Episode 13

Shane Mercer [00:00:11]:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Behind the Lines, the podcast that doesn't give you any picks or predictions. We don't peer into crystal balls, and you know what we really don't do? We don't give out any parlays, which is the theme of this week. So before we dive into it, remember to like, download subscribe, follow us on all the socials @ inplayLIVE. I'm your host, Shane Mercer, and that guy over there is Andrew Pace, the founder of inplayLIVE, the greatest sports betting community on planet Earth. And Pace, we don't like parlays at inplayLIVE, or at least we do not espouse them in any meaningful way.

Andrew Pace [00:00:50]:

Well said. Yeah, I think we try to stay away from them for the most part, but there is a time and a place for them in a series of different methods that you can use to benefit yourself.

Shane Mercer [00:01:00]:

And we will dive into all of that and give you guys those tips and suggestions on how to use parlays. But before we do that, I want to share a story about my experience with parlays, and it really forms the foundation of my betting experience. So, being in Ontario, for the longest time in Ontario, sports betting was legal, but it was only legal if you made a minimum of three picks on a ticket and single game bets. You could not bet on a single game at all. That was illegal. But it was legal if you put three picks together through Pro Line is what it was called in Ontario, and it's still here, it still exists in Ontario, and it's sort of through the government, through the province, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation. And so that is how I had to bet on sports when I was a kid. And I was doing this from the time I was well underage people. At a certain age when you're in your Tween years, your teen years, a lot of kids might stand outside a convenience store and ask an adult to buy them cigarettes. Here's some money, can you go in and buy me some cigarettes or alcohol or something like that? Well, I was standing outside the convenience store with my tuney in hand, asking adults to buy my Proline tickets for me, and it was a way to have some extra fun with my favorite sports teams in Toronto. But I was forced to mix in two other games. So if I wanted to bet on the Blue Jays game that night, I had to go and find two other games to put on the ticket. And it's funny because you look back on it and it was basically sports betting is only legal if you parlay. Otherwise it's completely illegal. I grew up in this atmosphere where I was conditioned to parlay from a very early stage, long before I should have been betting on sports. But it was this whole mentality of, yeah, well, if you're going to bet on a team, mix it in with a few other games and get better odds, and you have a bigger ticket, you can win more money, and it can be a lot more fun that way. So I had been par laying ever since then, and I really only kind of shed it from my sports betting repertoire when I joined inplayLIVE and really started to see how detrimental it was to my bankroll. And so it was hard, it wasn't easy to kind of get away from it. And I'll admit that I'm not totally away from it. I still enjoy a good occasional parlay, but I do not look at it as a way to win money over time or a way to be profitable over time. It is really a fun thing, something to do, and we're talking for peanuts. So, Pace, that's a little bit about my parlaying experience. Talk to me about you. Did you get into parlays? Was that something that was part of your sports betting regime? Yeah, big time.

Andrew Pace [00:04:17]:

Big time. Yeah, absolutely. I'm in BC, British Columbia. We have sports Action. You want to bet? We're dating ourselves here, Shane, when we're talking about asking for people asking for cigarettes because people don't smoke cigarettes anymore. They vape.

Shane Mercer [00:04:33]:

Yeah, of course, right?

Andrew Pace [00:04:35]:

And then sports Action. You want to bet anyone from British Columbia will remember those ads from back in the day? And that was like you said, you had to go get a physical ticket from 711, the corner store, to bet you couldn't do it online. And then it transitioned online and then eventually became PlayNow.com, which is now in three different provinces across Canada. And they are again, our government regulated books. And separate from our topic of parlays, I always find it funny that the government has limited me from playing on their sites. Not only that, they actually stole money from me, which is a whole other story for another time, but another episode for sure. Yeah, but let's just take NFL, right? NFL is the highest wagered sport on the planet per game played. And the way the day works and the way the schedule works really all caters itself to the parlay, right? So you've got the Sunday morning slate of games and the Sunday afternoon, and then obviously the late game, the primetime game. But the whole day is conducive to parlays. And the first reason is because everyone's playing more or less on that one day, which allows you to book in that guys day or guys event. That's not to single out women. I know there's a lot of female bettors, but the whole environment is very conducive to Boys Day Out. Let's gamble, let's have a few beers, and let's make some parlays. Right? So you design something to try to hit it for the early slate, right? You miss, you chase in the afternoon slate, and then you chase finally at the night game. The whole day is like a sports book dream, right? And I was very much a part of that environment in my early betting days. You get together with the boys, you make some bets and we were using that system much like you were so forced to parla, forced to make the parla, didn't have a choice. So that was kind of my earliest experiences with that environment. And then obviously you learn that you do have some online sports books and some other options that do exist to you as you kind of get more involved and then maybe you start actually looking at, oh well, why don't we just take this? Maybe it's a pregame single of an underdog that has parlay potential or payout just on the one pick because that team might pay 3456 to one just to win the game or whatever the case may be. And that's when you can start to look at single picks that do still have the big payout. Because we haven't said this yet, but what the hell is a parlay, right? A parlay is multiple outcomes that all have to come through in order for your wager to win. So if you bet on two different games, both of those two teams to win, if one of them didn't win, your bet loses. If you take more picks, let's say you take a five pick parlay and you go four for five. You don't get a bit of money back or a bit of your winnings, you lose the whole bet. So everything has to come through in order for you to win. But the real draw of the parlay is the lottery ticket style payout. So you're asking about my experience with them. What was really exciting was the prospect of, in my case, usually winning about $500 to $1,000, which was you're living paycheck to paycheck. And it's that boost when you're like, I've got an extra $500 that I won from my sports betting picks, my calls, my decisions, that all came through for me. And what's so exciting about them is you don't know anyone that has not hit one. Everyone has won, everyone has hit one. And when you do it and you get that boost, there's nothing like it. And that's the whole draw of sports betting.

Shane Mercer [00:08:54]:

Yeah. And depending on how big of a win it is, it can really sort of affect your life. Right. It's this potentially life changing impact or at least life changing for the short term or helps you get ahead in life. Right. As you said, if you're living paycheck to paycheck, it lets you get ahead of that a little bit and you're chasing that, right? Because everybody wants to get ahead a little bit.

Andrew Pace [00:09:18]:

Yeah. Sorry Shane. I think we were 22 years old and I can't remember who was playing, but I know it was the Houston Texans and the Denver Broncos. And my buddy put $20, they were both underdogs and my buddy put $20 on both of them to cover minus seven and a half. So they were underdogs. So the money line was plus money. So he took the alternate money lines up to minus seven and a half, and the $20 paid out, like $580. And he hit it. We had been drinking and he started crying.

Shane Mercer [00:09:58]:

$580 and he started crying.

Andrew Pace [00:10:00]:

He started crying. And he's like, I'm changing my whole life around.

Shane Mercer [00:10:04]:

Yeah.

Andrew Pace [00:10:05]:

Literally, he's like, I'm using this to set up the rest of my future. I'm paying off my debt. I'm paying off my debt. I'm starting a new life. It's a fresh start. And that's exactly what you were just touching on, right? That added money, when it happens, can be really exciting.

Shane Mercer [00:10:25]:

Yeah. And then you think you can repeat it, and you can do it over and over and over again. Well, we just know that the likelihood of that is highly unlikely, that you're going to be able to repeat that success in any kind of predictable way. But the sports books, they want you to think that, right? They want you to believe that. Yeah. Not only can you hit this, but after you do hit it, guess what? You can win it again.

Andrew Pace [00:10:53]:

Exactly. Consistently. And then you chase that down the rabbit hole into gambling loss, long term gambling losses. That's the reality.

Shane Mercer [00:11:04]:

And it's something that they promote pretty regularly. Right. This is something that they really want you to do. In fact, it's such a money maker for them that they invest a lot of their advertising dollars into pumping out this idea that, hey, combine your bets, put them all together, we're going to pay you huge when it wins. Parlay. Parlay. Parlay. Right?

Andrew Pace [00:11:30]:

That's exactly it. And I think we got a couple of these that we can run some of our I wouldn't say some of our favorites, but some of the ones that we've seen relating to these parlay ads here. So I'll pull a couple of these up. Let's check them out.

Shane Mercer [00:11:46]:

Yeah, let's take a look here, because chances are you guys have seen them before. But you know what? It's a message that we just have to take a look at again here to kind of understand how they're trying to fool you.

Shane Mercer [00:13:40]:

All right, so very quickly, I mean, some great ads there, some fun stuff, it's entertaining, to say the least, right? I mean, it's fun to watch that stuff. And just very quickly to the Aaron Paul one there, they call it a multi, that one's being played in Australia, but I can tell you that the exact same ad is running here in Ontario and they just insert word parlay for multi. So it's the exact same ad, but it's this idea that not only is it super fun, but you have all the control, you have the power, you make your picks and put them all together and we're going to pay you out huge when it wins. But you have the power, your fate is in your hands. Right? Right.

Andrew Pace [00:14:20]:

So I think one of the big things here is when we really start to get into the psychology of all this, that's when things really start to really uncover and we get behind the lines. So, Shane, you and I were talking about our individual stories of being conditioned a parla from the standpoint of this is our only option to legally wager, right? And that has changed. That environment doesn't exist anymore. So what environment does exist? It's an environment where you're being rewarded to parlay. In a lot of those ads we saw some sort of risk free or no sweat or free bet or a reward relating to making a parlay on those sites. So you're being conditioned to do it. One, in the sense that the ad is super exciting, it's super fun. I love the one of the two guys popular parlays, like they're fist bumping and it's like they did something so brilliant, but so fun, right? And they are creating the culture around gambling and sports betting as a whole. That's very fun, that's very easy to win, and that's this very exciting and positive experience. You combine that with the dopamine hit every time you actually place a physical wager, and now you're really getting into the conditioning that exists in today's day and age. And that excludes parlays relating to the viral things we're exposed to on social media and how that all fits into the equation of the viral parlays that do actually win. And that's really what's happening. And then in the ads, as well, like you just touched on you're getting the whole it's your bet, it's you. They're making it seem like it's your own unique values that put the wager together that are deeply rooted in your core, that are a part of your being. It's like your own online betting fingerprint that no one else has. And I think that speaks to the isolating nature of gambling, where you're refreshing your phone underneath the table at an event. You're sneaking off into the bathroom to check the scores of the game. You haven't been transparent with your family, your spouse, your friends, whatever, about the wagers that you've made, how much you've won or lost, and whether or not you're gambling each and every single day. I can remember being at work refreshing my phone. I can remember being at dinner refreshing my phone, because gambling is bad, and it's not something that I want to tell people that I'm currently doing or engaged in. And when you make it, it's you. It's your bed. As a special thing, it continues to cater to the isolation of the gambling world and that it's you and not a group. It's you who is not as smart as a collective. And that altogether, psychologically, I think, continues to train you to make these decisions, which we haven't touched on, that are the most profitable decisions for the sports book beyond any other handle that they take.

Shane Mercer [00:17:35]:

Yeah, that's something I want to dive into here, because the sports books, this is the most profitable thing for them when it comes to sports betting, the casinos are a whole other ballgame, and they make a killing on those. But when it comes to sports betting, it is the parlays that make them their bread and butter, right?

Andrew Pace [00:17:58]:

Absolutely. So parlays are three times more profitable to the sports books than any other wager that they take, and they happily and gladly pay out. The viral parlays, the ones that are small money, pays big money. Five, pays 100,050, pays 500,000. You see them online all the time. They gladly pay those out because they made so much more money that week, that day, that weekend, whatever the case may be on all the parlays that we don't see, which are the losers, insiders inside of this industry know that, and that is why the ads are being rammed down our throat. We're not sitting here hearing about what you can wager on in one single bet that isn't promoted to us. There is some promotional material related around to betting on your favorite team right. Which then brings in the emotional and the poor decisions. Like New York will be running ads. Right now, we're in the middle of the NHL playoffs on what you can bet on the Rangers. But they're not talking about other types of bets. And that's because when you bring a bunch of handle into one area on one team, the sports books upside is massive. If that team loses and then they can obviously mitigate their risk and do different things as well to balance action. But when they're doing that, they are training you on the parlaise and the fun and the excitement which makes them the most money, but then also on favoritism and on betting with emotion as opposed to betting with data analytics and motivations. Right. So one quote that I think is a really good one relates to the parlays in sports books as a whole. So not in any one specific area. They typically bring in about 37% of the total handle. Sometimes it depends on the state in the area, but it can be sort of 35% to 45% is what gets brought in. But the profits that are turned on, let's just call it 40%, so there's 60% more action, 60% more different wager types that are coming into the sports book, singles, whatever else. The 40% is turning three times more profit than any other type of wager. And specifically they say that without parlays, the businesses wouldn't exist. They're what, keep the lights on long term. They say they wouldn't be able to turn the lights on if that wasn't a part of their revenue stream. And that really speaks to why we see the ads like the ones we just played.

Shane Mercer [00:20:42]:

Yeah. Well, they obviously want to turn that 40% into 60 or 70%. Right. They want more parlays. Right. They want to increase that as much as they can so that they're not just keeping the lights on, but that they're turning a big time profit for some of these companies that are publicly traded too. That's big profits for their shareholders and it's not a terrible business case. Right. It makes a lot of sense for them, but it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense for you. The recreational sports bettor or the professional sports bettor. Right. Yeah. Despite what the ads are telling you and trying to make you think this isn't going to make you money over time. Right?

Andrew Pace [00:21:26]:

Yeah. So Mika Roberts, who ran Stations Casino sports book in Las Vegas, said it's parlays that let you see the games on the giant TVs and the sports books in Vegas. So you got to think about that kind of stuff. Right. So not only is your wager profitable to the business that you're placing it through, but it's the reason why they have the big screens. It's the reason why they have the free drink promotion when you place the wager. It's the reason why they offer you those bonuses so long term when they're offering you a viewing experience. Right. So a lot of these sports books now have physical locations that you can go to. Obviously the old days in Vegas, everyone had a sports book and you could watch, but you had to bet there. Now with it online, they're also doing well. Why don't we create some physical locations? There's barstool. Bars that are sports betting bars and things like that. So not only are you paying for the profitability of the sports book, but you're paying for everyone else's viewing experience with that type of wager.

Shane Mercer [00:22:32]:

Right. Could call it a donation at that point. Right?

Andrew Pace [00:22:35]:

Yeah, well, I mean, that's the angle that some of these sports books actually take with some of the tax dollars where that then gets spent. They try to make it seem like you're doing something noble by losing money as a sports bettor because of the good that your loss is doing for the local community.

Shane Mercer [00:22:59]:

I mean, hey, at least it's doing some good out there, right? It's something. So it's not easy though, to break away from this. Right pace and I know for myself it wasn't easy and I'm still working on it. And I think a lot of our listeners and viewers out there probably love making their parlays, whether they're professional bettors or just recreational bettors, there's a high chance that parlays are part of their regular betting experience. So talk to me a little bit about one how you recognized that parlays were not good for you financially and then how you worked them out of your betting game.

Andrew Pace [00:23:38]:

Right. So I think one of the back to psychology and psychology relating to parlays, I think one of the biggest transitions that occurs is people that have money versus people that don't have money. It's actually interesting, like the local lotteries. So nothing to do with sports betting, but lotteries are funded by the brokest people, largely speaking. So there's like some statistic, I'm not sure that I can be quoted on this, but I'll give you sort of a general proposition of what the statistic is. Roughly $400 a month US gets spent by the average sorry, $400 per year. US gets spent on lottery tickets and per household. But they ran a study that shows that it's the poorest people or the people in the lowest income brackets that spend that $400. And then the flip side to it is they're the same people that don't have $400 liquid at the end of the year in the event of an emergency. So they spent in a year more than they have access to, all in hopes of trying to get ahead through a system that yields another company profitability long term. Like you can't come out on top. The only way you come out on top is by getting lucky. Statistically speaking, every time you make that purchase, you get further and further behind. Then if you take that $400, I know it's not a large sum of money, but instead you invested it over the course of your adulthood. Right. So over the course of 45 or 55 years, $400 every single year indexed with inflation, and you're actually not doing so bad. You're doing really, really well. So that paycheck to paycheck mentality and then trying to get ahead through a big hit or a big payout like the lottery is baked into the psychology of building a parlay. So when you go to make a parlay, it might not be a lottery ticket hit, but it might be a weekly attempt, which is much higher volume and probably much more money. Like a lottery ticket is usually a couple of dollars, but a lot of these people that are betting parlays aren't doing a couple of dollars. They're doing 510, 2050 would be sort of the common wager types that you see. But again, trying to hit those $100,000 payouts, and then in some cases, people try to really hit five and six figure payouts. So the whole psychology of it is built around people that don't have money trying to hit something that's going to impact them immediately. And that then brings in this new product that's not super new now today, but new relating to the betting world, where we go back to my example of Sundays, where you go, okay, I'm building a parlay Sunday morning, and then it missed and I'm chasing it a bit Sunday afternoon, and now I've just got Sunday night. And you go, I don't want to bet $50 on the Sunday night game and have it pay out $40. That's not exciting, that doesn't get me my money back.

Shane Mercer [00:26:59]:

Yeah, that's not getting me ahead.

Andrew Pace [00:27:01]:

So now we have the same game parlay, where you can take any one specific game and turn it into that lottery ticket, brilliant by the sports books to generate a new revenue stream to get people that potential big payout in any one short term event. So then that gives you the opportunity as a bettor to not even just look at a football Sunday as, okay, I'm going to parlay the morning slate. You might go, I'm going to parlay a bunch of different, same game parlays where you have these huge potential payouts in multiple games and instead of betting 110, 20, $50 bet on the morning slate, you might have done that four, 5610 times just for the morning slate and then done that again for the afternoon. And then you go, okay, I'm playing catch up, but I can still build a real lottery ticket into one game. And that same game parla breakthrough for the sports books has been a massive, massive revenue stream and it's just being rammed down our throats. So I haven't answered your question yet. You asked me, how do you get away from this, right? And I think the single biggest way of getting away from it is getting away from your own financial problems unrelated to betting. So how do you get away from your own financial problems? All that money that you're putting into these bets that are yielding you long term negative results. So net losses you're going to hit, that's the whole thing. Everyone thinks they're so good when they hit. We get it under our ads all the time. We tell you not to parlay and they're like, but I hit this and they send the ticket. Well, congrats asshole. You're a net loser, right? And you don't have the fucking ability to figure that out. So look at your bank account and look at the lifestyle that you're living. Are you living paycheck to paycheck or not? And if you're not and you hit one sweet, that's fun, that's entertainment. But if overall you're struggling week to week paycheck to paycheck, that's a really good indicator that the money that you're putting towards betting isn't working for you. So you actually have to stop. So when you say how do you get away from it? You have to stop. You have to stop doing that and engaging in that behavior until such time as when you come back to it, you're not hoping to hit something that's going to determine whether or not you make your rent. That's going to determine whether or not you do or don't do something in your life. Because that's when the behavior that you're engaging in is creating a false sense of potential success that you don't currently have yourself based on your own practices and discipline. As for actually betting and getting away from it, well, that's where you have to adopt winning strategies. And the easiest thing for me to drop parlays was starting to win.

Shane Mercer [00:30:01]:

I guess that makes it a bit easier, right, when you actually start winning with something else that isn't parlays and is just a straight bet and a live bet. So we talked a lot here about the other side of this too, is that people are out there saying, but you said you got those messages. Hey, but look, I won this one and I won that one. We're not saying that these things can't win. They can't win, and they do win, and eventually you will win. But have you been tracking your parlays, right? Have you been keeping an eye on how much you've invested in parlaying over the years? Have you turned a net profit on those parlays? Chances are, if you're a rec bettor and you're doing parlays on the regular basis, you're not doing these things right. You're not tracking. You don't know whether or not you've actually made money off of them over time. And so it becomes this idea that, yeah, it'll work eventually, right? It'll work eventually, and when it does, it'll be huge. And I'll show it off to you.

Andrew Pace [00:31:11]:

When you hit a jackpot in Vegas, so you're on the slot machine, you hit a jackpot, you don't get paid right then and there. It isn't like money just shoots out and you put it in a bag and you walk out. Casino security comes in. It's a whole thing. You go into the back, you get the biggest suite in the place, you get the highest status with them. Immediately they make some sort of story about the jackpot being hit. And the reason for all that is because. They know that you just got an influx of money and just became an immediate VIP because you've shown evidence that you're a gambler and now you just got a whole bunch of money. So sports books know that too, right? And sports bettors know that as well. So it might not be super easy to get your money if you did hit a big parlay. In a lot of cases, you can get paid right away, but it might not be super easy to get your money right away, but you might hit VIP status where you get a really big free bet next, after hitting a parlay and things like that, and they'll start conditioning you to go, okay, you just won this big bet. Your bonus isn't $5 anymore. Your bonus might be 50 or 500 to really condition you to start making bigger wagers and to get that money back into their system and infrastructure. And that's the other side of it, too, from a psychology standpoint, again, where they know that your bankroll just grew, they know that your unit size maybe just grew. You know that you go, oh, let's say you hit one for 10,000, and rather than cashing out the 10,000, you might make your first ever $1,000 bet. You go, oh, I won ten. I'm going to take 1000 and throw it on this now. And before you know it, you become used to clicking that extra zero on your bet, and that money goes back into the sports book, in theory, really quickly as a result.

Shane Mercer [00:32:53]:

Yeah. They always find a way to get it back and like you said, try to condition you to take bigger wagers, play a little bit more loosely, recklessly, and you'll be inclined to do it because you did just hit that big win and jeez. Well, if I did it with this if I did it if I won a bet with a $50 steak, I can easily win a bet with a $500 steak and win $500,000. And I'm going to retire tomorrow.

Andrew Pace [00:33:18]:

Yeah, right. The dream works.

Shane Mercer [00:33:23]:

All right, so we know that we've established, look, parlay is not a way to win not a way to win money long term. But do you still do them at all pace? Is there a reason for them? Have you found a way to utilize the parlay in any kind of meaningful way that can grow your bankroll over time?

Andrew Pace [00:33:47]:

Absolutely. So the first thing is anything correlated. The reason why parlays are such bad bets is because the edge of the casino multiplies. So if the casino has a 10% edge on one wager and then you combine those together, the edge for the casino actually grew. So the flip side to that is if the player has an edge, you can grow the edge that you have against the sports book by making a parlay. Now, that is a dangerous thing to say because that might make people feel encouraged to parlay anything?

Shane Mercer [00:34:20]:

Yeah, they're like wait a minute, you just told me not to parlay. Yeah.

Andrew Pace [00:34:23]:

So going back to a lottery example, if you have like a 649, you have to hit six numbers out of the 49 and get all six of them right in order to win the lottery. I can't remember what the odds are. It's like one in 18 million, right? Something like that. So if your ticket is one dollars, right, and the lottery typically starts at, let's say 5 million, right, but it grows every week that it's not hit. There are cases where the lottery actually gets bigger than the odds to win it. So in this example let's again use 18 million. I know that's not the exact odds of hitting the lottery, a 649, but let's say that it grew to 20 million and you're taking a one dollars crack at a one in 18 million event that pays 20 million. Statistically speaking that is a value bet, right? But to realize the value you have to have actually hit it and you could spend every lottery for your entire life buying tons and tons of tickets and the odds actually say that you're never going to win, you're going to lose. So you never realized the value. Right. So as you parlay events that are correlated that create a bigger payout. Let's say the odds of a successful outcome is 2.0, but you've established that that 2.0, which is plus 100 in American odds actually has theoretical value. So the true event occurs more than 50% of the time. So in this case if it occurs 51%, you would have a slight edge with 2.0. But if it occurs 60% of the time you have a really nice edge there at 2.0. If it's a more than likely outcome, well then let's say that you found that again in another capacity and you parlayed the two of them thinking that that gave you a parlaid edge. Well, it becomes extremely increasingly less likely to realize your value the more you actually increase the probability of it occurring. So in the example there was 60%, that means the example of it not hitting is 40% but you just doubled it by adding that second pick. So that likelihood of it not hitting even though there's a theoretical edge there, just increased. So I guess my point of that is the more that you parlay and build odds regardless of the edge, the realization of value becomes increasingly difficult with higher odds. I'll give you an example. This is not a parlay, but there was a time at inplayLIVE in our first season of football where there was a specific sports book that if a team was starting their drive at their own 1 YD line so they have a 99 yard field ahead of them. They would typically adjust the odds for next score to be a touchdown, next score to be a field goal, next score to be a safety for them to punt all the drive markets that you can see. And I remember just the ball just being pinned landing down at the one and I just look up and I see safety pays 50 to one. And I'm like, Jeez. Usually that will drop to four or five to one when they're on the 1 YD line. So I'm like guys I'm going to put a little bit of money on safety. They didn't change the odds and it's sitting there for us all to bet. So we all put a little bit of money on safety. Put a responsible and appropriate amount of money on safety. Now how often does a safety occur when a drive starts at the 1 YD line? Not very often but it's the most likely time for it to occur and since the odds didn't adjust it created theoretical value. Does that mean the BET's going to win? No. Since that time that has not happened to me once in the last three years. Not once. So I don't have the volume to realize the value in that spot. If the wager missed right, that wager won. So we hit a nice 50 to one safety. But the reason why I say it is because I want that wager 50 times, I want that wager 10,000 times, I only got it once. And because the odds are so high and because the probability of it occurring is probably closer to about 10% in that exact spot, I got lucky to realize the value that one time but that doesn't mean value wasn't there. So my advice with all of this is when you're parlaying correlated things with an edge or with value that isn't necessarily a good thing either.

Shane Mercer [00:39:27]:

We've talked a lot about getting limited on this podcast and limits that get applied to winners and how sports books stop you from winning long term because you're not a profitable customer. And this all happens once you have established yourself more as a more sophisticated sports bettor like you have pace. And we had Ryan Spader on the show last week and he's somebody who just went through that experience of getting limited by points bet and it was a real bit of a shock to him that this happens and that kind of thing. But I bring that up because you can use parlays to not get limited as fast, right?

Andrew Pace [00:40:13]:

Well if the sports book is ramming something down your throat that they want you to do and you do it, you establish yourself as a good customer of theirs that's fallen into their traps. So you can use parlaise from the standpoint of betting insignificant money for yourself and your bankroll that they don't know is insignificant to you to establish yourself as a good customer. If you're a good customer you have a better chance of not being limited in your first few wagers. You have a better chance of making more money from that sports book than if you didn't establish yourself as a good customer.

Shane Mercer [00:40:54]:

Right, exactly. So there might be some ways to still get that fun parlay fix while maintaining your professional sports betting. By staying within your own rules.

Andrew Pace [00:41:16]:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, you kind of asked me, you know, do you do it? When do you do it? What's the upside of doing it? That's probably the biggest upside, in my opinion. The other way parlays can be really effective. When you talk about correlated events, this is really a loophole that's mostly gone. But a decade ago, you could find parlays inside of sports books with events that were the odds would increase, but the outcome occurring was the same. So back to PlayNow.com. The book that I was using at the time, they would do things like they'd have Peyton Manning to throw for two touchdowns, throw for 300 yards, and the Denver Broncos to win. It would pay six to one as a power pick for a Sunday night football game. And the Broncos were ten point favorites at home. So the money line was like -1000 or minus 5800 kind of thing yet if they're going to win, what are the odds Peyton Manning doesn't throw two touchdowns and then coin flip? Probably maybe a little less than a coin flip on the 300 yards, but they'd package those picks together and then put it out there, and they didn't handicap it properly at all. One of my favorite and most profitable early bets was taking whatever it was that they were offering in that capacity. And I'd have three or four accounts, and max bet would be $100, and I'd get as much money on those as I could. And that was a big driver of going, holy smokes, they're offering me a way to make money. And I think sometimes psychologically, for people where the parlay dropping can occur is when you've made money on something and found something that is actually successful, they close those loopholes down. But a loophole of some kind might be what puts you on your trajectory of going, I'm going to look for this now, I'm going to look for this now, and you start looking for ways to win as opposed to doing the typical ways to lose. So correlated events that are actually increase the odds of the bet, but the outcome isn't actually less likely or that much less likely because of the same game parlay. I think all that stuff is closed off. But there's other correlated things that occur. So, for example, if you have two football stadiums in the NFL that are really close together, maybe an hour apart, and you've got the same storm rolling through, and they're outdoor stadiums, the same wind close in baseball games. Right. Things that can be correlated that the books maybe don't know about, that are location based. That doesn't mean you need to parlay them, though. You could just take them both as singles, whatever the case may be. But weather that impacts stadiums in the same area for outdoor sports can be something that can have some correlation, that can provide positive value would be another example. And yeah, like you touched on establishing yourself in a good way, those are really powerful advantages of parlays.

Shane Mercer [00:44:36]:

One thing I want to sort of touch on there you brought up this idea of okay, well you've got two possible outcomes affected by the weather, the books haven't handicapped it properly or there might be an edge there. Right. But how you structure those wagers really matters if you are going to parlay them, right?

Andrew Pace [00:44:54]:

For sure, yeah. And again, going one for two can be net zero on your bankroll whereas going one for two on a parlay is a loss, right?

Shane Mercer [00:45:07]:

Exactly.

Andrew Pace [00:45:08]:

That speaks to what I was speaking about before where the more things you add even though there is theoretical value there makes it less likely to actually get the win or obtain the win in events like the one I just described. Those aren't necessarily high volume. Again, the best strategies are high volume. They're ones that you can consistently deploy your bankroll to so that you can realize the value on a consistent basis.

Shane Mercer [00:45:37]:

That's key one thing that I think maybe we haven't touched on in this but has sort of been implied the whole time is that parlaying for the most part is a pre game bet, right? You are making parlays before the games even begin and pace, I know that that is not your jam. You are a guy who likes to wait till the game has started and then place your wagers or at least get a look at what's happening on the field before you even think about making a pick anyway. Right? Do you ever consider though, a live parlay, right?

Andrew Pace [00:46:10]:

Yeah, well, I think there are some correlations, statistically speaking, that are unrelated to weather and things like that that are more likely to hit on a parlay than other things. And those are oftentimes handicapped properly. But I'll give you an example. If you have a big favorite. So let's say you have like a -15 favorite in the NBA or let's use -15 again a -15 favorite in the NFL to cover a total like that, especially in the NFL. You need to have quite a few points in the game. You can't have a low scoring game. So a heavy favorite minus oftentimes correlates with a more likelihood that if if they're going to cover the game is more likely to go over than it is to go under. So, if you were to do a pre game parlay of a minus and an over, that is a much higher likelihood of hitting than the minus and the under, right? That's just basic facts and data but public loves overs and favorites so then that can obviously take the value away from that because the line may be over inflated in that regard, but that's just a fact relating to some correlations with pregame favorites and totals. But taking that same logic into live betting, you can look at potentially like a hockey game. For example, the Oilers last night, we're shooting this on Monday. So the Oilers last night, they were down three nothing in the first period. Right. Let's say you're like, oh, I like the Oilers money line. You can look at things where you go, well, they actually can't win without the game going over. And the sports book is offering better value on just the money line by betting the money line with the over. So there are some things like that live where you go, okay, well, this team does if this team is going to come back, they have to be able to get over that total. If this team does come back, they have to hit their team total over. It's not possible for them not to get there and to lose the game. So that's where you could start looking at some same game live Parlas that might give you a smaller amount of payout than just the original wager that you were looking at. I don't do that stuff. So what I just said is all true. It's just not what I focus on. It's not what I wager on.

Shane Mercer [00:48:45]:

Right. And is there any reason why, or is it just a matter of you're doing your own thing?

Andrew Pace [00:48:50]:

A lot of the books that offer those types of bets are the gimmicky books that we just watched. Some of these ads are on, and they don't take the action that I would be wagering on it in the first place, number one. And number two, they'll shut you down if you're doing anything like that in any type of consistency a little too quick for my liking. Now, if you are a recreational bettor and you're watching this and you have those books, those could be good ways. Not that specific strategy that I just said, but looking at some of those types of things could be good bankroll builders in your early days. And I think there's a lot of sports books out there. This is unrelated to parlays, but they take action that's typically, maybe it's a maximum of three figures. So you're looking at maximums in the kind of 100 $200 range, maybe even a little less. But their lines are so soft and the things that they offer are so beatable that you can really jumpstart your journey to $10,000 in profit by utilizing those books with a series of different strategies that we teach at inplayLIVE and show you how to do but great ways to use live betting which include potential parlays, live same game parlays of very correlated outcomes to exploit some of those books that they know they're doing. But it's worth it for them to continue to offer that product and to shut down the winning player. But when they shut down the winning player, it doesn't mean that we didn't make a bunch of money to get us started and get our bankroll going in the first place. Right.

Shane Mercer [00:50:44]:

They're just hoping that there's enough other losers that will lose over time on those smaller wagers or medium sized wagers or however you want to approach depending on what they're offering.

Andrew Pace [00:50:54]:

Exactly.

Shane Mercer [00:50:56]:

Yeah, well, I think we've covered off everything there, Pace, but just to give a recap here, parlays not going to make you money over time. They might be a lot of fun, you might get a lot of a big rush out of it and get that endorphin hit and think that you can repeat that after winning one or two of them. But overall, the sports books love you if you're parlaying, and if they love you because you're parlaying, it means you're not making money long term. But if you are somebody who has already figured out how to make money long term, and you've crossed that hurdle, and you're a more sophisticated sports bettor than just the average rec sports bettor, then there might be some. Ways to use parlays to your advantage to make yourself look like a recreational. Better to get a bit of a longer leash on some of these sports books before you get limited. So that might be one of the advantages of a parlay or a way to use a parlay to your advantage. Pace, is there anything else I'm missing here?

Andrew Pace [00:51:59]:

You nailed it, man.

Shane Mercer [00:52:01]:

There we go. Well, that is all for this week. Thank you all very much for listening. And Pace, till next week, keep eating those books, buddy.

Andrew Pace [00:52:09]:

Thanks, Shane.

Shane Mercer [00:52:10]:

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'.