Episode 20

Shane Mercer [00:00:11]:

Welcome back to another episode of Behind the Lines. I'm your host, Shane Mercer. And look, we got Andrew Pace back in the chair. He's the founder of inplayLIVE, only the greatest sports betting community on planet Earth. But today we are going to hear from another person from a different sports betting community, and we're talking all about analytics. Very interesting topic, Pace. Before we dive into it, I've got to remind everyone out there to like, download, subscribe, follow us on all the socials @ inplayLIVE. And if you want to get a little peek behind the curtain, see what it's all about from the inside, we encourage you to sign up. And we have a special promo code for you that is 'BEHINDTHELINES' all caps. It will give you the very best pricing to join inplayLIVE. All right, Pace, with all of that out of the way, let's talk about analytics. For me, when I think about analytics, I get a little flashback to grade twelve math and my eyes glazing over and maybe I'm a little bit stoned and maybe I'm daydreaming a little bit about the girl in front of me. The last thing I'm paying attention to are the numbers on the chalkboard. And that's what analytics meant to me, at least for a long time. But over my sports betting journey, I've sort of come to embrace it a little bit and kind of understand it a little bit more and it really stats, numbers, figures. This is what sports is all about, right? What does analytics mean to you, though?

Andrew Pace [00:01:35]:

I don't know. Apparently you just got me thinking about my high school crush instead. What does analytics mean to me? Gosh, I mean, there's a part of me that where my gut just says it means noise. But that would be a naive thing to say given the impact that it actually can make on your actual betting success. But I think for analytics, simply put, I would say that's sort of taking the best information that you can possibly have access to and organizing it in a way to sort of prove a theory as it relates to in this case as it relates to a particular game or season or or a model, perhaps relating to a certain sport, it it's information. And information is power as we, we touch on many, many times. And then using that information, hopefully, then this isn't, this is outside of where I'd put the definition, but using that information to actually hopefully turn a profit or succeed with it as a result.

Shane Mercer [00:02:44]:

Yeah, I always go back to the movie Moneyball, and I think about analytics in baseball, a sport that is so heavily reliant on analytics, not that others aren't, but baseball sort of comes to mind as sort of the first sport I think of when I think of betting and analytics because of the role that it plays. And a movie like moneyball sort of gives you a glimpse as to how you can use analytics, looking at the past, creating models, and coming up with projections for the future. Now, I know when we talk about that idea and you sort of mentioned it being noise, again, we don't want to make predictions on this show. We're not here to project the future or come up with forecasts or anything like that. But there is a certain amount of, hey, if you look at what's happened in the past, it might give you an indication as to what could happen in the future. Right?

Andrew Pace [00:03:39]:

Well, I even struggle with that concept. I think what I look at is we go back to our episode on chaos and we look at the two armed pendulum and we go, okay, we just saw the pendulum swing out to the right, which way is it going to move now? And that's where you can use what's happened recently to best predict the next movement or motion. So we talk about the weatherman being wrong. Is the weatherman ever right? Hell yeah, the weatherman's right. Was the temperature spot on? Did it rain? Did it not rain? All those types of things, those are those forecasts and those are those analytics that obviously do have a baked in level of success. But then again, once we get into the real specifics, where the cloud was at exactly which time and where the rain fell, and if it fell, and precisely how much of it fell, and all those kind of things. So can you see where the pendulum is now and then go, hey, it's going to move this way next? Yes, but will you know exactly where the end of the pendulum that dot will actually fall? The answer is just no. So when I think of analytics and I think of forecasting and I think of using the past to, for lack of a better term, predict the future, I simply look at it as we aren't predicting the future. All we are doing is trying to find an edge, which is theoretical value. So can we use analytics to develop theoretical value and can we do that over time? And the answer, of course, is yes. So will we get this one game right? Maybe we will, maybe we won't. Will we get a profit over the course of said season or time frame as it relates to this theoretical value? Well, we don't know the answer to that right now, but after having looked back at a certain period of time using those analytics, then perhaps you can answer yes as it relates to that theoretical value. And of course, that's where the basis of making money on sports is sort of founded.

Shane Mercer [00:05:56]:

Yeah, exactly right. Well, that brings us to our guest for the show. This week I had a chance to speak with a guy named Harry Crane. This guy has a PhD in statistics. He teaches at prominent universities in the US. He studies this stuff and had an interest in this from an early age and got into it and went to school and did all of that. And then he found sports and sports betting and he realized, hey, based on my background, I might be able to do okay at this, I might be able to make some money at this. And it turns out he was actually really good at it. And so he is trying to teach people about analytics and how it applies to sports betting. So I had an opportunity to catch up with him again. His name is Harry Crane, and we will now show you that interview. I hope you all enjoy it and Pace, you and I will talk about it on the other side. So here's that interview. Now, harry Crane is a statistics professor and is the founder of Analytics Bet. Harry, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Harry Crane [00:07:01]:

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Shane Mercer [00:07:03]:

Hey, really happy to have you on, Harry. The whole purpose of this show is to help average recreational sports bettors become better bettors by teaching them about the sports betting industry, how it works, how it's designed for bettors to lose over time, and then we offer advice to help them improve their wagering process. So Harry, before we sort of mine you for advice, how did you get into sports betting?

Harry Crane [00:07:27]:

Well, I've been in betting for almost my entire life, so I started betting in around eight or nine years old, I guess. I was doing sports betting at that time. I was booking bets in my 6th grade class later started to run poker games in 8th grade and then took a few years off. But then the poker boom hit in early two thousand s. I was heavily involved in that, playing a lot of poker at that time. Got back into sports betting after that. I had a math degree and statistics, so I thought it would be around mid two thousand s. The natural thing would be to kind of take a bunch of data, analyze it, and see if I can make money sports betting. So I did that for a couple of years and then eventually went away from gambling for a while, went to graduate school, got a PhD in statistics. That led me into my career as a professor. And then it was about five, six years ago where I started to get back into it and focusing specifically on sports betting and a few other casino games, but primarily sports betting.

Shane Mercer [00:08:36]:

So what kind of success have you had?

Harry Crane [00:08:40]:

Well, it depends what you mean by what you want to know. But I mean, I've been, I guess the, the interesting thing is I I mean, I'm a winning bettor, and I could, I suppose, you know, I could if I wanted to make that my career. But, you know, I think that it's actually something that works out well as in addition to the other things that I do, it's a good complement to it. But I think in terms of the question you asked, what kind of success have I had? I say I'm a winner today, but I didn't start out as a winner. And I think that that's the story of a lot of bettors and even somebody say with my background, I came into it saying I have all the tools, but it still took me a lot longer than I would have expected to get to the point where I was confident that I could be a consistent winner.

Shane Mercer [00:09:42]:

I think you're absolutely right. I think that is, like most people's stories, is that they certainly don't start off winning regularly. But like you said, you had all the tools to begin with. So what was it that you felt you were missing? Or what did you realize you were missing over time?

Harry Crane [00:09:59]:

Well, I think that what I was missing was to the extent that I had practical experience in betting, it was through poker, which is definitely valuable experience, but it didn't translate so immediately to me, to the sports betting world. And so I guess the thing that I was missing was predominantly just the experience, the practicalities, the logistics of actually placing bets is something that just you could be the smartest math person in the world. There's extra stuff going on there that just isn't accounted for by the math or theory, and there's no substitute for that.

Shane Mercer [00:10:46]:

Right, so experience essentially.

Harry Crane [00:10:47]:

Experience, intuition and just understanding the markets.

Shane Mercer [00:10:57]:

So now that you've been doing this for quite some time, how would you describe your general approach to sports betting, or sports betting philosophy, if you will?

Harry Crane [00:11:10]:

Well, my approach, given the skills that I have, is to find I mean, there's a few different approaches that I can take, but it is more on the technical, the mathematical, analytical side of things. So I'm looking for advantages that I can get by. I guess one way would be you take a bunch of data and you just become an expert in the sport that you're interested in, and you build models and you kind of go that route. And that's something, that's something that I'm involved with. That's a very long and difficult route to go, but it's one that can pay off if you have the right people you're working with and you have the patience and the perseverance through all the difficulties there. On the other side, some of the biggest and best edges that I can get are ones where I see a market or I look at a situation and I say, I kind of know what the conventional wisdom would be in how you would think about this problem. That's kind of like the first idea that would come to my mind is I would do this, and then I can kind of test out right away. Okay, let me see if that's actually what the market is thinking is that actually the way these prices are being set is by using that initial approach. And if I can identify that almost right away, then I now have that as my baseline. And I can say, well, if I can improve upon that approach in any way, then I'm going to be able to get an edge on that market. So that's something that's been, I'd say, pretty useful for quickly testing ideas and also quickly finding edges that work and throwing away ones that don't.

Shane Mercer [00:13:05]:

Right, so you're building your own models then?

Harry Crane [00:13:08]:

Oh, yeah.

Shane Mercer [00:13:10]:

Right. And are you mainly focused on Pregame or do you do any in play, like live betting?

Harry Crane [00:13:19]:

I have both the models, yeah. I have some in play betting for specific sports, but not I haven't explored that to kind of the extent that I would like. I would say I found some actually the great example there is that the thing that I think there's a lot of value to be gotten out of the in play betting. The challenge for my approach for in play betting, and this is a limitation of the approach I bring, which is this analytical, mathematical approach, is that when you're in play, so much is happening so quickly and if you're going to use a you can't be too sophisticated at the current moment because you're needing a data feed and you're needing all kinds of stuff to be processed in such a short period of time. And then you have to execute the bets. I'm not saying that this is not something other people have probably solved this better than me, but that was a friction that I encountered in trying to execute it was an execution problem.

Shane Mercer [00:14:25]:

Right. Well, it's funny you say that because the group I'm with inplayLIVE, we very much focus on live wagering and sort of have a much higher priority on it than Pregame because we have sort of some strategies that work really well betting live. But you're right, decisions do have to be made very quickly and it's not exactly easier, at least initially. It takes some time to kind of catch on to it. Let's talk about the bigger, broader landscape, though. How would you describe the current state of the sports betting landscape in North America?

Harry Crane [00:15:04]:

Yeah, well, it's a strange one in that, well, you got the regulated markets coming into most states at this point, and they keep adding new states every once in a while now. And so the thing that's I think interesting about it is that at first and in New Jersey, this was this was maybe bigger than than in other in most other states is that at first there was a lot of opportunity to take advantage of the marketing and a lot of the bonuses and just the overall excess money that was really flooding into this market. And that seems to have I wouldn't say it's dried up entirely, but it certainly isn't what it was two, three years ago. Most sports books are limiting people very quickly. That really is where a lot of the game has gone, where you're you're, if you're playing in the regulated markets, finding a way around that system of getting limited. I mean, that's always been the game. Even offshore, you have to kind of play that cat and mouse. But I think that that's something that I found, that it wasn't surprising to me to realize that. But I think that that's one of the issues that people have. And some of the students that we have in analytics bet they want to become either semi professional or professional bettor. They may have a good year, good two years, but what's the sustainability of that approach, given the limitations that the market is putting on you? So, again, it comes down to the execution and the logistics of actually executing a strategy. Not so much coming up with the strategy.

Shane Mercer [00:17:03]:

I'm glad you brought up limiting, because that's such a hot topic here on this podcast. It comes up all the time. So give me a sense of your experience in terms of being limited and how did you navigate that?

Harry Crane [00:17:17]:

My experience was probably always a bit different than most individual bettors because I was always working with groups who would take care of that problem. That was their job. And my job was to do what I do, which is to find the bets to execute, to come up with the bets that we're going to place. So to the extent that I experienced limiting, it actually was more of a research question than an actual practical problem. I actually would place bets myself, more out of curiosity than anything else to see, if I keep doing this, how long can I get away with it? And let's just kind of test the waters here, because I know people who have survived at places like DraftKings or MGM or wherever for year two years consistently, making good amounts of money, and then eventually got limited. But they were able to navigate it for that long, and it didn't seem like they were doing anything too special. On the other hand, you have situations I've been in, sometimes you're limited within three, four, five days. So it's hard to know. I'm sure that there's people I never really investigated it to the point where I understood exactly what's happening, but I think that the results definitely vary across people.

Shane Mercer [00:18:47]:

And across sports books. Right?

Harry Crane [00:18:49]:

Yeah, for sure.

Shane Mercer [00:18:53]:

Okay, so let's dive into the analytics side then. How do you use analytics to gain an advantage? Or sort of how do you apply your, I guess, outside sports betting knowledge, experience, and education and take that and apply it into the world of sports betting?

Harry Crane [00:19:12]:

Well, the way I think about it is this. There are basically three big ways that you can get an advantage. You can get an advantage in betting. One is to have, you know, the first is information. Next is execution. The, the last is, you know, methodology or technology or, or, you know, analytics for, for the sake of this conversation. So, you know, to, to kind of go through those information is, you know, if you knew a player was injured before anyone else did, you could bet the line now, you know it's going to move later, you could buy it back, you know it's going to happen. You kind of like seeing the future there. And so getting inside information or early information is definitely the most valuable and reliable way to make money. It's just probably the least scalable unless you have a really reliable source, which is hard. I'm sure there's people who have those. Execution is imagining we all have the same information, but you're able to execute on something faster, more effectively somehow than others. And that includes this issue of getting limited or being able to work around the limitations. This includes betting in play in a way that maybe others can't. The last one is analytics, data crunching, taking all kinds of data and information and trying to process it and get a systematic edge over a large sample. And so the benefit of that approach is so the drawback to that approach is that the edges tend to be much thinner. You might have a one or two or 3% edge, whereas if you have early information, you have 100% edge or higher even. But if the edge is there, you can scale it to every game across leagues and so on and so forth, depending on how you're able to scale your model. So that's been my approach. The key to it is getting data. You get data, you fit statistical models, and then a lot of it is really digging into the weeds of understanding what the math means in the context of the sport you're analyzing and then always just figuring out ways to tweak it to make it a little bit better. And we're tweaking things on very marginal. It's always about squeezing that extra marginal bid out and then you keep tweaking every little bit of it and you kind of work your way up and you keep getting better. That's the overall approach.

Shane Mercer [00:21:58]:

So if I understand correctly, what you're saying is that you develop models that sort of tend to give you a 5% edge or so, and then you try to scale it up and apply it more broadly across leagues or sports or however it might be.

Harry Crane [00:22:15]:

So that would be the approach. Some approaches, some models I fit are, I estimate them now in hindsight, given the results as 200, 300% edges. Those are few and far between. But if I'm taking the approach that probably most people think in their head is, you fit a baseball model, you have a bunch of baseball data, and then you come up with a model before every game, you have the probability of each game going over under the spreads, the money lines.

Harry Crane [00:22:50]:

Something that is along those lines. You're saying, yeah, if you can get a 5% edge at that, you're in business because you can bet a good number of games, you can get a good amount of volume down because there's a good amount of games. In other cases where maybe there isn't as much volume, there isn't as much quantity. But the mistake, if you can identify the mistake, you can get a much larger edge even on some of these mathematical approaches because you're using more advanced math. So I guess it's kind of a balancing between you don't need to be kind of a math wizard to fit a model. In a lot of cases, you have to know a little bit of regression statistics and you just got to really work hard to hone that model towards the goal, towards the particular domain that you're interested in. But then on the flip side of it, certain very specific situations, if you know enough, you can really get a huge edge by essentially applying a technique that nobody knows about that isn't priced into the market.

Shane Mercer [00:24:02]:

What would you say the average sports bettor simply doesn't understand about data analytics and how does that impact their success, or lack thereof?

Harry Crane [00:24:17]:

I guess to the extent that I'm assuming most sports bettors really never even go the route of data analytics. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but the ones that do and the ones that try it, I think that what they're likely to miss is how difficult it is, how much work it's going to take to actually get this thing to work. It's not something you do over a weekend and then by Monday morning you've got a winning baseball model.

Shane Mercer [00:24:53]:

Only it were that easy. Eh.

Harry Crane [00:24:56]:

Going back to one of your first questions, that in a lot of ways was my initial mistake. The thing I didn't realize is how hard it would be. So in my case, it's multiple years of work to get something to work. Maybe I'm just slow, but although I don't think that's an outlying case, I think that it can take two, three, four years to get something that is going to be reliable to give you an edge because there's just so much you can do wrong. And so I think that that's maybe the thing is that it's going to take a long time. The things that are going to matter are not the things you're a lot of, just stupid, annoying things that you don't really want to think about, like data entry and data accuracy and things like that. And it's harder than you want it to be. And so if you don't love it, if you don't already kind of have a passion for it and you're not predisposed to just enjoying what you're doing and really just digging into it and going for it, then there's a good chance eventually you're going to want to give up.

Shane Mercer [00:26:03]:

And to a certain extent it sounds like you're actually talking to sort of the past you who is also a statistics professor, a PhD in statistics. I mean, the average sports bettor probably doesn't have those things, might not even be very good at math or even have a solid understanding, let alone a university degree in the field, right? So how does somebody like that approach data analytics when they hear this podcast?

Harry Crane [00:26:35]:

I have no idea how someone without my background would approach data and analytics, which isn't to say they can't, it's just that I can't speak to that experience. What I can say though, is that I've wondered from time to time you would think my background has to give me an advantage somehow, and I'm sure it does. I can't say that it doesn't. But there's probably also things about it that puts me at a disadvantage in some strange or backwards way where I'm coming at it from too mathematical of a perspective or too theoretical or I'm trying to make everything perfectly. Fit together in this kind of mathematical framework when at the end of the day, you do have to be able there is a balance between the art and the science, the creativity and kind of the technical just doing things right. But you also have to be able to kind of know where it's okay to break the rules a little bit to get something in there that the math isn't really clean, but it works and it makes sense in a domain context. And so I think that that's the balance and there's definitely people out there who have that down pat and I think they tend to have much quicker and better success than someone like me who's coming at it from a much more technical standpoint.

Shane Mercer [00:27:59]:

Yeah, it really sounds like you're the type of person sports is chaos, which we've talked about quite a bit here on this podcast. And you sort of sound like somebody who is doing your very best to use the tools, use your knowledge, your experience to apply some kind of order to that chaos. Would that be correct?

Harry Crane [00:28:21]:

Absolutely, yeah, for sure. That's exactly the way to put it.

Shane Mercer [00:28:27]:

Then how do you kind of embrace that element of chaos that unpredictability?

Harry Crane [00:28:33]:

Well, I think that's what draws me and draws kind of a lot of people to this type of thing, right? You have this unpredictable outcome or this future outcome that has uncertainty around it. And the challenge is to do exactly that, right, is to sift through the noise and to try to figure out what's actually going to happen here, what's actually going on. And so actually some of this is related to the motivations for when we started the courses at analytics. Bet was one of my main motivations wasn't necessarily to educate sports bettors or to make them more profitable, although that is part of it, and that ultimately is what we're doing. But I just thought the idea of for me, I don't feel like I actually understood statistics until I started applying it to gambling and sports betting in particular. And that's because a lot of what I had learned was, in context, that I didn't really care about biological trials, clinical trials, whatever the case may be. And I didn't understand any of that because I didn't care about it. Once I started to work on a problem I cared about, a lot of the more nuanced concepts started to make a lot more sense because I had an example I could go to to say, this is what it means in this context. It makes a lot of sense in that context. So I thought teaching statistics in the context of sports betting was a great way for a lot of people who don't have the background you're talking about, who maybe hated statistics in college, like most people did, to actually learn it in a framework that they actually like, that they care about, that's inherently interesting to them, and they'll probably understand and absorb a lot more by doing that. So that was actually a lot of the motivation. Yeah.

Shane Mercer [00:30:25]:

No, it makes a lot of sense. Right. Sort of pull people in by getting them to learn maybe something they never wanted to learn, but sort of do it through this lens of something that they're really interested in. I e. Sports Betting I want to ask you, though, and I'm just curious, as part of your strategies and your tactics in sports betting, are you deploying any kind of advanced technology? Are you using artificial intelligence in any way? And do you see or how do you see artificial intelligence and big data analysis kind of how do you see the future of that advanced technology in the sports betting realm.

Harry Crane [00:31:08]:

Depending what you mean. AI means something different to a lot of people, and it's evolving over time. But I think that what you're probably referring to is not something that I'm using any kind of chat GPT or anything like that at this point. I think about it a lot because you think, well, how far off are we from somebody being able to make use of that? Maybe they already are, but maybe five years from now it'll be much more widespread, maybe ten years, who knows? And someone in my position always has to you always have to be able to evolve. Right? I think that in order for that to become more widespread, I mean, the the out of the box so I guess, you know, the out of the box chat GPT, I don't even know how it would get used. You could probably think of some ways, but it itself has a lot of mistakes and has a lot of errors. There would have to be one of. Two things. Either it has to become a lot more accurate or you have to build machinery on top of it to be able to interpret what it's spitting out. A lot of the time is just complete nonsense and it's not accurate at all. So it's almost like another noise generator for you that has some semblance of truth and accuracy behind it. So it's like another data generator. So I think it could be an interesting thing to look at. But I guess here's what I'll say to that, which is I'm not using that. If I was starting out today, where would I start? It's like when you spend enough time in this, you try everything. Every idea that comes into your head, you're tempted to try it. Right? But the problem is there's only so much time in a day and every idea that you try out, it's usually not over time you get better, but it's usually not ten minutes and then, oh, I know that doesn't work, or ten minutes and I know it's going to work. It could be a week, it could be a month, it could be three months, it could be longer. So would I be trying to go down this rabbit hole of let me try to figure out how to use Chat GPT to beat baseball? I probably am not inclined to do that, but somebody who knows that. But the reason for that also is that I have no expertise in that stuff. I really don't know what's behind it. My whole thing is I don't think that the way I do things is the best way or the only way or whatever. It's the best way for me, I think, because I'm trying to leverage maybe the specialty that I have and trying to get as much value and edge out of that, right? So somebody who's coming at it from a totally different angle should be trying to leverage their edge totally differently, right? So if somebody who has machine learning and large language model expertise, maybe they should start out that way. That would be a very natural place to start and they might be able to really have a breakthrough. Someone who's coming at it with what I know or even less than what I know. From a statistics perspective, I feel like you're going to end up kind of there's probably easier and better ways to go about it, or you're going to end up in a dead end, more likely than not.

Shane Mercer [00:34:44]:

But before we wrap up our conversation, I just want to ask you because I know this is something that comes up and it's something that winning sports bettors kind of have to deal with all the time. And I'm curious as to how you deal with it. The idea that, look, Harry, the sports books are designed for you to lose. There's no way to beat them over time. Betting on sports is just a losing plan. There's no way you can be successful doing it. What do you say to those people out there that just don't think it's possible to win betting on sports?

Harry Crane [00:35:19]:

Well, it's not true for starters. There's plenty of people who've done it, from you're going back 50 years to the present day, there are people, and there's books written about these people, there's movies made about them that not only make money and make a living betting on sports, but betting on every single casino game imaginable, any gambling game. There are people who have made millions and multiple millions of dollars, and in the case of sports betting, there are people who've made hundreds of millions of dollars. So there's definitely a way to do it. It always is getting harder, right? I mean, if you did something 40 years ago, you were the first one in, you had the benefit of being the first one in, but you were also in an unproven territory. You didn't know if it was possible back then to make $100 million betting on sports. Now you do, but there's more people who know that, and so is more competition. So it's the kind of thing where, yes, it's definitely possible. One of the things that relating to this somewhat is one of the things that we're doing now with analytics bet is we're going to the state regulators and to the commissions and trying to educate people on that exact point. To some extent, to say that we can't have regulated this regulated market is crazy, where we're allowing regulators should be on the part of the constituents, the citizens of the state, the residents, whereas in fact, they're mostly operating in the pockets of the big casinos. At a minimum, what we should be trying to promote is a minimum level of betting education and betting competency, especially for people who are going to be betting over a certain threshold. If you bet over, I don't know, whatever the number is, pick a number. Maybe it's a good idea to at least call attention to the fact do you know what the expected return on a five leg parlay is? Do you know what the return on a single game, on these single game parlays are? And it's not to say that it's okay to if you know that you're losing 40% on a bet and you choose to make it anyway, we can say maybe that's okay. But I think that there's so much misleading content out there, especially a lot of it's being put out by the sports books to say, picking the winner of the day, the lock of the week, the lock of the century, and everything in between. And all of the advertisements are geared towards getting people to bet, and of course, those people tend to lose. And so they have the opinion that you just said, which is that it's impossible to win. I think a minimum level of betting education, not to say everybody has to Become a professional but at least to understand what It is that they're doing what -110 means in some kind of mathematical sense I think would go a long way to actually sustaining the industry everybody wants.

Shane Mercer [00:38:46]:

It sounds like you're advocating for responsible gambling. A real, true message of responsible gambling, not what the Sports Books currently pretend is responsible gambling.

Harry Crane [00:38:58]:

I mean, essentially, yes, exactly.

Shane Mercer [00:39:03]:

One last thing here, Harry. You've mentioned it numerous times throughout the interview here, but you work with a group of people, correct?

Harry Crane [00:39:17]:

I work with a few people, yeah.

Shane Mercer [00:39:20]:

How important is it to work with a group?

Harry Crane [00:39:27]:

For me, I guess I can say, looking back, I've never been able to do anything successfully without on my own. I mean, poker poker, I guess, is the last thing that I did, and I think to my detriment, I was very kind of isolated in that. Of course, poker is an individual game, but there are people who at least they share ideas, and I never really did that there. I had success at poker, but I think I would add more success if you get into the right groups and you're able to kind of bounce ideas off each other for something like betting. Sports betting the lone wolf. It's possible, but I think there's just so many you're really limited in what you're going to be able to get, especially when we talk about the logistical issues of getting limited. Unless you're managing an entire team of bettors and you're also running all these models and figuring all this stuff out yourself, that's 100 hours a week job minimum, and you're kind of always on call there. I think that having a team and leveraging the strength of individuals, some people are going to be more mathematical, some people are going to be more business oriented or logistical and practical. I think it's good to have a good mix.

Shane Mercer [00:40:58]:

Yeah, absolutely. 100% agree with you on that. So important. And you mentioned all those people over time who have won money betting on sports or betting on casino games or betting on anything. Almost all of them did it as a group. Right. Not too many people did it as a lone individual.

Harry Crane [00:41:15]:

Exactly.

Shane Mercer [00:41:17]:

Harry Crane, statistics professor and the founder of Analytics Bet. Harry, what a great conversation. Thanks so much for joining the show.

Harry Crane [00:41:25]:

All right, thanks a lot.

Shane Mercer [00:41:26]:

All right, Pace. So that was Harry Crane. What a guy. Really interesting. You can tell he's got a very brilliant mind, especially when it comes to numbers, but a lot to take away from that. I've got some thoughts, but first, Pace, I want to hear yours.

Andrew Pace [00:41:41]:

How much time do we have? I mean, that's what it's all about right there. We've got a guy who's literally goodwill Hunting level brilliant. He literally could play Matt Damon in Goodwill Hunting and obviously has the accolades to support his knowledge, his theories and everything that he's doing. And like you said before we started he said he started at a young age.

Andrew Pace [00:42:10]:

I think he was a little bit below the legal betting age when he started betting it. He said eight or nine years old. But yeah, I mean, as far as thoughts go, there's a lot to unpack. We've touched on pregame betting. I know at inplayLIVE, a lot of times we have alluded to the time commitment of pregame betting. And then when you bring in the whole tipster model, which we've done a whole episode on, and you think about someone giving you picks, let's eliminate the scammers, let's take them out of the equation entirely. And let's say that we've got Harry giving us the analytics and data and actually picking a game for us where you go, okay, all of this time commitment, which he really touched on multiple times, he made reference to a 100 hours work week as it relates to building models. But then if you go to his three points of execution, three points to success, info, execution and analytics, the analytics side of it, if you have a systematic edge over these main markets. So we're ignoring insider information and the execution of it, he's talking about a 1% edge and we have touched on that a number of times as it relates to pregame pros. So that's his edge. So that means us as sports bettors. If we're following a guy like him, he's not a tipster, but if we're following a guy like him like him, that is a tipster, right? Or if we're paying for a service like this, who's to say that we're getting the same line as him? So, if he has a 1% edge and perhaps he's placing a wager where he's found that edge at minus 110 and by the time we get around to wagering it, we've betted at -115 because we want to tail him. Well, we've lost the payment for that particular subscription or tipster, we've lost that payment already. That comes out of our edge. And then we've betted a line where we've lost that 1% edge and might even have a theoretical negative long term return based on not getting the same number. So when you combine the information that he just gave us and I love everything he's doing, everything he's doing is in line with bettering the betting industry, with giving them education, with giving them fish instead of giving them a fishing rod, instead of giving them a stinky fish. A lot of overlap with what we're doing with inplayLIVE. But when you take these services he's building his own models, you take these services that are all designed for us to get an edge and all the same people are using these systems in a similar way. He touched on it really, really well. The edge that he's working on and the systems he is working on is his information and his interpretation of them. So if you're taking a system that everyone else is then using to do the same thing yourself well then you've got to ask yourself where actually is the edge?

Shane Mercer [00:45:21]:

Yeah, that's a good point right. Because you're all doing it at the same time in theory and are you crushing those lines? We talked about this on our episode a couple of weeks ago about dynamic lines. Are you dropping those lines all the way down and some people inevitably end up getting in at a worse line, right? Yeah that makes a lot of sense right. Where you could potentially lose that edge.

Andrew Pace [00:45:47]:

Yeah so the reason why I said all that the last thing I'm trying to do is discredit this guy. This guy's like the more brilliant version of our whole group combined in a lot of ways from the standpoint of his actual knowledge and mathematic background but I'm referencing to the recreational bettor that's purchasing some sort of package from a tipster when you really uncover the hood of the best of the best. We just spoke to one of the best of the best pregame pros and anyone that's telling you that they have a bigger edge than this 1% 3% edge and it's main market stuff that's being reproduced to someone that's pregame betting you know after listening to that they're scamming you it's just not accurate it's just not true.

Shane Mercer [00:46:40]:

Yeah, that's a really good point. This guy sort of is somebody who is quite after having that conversation and chatting with them, it's very clear that he's not a tipster, like you said. And the distinction between someone like that and somebody on Instagram who is telling you to go bet the mets at -200 ODS and do it right. Now are night and day, right? I mean, like, come on, the difference is extraordinary.

Andrew Pace [00:47:05]:

Yeah, and I don't think he's seen our podcast before. And then he came out talking about the lock of the week and all those same things and calling those people out, because he does have such a profound knowledge of where success truly lies long term. And again, he's pooling money as a team, he's working as a team. So there's the element of being able to succeed where you can't just do it on your own. I know you can do it on your own. I know that is possible. But the power of the community and the team is obviously greater than the individual. Right? So he definitely alluded to that as well as an overall part of the long term success. But it is the syndicate type model, right, where money is being pooled and then executed through multiple accounts to get large sums of money in on these pregame, to identify these edges. And again, if that is happening, where we are talking about pooled money, pooled resources, and a lot of money coming in at once, it would be really hard to tail as a tipster, tail a tipster as a recreational vetter, knowing that they got the sharp line and you potentially didn't.

Shane Mercer [00:48:23]:

Yeah, I love that you brought that up because that's something I wanted to talk about too. Here we have a guy, he's extremely sharp, clearly, but he's also recognized I can't do this alone, I need people like me thinking like me and we need to work together as a group to be able to do this effectively. And one of the first moment where he brought up being part of a group was in our conversation around limiting, which I thought was interesting because he basically said, yeah, of course we get limited, but I don't deal with any of that stuff. I've got a whole bunch of other people that are going to deal with that stuff for me. They take care of that, I take care of the modeling and the analytics and that side of things. So a very sort of clear division of labor, which I thought was really interesting here with the operation that he's a part of.

Andrew Pace [00:49:12]:

But also too, we've seen with sports books where they say in their terms and conditions or shut you down or didn't pay you specifically because they accused you of being a syndicate. And one of the things that I do love about inplayLIVE is we do execute individually as a community. And what I mean by that, if you're watching and you're not a part of the community, is that we're not betting for you, we aren't taking your funds and then distributing them and then giving you a return. You're going through all those processes yourself and that allows you from the standpoint of being accused of being a syndicate, to actually provide evidence that it is in fact you placing the wagers, your devices, your IP address, your accounts, your money, your bank accounts, the list goes on and on. So I do like that from the standpoint of what it is that we're doing. But at the same time, when I think about Purifying, the betting industry, what we stand for in this podcast and obviously with the community of inplayLIVE, it only benefits us to interact with guys like Harry because we gain knowledge. Knowledge is power. We gain a little bit more information, potentially leading to greater edges or more sustainable and long term edges. Obviously, sustainability was something that he really touched on with all this which actually kind of mimicked DK's sentiment with respect to the legalization of the books that you guys touched on last week and then as it relates to books trying to become more profitable and really honing in on Sharp bettors being their way to appease stockholders and shareholders going forward. But yeah, from the sustainability standpoint of potentially collaborating with Harry or guys like him that can continue to better our community and then potentially obviously better his as well, and the prospect of that type of thing, again, from the standpoint of Purifying the betting industry is just exciting.

Shane Mercer [00:51:11]:

Yeah, I loved what he said about that. Before I forget, I just want to mention I don't know how Harry's organization works. I don't know the intricacies of how those relationships work. All I know is what all of you heard in the interview. So I just want to make that clear. I don't want to say, oh, he is a syndicate or anything. If anybody out there from sports books is listening or anything like that. We don't know exactly how it works within the group that he's working with, so I just want to make that clear. But I did love that element of he's also somebody who like us. Pace. And the whole purpose behind our podcast here about educating recreational sports bettors and sort of helping people understand the landscape and avoiding the pitfalls is something that he's advocating for and his group is advocating for as well, and sort of lobbying the regulators and reaching out to them and sort of making these suggestions that, hey, maybe the sports books could do a better job at educating their customers about what exactly it is that they're engaging in. And so I really appreciated that element that he kind of brought to the conversation because, yeah, that's exactly what we're all about and I didn't know that he was going to come with that. So it's really encouraging to see other people out there who are as sharp as him, who are also taking the same approach and recognizing that the landscape isn't fair, that it needs to become at least a little bit more level, if not a completely even playing field.

Andrew Pace [00:52:37]:

Totally, yeah. And he touched on, like, hey, you're about to make a parlay. It's got a negative 40% ROI on it, right? Would people still make the parlay? Yes. But would people potentially look at what they're doing a little bit differently? Yes as well. And I don't think that that's a realistic expectation that the books would actually ever provide. But perhaps somewhere in the site there could be that level of information provided to players and they might have to click an accept or agree button where they go, this is the nature of what it is that we're promoting. And a lot of people wouldn't read it, but at least it would then be offered. And I would consider that to be a true responsible gaming tool as opposed to obviously the ones that we've touched on in previous episodes of this podcast. Now, I do want to touch on a couple of things that I haven't yet that he brought up. So he talked about his sort of three pillars, the info, execution, and analytics. You know what's really crazy about this? And this really speaks to teams because I have some experience not with this myself as a sports bettor, because of the nature of the way I wager and how I really do try to view analytics and news as noise to a certain extent and just really focus on what's actually happening when the game is on. But information so he talked about information and I think that he kind of skipped over a word there and it is unique information. He's referring to information that other people do not have.

Shane Mercer [00:54:03]:

Yeah, he called it insider information but that's what it is essentially, it's information no one else has.

Andrew Pace [00:54:08]:

Which technically speaking would be illegal in the stock market but in the world of sports betting it's not. Which I mean, if you can beat the books, I say power to you. So it's cool. I've heard of some stories of people that have a team again, where one of those team members is deployed in an actual stadium and they could be looking at anything from the Super Bowl. Color of the gatorade bath. To the performers halftime outfit to getting a lineup before it's released online for maybe a low market college game where you have a piece of information about a certain player that is hugely impactful that isn't playing before that actually information isn't released or sorry is released. So you get that edge. And with respect to that kind of stuff, it really is a race to market. And again, that speaks to the fact that he isn't a tipster because he knows that he has that edge. And that edge is in such a small time frame where he collects that information before people in whatever capacity that it is that he can to then place his wager. And by the time he would place it and then release that information, we're talking about sometimes seconds. Which actually has a lot of parallels to what we do with live betting. And I'm not referring to necessarily a player not playing or playing live, but a play that happens where we potentially gain an edge on the books or a play that happens that changes the algorithm in the books where book A reacts in a certain way to that situation occurring where book B reacts in a different way. The way they react is similar but it can just be just enough difference where we actually can get that theoretical value or that edge live. The difference with the live aspect of it is for us it's about what we're actually watching and listening to in real time. Whereas in this case it's before the game started and gaining that information. Which leads us to the second thing that he brought up which was execution. So you get the unique information and then how are you actually going to execute to profit and then you have this short window of time to execute on it before that market is taken down, before the public hears about it, whatever the case may be. And it really comes down to speed and there's a lot of parallels there with what we do live in the sense that sometimes we get a line that we only have one to 5 seconds to actually slip the wager in. And you'll see with a group of people like with imply live, maybe 10% of the members actually spun the bet in, maybe 5% did, maybe 50% did. But there was this tight window where 100% of the people were not able to get in on that particular line. So execution obviously being huge. And then he talked about the systematic edge, which is the one to 3% edge and the analytics that he uses to create those models to gain those edges. So definitely sounded like the big edges that he gets, like those 3400% ones that he alluded to were based off of some of that unique information and obviously the execution. But then also from the analytics standpoint, perhaps taking on a piece of information or data that the books aren't really privy to and having a large edge, which usually, again, when you come to those ones, those sort of situations, there's a time frame associated to how long you can actually execute on those ones for until the books adjust to them. But really cool stuff. And I know for a fact, like having that guy in our group would be really powerful for all of our members. But also on the flip side, I'm very confident that he would find tremendous new avenues of making money that he never knew existed before with what we're doing, meshing with what he's doing.

Shane Mercer [00:58:08]:

I think you're absolutely right on that. When I talked about a are you betting pregame or are you betting live? And he was like, oh, mostly pregame, but I haven't really explored betting live too much. I was thinking in my head I'm like, hey buddy, we can help you explore. We can give you a hand there. And I do think that he would probably be able to find a ton of value live. He would be able to sort of just really excel and people like him. I don't want to just say it's just him, but if you're out there and you're listening or you're watching and you're sort of in that area already and you're already in this space yeah. If you're only betting pregame and you do have models and you do have a strong background in statistics, analytics and data, joining a community like inplayLIVE can really help you elevate that and apply it to Live sports wagering. And I was thinking about it. Let's say a guy like Harry tells me that basketball game between the Nuggets and the Heat is going to go over 200 points. And he's telling me this pregame, well, I can use that as sort of a signpost that kind of says it doesn't dictate how I'm going to wager live. But I know Harry, who's got this incredible model, says it's going to go over 200 points and then the game is live. And I'm watching it and now it's gone down to 180 points. But I can say, hey, Harry's model was saying as much as 200 points. Maybe that's another reason to like the over in this game. And maybe combine that with a whole bunch of other information to give an even stronger edge or to create that edge and really kind of just using the analytics, the data, the background, as you sort of referred to. It as noise, but not so much noise. Not also complete guidance, but something to be aware of. Something to give information and to help better inform your decision making process. While betting on sports live.

Andrew Pace [01:00:09]:

Totally. And, I mean, he'd probably be the first one to tell you there's been games that he bets on where it just goes completely the other way from tip to tip.

Shane Mercer [01:00:17]:

And that's sports, that's chaos. And we talked a little bit about that, too, of course, in there.

Andrew Pace [01:00:21]:

Yeah, he said something that I really liked. I'm going back to the time commitment. He really touched on that quite a bit. Talked about the 100 hours work week, the amount of time it takes and the amount of work it all is to be a successful pregame sports bettor. He mentioned a line that I loved. He said, it's harder than you want it to be, so you better love it. And I think that live betting. Sometimes people will say to us at inplayLIVE, the time commitment was too much for me, but sometimes I look during certain times of the year, especially where I go, jeez, we're getting these edges, putting in this little amount of time, a couple of hours a night sometimes. It's really awesome. So something to be grateful for, I think, with our community.

Shane Mercer [01:01:01]:

Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, Pace, I really enjoyed the interview. That's all the thoughts I had on it. I thought it was great to connect with Harry. Pace, any final thoughts, final words? Anything you want to share with the audience before we say goodbye till next week?

Andrew Pace [01:01:14]:

Yeah, so if you take our Chaos episode and you take this episode and where you talked about trying to kind of quantify or put the chaos into a bucket that potentially could be value. He's not predicting the future, guys. It's very important to understand that. He's trying to identify value. And it sounds like he does so successfully, especially with respect to the times that he doesn't have insider information. And just because you get a bit of insider information doesn't mean that the game is going to go a certain way. It means that you're getting value on the lines. He talked about buying out of them. So if you get information early and you're able to buy out, it means that you didn't even need to watch the game or the result of the game didn't even matter. The profit was made before the game actually even started. So always keep that in mind going forward with respect to any edges, any tipsters, any. Models like this and especially analytics services. I'm not speaking out against analytic services, I want that to be clear. But he made it very clear that his edges are different and each pro's edges or systems edges should be different. So what that means is if you're using a system that's generating edges that all sort of bring sharp bettors to the same space, that 1% 3% edge is likely going to be gone or even that much more minimized. So can you make money doing that? Yes, but it's more likely than not that doing all of that work using someone else's system is likely just going to lead you to tread water. Okay. Now you might think, well, how could this guy say this? Is he's sitting here with his own betting service? Well, of course the reason with that is the success that we've had from our members. But the nature of live betting where you do have that short window to get something in based on what you're seeing both on the books and their lines and obviously what's going on in the rank, the court or the field and that leading to sustainable long term profits and that would be the last thing that I would touch on is he did really harp on sustainability and a huge aspect of that is your sports books and not getting limited and the simple reality is that you will get limited. So you do need to find sustainable, long term sports books that don't limit you, like Pinnacle and bookmaker and then sports books potentially using offshore channels or other opportunities to keep things coming in so that it isn't like this one or two year thing that just makes you a little bit of cash. And I'm evidence that that works, and I believe that Harry is as well. The guy's been betting since he was eight years old and he's still here. He knows how to work around some of the sports books to continue to get action. So I've been doing this for well over a decade and can speak to that as well. So yeah, really great information. Harry, if you're listening, thanks for joining us. That was really awesome. Hopefully we can have him back on in the future and continue to have really sharp and guests like that to make Shane to make us look smarter than we are.

Shane Mercer [01:04:24]:

I don't know that that's the outcome, Pace, it's probably the reverse all around. But you know what, I really enjoy those conversations because I learned so much and I enjoy my conversations with you too Pace, because I learned a lot from you. And what you and Harry both have in common is that you are both what Bet analytics or analytics.bet and inplayLIVE are both doing. And you touched on this is you're not giving people stinky fish, you're teaching people how to fish. It's just a couple of the different ways. Really enjoyed exploring the different ways. Pace, buddy. Always enjoy our conversations. Till next week. Keep beating those 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'.