Episode 22

Shane Mercer [00:00:12]:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Behind the Lines. I'm your host, Shane Mercer. Thank you so much for joining us today. We've got Andrew Pace, the founder of inplayLIVE, the greatest sports betting community on planet Earth. And we have brought back the golden goose himself, Kenny Huber. Kenny, thanks for joining the show again. How's your summer going, buddy?

Kenny Huber [00:00:32]:

Pretty good, pretty good.

Shane Mercer [00:00:33]:

Awesome. So happy to hear it. Guys, today we are talking about rewards programs. This is the second part of a two part episode. So if you missed episode one on rewards programs, go back to last week. Have a listen to that. That is where we talk all about rewards programs, how they work, how they're designed to keep the sports bettor, betting with the promises of free gifts, free rewards, free money, all sorts of freebies that maybe don't ever actually make it into the bank accounts of sports bettors. So please go back, have a listen to that episode. And before we get into today's topic, I got to remind you all to like download, subscribe, follow us on all the socials at inplayLIVE. And if you want to see what it's like behind the curtain, you can join inplayLIVE. We have a special promo code for you that is BEHINDTHELINES, all caps. That is also the name of the show and it's 'BEHINDTHELINES' because that's what we do. We take you behind what the sports books are doing to take your money. We are not here to give out picks, predictions, or peer into crystal balls and try to tell you who's going to win in the next big game. That's not what we're here for. What we're here is to teach you about how the sports books work, how they are always trying to take your money so that you can become a better bettor, even a winning bettor over time. And today we've got two winning bettors on the show. Guys, so happy to have you both here. So as I mentioned last week's episode, Pace, you and I, we talked all about rewards programs, how they're worked, how they're designed to really kind of allow the sports books to sink their teeth into sports bettors and really, really milk the problem gamblers, the ones who think that they're getting something for nothing throughout the whole experience. Meanwhile, they're just losing and losing and losing and going deeper into debt and just doing perhaps dangerous, financially dangerous things with these sports books. But there are ways to take advantage of these rewards programs. So Kenny, you are a superstar at this. You have been doing this a long, long time, taking advantage of the rewards. Pacer, when we talked about it last week, we talked about it sort of how Vegas kind of started this off and then we talk about how the sports book sort of picked it up. But Kenny, you've been doing this for a long time talk to us a little bit about what you've been doing in Vegas when it comes to rewards programs and how their rewards programs work.

Kenny Huber [00:03:10]:

Well, I'll start off with the sports book side of it before I get into the casino, the casino side. For over a year I was signing people up and one of my friends was doing the same, signing people up and just milking all of the great rewards that they have for DraftKings had like a risk free bet or free cash. And it was just a slow drip and you could basically just bet one book against the other, doing some arbitrage plays and everything to really milk some of the promos that a lot of the sports books have. But you have to really read the fine print. We kind of had it all down to a science which ones were truly a risk free bet where they gave you back cash versus the ones that gave you a free bet that you then had to play. So we would know how much to bet on both sides. And we basically had it down to a science where we would make anywhere from 3000 to 4000 per person that we signed up just free money. We would give them 500 because the people wouldn't know how to do it. We would do it for them and then we would make anywhere from 2500 to 3500 per person and they'd be happy getting the 500. And then we would basically did it almost as a job before we started getting really sharp at doing all the bets. So that was a very good money maker for us. And to be honest, I don't do that as much anymore only because they really don't like that. They consider that kind of like especially when they're doing arbitrage betting and finding those weak lines. They kind of caught on to that side of it. And I still like to use the bonuses, but I use them just as when I actually want to make a bet. If I'm opening up a new account, I then would take advantage of the bonus. But if you try to abuse it, if you try to abuse those bonuses, they really protect those marketing dollars and they really frown upon if they think you're trying to game the system with it. Now, on the casino, on the other hand, I get tons and tons of benefits from the casino. The list is really long as far as like, I've bet online with DraftKings in their casino. I got to meet Tiger Woods from betting through the casino. Just with my relationships that I've built with I'm actually wearing my Tiger Jam hat from last April. That was really just from there was a contest going on. But I've built such relationships through the casino side of it because my host and my first host my second host, my first host is now promoted to head of Pennsylvania. One of my other hosts is the head of the New Jersey and New York market. And my current host moved from Pennsylvania. She got to take one client with her to New Jersey, New York. So now she's my host of basically all three states. She offered me Shaniah Twain tickets tomorrow to like, a suite at MSG. But my wife and I can't go. But everything that she does for me is just amazing. And she knows that I'm an ultra, ultra sharp bettor, but she knows that I play the game where I'll go into their casino and drop a couple of thousand just to kind of so she can keep giving me promos and not making my sports limits incredibly low. But that's a special relationship that I don't think most people would probably be able to cultivate at this point. But it's something that since I was kind of in on the ground floor, but it is something that you'll have the opportunities with other books and whatnot. Like I said, the list of the benefits. I won a Jeep Gladiator through a gambling contest last summer as well. I found a flaw on some they have some stupid rocket game on Draft Kings, and my buddy got me playing it and I got addicted to it. But then I realized in the beginning of them introducing this game, if you cashed out it right at the right time. I actually turned it profitable over like three days, I made 25,000 in cash and wanted Jeep Gladiator. And the ironic thing was, if you came in first place, you want a Jeep Gladiator. If you came in exactly 200th place, you would win a silverado and 20,000 in DK dollars. My wife came in 199th place and one of my good friends, his sister, came in 201st place. So we missed out on the silverado and the gladiator by one spot or the silverado and the cash. But the benefits and from a US perspective, I know a lot of Canadians, unless you're a professional gambler, you don't actually pay taxes on your profits. But in the US. We do, and I'm in the 38% tax bracket. So the way the IRS looks at gambling is they don't care if you're winning or losing at sports or winning or losing at the casino. They just kind of put it into one big bowl of this person's a gambler. So I make over seven figures a year sports gambling. So when I turn around and say I lose 200,000 in the casino for the year, that just comes directly off of my income. So I'm basically not losing 200,000, I'm losing 76,000 less. So I'm really only losing like 120,000. So year after year over year, I definitely lose a casino gambling. But the benefits for me outweigh it for me to get a gladiator, for me to get a putting a 45 minutes putting lesson from Tiger Woods, I would pay 125,000 just for the putting lesson. From Tiger Woods. Meanwhile, I go on cruises for free from through Norwegian. They put me in this Haven area, which is crazy expensive. Andrew just paid a ton of money to go into Haven, where I get all of those perks for free from my casino gambling. I just got back yesterday from the Hard Rock. I spent all weekend at the Hard Rock. I had front row tickets to Bill Burr, and my butlers greeted me with thousands of dollars in booze in my room and everything's picked up, compliments of Hard Rock. I sometimes travel to other casinos. A funny story is I like to have a little shady host at different places. And I travel to one casino and I tell my host, I was like, hey, can you pick up my airfare for the trip? He goes, sure. He goes, how much is it? I go, 1500. He goes, all right, here's what I'm going to do. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put 4000 on your card, and we're going to go down and play a slot machine. And he goes, 1st, 1500 yours. And then the rest will split. I'll meet you upstairs in the men's room. It was really shady deal, but I like those kind of people that take care of me. So we ended up turning the 4000 in slot play and the 3500. I went upstairs, I gave him $1,000 in the bathroom. I made an extra thousand. He made 1000, and it was just a fun time. But yeah, the perks I get are unbelievable from the casino. And like I said, it's about 200,000 that I lose each year in the casino, two to 250. But it's really I can take all of that off of my income. And to me, my wife hates this, but I say it's the necessary evil to live. The life I've grown accustomed to is the casino gambling. I just love having the butlers. I like going to Atlantic City. I like going to Vegas, like going to Florida, the Hard Rocks down there in Seminole and whatnot. But yeah, it's really been a fun ride. And I would never casino gamble as a living, obviously, but I'm sure there are people that do it that can card count and everything in blackjack. But to me, that's a bit of a grind because you're really only getting, like a 1% edge or what Andrew and I do. Basically, we have 15, 20% edges on some of the things that we do, where there would never be a casino that would ever offer those games because nobody would ever play at them. Because Andrew and I are so much sharper than everybody else.

Shane Mercer [00:11:12]:

Wow. Okay. So much to dig into there. I mean, Tiger Woods, Shaniah Twain, Jeeps Cruises, all sorts of awesome perks. I mean, I know that you've been cruising most of the summer. I mean, we could probably call you King of Cruises at this point. And I know you convinced Andrew to go on one with you to hear all of this. It makes me think, jeez, maybe I should be playing in the casino all the time and betting on blackjack or poker or slots, roulette, whatever it might be. But you said you lost $200,000 over the course of the year. I mean, for an average person out there, that would bankrupt them. To be clear, you are only doing that because you are crushing it on sports and sports betting.

Kenny Huber [00:11:58]:

Absolutely.

Shane Mercer [00:11:58]:

Now you're taking those winnings and you're saying, okay, well, because I got to pay taxes on these winnings, it makes sense for me to lose some money. I'm going to lose it in the casinos so that I can build these relationships that you mentioned and kind of cultivate these relationships where they allow you to keep playing at the sports books and keep betting on sports as well.

Kenny Huber [00:12:19]:

Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah. I get all the perks, like the Schneider, Twain, and Tiger Woods, and I get all of that as part of my casino play because I'm too sharp at sports. They wouldn't necessarily give that to me if I was a winning sports player. Like, for example, my way to the Tiger Woods putting lesson. Somebody else was on the bus with me also getting the putting lesson, and he showed me his Draft Kings account, and he had, like, $3 million in it, and he was betting, like, $100,000 parlays. He was 100% there because he was a losing bettor. There's no way in the world DraftKings would take $100,000 parlay from me or 100,000 anything from me from my personal account. So obviously he was there because he's a losing sports bettor. But I was basically there because of my casino play and the relationships that I built. There was a contest to get into the Tiger Woods thing. They just gave me an invitation because I happened to be on a cruise for free from Norwegian the week they were running the contest, I talked to my host. I said, I'll do anything to get the putting lesson from Tiger Woods. And she was able to call her boss and his boss called her boss or his boss, and they ended up getting me on the course with Tiger Pacer.

Shane Mercer [00:13:40]:

Our audience, in a big way, is made up of recreational sports bettors who cannot afford to lose $200,000 in a casino. They probably can't even afford to lose $2,000 in a casino. I know I wouldn't want to lose $2,000 at a casino. What would you say to them as they kind of hear Kenny's stories about how he's kind of getting all these rewards from his casino play?

Andrew Pace [00:14:01]:

Yeah, well, I think if you're a member of inplayLIVE, you've certainly seen Kenny's stories, or maybe you've met him or you've maybe even seen him at the tables, and he draws a crowd, like, straight up. There'll be reserve tables, people wanting to play on a table, and they're not allowed to because Kenny's in the house. We had a story where we were sitting there and people were begging for lower limits on a table, and they said Kenny was actually not feeling too well this night, and they're asking for lower limits on the table. And they said, sir, there's a player on board this ship that won't allow us to lower the limits. He wants to make sure that there's only a certain caliber of gambler playing on the table with him tonight. And I'm like, yeah, he's sick tonight. He's not coming down. We don't care if you guys lower them. And they had a meeting, like the dealers with the pit boss, and they came back and they said, as long as he's on the ship, we won't be changing these limits. Kenny just loves these stories because he loves getting smoke blown up his ass, and he never came down that night. But I guess what I'm getting at is it glorifies gambling and the casinos, the sports books, everyone, they love these stories from a guy like Kenny, because what does it do? It encourages you to gamble. You can focus on the Tiger Woods and the Shaniah Twain and the Jeep Gladiator and all these different things. I know Kenny also had a five star dinner with CEO of DraftKings last year, and it can really glorify things. But the flip side to it is what he said. He's like, I lost a couple of hundred thousand dollars. And now here's where the real problem comes in with this type of behavior. We always say this at inplayLIVE. There's only one golden goose. There's only one Kenny. There's only one golden goose. And the reason why I say that is because he's talking about a lot of different things. Like, I'll just give you one quick reference to some of the things that he said. He talked about the fine print of sports books and their bonuses becoming more or less, he said, almost a job. But let's be real. You quit your job, Kenny, so it was your job, right?

Kenny Huber [00:16:02]:

Yes.

Andrew Pace [00:16:02]:

And that flipped his mindset with respect to sports betting and the gambling arena. He went from a losing player to going, hey, I found a way to win some money. Now I want to keep finding ways to win money. So when you talk about the theory of this, where you go, hey, you can milk these bonuses and you can go make money, do you think that we as sports bettors or we as podcasters or whatever the hell you want to call us, think that we've found some crazy loophole that isn't available to other people? These loopholes are available to everybody. And the sports books know that. The sports books aren't sitting there going, hey, we're giving you this bonus and no one else is doing it. It's like, no, you can play them against each other at both books, but they still offer them to you. Well, why do they still offer them to you? Because they're taking the risk that the player on the other side is not Kenny. And the reason why they'll do that is because the theory of us discussing these things and going, hey, I won some money on sports, so now I'm going to go just play the game a little and go lose some in the casino. They're like, yes, please. And we've seen it at inplayLIVE. We've seen seven figure success stories go try to do this stuff and fail to the point where gambling got them. So the sports books and the casinos don't mind taking the risk of these bonus, as Peter Murphy says, these bonuses, promotions, and inducements, they don't mind taking these risks in hopes that the player actually loses their head and loses their money. And that's where the theory differentiates itself from the execution. There's one thing Kenny touched on there, and that was forget about the shadiness of the free play story where he milked an extra 3500 from the casino host, which, by the way, is hilarious. Didn't you meet him in like an alley or something afterwards?

Kenny Huber [00:17:55]:

It was the men's room where there are no cameras in the stall.

Shane Mercer [00:18:01]:

Was it inside the stall where you close the door and everything?

Andrew Pace [00:18:04]:

My God. Jesus. Right? But there's actually something that wasn't mentioned in that story, and that was that he was offered $4,000 in casino free play. Have you guys ever spoken to someone that gets big bonuses and rewards from these casinos like Kenny does, that talks about milking their free play and turning it he turned the $4,000 of free play, which had a certain amount of rollover, he turned that into $3,500 cash. Everyone else just goes and bets that $3,500. And I've been on phone calls with Kenny where he's like, oh, draft Kings offered me a $20,000 casino bonus. So I'm playing through about 5 hours of $25 blackjack hands. And then he'll just spit out when he says to me, he'll just spit it out right away. He'd be like, if I play $25 hands, four different hands for X amount of time, my theoretical loss is X. He just says the exact number, and he's like, so I know that I'll turn that $20,000 into 15,000 or 17,500. And we have these conversations all the time. And the problem with it is that it encourages other people to go to the casino, and they don't have Kenny's head with this stuff where he goes, hey, I rolled it over. I just made my money. I'm now cashing out my money. He played their game. He played in the casino. He got the bonus, and he turned it into cold, hard cash and then probably used that towards sports betting, which made him probably added a zero to it, right? So there's inherent discipline associated with the things that he's discussing where let's say the next $5 million sports bettor that comes along that says I'm going to dump two or $300,000 into the casino doesn't dump that much. They dump a bunch more, much to their detriment. So just a huge caveat to everyone listening to the things that come up in this is that the theory is different than the execution. And Kenny knows how to milk these situations. And like he said, he still lost at the end of the year with respect to the casino play and obviously not sports betting.

Kenny Huber [00:20:05]:

Yeah, that's a good point because I really do try to do the bare minimum to get everything that I get when I go to the casino, I know I have to put in around 2 hours of play. I'll put in my 2 hours of play and then I'm pretty much done for the night. And then if I lose X amount on a trip, I know they'll pick up my whole trip. So I just won't go back in there and play. I won't chase to go try to win it back or anything like that. I put in my 2 hours of time each day. And at my levels, I'm basically a 1500 to 2000 average bet that's enough play to get all the perks, the butlers, and this and that. Or if I dump 10,000 the first night, I'm good for the whole trip. Basically. I just got back from the Hard Rock. I won 18,000, I lost five one night, I won three, one lost five. And then I was down two. I was like, all right, I'm either going to lose 8000 and I'm good for the trip and I ended up winning like 25,000, something like that.

Andrew Pace [00:21:02]:

And this is the thing when you get to a certain level, right? So let's use perfect blackjack as an example. And when you talk about rewards, and obviously we talked about the dangers of the rewards in the last episode and what they're designed for you to do, and then let's talk about perfect execution. I know of people who will build a spreadsheet with all the perfect calculations and a model relating to blackjack. And they're not trying to beat blackjack, but what they do when they play is they calculate all of the rewards they were offered. So potentially free flight, limo to and from the airport, nice big suite that might be $1,000 a night or $500 a night or something like that. All of their meals, all of their drinks. And they'll quantify that on their trip, and they'll go, okay, I could go on a vacation to, let's say, Hawaii, which is going to cost me a fortune. Or I could go on a vacation to Las Vegas. All of that stuff is going to be picked up. And if I play perfect blackjack, there's a theoretical edge. Not on my play, I'm going to lose over the course of the trip. But if I play perfect blackjack for X amount of time, I will have fulfilled the requirements to have gotten all of those things picked up and the net cost over the course of time. Mathematically speaking, there's an edge in what I received, not in the actual money won or lost. So this is where you can introduce the concept. I know we've touched on a little bit with sports betting, but regardless of betting of actually profiting off of a reward system which is very similar to a credit card. So credit cards have 20% interest, right? If the average consumer, they pick up a credit card, oftentimes they need it. So you go, oh jeez, I have no money in my bank account, but I've got good credit. I can get 1000 or $2,000 credit and I can start living off of that. End of the month rolls around and boom, 20% interest starts kicking in. $20 here, $20 here, $50 there, starts building over the course of time. And before you know it, that particular customer becomes a lifelong indebted customer that's paying them subscription fees more or less in the form of the debt that's holding their money. Well, what's the flip side of that? It's paying off your credit card every single month. It's getting a higher credit tier because of the fact that you're successfully using that in the best possible way. So you get a credit score potentially into the 800s. Well, what does that allow you to do? That allows you to do leveraged investing? Leveraged investing is a mortgage where you don't actually own the real estate yourself. The bank puts up the rest of the money and the growth and earnings from that particular real estate, be that rent or be that market fluctuations, you receive those benefits despite the fact that you didn't put up all the cash yourself. So using the credit card successfully built your overall financial position. Then there's the credit card rewards. So I put every dollar through my credit card. I haven't paid for a flight since I can remember because I have such good tier, so much money going through my credit cards that I have a tier status high enough to get these great rewards. And for some people that's cash back, for some people that's flights, trips, whatever the case may be. So credit cards and debt are more or less like, historically speaking, this very new concept for humanity that has literally decimated people's overall financial well being as a whole. Much like gambling, much like sports betting, much like casino play that really, quite frankly, fuck people up financially. But there is sort of a light at the end of the tunnel where you can flip that on its head and put all those benefits in your hand. The fiscally responsible credit card user, or the well calculated and executed sharp sports bettor, they're very similar.

Shane Mercer [00:24:59]:

Loving what you're touching on there and that comparison between credit cards and gambling because both at the end of the day are out there to milk the consumer, whether that's the bettor or that's the person using the credit card. And I loved how you touched on the A two. Also the idea of there are ways to use credit to your advantage, but you have to, one, know the theory, know it all very well of how it works, and then execute and execute almost perfectly when it comes to the gambling side of things. Kenny, obviously you know the theory very well and you're an expert at the execution, but most people out there 1 may not have a solid understanding of the theory completely. And when it comes to execution, there's no execution, or execution is very poor. So for all of our audience out there, our listeners, our viewers, what advice would you say to them who are made up of mostly recreational sports bettors or people early on in their sports betting journeys who maybe want to make a go of it as a professional eventually? What advice would you share with them when it comes to the rewards that they're being offered by the various sports books and the incentives?

Kenny Huber [00:26:15]:

Absolutely. The reason I said I don't personally do the sports book promos anymore is because I'm betting 40,000 a game. So when I'm getting a bonus for $1,000, it doesn't outweigh for me. If I were to abuse that $1,000 bonus, it doesn't outweigh me possibly getting limited at that sports book that much quicker. Where I know if you're a $5, $10, $20 bettor, where $1,000 is big money, then I would definitely milk the system. For me, it's risk versus reward. Where I can milk this, say this sports book for 50,000 just betting, or maybe I get 20 bets in, maybe I could milk them for a couple of hundred thousand versus me getting just a quick $1,000 payday and then they catch on to it. My best suggestion is for people that are new to getting sports is read all the fine print of all of your promos, find out if it's actual cash, find out if it's in the form of free bets. Those risk free bets are pretty much what most of the sports books now offer. I don't know what Draft Kings current one is. FanDuel used to be you would get cash, barstool used to get cash. But I think they all changed over to free bets. I think one of the states, it might be Ohio, where they made it illegal for them to give you free bets. One of the states is they actually give you your cash back if you lose the bet. Or you might have a one time rollover, which to me, a DK dollars. For anybody listening to this, DK dollars is the same as cash. You just have to bet through it one time and you don't lose. It like a free bet. Say it's $1,000 free bet. If you bet the $1,000, you'll win. Most of. Them you can't win crazy ODS on it. But say you're betting something that's plus 100. You bet your $1,000 free bet on it. If you win it, you get $1,000. You lose the free bet though, and then so you basically convert it so that free bet in theory, really only has a value of $500. So it really only has a 50% value. The free bet, if they do allow you to bet stuff with high ODS, there's ways to convert it where you can actually get up to like 66% on your money without getting too elaborate into the idea. It's basically you're not getting the risk back with a free bet. So I'll do easy numbers. Say it's a $10 free bet. If you bet $10 on something that's plus 100, your return is $10. If you were to make a $10 wager on something that's plus 100, your return is $20 because your wager is half of the return. If you were to betting on something that's plus 1000. Now, say your $10 free bet will return $100. And then if you were to bet $10 cash on it, it returns $110. So your stake becomes that much smaller as a percentage of your bet. So if you want to convert it, say on something that's plus 1000 and say you can find it minus 1200 somewhere else, you actually would make more money betting $10 on something that's plus 1000 and then bet say like $60 on something that's minus 1200. We're just trying to do the math in my head really quick. You would actually make out better doing that because your stake is not a bigger part of your return. Sorry, I hope I confuse you guys there.

Andrew Pace [00:29:50]:

Well, just for anyone listening that goes, hey, this is really cool, I want to learn more about this in our inplayLIVE has a masterclass, and the masterclass is a suite of videos that teaches you how to become a sports value analyst, which is the term we refer to as a professional sports bettor. And there's an entire chapter on this exact concept and how to do it. And one thing that Kenny said is he's like, oh, I'm not going to abuse a bonus for $1,000 when I'm betting 40 or $50,000 on one single bet. That's pretty important to touch on. That's how you started. Your unit size was in the smaller or the more typical numbers, and now people hear about that. That wasn't that long ago that Kenny was doing that. That started in 2018 in New Jersey, so five years ago. And now all of a sudden he's betting salaries on a single game. And there's not a lot of people betting as big as Kenny are at inplayLIVE, but there are certainly a lot of people betting in the thousands per unit size that all started in the one to 25 or $50 unit size range. So it's possible. It's a lot of fun. And this is a great way to start your bankroll.

Shane Mercer [00:30:59]:

Pacer, you mentioned that there that is the 'BEHINDTHELINES' promo code that will help get you into inplayLIVE and access to that Masterclass that Pace is mentioning there. It sounds like what you guys are saying is that Kenny, it doesn't make sense for you right now, but it made a lot of sense for you when you were in those early stages of getting into this and building your bankroll to really kind of milk those bonuses in any way you could.

Kenny Huber [00:31:26]:

Absolutely. It was a giant boost to my bankroll doing that. I did that for the better part of a year and Rick did for several years.

Shane Mercer [00:31:36]:

Rick's a buddy of yours?

Kenny Huber [00:31:37]:

Yes.

Shane Mercer [00:31:41]:

You mentioned something there, though that I think maybe is easy to lose for the average sports bettor out there or sort of maybe easy to overlook. And that was read the fine print. Nobody wants to read the fine print. I don't want to read the fine print. I just want my free bet. I just want my bonus bet. I want to make my bet and move on, right? And sort of get my action and I don't want to read that fine print. Why is that so important though?

Kenny Huber [00:32:07]:

So I'll give you an example where I didn't read the fine print recently. DraftKings had a casino bonus where if I deposited $1,000, they would give me it was 100% deposit match of $1,000 with a max of $1,000. So I put 1000 in. I was like, I'll get a free thousand dollars. I didn't read the fine print of it. And if you bet blackjack, which is the game I typically play on DraftKings, it carried a 25 times rollover, but blackjack only counted 10%. So instead of me having I'm thinking I bet through 25,000 blackjack, no problem, I will easily clear this bonus. But then they made blackjack only worth 10%. So now I have to bet through $250,000 to release that 1000. And that is not profitable. That is not a profitable bonus when I have to bet it through that much. And I ended up losing a little bit of money on that whole promo and it took me forever. And your money's locked. Your money's locked up. So they locked up $2,000. They locked up my actual money that was deposited and the 1000 bonus. So they had $2,000 of mine locked up until I bet through this whole stupid promo. And I spent hours doing it. I felt like just starting to bet like 1000 hours in, but then I know I would end up losing a ton of money and then I would be even more frustrated. But I ended up losing a couple of promo and costing myself a whole lot of time and frustration. But yeah, reading the fine print is very important to know exactly what your strategy is going to be to milk the system or to gain an edge on the system by ringing that fine print.

Shane Mercer [00:33:54]:

Yeah. And the other side of this that I think might be sort of easy to lose sight of is knowing your math. Right? You mentioned these rollovers or how does the bonus work? That free bet is really only 50% of the value that claims to be on there. So knowing your math ahead of time is critical. It's almost everything in terms of one. Now, I've read the fine print, but do I know my math and how I'm going to apply it and execute on it?

Kenny Huber [00:34:26]:

Right? Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. Knowing your math is good. And just another comparison, too, with sports. And I meant to touch on this earlier between sports and casino. My friends find it funny, but if I go and lose, say, 100,000 in sports in a day, I'm not angry at all. I'm just like, I know I'll get it back the next day. I almost feel like I'm giving the sports book alone sometimes. It lets me go even longer on those sports books. I know I'll get that money back when I go and lose like 10,000 or 15,000 or 20,000 in the casino. I'm pissed. I'm absolutely pissed because that's not a loan. They're not giving me back. They're not limiting me anytime soon. I look at the numbers completely differently even though they're one five times or ten times with the other losses. I look at money completely differently when I compare sports to casino gambling in that I'm really frustrated when I lose the casino and obviously I lose more than I win losing 200,000 last year. But with sports, I just know I'm basically giving them a loan. Till next time.

Shane Mercer [00:35:31]:

Pace, Kenny kind of touching on something there, though, that I think is really interesting for our audience out there because we talk about this almost all the time. It comes up every episode where the word limit comes up and limiting and he's sort of saying he'll never get limited in the casinos, which is great, and he's worried about getting limited in the sports book. But is there ever a situation where playing in the casino helps increase your limits for the sports book? And is it worth it?

Kenny Huber [00:35:56]:

For me in my relationship with DraftKings? It definitely does. If the sports traders, they always say that it's the traders decision. Well, if the traders limit my account, I then contact my host at DraftKings and I say, look, they limited me again. Is there anything you can do? Oh, yeah, I'll talk to them and then she'll talk on my behalf to the traders and get me unlimited. But you almost have to build those relationships. When you're a big sports bettor. There will be hosts that will contact you to see if they can help with a deposit and this and that and any promos and stuff like that. So when you become a bigger sports bettor you do get these hosts and you can start building those relationships and sometimes they're willing to go to bat for you against the traders that might limit your bets.

Andrew Pace [00:36:49]:

Yeah, I would say Kenny's relationship with that stuff, Shane, is special, very special. Most of us don't have access to any sort of negotiation in these types of circumstances. It also proves that they can remove your limits. They just obviously choose not to and they say there's nothing that they can do. But your question, does this help give you a longer leash with sports betting? I would say it depends and I would say it's not worth it for Kenny. He is in such a unique circumstance where it has worked for him sometimes. But I think the potential loss and what it can do to your overall psyche is a net loss, regardless of the added leash that it gives you that you probably in general wouldn't want to engage in. But for some sites, yeah, it'll help you, for others it won't. And I think ultimately you're probably better doing some recreational sports betting strategies to longer that leash versus casino play. But yeah, if you have really disciplined execution with this stuff and you do have a planned approach as it relates to the fine print of the situation that you're in and you can successfully execute on that without any discrepancy. So you didn't raise your bets, you didn't chase, you didn't go over your budget and by all means this could definitely be a tool to add to your tool belt.

Kenny Huber [00:38:21]:

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that, Andrew, 100%. I would say it really depends on platform, the platform, whether the casino gambling would help, but I would say 90% of the time it's not going to help at all.

Shane Mercer [00:38:35]:

Pace, do you deal with a lot of hosts yourself? Do you end up getting a lot of these people sort of reaching out and making you offers or sort of wanting to grease your wheels a little bit, hoping that you'll lose some money in the casino and then how do you deal with it?

Andrew Pace [00:38:50]:

I just tell everyone I'm with Kenny and they hook me up like you wouldn't believe.

Kenny Huber [00:38:55]:

Don't say that.

Shane Mercer [00:38:56]:

Easy. There we go. We'll just name drop Kenny, we're good to go.

Andrew Pace [00:39:00]:

Well, it's interesting, yes. I've gotten some really like when it comes to the sports betting side of the rewards. I've gotten some amazing rewards and things like that from some of the books that aren't notoriously known for that kind of thing. I think once 2018 hit and New Jersey regulated and then it started rolling out. We've talked about this in the last episode where I was stunned that these reward systems were spilling over into sports because I knew how much money you could make from sports betting. And if you're taking a table game at a casino and going one for one on that with a sports bet, you're going to have profitable professional sports bettors that are now getting more and more rewards and benefits on top of their profit, which Kenny is the spitting image of with respect to some of the things that he's had access to. For me personally, I've done a really good job of this is almost unheard of with offshore books, but someone calls you up and it's not even a deposit bonus. It's just a bonus, hey, happy birthday, here's $1,000, or different things like that. When I've had that account in a good position and really good bonus offers as well, and then that all comes crashing down pretty quickly. But I actually have a story not about me. I just got back from Vegas a few days ago, and I get treated great in Vegas. Nothing like Kenny, but I definitely spend and pay for the things that I have on that trip. And as a result, just the spending and things like that have always had me in a good status or tier credit kind of situation when I've been there. But I met up with one of the members of inplayLIVE. I'm going to leave him anonymous for the sake of the podcast, just so that no one's catching on to what he's doing there. But I met up with him at caesar sportsbook, and you're in vegas, so sometimes the topic of gambling gets brought up, and he's like, oh, I've never gambled in vegas. And I was like, oh, just chatting with him, I'm like, do you have good status with caesars? He's like, yeah, I'm seven stars, which is their highest tier. So how does that work? He's like, I get four free drinks a day. They pick up every single meal for me. I've never had to pay for a thing in vegas, more or less. He said, like, I've never had to pay for a thing. Free room, free everything. And he never played a single table game in vegas or anywhere along the strip the entire time he was there. He then went over and did the exact same thing at the win and had a nice ten day trip in vegas that was more or less 100% completely paid for without ever touching the casino. And that's because of his sports betting. And I said, well, how have you done with these sports books? Because I'm just thinking to myself, like, he couldn't have done well. He's like, yeah, I'm up about 120,000 on caesars this year, and I'm just like, holy smokes. So they haven't limited his play. They're offering him free trips with comped meals and comp drinks, and he's taken them for $120,000. So, like I said, it's just an added benefit for a lot of these top guys. And there's the argument of, okay, well, how long will this stuff last? And then there's the flip side of it, where you go, we're working towards like, a level playing field in this industry, and there are options for winners to keep playing. So provided that this stuff keeps coming in, this is where you go, hey, it's like the credit card. Don't view the reward system as a way to loop you back in. View it as an opportunity for you to add to your edge. I know, Kenny, you haven't touched on all your stories, but you save up your DK dollars for one time of the year. So why don't you tell us this is an added reward on top of his seven figures of profit?

Kenny Huber [00:42:45]:

Absolutely. So around Black Friday the past two years, they do these sales for Black Friday where if you're onyx tier, you can get 50% off everything in their Dynasty store where they have, like, gift cards and whatnot in there. So I could either it's roughly around a million crowns is equal to about $1,000 in cash. Well, on Black Friday, it's worth 2000 if I want to get gift cards. So I got like a couple of thousand in Uber. I got like 40,000 in Amazon last year. So I basically don't pay for Amazon anymore. I just bought a new house in the Jersey Shore, and I buying furniture and everything. I'm buying everything on Amazon because it's basically free and I already have enough crowns. Where this Black Friday? I think I calculate it's going to be somewhere around $100,000 in $100,000 worth in crowns for for buying stuff.

Andrew Pace [00:43:41]:

$100,000 USD worth of product to buy.

Shane Mercer [00:43:48]:

And Amazon right, that's whatever you want.

Kenny Huber [00:43:49]:

I don't know if I'm going to do all of it on Amazon this year. They best buy on there. They have. Like American Airlines. They have pretty much almost any gift card you could imagine under the sun. They pretty much have. So I'm just going to convert them all into different gift cards this year.

Andrew Pace [00:44:07]:

The perk that Kenny just mentioned is better or more money than any individual person in theory could ever dream of winning in any type of contest or sweepstakes. And he didn't even tell that as part of his story of how he milk's rewards.

Kenny Huber [00:44:23]:

All right. I met John Daley. I went down the borkhill island. Played golf with Big poppy. There's a lot of other perks that I left out here.

Shane Mercer [00:44:34]:

But again, I think we have to remind people out there because they're listening to this and thinking, well, why can't that be me? And it's not that it can't be you. It's just that kenny, you've been working at this for years now and developing this and fine tuning this process of sucking the juice out of these sports books, these companies, these operators, and you've sort of have come to a place where you're an expert at it. We've talked about this a few times now, the expert in execution.

Kenny Huber [00:45:09]:

I drew an analogy for my wife when I decided to do this professionally full time and shut my other business down. I told her, I said, this is like a test. I've been studying for since I was eight years old, because that's basically when I started sports gambling and I was a programmer, developed my very first program when I was like nine was the handicap totals and NFL. So I was like, this is like a test I've been studying for my entire life, and I'm just passing it in flying colors. That's basically how I do the comparison to her when I decide to make the leap. But, yes, my mind, I think, in some ways works a little differently when I see numbers and things like that.

Andrew Pace [00:45:52]:

Well, Kenny, even the fine print story, we're talking about reading the fine print of the bonuses, and now you've got the fine print of I mean, it's simple. A lot of this stuff that we're saying, people be like, this guy thinks he's special because he found a 50% discount one day of the year at DraftKing Store. Everyone knows about that. But Kenny is the guy that saves them all up and waits for that moment. It's just another disciplined approach to the whole system of benefiting from the opportunities that are being put forward.

Kenny Huber [00:46:19]:

If I didn't wait for that, I could get $50,000 right now in cash if I didn't want to wait till November.

Andrew Pace [00:46:24]:

Who would pass that up? Most people would take the cash.

Shane Mercer [00:46:29]:

Yeah, right, exactly right. Especially if you needed it, right? You'd be like, Jeez, $50,000, that'll change my life today. But why wait? But you have that mindset and that discipline instilled, like, no, I'll wait.

Andrew Pace [00:46:41]:

That's why we wait, Shane. That's why we wait. What a rush.

Shane Mercer [00:46:46]:

Well, this has been a lot of fun. Pace, before we go, is there anything that you think we're missing on this topic? Any other pieces of advice you want to share?

Andrew Pace [00:46:57]:

Well, if anyone wants to meet the Golden Goose, you can just travel to Jersey Shore and he'll be the person on the beach under all the Draft Kings gear because he doesn't pay for shit if it's not paid for by the sports book.

Shane Mercer [00:47:12]:

Kenny, it almost sounds like you're sponsored by Draft Kings or something.

Kenny Huber [00:47:19]:

I love DraftKings, I'm not going to lie.

Andrew Pace [00:47:21]:

Love it.

Shane Mercer [00:47:22]:

Well, Kenny, man, it's been great having you on the show and hearing your stories, and I'm sure there are so many more stories. We will be glad to have you back on the show to share some more in the future. But for all of you out there listening, it's like Pace said at the beginning, there is only one Golden Goose. So please, do not play. Do not ruin your financial future by trying to become like, damn.

Kenny Huber [00:47:44]:

Yeah. Do not play in the casino is my best advice. Do not play in the casino. Play everything that you play in the casino and plan on losing. Play for entertainment.

Shane Mercer [00:47:55]:

But yes, there are ways to take advantages of those rewards. Read the fine print, know your math, and then take advantage of it with that level of confidence that you can execute in real life in a disciplined, controlled way. All right, well, guys, that's it. That's a wrap on this episode. Pacer, I'll see you next week. Kenny, we will definitely be seeing you again sometime soon because you got so many more stories to tell, and we can't wait to hear them. All right, guys, till then, keep eating those books. Thanks for tuning into 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'.