anything is not to their liking, the file format even, they'll decline it. And again, that might take a few days. The next is the selfie. And the selfie one is hilarious, right? Because they'll get you to write something on a piece of paper and then they'll say that part of your face was covered or your thumb was covering part of the card, which now you're holding a camera in just the weirdest way to try to make sure that you took the photo properly. I got one where they said please make sure that both of your elbows are fully seen in the photo to make sure it's not someone else's hand holding the document. What would it matter if someone else's if I had this magical third arm somewhere, what would it matter if it was that person's hand? Not to mention you could just see the color of what the person's wearing anyways. But write any single reason for you to slip up, they're going to try to get you on. And then you get into the proof of payment stuff. And once you get into the proof of payment stuff, that can be wild, right? So, to give an example, let's say that I deposited on a credit card or a Visa debit card of some kind, and then I requested withdraw via Etransfer. They're going to ask for proof of payment. And that is usually a bank statement that shows that the deposit that you made into that account, they see that transaction in your statement, right? But what they'll do is they'll require your card number on that statement, which oftentimes is not provided on your statement, especially if it is a debit card. And then they'll ask for some sort of statement from the bank which requires you to physically go there to get the card number manually put on by the bank. So the bank says this person does in fact own this card and the card number is on there. So that can be a whole process in and of itself. And then what happens is you go to withdraw via E transfer and they say to you you can only withdraw via the method that you deposited. So you process a withdraw to the credit card or to the Visa debit card and oftentimes the withdrawal will not process to that card. And then you'll get contacted saying that you have to use a different method. And they tell you to do that. So then you go try a different method. And it says, they say to you, first deposit $10 the minimum so that we can see that it was you. And then you go to withdraw to e transfer. And you're like, okay, finally I'm going to get my money. And they say to you, we need proof of the e transfer now, and you have to provide proof of payment again. And this process, each one of these steps can be three days. So I have had situations that last months before I get my funds and yeah, maximum withdrawals and all this kind of stuff. You add it all up, you tally it all up and you go, holy smokes. This process is 100% designed so that you keep your money in the sports book and sometimes in a lot of these cases, Shane, as you know, being a pro, I've now been limited. So they're hoping I go play in the casino, right?

Shane Mercer [00:19:08]:

Yeah, exactly right. They want you to keep that money in that account so that at some point they think you will lose it. And I mean, in a lot of ways, the tactic works, right? It is something that does frustrate the player. So I went through this just recently. You brought up the selfie thing, right? I just went through this with Expat only about three or four weeks ago where I was fighting with them to get a withdrawal out of there and it was exactly like that. It was, okay, we need a selfie with you holding your driver's license next to your face like this. Okay, send it over. No, it's too blurry, Pace. I'm telling you, it was crystal clear, like, as clear as I am right now, but it was too blurry. So you know what? And then they said I got on the phone with them and I'm like, how am I supposed to get this less blurry, right? Well, do it closer to your face. Well, okay, so I bring the phone and it's right here in my face, but now I can't get the driver's license in there because it's too close. And so I'm trying to find this balance. Finally, I get it done and they're like, okay, and again, it's like you said, three days, right? Three days later they're like, okay, your photo is good, but now we need proof of address. And you're like, okay, you know what? I will get you your proof of address and I send in a utility bill, literally the property tax bill for the home I own. It couldn't be more straightforward than that, right? No, we don't want that. We need something else. Show us a bank statement with your address on it. And you know what I did? I ended up in this case, I actually still do have some bank statements that are mailed to me, but a lot of people out there don't get things mailed to them anymore.

Andrew Pace [00:20:59]:

Yeah, I think to your point there, Shane, is no matter what the first document was, they would ask for that second one, just something different. And if you're a viewer here and you're thinking like, okay, this sounds a little ridiculous, why wouldn't you just send this in all up front? So sometimes I've done that before, and some sites allow you to do that for sure. But I've also had it where every document I sent beside it says rejected. Rejected. Rejected. Rejected. Rejected. Guess what the reason was, Shane?

Shane Mercer [00:21:26]:

I mean, there's a whole host I'm going to go with. Edges were cut off on the scan.

Andrew Pace [00:21:32]:

Not requested.

Shane Mercer [00:21:34]:

Oh, no, not requested. No, not requested yet. They might request it in the future. But we didn't request it.

Andrew Pace [00:21:42]:

Oh, it got requested. It got requested. Not requested yet.

Shane Mercer [00:21:47]:

Yeah, not requested.

Andrew Pace [00:21:48]:

All rejected. No, we see that. You know what we're going to ask for, right? And now you might be thinking, okay, but this is only these shady books, or this or that. Right. It's not the case. This has spilled over into the North American regulated states and provinces.

Shane Mercer [00:22:07]:

Yeah, it's happening. It is. With regulated books as well, it's become sort of common practice. I had a good one with Coolbet as well, which is now leaving the province of Ontario.

Andrew Pace [00:22:18]:

Do you know why they're leaving the province of Ontario, Shane?

Shane Mercer [00:22:21]:

I don't know. All I know is that it coincided with the end of the NCAA college basketball season. And I know that I made a killing from them over college basketball. And I know there's a whole lot of other inplayLIVE members that might have done well during college basketball with Cool Bet in particular. But, yeah, they're moving on and they're leaving. I'm not exactly sure why, but I'm going to take a stab and say that they were losing money over the long run. I mean, why else would they, right?

Andrew Pace [00:22:52]:

If you're not with the major books, the FanDuels, the draftkings, the 365s, and you don't have sharp lines, you oftentimes only attract the best bettors. And I think they're an example where they might not have a big following on socials, which usually would indicate that they don't have a ton of users. I remember when I used Coolbet, I shot up, I used them for a week, got limited. I think I maybe cracked five figures, but it might have been around 8000. And I shot up to the top of their lifetime earnings leaderboard. They have a leaderboard and you can see where you're at. I shot up, I think I was in the top 50 and I was already done, right. So I was like, oh, that's cool. And they show a little graph. I think I posted it to our Instagram at the time. It was a couple of years ago.

Shane Mercer [00:23:37]:

But yeah, I thought that was pretty cool too, because I got pretty high up on that board. I felt special for a few minutes.

Andrew Pace [00:23:43]:

But I think that might speak to just the nature of the clients they do attract. You end up getting a lot of sharp bettors when you're a small book that a lot of other people don't use.

Shane Mercer [00:23:54]:

Yeah, a lot of you rec bettors out there. Might not have might never have even heard of cool bet. But it is something that we were actively searching for and looking for. Not a lot of rec bettors might be out there searching for that. I did get paid in the end. I did get paid. And you know what, too? After I got verified, I was able to get all my money out of there. Eventually it took a couple of withdrawals.

Andrew Pace [00:24:21]:

Because there is that maximum amount that responsible maximum.

Shane Mercer [00:24:25]:

Exactly. But you know what? I think it takes discipline. Right. This is where discipline comes in. And when you know that the sports books are going to throw up these barriers ahead of time, your mindset changes. Right. It's very different when, like you said, if you've won the money and you've allocated the money in your head that, oh, I just won $2,000. This is my mortgage payment or my rent payment for the month. That's awesome. And I'm going to pull it out and I'm going to sort of enjoy this perk right away. And then they throw up all those barriers. It can't frustrate you. I can only imagine how frustrating it would be, but now that you're watching the show, for all of you out there and listening, you know that they're going to throw up these barriers. You can mentally prepare for that and know ahead of time, hey, this is what they're going to do. They don't want me to pull this money out, but if I just play ball with them, verify with them, do the dance with them, they will eventually pay me out because I know myself, I have not had an experience. Fingers crossed. I have not had an experience yet where I have not been paid by the book. But Pace, I know that you have your stories where they haven't paid, and I'm sure you've heard many other stories where they haven't paid or they've tried to withhold the funds and the verification process wasn't the end.

Andrew Pace [00:25:55]:

Yeah. So I think my advice to any player out there, professional or recreational, is just go through the steps. Don't let it frustrate you. And if you need to set some sort of notification so I have a couple of books that have been paying me out. Now in some cases it can be months. So I was dealing with a book that is 2750 a month. I ran that up to 60,000. Right. So a year later yeah, but I'll set a notification. Get your money from X site. Dealing with one right now, that's 3750 a week. And process the withdrawal before we shot this episode. Every Monday. Every Monday. I think I've got three or four Mondays left, right? So don't let it trip you up when they treat you that way. Don't go chase, don't go gamble. Just go through the steps and do what they ask. Be the human being that you're required to be to pass the verification and don't know that this system is designed to mess with you. Don't let it mess with you. It's messed with me a number of times, and I've had to learn that the hard way over the course of however long it's been that I've been doing this. So you had just brought up books not paying you. So I haven't been paid by certain shady and sketchy books that potentially don't verify or do verify, and then accuse you of something that's completely false as kind of a cop out to a term and condition in their sports book that, in my case, actually has not been true. Now, when that stuff happens, that's where I think you take recourse. There's legal action that you can take. There's lawyers in Malta and carousel in these places. There's eCOGRA and other regulators that can get involved. If it's happened in a North American regulated market, get your regulator involved immediately. We talked about proof of payment. We have seen stories in inplayLIVE, and I've had it happen to me myself, where they start asking for information on other payments on your bank statement. So they've seen the deposit to their site, and now they're trying to slip you up even further. And now they're going beyond their allotted sort of regulated allowance of what they're allowed to ask of you and do so, oh, you did an e transfer to John Smith for $5,000. Can you please explain that transaction? So they're asking beyond what they're allowed to?

Shane Mercer [00:28:42]:

Yeah, that's none of their business.

Andrew Pace [00:28:44]:

Yeah. When this stuff happens, the best thing you can do is find out who regulates that book, which somewhere at the very bottom of their site it'll say Bodog or Bovada or Bet US or whatever is a regulated sports book of Malta or carousel regulated. Under this license, you can then look up the regulator based on where they are. There is a contact form of some kind. Get the email, that regulator, and when you respond to the email, copy the regulator. You will be paid so fast it is insane. They'll pay you over the responsible gaming limit so fast because they know that they're engaging in practices that you're not allowed to engage in. So, again, if you don't know that, if you haven't lived through that and you're a recreational player, they're trying to slip you up. And I just got an email you're a cash out was successful.

Shane Mercer [00:29:44]:

As a recording. That's amazing.

Andrew Pace [00:29:46]:

I was a screen record, and we saw that pop up. Right. So go into it with that approach. And if you need to copy in the regulator, if you're in the North American regulated environments, you can go to our website and we have every single regulator in each state and province that you can utilize to your benefit. Now, not getting paid by those shady sites is kind of a bit of the game you play, but I'll talk about some of the regulated sites that haven't paid me. These are regulated in North America that have been regulated since 2018.

Shane Mercer [00:30:25]:

Now, these are big brand name books we're talking about here. Books that even the regular average bettor would know.

Andrew Pace [00:30:33]:

Yeah, like Unibet's an example in my case of one that didn't pay me. We can talk about Kenny's story with MGM as well, but he actually did end up getting paid, but originally, officially did not get paid. There is recourse that you can take after officially not getting paid as well with the regulators and things like that. But I'll give you an example. Okay, so this is my history of betting. Now, I'm dating way back to people in British Columbia, vancouver area will know of something called sports action. And sports action was like a bet slip that you could go you go buy a lottery ticket, you go play keno, and you could also buy a sports action betting ticket. They finally figured out how to get sports action online, so you could do it online instead of going to 711 or your corner store or whatever it is okay to buy these.

Shane Mercer [00:31:22]:

Sounds like proline in Ontario. Very similar.

Andrew Pace [00:31:25]:

Exactly the same thing as proline in Ontario. Not proline today, but back.

Shane Mercer [00:31:30]:

No, the old proline.

Andrew Pace [00:31:31]:

Yeah. So then it became sport. It would be on our Canucks ad, sports action. You want to bet? It might have been the EA Games guy who lives in Vancouver based company as well, but literally might have been like EA Sports. Right. So same thing, sports action, you want to bet? And that eventually became PlayNow.com. And PlayNow.com was just your version to go watch, to go place these sports action bets. So what you could do is you could log into anyone's account, from anyone's WiFi, from anyone's device, whatever, and you could deposit via any card. So I could say to my buddy, and this happens in your early twenty s, I could say to my buddy here, use my debit card to deposit, or hey, I owe you $50, why don't you just use my card to deposit on his account? Right? And then more deposit methods start being available to players and you could e transfer into the accounts, no problem. Different emails, different people, didn't matter, right? So you get trained to do things a certain way, and this sounds so stupid now in 2023, right? It's stupid. But that was the world that existed. And it's no different than your buddy picking up alcohol for you, right? Here's my debit card, here's my costco card. This shit happens all the time. Right. So you're trained that that's acceptable. Okay. And then I had a situation where using Gigadat, which people that are familiar with Gigadat, it is the email system that you can use the third party that deposits into betting sites. And Gigadat is used by so many different providers. So using Gigadat, sending money from one email to another account, thinking that the third party would be okay, that happened to me. And that locked up nearly $60,000 worth of funds across number one, univad. But then their odds provider, which we talked about in a previous episode, is Kambi. So it locked up all of my.

Shane Mercer [00:33:30]:

Kambi money across all Kambi books.

Andrew Pace [00:33:32]:

Wow. Two different people at the same time. And the tough part about that situation is I made a mistake. Right. I fucked up. I shouldn't have done what I did. It was an honest mistake. Truly, truly an honest mistake. But when it happened, they let me continue to play. They let me use the funds. Right.

Shane Mercer [00:34:00]:

It locked the accounts.

Andrew Pace [00:34:02]:

No, right. It said that wrong.

Shane Mercer [00:34:04]:

Okay.

Andrew Pace [00:34:05]:

I continued to play. I continued to bet. No issues. Okay.

Shane Mercer [00:34:09]:

No issues.

Andrew Pace [00:34:10]:

Right.

Shane Mercer [00:34:10]:

Okay.

Andrew Pace [00:34:10]:

Also validating the process of doing it. Right?

Shane Mercer [00:34:14]:

Yeah. If you were able to keep playing and they accepted everything, and then you were able to sort of status quo, then why would you think anything was wrong?

Andrew Pace [00:34:23]:

So then who's this person? When you go to get paid, who's this person? Oh, he's my boyfriend. He's my friend. He's whatever. He just owed me some money. So deposited for me, that kind of rationale. All accounts locked, all funds suspended. This is what's crazy, too. They didn't even return the deposit they stole from me. I made a mistake in that particular instance, and I think that that's okay. It's important to be vulnerable and humble and say, you know, I screwed up. But I guess what I'm getting at is if you're losing money, they'll take any deposit method that you can possibly offer. They're okay with that process happening. But if you win money, that's where they'll look into everything and use every reason not to pay you.

Shane Mercer [00:35:14]:

And that's what it is. Right. They're always looking for ways to not pay you. Right. If they don't want winners, they want losers. It's part of the business model. They got to make money. And if they can find a way to not pay you that even has a hint of legitimacy, or they find any kind of error, or you doing something that looks slightly off, they'll use it against you.

Andrew Pace [00:35:41]:

Yeah.

Shane Mercer [00:35:44]:

You mentioned our buddy Kenny and a big sports book. MGM got Jamie Fox on all the ads. It's crazy to think, though, that a book like, maybe Uni Bet, that's smaller, lesser known, they can't afford to have really big losses, like tens of thousands of dollars. But maybe you would think that bigger books like MGM, like Bet365, Fanduel, DraftKings these ones that everybody knows that everybody thinks are making millions and millions of dollars would be able to pay out those winnings or wouldn't necessarily want to fight to keep those winnings, but that's not the case, is it? Right.

Andrew Pace [00:36:30]:

And I think that just all lends itself back to the whole tilting keep your money in the book thing and hopefully you can lose it back. And I will say another piece of advice for anyone that's been down a difficult path. Unfortunately, my story that I just gave, and I have many more stories than that one where things went the wrong way for me. But net of all of that, that's just a write off in the grand scheme of the success, thankfully. Now, if you have money locked in an account but you can still access it and you can still bet with it, you can bet that money through. So what you want to do in that spot is open an account like Pinnacle or Bookmaker, which should, between those two books should cover off pretty much everyone in the world. You can access those sites, Pinnacle or Bookmaker. And what you want to do is take the opposite side of the bet that your money is in the account that they won't pay you and you want to funnel that money out through to the other sports book. That can go the wrong way, but eventually you're going to lose that as much as you can on the site that's locked or you're not getting paid. Eventually you will lose that money to the Pinnacle side or to the bookmaker side. And those books know that people do that to their book and they welcome it because they have the sharpest lines, the best odds, and they pay out their winners. So you can always do that to filter it out. If it's a crypto book, you can do that through cloudbet and that is a way to get your money. If you can access it. Like I said in my case, locked, closed, done, I can't access it. But that's always a way out, right?

Shane Mercer [00:38:05]:

Though you do have to have the funds available to make those other wagers, right? And maybe all of you out there may not have access to those funds, but again, this is money that you won over time. You didn't deposit 60 grand and they withheld it, right?

Andrew Pace [00:38:24]:

Correct. Yeah.

Shane Mercer [00:38:26]:

But some of these other big sports books though, too, they may not always pay out or they may look for ways, especially if you are making a big deposit, right? A lot of you out there might think, oh, you're betting you're depositing $100, $200, $500, $1,000 maybe on the really high side. But Pace, you know some guys that will deposit significantly more than that and then we get into the whole conversation of moving big money around and that.

Andrew Pace [00:38:57]:

Kind of thing, right? So I think with crypto, which will be a great episode that we'll cover in the near term. Crypto is such an important discussion in the world of betting. And then there's the regulated crypto and books, which are very few, and then the unregulated market, the crypto rush obviously being a place where a lot of people made a lot of money in a short period of time as that sort of initial boom happened. And then they're looking for money to spend and move. And books like Stake.com then came forward. Stake.com had no verification. None. They do now, but they had none. And the system of having no verification and having big money come in is designed to encourage people to move money through their book. A good example might be if you run some sort of drug enterprise and you do want to clean your money through a sports book, taking a whole series of really big bets, and maybe you're taking odds of 1.1 or 1.5, and then the one that you lose is your spillage. That's your write off. It comes back as a winner, and now it's sports betting winnings. And you pull it back out through crypto, and it went through that channel, and it's a way of cleaning money, right? So casinos and sports books have been an arena for that for a very long time. Las Vegas Strip takes cash for their wagers, right? You don't wager with a credit card and you don't verify your account. You walk in, they don't know who you are. You put down some money and you bet, I was in Vegas last week. We put $2,000 on the till a good few times, right? And that isn't a crazy amount of money. But if you go, okay, we're a team and we're engaging in this type of behavior, and you go to the tills all the way across the strip, and maybe a bunch of people do it at the same time, you fire all the money through the sports books, and then you walk out with your cash as winnings. Right? So that process has existed forever. And I guess what I'm ultimately getting at and what my point is here is that they're happy to accept the deposits. So the next story that I have is an example of a sports bettor who is in inplayLIVE who deposited $20,000 in a regulated environment to bet365. So bet365 is a regulated book. And this particular player did a $20,000 deposit, which is a large deposit from the standpoint of the average deposit from a sports bettor, being typically four figures or less. So this is a two x two times five figure deposit, and no questions are asked whatsoever. Play, play. We will take your money. Right? And then it gets to the time where this particular player, I think he won about $60,000. So his balance might be up around $80,000 and it's time to withdraw the accounts fully verified. Right. And bet365.

Shane Mercer [00:41:55]:

He did all the verification up front.

Andrew Pace [00:41:57]:

Yeah. And Bet365 happens to be one of these sites where if you do verify up front, they actually do pay you. So we're talking about all these additional steps. Bet365 has always been a fairly reputable book from a payout standpoint if you want to talk about their reputation. Otherwise we don't have enough time on this episode or all of our episodes combined for me to talk about that. But he goes to get paid, process the withdraws, and usually with Bet365, it's going to be 48 hours or less, and that money is going to hit your bank account. So didn't get paid. Didn't get paid. Didn't get paid. This is one of the tactics they use, right? They don't tell you why you don't get paid. They wait for you to come to them just in the off chance. And this does happen. This does happen. It could be small money where it's a dollar, $2, $100, whatever the case may be the off chance that money doesn't matter to you and you forget about it, right? And in a lot of cases, it's like the gift card system. The money, you would love to use that $100 gift card for dinner, but you forgot about it, and it's under the couch or wherever the hell it is collecting dust, and you never use it, right? So the off chance that you forget about the money is a big part of that process. Then he contacts this member, contacts Bet365 and then gets told that the amount that he deposited was again, and this is where if you verify this upfront was above the responsible gaming limit. I don't mind that a $20,000 deposit, they should look into it. The second it hits your account, they should lock the funds and say, I'm sorry, we can't let you bet. We need to verify that this is legitimate, but instead they're comfortable with taking all of those other types of action that I described when I started talking about this. So they then are asking him to verify, and in this particular case, we're not talking about the verification of the proof of the fund. So they see a bank statement, they want to know your income, your pay stubs, where you got the money from, how you could afford to make a $20,000 deposit. And then it becomes a full blown interrogation where essentially what they're looking for is a reason for you to not be able to afford the deposit as a reason not to pay you, but only after you want money, which this story so I have a lot of stories and I've seen a lot of stuff. This one really hit home with me because I looked at it and I was like, holy smokes. They are doing this to potentially not pay a player because they didn't like that he won, but it was based on the deposit size, which they loved at the time that he deposited.

Shane Mercer [00:44:39]:

That is just unbelievable to think that they have these anti money laundering rules that they claim to be enforcing, but they will accept the huge payment, the huge deposit, without question, without question. But then only after he's won money do they go back and say, wait a minute, how did you afford this? Which is also not really any of their business either. But if you've already accepted it, how are you going to say that this person doesn't deserve the winnings or that the winnings should be withheld? Because if they lost that money, or if that person had lost that money, they wouldn't have asked any questions, right. And they would have accepted another five figure deposit down the line.

Andrew Pace [00:45:29]:

If you made it, right? With bells and whistles, they would have accepted it. But not only that, if that bet was 20,000 and it paid 20,100, you know how fast they would have paid that player out? They would have paid it out instantly. It's because the account won real money and got limited. They want that $20,100 bet again and again and again and again and again because they're happy with that spillage when it comes their way.

Shane Mercer [00:45:54]:

Right. It's crazy to think that what some of these books will do to prevent you from winning money. But getting back to the regular sports bettor out there and sort of average bettor. Some of the key takeaways here, verification is going to happen, especially if you're in a regulated market. Don't be scared of it, right. It's okay. You can give them your license. You can take those blurry selfies and try to get them as clear as possible and just do the dance with them and you for the most part will get paid, right?

Andrew Pace [00:46:35]:

Yeah, exactly. And I think my sort of one piece of advice with all that stuff, it's totally fine. I recommend verifying up front always, but it's totally fine to contact Chad and say, am I fully verified? If I process a withdrawal right now, would it be approved or would I have to take additional verification if they say it would be approved, screenshot, that type of stuff, just to make sure that you have that ready to show them. Because they do respond to that type of thing. The other thing that I think is a smart thing to do for a recreational player is when you make your first bets, as soon as you have a win, don't withdraw all your money, but do a small withdraw. And the reason why I say that is because you're going to have to go through these hoops. And if it is a small withdrawal, like I'm talking even $10, if you make that withdraw, what's going to happen is they might process it and verify you much quicker than if it was a bigger withdraw or a limited account. And when you do that with the smaller withdraw, what you've really done is gotten yourself set up to get more money later because you've checked all the boxes. Once you've checked all the boxes, it's pretty much automatic or it is actually automated, so there's no human element to it where they're looking at your account anymore. So once that process is done, then you know that you'll be able to get your funds safely from there, right?

Shane Mercer [00:47:59]:

Okay. So don't be scared to verify before you've made a bunch of money, right? Or before that you've been limited. Just go ahead, guarantee that you've had that verification even worth withdrawing a very small amount just to guarantee that it will happen so that when you do make more money, you're not going to face a lot of these roadblocks, hopefully less. Hopefully less. And that's what we're here to do. We are here to help you make more money and face less roadblocks as you do it. And we hope that you're going to take that away from this episode. Pace, anything else important that you think we missed before we wrap up today's show?

Andrew Pace [00:48:38]:

No, I mean, MLB is underway and it's been pretty exciting. We haven't had a high volume in our last week, which was week one, but we went three for three on the MLB calls and, yeah, really excited for this baseball season.

Shane Mercer [00:48:51]:

Yeah, baseball is back. It's awesome. And we will have to do a baseball specific episode where we give our viewers and listeners some little tips and tricks and things to avoid in baseball as well. Because baseball is long, the season is a grind, and making money in sports betting, baseball can be tricky. It can be done, but it can be tricky, right?

Andrew Pace [00:49:15]:

Absolutely.

Shane Mercer [00:49:16]:

All right, so baseball coming up till next week, keep beating the books. Take it easy, buddy. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Behind the Lines. Remember to like, download and subscribe. We are on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, and everywhere you get your podcasts. Have a betting story or want to be featured on our podcast, drop a note in the comments below. And if you want to join inplayLIVE, use promo code 'BEHINDTHELINES'.