Episode 12

Shane Mercer [00:00:11]:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Behind the Lines, the podcast that helps you become a better bettor by understanding how the sports book and the industry works. I'm your host, Shane Mercer. That guy over there is Andrew Pace, the founder of inplayLIVE, the greatest sports betting community on planet Earth. And today we have a very special interview for you. We are talking to MLB analyst, an author, a writer, a statistician. His name is Ryan Spaeder, and it is a fascinating interview that starts off with him getting limited by a sports book. And that's all I'm going to share with you about it for right now because there's so much that we get into in it and it's really great. But Pace, before we get into that, I need to remind all of our audience, our listeners, everyone out there, to like, download, subscribe, follow us on all the socials at inplayLIVE. And if you want to become a member of inplayLIVE, we have a special promo code for you to use 'BEHINDTHELINES'. All right, Pace, again, a couple of other things we want to talk about before we get into the interview with Ryan Spaeder, who is an incredible individual, great guy, I'm so glad I was able to connect with him. But first, Pace, you were on the news talking about some sports betting news. Recently you were on CTV news channel with anchor Donna Sound. Pace, you guys were talking about the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario looking to possibly ban sports books from using celebrities in their advertising. We're talking athletes, actors, actresses, singers, and influencers on social media, right?

Andrew Pace [00:01:47]:

Yeah, it was pretty cool to get to talk about that. The unfortunate part about news pieces is that the company's responsibility is to fill the time with as many relevant stories as they can, and that typically leads to not doing the full sort of Behind the Lines esque episode on the topic. So it's really quick and I don't think we really get into the meat of it all. And I think that that's one of the benefits of getting to do these podcasts is that they're more geared towards the people that actually want to hear it. Whereas national news oftentimes sports betting might not be the most exciting or engaging topic for the mass viewers. But yeah, we talked about the proposal that's coming forward in Ontario that you touched on there, Shane, and it's just such an interesting topic because the AGCO Igaming is what you see it as on the sports betting sites in Ontario. They legalized April 4, 2022. That's when they launched and they're proposing a change to celebrities and influencers, no longer being able to advertise sports books. And to me it's baffling because I look at this whole space and they modeled their regulations off of what was going on in New Jersey, what was going on in Colorado, what was going on in pennsylvania. So they had the playbook where all these celebrity endorsers and advertisers were already heavily involved in the market there. So it's kind of one of these things like, hey, what did you expect? And it makes you question, well, why did you legalize sports betting in the first place if you weren't comfortable with the sports books? Using marketing tactics that they have at their disposal and fingertips to maximize their profits. Celebrity endorsements work. They're an effective form of advertising, otherwise big companies wouldn't use them. So why are the sports books allowed to profit off of your losses? Why are the governments associated with the taxation benefits of sports betting allowed to profit off of your losses? But celebrities are now being told that potentially they can't profit off the losses. And then that brings into question an organization like the Toronto Blue Jays who have the score bet plastered all over their stadium. Why are the Toronto Blue Jays allowed to advertise sports betting and promote sports betting? The rationale for stopping the celebrity betting is relating to youth. So who's to say that the Toronto Blue Jays is less influential than Austin Matthews? Or less influential than Vladimir Guerrero Jr. I know Vladimir's not on any ads that I know of, but I'm just using that as a Marquee Star baseball player as an example. And why are the Toronto Blue Jays then exempt from impacting youth relating to betting? And really what I think the real issue here is that this is sort of the AGCO reacting to something that people haven't liked in the betting landscape and trying to pull a curtain over our eyes to make it look like they're taking action on something. But the reality is they're taking action on the completely wrong thing. They should be taking action on minimum, maximum wagers for all players across the board. So if you're a losing player, you don't get increased limits that caters to problem gambling. That's as obvious as it gets right now in the landscape that we're currently in, it's not advertised. And a lot of people don't know this because they don't actually hit the level of betting that you would see the difference. But if you lose money, you get to bet more, and if you win money, you get to bet less and less. So that's not a level playing field. They're not focused on creating a level playing field. They're not focused on giving users the education tools and resources that they actually need not to succeed, but to have an understanding of the landscape that they've entered. And that's precisely why this podcast exists and it's precisely why inplayLIVE exists. So the AGCO is missing the mark here.

Shane Mercer [00:05:59]:

Yeah, it's not surprising to see a government bureaucracy, one, not focus on the correct problem, but to just sort of throw something up and say, well, hey guys, we're going to do this because we think it is targeted towards a younger demographic. And look at us. We are taming the big bad sports books by stopping them from using these athlete influencers. It sort of seems like a PR tactic by the AGCO more than anything else.

Andrew Pace [00:06:32]:

Totally. And I think that with respect to seeing the AGCO, you could just apply that same statement that I just made to any regulator in any regulated state or province. And I think the one positive in all of this is between the Petta Murphy attack of the sports book CEOs that we kind of featured on our episode last week, and then now what's happening in Ontario. I will say the action in Ontario is not exactly what I would have hoped for or think is the problem. But we're starting to see sports books in general scrutinized and action being taken against them for the way that they're engaging in their business practices, which is.

Shane Mercer [00:07:11]:

Hopefully eventually the AGCO sort of finds its way towards moving in the direction of fair play.

Andrew Pace [00:07:18]:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well said.

Shane Mercer [00:07:22]:

All right, moving on. We've got another topic popping up in the news that really sort of affects sports fans everywhere, especially if you're a fan of the NFL YouTube TV and NFL Sunday Ticket and Red Zone, you're going to be able to get it all through YouTube TV. On the surface, this sounds great. Fantastic. People out there who have done the cord cutting and they don't have a cable subscription or sort of looking for streams and sort of getting extremely delayed streams, might be looking towards this YouTube TV option to watch all of their NFL action every Sunday. But Pace, I know you have some concerns on the latency front, right?

Andrew Pace [00:08:06]:

I think the latency isn't being discussed at all online right now. And it's one of these things where I've seen this already. So in Canada, we had a company called The Zone Takeover from Cable for NFL Rights. Gosh, I want to say 2018 might have been 2019, whenever that was. There was a mob of extremely passionate fantasy experts, sports bettors, anyone that had any concern relating to latency that took to the Internet to bombard De Zone with how bad and how latent their service was.

Shane Mercer [00:08:45]:

It was terrible at the beginning.

Andrew Pace [00:08:48]:

It still is from the standpoint of latency. It might be a little bit more user friendly and actually work, because part of the problem then was that the service didn't actually work. So in a lot of cases. But putting that aside, the mob that took to the Internet actually won. So it got to the point where cable providers then offered Sunday Ticket again, you could buy it through your cable company. And this is before inplayLIVE. I was at the forefront of that mob. I was as passionate and as instrumental as anyone else was at that time. All of us with our small Twitter followings, just bashing them and asking for resolve. And what's interesting is at that time and still to this day they say that latency isn't really a concern of theirs. Yeah. So fast forward to today. Now we have YouTube TV taking over the NFL. So I've kind of seen this playbook already. And what's crazy is the topics that we have already talked about on this podcast, like latency with streaming, that is going to be something that people don't even realize in the United States that they're about to face with YouTube TV, provided YouTube TV does not correct the latency. So we've seen Amazon Prime successfully do it with Thursday Night Football last year. Some of the least latent sports viewing in the history of sports that we watched through Amazon on Thursday nights. And that will remain. They still have their contract on Thursday nights. So then you're going to flip to Sunday. People will have tuned in, paid an astronomical amount of money, in a lot of people's opinion. In my opinion, we're in a great position with inplayLIVE members where we look at subscriptions like that as investments, not as we're sitting here licking our chops going, can we get every NFL game with no latency through a TV provider? We would pay way more for the subscription than what the cost is in our case. But people that are investing a whole bunch of money and then they're going to find out you can only sign into two screens at once. One of the biggest issues that people were upset with, the zone potential blackout games was a big issue. I don't know if that's going to be the case with YouTube TV. I don't think it will be. And then seeing the text and things like that of the event already occurring, fantasy football notifications, et cetera, and then watching it after that, people don't realize that that topic is going to like week one of the NFL. It's going to be like wildfire if Google hasn't figured it out yet.

Shane Mercer [00:11:30]:

Yeah, I would imagine that they would. It is a big deal. They know that. But you never know. You really don't. And I know me personally, it's all about that red zone. I got to have that red zone screen up every Sunday just so I can see every big play and sort of see how the games are unfolding with that. I'm a big red zone guy. Anyway, I think a lot to look forward to on that side of things. As part of our previous conversation with the AGCO, we were talking about fair play. Fair play comes up a lot in this next interview with Ryan Spaeder. And so I think we're going to jump into that now. I want to set it up, though, by saying this guy is somebody who was not exactly a great bettor, but he found his way to become a great bettor. And then Pace, as you know, once you become a great bettor, what do the sports books do? They shut you down and he got really upset. So that's how we'll set it up with that. We will play that interview for you right now. Here it is with Ryan Spaeder. Ryan M. Spaeder, MLB analyst, author of Incredible Baseball Stats Statistician, and a former hedge fund manager. Ryan. Welcome to Behind the Lines. Thank you so much for joining me.

Ryan Spaeder [00:12:49]:

Hey, I really appreciate finally getting on the horn here and being able to talk to you guys.

Shane Mercer [00:12:54]:

Hey, really excited to have you on the show. And we brought you on because we saw your PointsBet story. You hate PointsBet. In fact, in one of your tweets, you said if they were a publicly traded company, you would short their stock. Why do you hate PointsBet so much?

Ryan Spaeder [00:13:13]:

So, you know what? All of last season, I had a great relationship with PointsBet, mostly because I took them for about six figures during the MLB season.

Shane Mercer [00:13:23]:

Nicely done.

Ryan Spaeder [00:13:26]:

Yeah, I appreciate it. It paid for the car that I'm sitting in. It paid for the ring on my fiance's finger.

Shane Mercer [00:13:36]:

Congratulations. Well done, buddy.

Ryan Spaeder [00:13:38]:

Yeah, well, my issue stems from the fact that they kind of just banned me for no reason. I couldn't even bet so much as a single dollar. And I believe the reason is because I was so successful against them last season. I reached out to my rep because they made me a diamond member last year, which is by invite only. They took me to a Ravens game, an Eagles game, put me in a box. I was hanging out with the rep, and he kind of had nothing to say to me. And I feel badly for the dude because we were very friendly, but clearly he's been told that I'm persona non grata and I'm no longer allowed to wager with them. And an issue that I take with this is clearly it's becoming clear to me that a lot of these books talk to each other. It appears and I'm not saying this for certain, but it appears that I've also been limited on FanDuel. And my concern is that I will also be limited by MGM, which is the one that I use most of the time. And I'm also whatever, they're high Platinum member or something there. So if I ever stay with MGM, typically I don't pay for a hotel. I just recently went to the Marine Corps Ball with my fiance. I promised her I would take her in uniform and COVID hit, and then they got canceled two or three years in a row. So I had to squeeze into my old uniform and take her, and they put us up in a hotel, which was fantastic. But my concern is that I just keep getting cut off here, and it's a big part of my life. I spend a good, I would say six to 8 hours a day on baseball.

Shane Mercer [00:15:42]:

I totally understand where you're coming from, there. Ryan, first I want to ask you about some of the conversation and some of your experience with PointsBet. How did you find out that you were being banned, as you called it? I think most of the members of inplayLIVE would call it limited or restricted or cooked as a sort of slang kind of term. But talk to me a little bit about how you found out that you were being banned from PointsBet again.

Ryan Spaeder [00:16:20]:

I don't know if banned is the best word for it. I think it's more of like shadow banned because I'm able to deposit into my account still. I've been stripped of my diamond status, which if you saw from my Tweet, my connection there confirmed. And even though I can deposit, I couldn't bet so much as a single dollar. And last year, what I was doing, I would make bets on occasion of up to like two grand. I had the one bet last year that was a same game parlay. That was $250 to win about 54,000. And that hit I'm surprised they didn't kick me off there. And the funny thing about that is it was a free bet because they would occasionally give me free bets as a diamond member. And it's just a shame because truthfully, it was my favorite book.

Shane Mercer [00:17:25]:

So you hit a big bet, basically. You hit one really big bet that accounted for what, half of your winnings with PointsBet close to.

Ryan Spaeder [00:17:32]:

I would say 40% or so, maybe 35. I took them through the Wringer last year, I'll tell you that right now.

Shane Mercer [00:17:40]:

Well, it certainly sounds like it. Again, kudos. It's great when we hear stories like this because winning is possible. It's more than possible. But I want to ask you, how did you feel when you realized that, okay, I can't play here at PointsBet anymore?

Ryan Spaeder [00:17:57]:

Honestly, I was super disappointed. I mean, they had invited me out to their headquarters is in Colorado, and then so they had invited me out there, go to a Rockies game or whatever, but I was super excited about that. I was going to plan a trip out there and I end up getting axed, as it seems, I guess I can't say for certain. And then the other thing that I started thinking of is I start thinking of what is the reason for this. When I was in the Marine Corps, I was an intel analyst, right? So what I was supposed to do was deduce reasons. And I'm thinking about it and I start thinking like, maybe they're just out of money because apparently this is happening to other people. Apparently recently they had a bet cash that they canceled after the fact. It's a little bit ridiculous. And the only reason that I was told as to why I'm limited is because I've been limited by their traders, which nobody has been able to explain to me what that means. I don't know what their traders are. So I just kind of think that they saw what I did last season and decided to ask me.

Shane Mercer [00:19:21]:

Yeah, I'm kind of laughing here. Ryan, I'll be honest with you. Why? So the group that I belong to inplayLIVE, and I know you were in contact with Andrew Pace. He's the founder of inplayLIVE. So we're a community of sports bettors who do this regularly. And this is not a surprise to us to hear your story. This is common. This happens all the time. And what is shocking, Ryan, from my perspective, and I think from the perspective, a lot of the members of the group who are listening are probably thinking, wait a minute, PointsBet allowed you to run up your account to more than $100,000. Almost all of us would be limited well before that and would never even have the leash that you had to get it that high. Getting limited by sports books is almost just part of the game.

Ryan Spaeder [00:20:15]:

So I think I can respond to that for you. People who gamble tend to do exactly that, gamble. It wasn't until I started following a system that I had some success with this. Previously. I think other than the last three years, I probably had one winning season ever. Because what I would do is the same thing that every bad gambler does is I would have a hot week. And then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, now I can afford a $200 bet instead of a $100 bet or a $2,000 bet instead of a $1,000 bet, when in reality, it's going to regress to the mean, and me as a math person should have understood that. But I'm also a gambling act. It wasn't until I put math behind this and I was like, I am sticking to what I am doing and I'm sticking to my plan and I'm sticking to my units that I had success with this. Now, I think that some of the customers that I was bringing to them maybe had problems with sticking to what their plan was. And so when the bottom falls out and you have a bad week and all of a sudden your unit size is four, five, six times what it once was, you lose it all and then some, and then people try to get it back, as you know.

Shane Mercer [00:21:47]:

Kudos for recognizing in yourself that you had these gambling tendencies and this problem gambling tendency and sort of finding a way, putting in a system, putting in rules and sort of strategies for yourself to manage that. So well done. What pushed you in that direction? Was it just the fact that you were tired of losing?

Ryan Spaeder [00:22:12]:

No, I'm a math guy, so I decided, like, the best way for me to do this is to just do it by the math. That is it. I build models to predict what I'm going to do. I tear out my confidence in terms of the models that I built, in terms of the pick versus what the value is. It's really just the fact that I took a step back after the Super Bowl four years ago when I was like, oh, man, can I swear?

Shane Mercer [00:22:55]:

Yeah. FCC rules here, bro.

Ryan Spaeder [00:22:59]:

I did really shitty this NFL season. I got to figure it out. And then I realized I took a step back and I was like, okay, stick to what you know, which is baseball. I also do pretty well in NBA games, but only live in terms of over and unders.

Shane Mercer [00:23:17]:

I love hearing that.

Ryan Spaeder [00:23:20]:

I do really well with baseball in terms of picking games, but what screws me up is when I start doubling down and tripling down and quadrupling down even. And I decided that there's 2430 games. If I pick them all, I know I'm going to pick at a Clip that's I think I was around 62% last year, which is pretty freaking good. I know that I'm going to pick at a Clip that will be profitable as long as I don't mess around with the amount that I'm betting. And so I decided to take that route. I think the first season I did it was three years ago, maybe four. I might be mixing up years, but the first season I did it was profitable, and I did it only for a little amount because I was testing it out. I was only doing $10 a game at that point. Right. And I would decided, if this is successful, then I ended up doing ten times that the following year and even more that going forward. I will continue this, and I haven't had a losing season since. It's been great.

Shane Mercer [00:24:43]:

Yeah. Hey, well done. You arrived at a lot of the principles that we espouse here on Behind the Lines and within the inplayLIVE community. You had a system, you practiced sound money management, which is probably the number one key to any form of successful betting strategies. And it sounds like you were probably also tracking your wagers.

Ryan Spaeder [00:25:07]:

Yes. So I try to track them now. What I actually have is I outsourced it, so somebody else is tracking it for me. Just given that I have, you know, a full time day job, and I'm in grad school full time at Georgetown, and then I have this, which I spend like 6 hours a day on. I sleep. I'm not even shitting you like 3 hours a day. It's terrible. The hairs in my beard are getting gray, as you saw prior to.

Shane Mercer [00:25:39]:

It didn't look that great.

Ryan Spaeder [00:25:40]:

I'm wrapping it up. I'll be done here in a month, and I'll be able to be able to spend even more time in baseball.

Shane Mercer [00:25:47]:

I want to ask you some questions about your strategies and about how you're doing it, but before we get into that, I want to get back to the topic of limiting a little bit. So, Ryan, I want to give you a warning that if you're going to continue to do this, getting limited by sports books, like what happened with PointsBet, that is a part of what you're in for. I myself have been limited on over a dozen sports books, and the members of our community inplayLIVE would laugh at that number because some of them have been limited on hundreds of sports books. So when I tell you that limiting is a part of this game, a part of this process, and sort of having the kind of conversation that you had with PointsBet is going to become a sort of regular part of your life if you continue sort of going down this path, what goes through your mind?

Ryan Spaeder [00:26:42]:

Goodness. I think what I'm going to end up having to do is like an Oceans Eleven thing. I live in Stafford, Virginia, so I'm about an hour away from and as I just told you, I go to Georgetown. I'm an hour away from MGM national harbor. I may have to do an Oceans Eleven type deal and just have their strippers go in and place bets for me. Give them 10% over the top.

Shane Mercer [00:27:13]:

That's one way to go about it. I guess you're going to have to find creative ways, though, to kind of navigate that. Do you feel like it's a fair industry?

Ryan Spaeder [00:27:25]:

No. And I should know this as an author, but I don't know if it's immoral or amoral, but I don't think it's correct. I don't think it's right. I think to just say, hey, we're only going to keep the losers so that we can grow our profit stream. I don't think it's right. And to be honest with you, on top of that, it sounds like you do pretty well in terms of gambling as well. And today is what, April 11?

Shane Mercer [00:28:05]:

Yeah.

Ryan Spaeder [00:28:06]:

So we got seven days and I'm going to have to pay a shit ton in taxes. I honestly almost missed the days where it was all offshore.

Shane Mercer [00:28:16]:

Yeah, I can understand that. Now you're working with these regulated books and you being in the US. Just full disclosure, I'm in Toronto or north of Toronto.

Ryan Spaeder [00:28:24]:

Okay.

Shane Mercer [00:28:25]:

Us, we are very lucky in Canada. That's right. We don't have to pay any taxes.

Ryan Spaeder [00:28:32]:

I think I'm going to have you place bets for me.

Shane Mercer [00:28:35]:

Yeah, I don't know if I'm your guy for that, Ryan, but I might be able to connect you with some people who might be interested.

Ryan Spaeder [00:28:43]:

I'm just kidding.

Shane Mercer [00:28:47]:

No, that's all good. I don't blame you for kind of thinking that way, though, because that's how you're going to have to think. You're going to have to come up with creative solutions and ways to kind of work around the books that are available to you and kind of work with them and find ways to navigate this space. Because like I mentioned, if you're going to do this on a regular basis and you're going to be successful and it sounds like you have at least some of the tools in your toolbox to be successful long term you're going to have to sort of play this game with them. And it is unfortunate and it doesn't always necessarily feel fair but on the flip side of it, if you work at a sports book and you're a sports book CEO, for example, well you need to run a profitable business and Ryan guys like you and me, we work counter to that.

Ryan Spaeder [00:29:38]:

Yeah, but the retort to that is I think that they should be able to predict exactly how much they're going to make in a year. Because again, math dude here right, let's say we got two teams 50 50 chance to win you're looking at -110 or -115 each all you have to do is adjust those odds to the left or right to ensure that 50% of the bets are on one team and 50% of the bets are on another team. What I think that they're doing is they're doing the adjustments but then on top of that they're keeping away people who don't tend to lose and to try to maximize profit, which any business should try to maximize profit. However, I think in this industry it's just wrong to say like, okay, this guy's a loser so they can stay and this guy's a winner so he can screw off.

Shane Mercer [00:30:46]:

Yeah. And there are sports books out there I shouldn't neglect them in this sense, but there are sports books out there that very famously do not limit winners. And so I'm thinking about Pinnacle. I'm thinking about Bookmaker. These are technically considered Sharp books. So there's the Sharp book model and then there's the soft book model.

Ryan Spaeder [00:31:08]:

You're going to have to send me your list of the ones that you think are solid.

Shane Mercer [00:31:14]:

Well, it's not about whether they're solid or not. It's just a matter of they won't limit. And what they do is they have market limits. So they'll have limits specific to the market that apply to everyone who bets on their sports book and so they will never limit you as an individual. And it's called the Sharp book model. That's sort of how it's been coined. And then there's the soft book model where PointsBet DraftKings FanDuel. Most of the popular ones follow the soft book model, which is the model where they take on as many customers as they can that are losers, and they use their algorithms to weed out the winners and limit the winners and sort of identify them over time and then limit them all the way down to zero dollar bets like you experienced.

Ryan Spaeder [00:32:02]:

With well they should be using their algos to do exactly what I was just talking about in my opinion.

Shane Mercer [00:32:08]:

Yeah, they could follow that Sharp book model. And that's what the Sharps books do is that they. Find a way to balance the action. It makes a lot of sense to go down that route. I think depending on where you fall in this argument, you may agree that that is a more ethical way to go about navigating the sports betting landscape. But is it as profitable? I don't know. Some of these sports books are doing very well by limiting winners and only accepting losers to play with them long term.

Ryan Spaeder [00:32:42]:

Sorry to interrupt you. I think it's more reasonable though, in my opinion, to instead of being like, okay, this guy won, we're cutting him off. Instead of that, instead of giving like a minus 110, minus 110 on both sides, make it minus 112, make it minus 114. Whatever you have to do that is more reasonable to me than to cut off individuals. And I think in the end, if they were doing that, points bet has a very bad reputation right now. I don't know how much time you spend on Twitter, but I think in the end, if you were doing that, you probably wouldn't have all of Darren Ravel and his 2 million followers. Darren's actually a friend of mine, a mentor as well, his 2 million followers finding out about PointsBet who canceled a bet after it won, which is ridiculous.

Shane Mercer [00:33:41]:

It is ridiculous, you're absolutely right. But it happens. It happens. And it's not just PointsBet. There are many other books that have done this. They'll void bets. They'll claim that there was market manipulation. They'll say that you had some sort of edge or that the result was known ahead of time. There's all sorts of excuses for why they do it. And I mean, there are legitimate cases where the sports book has posted a bad line, a broken line. That happens too. But yeah, it's not just PointsBet there's so many others that do this and engage in these practices. It would really blow your mind. But I want to get a little bit of insight into how you were so successful. We talked about you coming up with a system, managing your money, tracking and that kind of thing. But what is it specifically? As a guy who really focused on as a statistician and somebody who was focused on statistics, did you find something in there that really works? Is there any sort of tips or suggestions you can share with our audience?

Ryan Spaeder [00:34:46]:

Sure. So I'm not going to give you my proprietary, god, I'm messing up the word proprietary model or anything, but the couple of things that I look at first of all, I never bet a runline unless it's live in action game. And that game I have to be watching because then I'm going on feel entirely I can envision how the game is going, and I've done very well with that. I avoid it, run lines entirely pregame. The only one that I will consider on occasion is the Rockies, minus one and a half at home as an underdog. That is it. Other than that, I don't touch them. As I said, I do every single game. So what I tend to look at is, for example, maybe a player has 20 at bats against a single pitcher, right? That's not significant. In my opinion. Flukes happen. Maybe he's over 20, or maybe he's seven for 20. Or maybe he's 13 for 20, right, and 13 for 20. You're like, oh yeah, he's definitely getting a hit tonight. No, I don't think you can look at that. What I use is are you familiar with Baseball Savant?

Shane Mercer [00:36:12]:

Baseball Savant? No.

Ryan Spaeder [00:36:13]:

Okay. It's a website. I definitely recommend checking it out. It's all public information. It has every single data point imaginable, and you can do whatever you want with it. It's really cool.

Shane Mercer [00:36:28]:

I want to ask you about that, though, because there's qualitative data, there's quantitative data, obviously, you know this as a math guy, but how do you know which data points matter and which data points don't?

Ryan Spaeder [00:36:44]:

So that's a really good question, and I think it's variable. It changes. Oddly enough, the variables change, right. For example, what I was going to say is when I'm looking at a player facing a pitcher, I don't look at their head to head matchup. What I look at is their matchups against, like, pitchers, like similar pitchers, guys who throw the same stuff, guys who have similar velocity, guys who have similar rotations per minute, which means movement generally. So I'm looking at it at a broader spectrum. And then, for example, if a guy performs well off of like pitchers, and then he's also 13 for 20 off of this pitcher, then I'm generally going to be in on it, right. If a guy performs poorly against, like, pitchers and I keep defaulting to Colorado because it's the easiest example if a pitcher is in Colorado and they tend to get guys out with their junk ball, right curveball, slurve, whatever. You think they're calling it a sweeper now? Then he's probably not going to have the best outing because the ball doesn't tend to break. In Colorado, there's so many different points that I look at, and at the end, when I make my decision, I don't always think the team that I pick is going to win. I just see the most value there.

Shane Mercer [00:38:29]:

And I'm going to take a guess too, that if you're looking at all these data points and you're looking at things like that, you're not necessarily taking those main markets where it's Team A versus Team B and you're taking Team A to beat Team B, right. You're probably looking at some of the more minor markets.

Ryan Spaeder [00:38:48]:

So what I do is I make my own. I assign a plus value, sort of like I don't know if you play blackjack at all, but if you're familiar with counting cards, a plus value and a negative value, right. And I assign that to each team and that's how I make my plays. And then what I do is I go through and tier each one. I usually do four tiers. I've done up to five and I tier them based on confidence times value. Generally the ones that end up in the tier one or tier two have north of 50% confidence and north of 50% value. In my opinion. I just try different methods and I add to it throughout time. I generally don't take away variables that I'm using, but I will add to it and it does adjust to the left or to the right over time.

Shane Mercer [00:39:48]:

One last question for you here, Ryan. If you could give one piece of advice to a recreational sports bettor who is planning to bet on baseball this season, what would it be?

Ryan Spaeder [00:39:59]:

Stick to your unit size.

Shane Mercer [00:40:02]:

What does that mean?

Ryan Spaeder [00:40:03]:

Stick to your unit size.

Shane Mercer [00:40:05]:

Oh, stick to it. Yes, stick to your unit size. Money management.

Ryan Spaeder [00:40:08]:

$100 a game. Bet $100 a game. Don't change. The only time I say change is if you get four times your money, then you're comfortable enough to double up. Otherwise I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't recommend doing it.

Shane Mercer [00:40:27]:

Like, if you've increased your bankroll by four times, then maybe double your unit.

Ryan Spaeder [00:40:32]:

Yeah. So let's say, for example, your bankroll is ten grand and now you're sitting on 40 and you're betting $100 a game, then I think you're in a good enough spot to increase that to 200.

Shane Mercer [00:40:44]:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Ryan Spaeder, thank you so much for joining me. I wish you all the success in your sports betting time. And to be honest, this might sound strange to you, but I hope you get limited on more books as you go along because that means you are winning.

Ryan Spaeder [00:41:06]:

Thanks, brother. I told you we'd go long. I'll send you some of the tickets so you can check them out.

Shane Mercer [00:41:11]:

I love it. All right, pace. So that was Ryan Spaeder. What a character, right?

Andrew Pace [00:41:16]:

Yeah, big time.

Shane Mercer [00:41:17]:

It was a lot of fun chatting with him. One of the big things that I take away from that conversation is like, here's a guy who was betting on the regular, but he was able to recognize in himself that, man, I kind of suck at this. I'm not doing very well and I think I could be better. And his go to became tracking and money management. I think that says a lot about what you guys and the crew at inplayLIVE are doing.

Andrew Pace [00:41:45]:

Yeah. I think also, too, his journey speaks to the power of having a community of professionals to guide you through this landscape. There's two sides to that. I think the first side of it is it's almost like this joy I feel in him being limited and not knowing that it would happen to him in the way he reacts and feels about it. It's inspiring because it reminds me, like I said, number one, having the value of the community to guide you through those types of things that happen to winning players and what to do next and how to go about it all, of course. But then the flip side, like I was touching on not to lose that feeling. Shane, you're talking about I've been limited to dozens of books and people at inplayLIVE have been limited at hundreds. Well, that doesn't mean you stop fighting. That doesn't mean you accept the status quo. That doesn't mean that you don't continue to contact your regulators to go to social media like Ryan did. We met him because of his protest that he put out on Socials and that's what brought him onto the show. Don't lose that sort of juvenile new experience, fresh experience of being limited and the reaction to it continue to push and that's what's going to create real change.

Shane Mercer [00:43:16]:

Yeah, that's an interesting point because I think I'm sure you absolutely have kind of become numb to the feeling of being limited. Right. And the sort of frustration and anger that Ryan experienced right off the bat and wanting to sort of put it all out there for the world to see, to be like, hey, can you believe these guys? They limited me. How dare they? This is unfair. And all those kind of feelings. I think after a while and after it's happened to you numerous times, I know I could speaking personally, each one becomes like, yeah, okay, I got limited again. Time to move on, on to the next one. Right. But I think you're right, it's important not to lose that sense of desire to want a fair playing ground.

Andrew Pace [00:44:07]:

Yeah. If anything, it should motivate you to justify it even more. And I think that's a lot of people know this, but we kind of started inplayLIVE, kind of on the back of that war, that fight where you go, hey, if you're going to do this to me, I'm going to show hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands of people how to do what I do so that you guys can see the power of collaboration. Right. Which, like I said at the start of this episode that we're seeing on full display now with some of these sports books being scrutinized.

Shane Mercer [00:44:42]:

One of the other kind of interesting aspects that I liked about Ryan was that I mentioned how he was tracking, but then he really started to dive into it and came up with a system, came up with a strategy, a plan of action, and he stuck to it. He showed that discipline and he mentions that he was in the US. Military. I think a lot of that discipline might stem from that because it does take a tremendous amount of discipline to stick to a system. But that in turn was the key to his success. And if anyone out there is doubting whether or not you can be a winner, well, Ryan has proven that you absolutely can if you can maintain that level of discipline. Right.

Andrew Pace [00:45:32]:

And I think we've touched on that before, and I think that the message really is that regardless of a successful system, you're never going to succeed long term if you can't figure out how to lose. And figuring out how to lose means managing your money effectively, managing your unit sizing effectively, not chasing, not tilting all the things that can happen and does happen, even to the best of us. That happens to the best of us all the time. But when you learn to handle those swings and get through them, you become unstoppable because you know the benefits of losing. You get to have a banner account like Ryan's PointsBet account that goes into the six figures because of the fact that you potentially lost in that book. I don't want to say it's everything, but really, once you've got it all figured out, it's everything because otherwise you don't stay in the game. If you don't have those disciplinary principles, you fall out of the game and you got to either start over or quit.

Shane Mercer [00:46:36]:

Yeah. And it also sounds like Ryan could have used, like you mentioned, a group or a team or people who have been through the process before to help guide them on how to sort of proceed after getting limited by PointsBet. Right. He sort of seems to be finding his way a little bit, but it might have been a lot easier.

Andrew Pace [00:46:57]:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that a lot of our members have it's like a badge of honor. I know when you do get limited because it's your payday, number one, you get to pull your money out of that book, and number two, you've beaten a sports book. They don't want your action anymore. It's kind of got that old school, like 50s badass Vegas vibes where instead of getting beat up in the back and told never to come back, you just get your money and say, okay, I'll move on to the next one. So it is a badge of honor.

Shane Mercer [00:47:29]:

Yeah, badge of honor and not as bloody.

Shane Mercer [00:47:37]:

I just want to say thank you to Ryan for joining the show. I really enjoyed chatting with him. That was a lot of fun. Pace, any final thoughts before we sign off here?

Andrew Pace [00:47:47]:

No. Huge shout out to Ryan. Thanks for coming on. I think awesome to get the perspective of a statistician and also recognizing that you can win. I think that's something that's a real take home message for a lot of people that don't recognize that and that it isn't like he has access to information that other people don't. He interprets it in specific ways that yield positive results, and given his background, has been able to apply that in a successful way and also too. He knows what works for him. He touched on baseball being the sport that he's most successful at because he lost at other sports where his models didn't apply. And yeah, I mean, you bring that mindset of understanding and recognizing that winning is possible and that it can be done. That sort of open mind to learning into an environment like inplayLIVE, our community. And before you know it, his tactics and strategies become a staple of ours while he learns all of the other ones that are so effective for us. In all of the other sports, the community continues to grow, continues to succeed. And that's really what it's all about. And we've seen that happen with other pros in the past and we've seen recreational bettors become pros with that same mindset. So that's not behind the lines, that's in front of the lines, beating them and how we use the information from behind the lines to actually exploit them and win over the long term. So powerful message from him. And at the same time, obviously, he is a math guy, but he's not this extraordinarily brilliant human being that came in that's doing something that no one else can do. This is something that all of us can do. We can make more informed and responsible decisions that can be profitable and we can have fun doing it.

Shane Mercer [00:49:48]:

Yeah, all he did was recognize that, hey, I'm not doing this. Well, it took a certain amount of humility to be able to say that and then to be able to correct it and go forward from there. Staying humble and staying hungry goes a long way, right, Pace?

Andrew Pace [00:50:02]:

Absolutely.

Shane Mercer [00:50:03]:

All right, buddy. Well, until next week, keep beating the books.

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'