Episode 26

Andrew Pace [00:00:00]:

Do you think the sports books offer a cash out for the player's benefit or for their own benefit?

Shane Mercer [00:00:08]:

Do the sports books do anything for the players benefit? I mean, righteous. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Behind the Lines, the only podcast purifying the sports betting industry. If you like us, give us a follow, download, subscribe. We're on YouTube, apple spotify everywhere. You get your podcasts. And if you have a betting story or want to be featured on the show, reach out to us. This is the sports betting podcast that gives you no picks, predictions, or crystal ball peering happening here. We give you the tools to succeed. And today we are literally diving into some awesome online tools you can start using today. They're totally free at inplayLIVE. And that guy over there, Andrew Pace, he's the founder of inplayLIVE. You should know that by now if you've been listening. And he can help guide us to those tools. Like I said, totally free. And they really can help you take your sports betting to the next level. For all of you out there who are listening to this as it is, a podcast, I just want to say that this episode is a highly visual episode. So you'll either want to go and use the tools right after listening, use them while we're talking about them, or you can watch the video version of the show. Because there's a lot to look at on today's show. Right, Pace? We are looking at some really interesting tools. Some of them are on the inplayLIVE website. That's a place where everybody can go to get them, but they're also associated with a sports book, or at least some of them are associated with a sports book. So, Pace, tell us why we are using a sports book. Usually we're out to beat the sports books, but this one's kind of special, right?

Andrew Pace [00:01:59]:

For sure, yeah, we're definitely out to beat the sports books. And I think that that's precisely why we're on this sports book, because this sports book teaches you how to beat other sports books. Most people don't actually dive into things to the level that we are. So with anything in life, success takes time, it takes energy. And of course, as we've learned today, Shane, it takes effort.

Shane Mercer [00:02:23]:

Absolutely. That comes from the primer for all of you out there who aren't members. So every week on Mondays, Pace does a primer, which kind of helps get us in the right frame of mind for the week ahead, the sports betting week ahead. And a lot of talk about effort today.

Andrew Pace [00:02:39]:

Yeah. And on that note, I think that this is like a notion that's oftentimes in business, so you'll see the most successful realtors, the most successful stockbrokers, the most successful insurance salesmen, like the list goes on and on and on where a presentation will be done to the newer staff or the less successful staff by someone that's extremely successful in the industry. And oftentimes people will say, well, why are you giving away your secrets? Like, why would you tell people that that's the recipe for success? Why wouldn't you just harness that all to yourself so that you can keep the greater part of the business? Well, a lot of people that are really successful believe in something called giving back. And a lot of people it's weird how we teach our children to share, but a lot of adults have a really hard overall grasp of why someone would help someone else, which is a real problem in the world today. But there's actually another reason. Giving back is a big part of it and they know that there's going to be that sort of 1%, maybe it's 5%, but usually about that 1% that really breaks through. Took that person's advice, got their information, and you never know the benefits to that person who shared that information besides the actual intrinsic value of giving back. They might end up working together someday where they form a team of some kind, where they go, hey, this is the person that I can credit my success to and now I'm going to that person in hopes of actually bettering them and their business for the mutual benefit of the two of us and our team. But it's actually the effort. That's actually what it comes back to. It's that a lot of the people that give that information, people actually learned but they didn't execute. So Robert Herjevik, a guy that's been featured oftentimes on the show Shark Tank, he's really big on this notion. And the notion is that the idea is irrelevant. And of course the idea is relevant. It's that the execution of any idea, the execution of any concept is what makes or breaks the actual long term success. So that's why I say the actual energy and effort. And why would a sports book do this? Well, there's a lot of reasons. Number one, a sports book that would teach you how to win is going to be one that allows winners to actually play long term. So we've talked about a lot on this podcast, like a lot of different concepts and a lot of it has bashed a lot of the books and a lot of it has also looked towards this brighter potential future where winners, sports books and losers coexist. And you would be naive to think that we can't coexist without the books being profitable over the long term. And in order for the books to be profitable over the long term and allow winners to play at their sports books, that means that the winners, the sharp, bettors the sports value analysts, they become a very important part of the longevity, sustainability and the action taken by that sports book. You cannot ignore the winners if you're allowing them to stay. You have to harness and embrace the winners and because of that and because of the fact that I know that sports books have to be profitable over the long term with winners. There's a handful of sports books that I still want to beat personally, but I will promote professionally for the greater good of the industry in the recognition and understanding that they are the model that other books must look to, to create and be a part of this inclusive world without discriminating against winning players. And that's where we get to obviously the meat and bones of what we're talking about today. Why would a sports book give this information away? And it's simple. It's because they're not hiding that winning players are out there. They're welcoming them into their books and saying not only that, we will give losing players these same tools that winning players use independently on their own. We will create them for them, let them use them, and allow them to have that same opportunity to come onto the other side of the equation and actually win money over the long term.

Shane Mercer [00:06:57]:

As we go through these today, and we'll get to them in a second and get to the sports book in a second. But as we go through this, I want everybody out there, all of our listeners and viewers, to think themselves. Think about the sports books you're using think about the books you're using every day on a regular basis or every week or whenever your favorite sports on and you're betting regularly. And ask yourself, does this sports book give me the tools I need to be able to beat it or be able to beat other sports books? And chances are a vast majority of the time the answer is no. But in this case, the answer is yes. So Pace, tell us the sports book and let's have a look at the tools. Yeah.

Andrew Pace [00:07:35]:

So today we are on Pinnacle Sportsbook. So if you're with us today from the United States, it's a bit of a bad news, good news situation. The bad news is that Pinnacle is not regulated in the United States and is not on the list of any of the regulated books in any of the states. So that's the bad news. The good news is twofold. Number one, you can access these tools so that you can educate yourself. We're going to put the link in the bio below on all of our channels so you can click that link. You can also go over to inplaylive.com and click on our free tools link and the link will bring you directly to these tools, which is a great way to, without using this specific sports book, still get access to the education and information that we're going to be talking about and showing you today. That's the good news. Number one, if you're in the United States, good news number two is it's not official yet, but there is very strong conjecture that the odds from Pinnacle alongside with the welcoming of winners is being rolled out with one of the regulated providers in the United States. It just hasn't reached all of the states. It's only reached one at this time.

Shane Mercer [00:09:01]:

That'll be interesting to see that when that comes through.

Andrew Pace [00:09:04]:

Yeah, exactly. From that standpoint, you go, okay, hey, I've listened to these guys on this podcast. I've started playing with DraftKings and I've seen that they've pulled some shady stuff on me. I actually really like DraftKings, but maybe that was a bad example. But FanDuel shady stuff.

Shane Mercer [00:09:22]:

Yeah, FanDuel DraftKings. Bet365. I mean, they've all pulled it, right?

Andrew Pace [00:09:25]:

Yeah, I mean, I would say DraftKings would be more reputable, but BetMGM a really good example where you go, hey, I've listened to this podcast, I've started to put some of this stuff into practice and sure enough, BetMGM only let me bet for a week, or whatever the case may be. Once these books that allow sharp players to play get sort of brought into the picture with these tools that we're talking about so that you can use these tools, that's where these other books will start shaking a little. Bit because they're going to go, holy smokes. We're not running our book this way. And we're losing over time to this sharp sports book.

Shane Mercer [00:10:03]:

Yeah, for everybody out there, too. We've obviously talked about this a lot, but if you are new and you're just joining us for the first time, or you've only heard a couple of episodes and maybe we haven't talked about limiting. Limiting is what the sports books do to get rid of winners. So when we talk about a sports book letting winners play, we are referring to the fact that they do not limit winners. A vast majority of sports books out there will limit winners after they've won a certain amount of money because, hey, winners are bad for business, or at least for them, but in this case, not for Pinnacle.

Andrew Pace [00:10:36]:

Exactly. Yeah.

Shane Mercer [00:10:38]:

So the first one up here, they give us a bit of an odds calculator, right? And this is just to get, I think, people familiar with, hey, how are the odds presented to you? Do you know how to read them? And do you know the differences between them? Right, so they convert it for you. And when we're talking about odds, there's typically three main, sort of main methods of looking at odds and sort of numerical systems. You have the decimal system, you have American odds and you have fractional, which pace I don't think I've ever used fractional in my life. I think my mind would explode if I tried to use fractional. I definitely could not do it without something like this, like an odds converter to show me what the fractional element means. I would have no idea. So I don't know if anybody uses fractional. Do you know anybody who uses fractional?

Andrew Pace [00:11:32]:

Yeah, it's more common in the UK and in europe. But overall, I would say the simplest is decimal. A lot of people that are familiar with American odds don't understand decimal odds. But since we've brought it up, I always laugh at American odds because the whole system was built around building that paper bet slip in Vegas where you actually went up to the till and they would say to you, they wouldn't say, what do you want to bet? Like, yes, you pick, what you want to bet on. But they would say, how much do you want to win? So you still to this day, if you have a really recreational bettor. So let's say it's like ten years ago and Floyd Mayweather is still undefeated and he's going to face an opponent in the ring. He might be like a -1000 favorite or even higher. So you'd go oh, you'd get a recreational bettor, come up to the till that might be going to the fight that says, hey, I want to bet on Floyd Mayweather today. And the response would be, okay, how much do you want to win? So they'd be like, I want to win $100. So they go, okay, it costs $1,000 to win $100. So all of American odds are really based on how much you need to wager to win $100. And just back to this calculator here, since we're on American odds, if we put in a stake of $100, but the stake is -110 you're going to see here, that the payout is 190. But if I put in 110, which would be referred to as laying the juice, I return $100 in profit. So the whole odd system is based on how much to use. Now, this bet calculator is super simple. I'm going to switch the odds over to decimal here, but it's super simple. But why I like this is because as an inplayLIVE member and as a professional sports, bettor overall. I think it's really important to get comfortable with both decimal and American odds for a whole series of different reasons. I've used books where you actually can't change the odds, so you actually have to be comfortable from that standpoint. And then you have someone that's really comfortable with American odds, but not decimal odds or vice versa. And how they say call out their wagers won't be consistent with the next person that calls them out. And when you have a community of hundreds of people, you're going to get some people that are more familiar with others and as a result calling that out. And we see it time and again where a brand new member comes in and the odds get called an American and they say, what's that? And then the odds get called in decimal and they say, what's that? A different member says, what's that? So with this odds calculator, all you need to do is really simple, right? But you can mess around here and see how much each different line pays out. And then, if you want to, you can add odds to generate a theoretical parlay. And you see, obviously, the price goes way up there. But we're going to come back to the odds format, american versus Decimal, later on in this episode when we get to one of the other tools.

Shane Mercer [00:14:20]:

Right now. I think that the more you play with this, the better. If you don't think you have a solid understanding of the differences between American odds and decimal odds. The more you play with that tool there, the quicker you'll be able to realize wait a minute. These numbers actually aren't that different from each other. And pace. I know this was something I kind of maybe struggled with a little bit when I was first early on and live betting and focusing on different books at the same time. But over time, I began to just I read the numbers they translated in my brain to the exact same thing. So plus 300. Translated to 4.0 like that. Instantly I looked at it and it sort of became second nature. So for all of you out there thinking that, like, oh, jeez, how am I going to get my head around these things? Over time, it becomes so easy and it becomes second nature. And especially if you're tracking if you're tracking your wagers and you're actually marking them down. Oh, man. You'll learn the differences between them and be able to sort of differentiate between them and go between them like two different languages, seamlessly and being fluent.

Andrew Pace [00:15:28]:

Right? And obviously, next to that, the Bet calculator is where you can actually see how much everything pays and then add in parlays and add more picks and all that kind of stuff. Honestly, this stuff is very elementary. But they do have this odds converter calculator as well, and that just gives you a little bit more comfort. And what I like this for specifically is if you're using American odds plus 300, all you do whenever the odds are plus in American odds, all you do is add 100 and then divide it by 100 in order. That might sound tricky, but all you're doing is adding one. Really? That's all you're doing? So plus 300. Just add one and it's 4.0 in decimal. odds. Right.

Shane Mercer [00:16:06]:

There you go.

Andrew Pace [00:16:07]:

If we have plus 200, just add one. Plus 200? So plus 200, add the 100 to plus 300 and divide it by 100. It's 3.0. So I just think of it as adding one to it, and that converts it to decimal. odds. Now, where things get tricky is the minus one. So I like to be familiar. With some really common odds so -120 is 1.83 -200 is 1.5, -1000 is 1.1 So you see those all entered in I Know that Just from Obviously Familiarity. But you potentially might hear those things coming out of my mouth and go, oh, my God. I didn't know that at all. You come over to this odds converter Calculator and you type in some really common odds and obviously the pregame one of -110 on both sides is really common. 1.99 I usually refer to that as 1.9 and -115 is that 1.87 line that you see so consistently and -125 at 1.8 those are just some good ones to get really familiar with there and then when you do that the comfort overall builds. And what's great about that is when we get into a couple of these next tools here, when you're actually looking for these on the fly, you will know when you have decimal odds on one site that maybe didn't. Convert to American that 1.83 is -120 and you don't need to think about that anymore. And the value of that is obviously that allows you to identify whether that line is similar and consistent with other books or if it's actually an outlier really quickly.

Shane Mercer [00:17:40]:

And like I said, the more you do it, the quicker and easier it becomes to sort of make that Translation. And the other thing is like you kind of mentioned there you tend to see especially when we get into those minus American numbers that sports books tend to offer the same numbers over and over again -115 is much much more common than -113 for example right and so you don't necessarily sort of need to worry about some of those other numbers. And Once You Know what -120, is versus -115 you can kind of make a Pretty Good estimation. If you need to do this on the go and you're doing it Very quickly, which we often do live, but you can make these adjustments on the go very quickly, if you do see a number that kind of falls in the middle and know that it's somewhere between 1.83 and 1.85 or whatever it may be.

Andrew Pace [00:18:32]:

Yeah, exactly.

Shane Mercer [00:18:35]:

Okay, so moving on here though, we have One that I want to get to that I think Pace, we could probably spend a lot of time on it because this is a surefire way to make money over time. If you can do this consistently and do it regularly and it does take work, it Is A Bit Of A grind, I'm not going to lie to anybody out there that A lot of what we talk about here on this podcast is work and It takes time and energy and focus. But arbing it's a surefire way to make money. You can make money over time. You are guaranteed to make A profit when you take A successful ARB. But finding the ARB can be what's challenging and then knowing what To Bet especially difficult early on in The Arbing days. So if you're new to Arbing, you have to pay attention here. If Arbing is something you've thought about doing again, you really want to dial in here and focus on this because this is how to Create A successful ARB. And Pace, this gets back to our conversation around the books. Not wanting you to know this kind of thing, right. A lot of sports books out there do not want you arbing against them with a sharp book like Pinnacle. But Pinnacle wants you to do it because they know they're the sharper side of the wager and their side is probably going to well, the house on their side is probably going to win and you're probably going to win your wager on the other side, which is where you're going to turn a bit of a profit. But Pace, walk us through it a little bit here.

Andrew Pace [00:20:03]:

Yeah, I think you obviously brought up some good points there, but pregame arbitrage is rare and oftentimes leads to a very quickly limited account if you did bet a bad line. Now, why would a sports book advertise this? Let's go back to that question and let's take the equation of the winning players and Pinnacle being the sharp side and the ecosystem. Let's just remove my whole response there and go, okay, is there a benefit for the sportsbooks to do this if the player is guaranteed to win over time? And the answer is actually yes. So sportsbook might teach you how to do this because they know that the execution of it, again, that effort, but the actual successful execution of it is trickier than it actually is going to sound when we talk about it here. And there's some reasons for that. Arbitrage is the guaranteed profit by pinning sports books against each other where the sum of the odds are greater than zero. In American odds, in a two sided ARB, that means that the sports bettor actually can't lose. So you sit there knowing that you've covered yourself off by finding two different lines that pair up nicely with each other, like, again, ensuring that profit where the sports books actually technically are the ones gambling because they're playing against each other and you're the person that put them up against each other.

Shane Mercer [00:21:30]:

So Middle person?

Andrew Pace [00:21:31]:

Yeah, you're the middleman

Shane Mercer [00:21:34]:

Skimming just a little bit off the top.

Andrew Pace [00:21:37]:

Yes, exactly. From that standpoint, execution is so much different than the concept of it because these are some of the things that happen even to the best of the best. So let's just draw up an ARB here with American odds. And American odds are great for arbitrage because they will tell you by again, the sum of the two odds so -110 and plus 110 is going to be if we bet $100, it's going to be an equal ARB profit for hedging x units $0 the sum of -110 and plus 110 is zero. So that's what you would consider to be on both sides, a fair wager that you're going to theoretically break even at over time. But let's just switch this over to plus 120. Okay. So now we've created a positive ten when we add the sum of these parts together. So you'd be looking on one book and you see -110 for team a to win and on another book team B to win is plus 120. That's where this arbitrage opportunity has been created. So let's say that we did this $100 stake on the -110 side and this 86 77 stake. So this calculator is telling us how much to bet to return equal amounts on both sides. So we're going to return 190 on the -110, and 190 on the plus 120. And if you have these two sites open, you could have this calculator in real time, helping you with those exact amounts. Now, we created $4.13 of profit. And this is where the execution gets really tricky. So let's say we identified the ARB. We've spun in one side of the bet. We're spinning in the second side of the bet. And this side flips to -110. You didn't get the bet in. You spun out and all of a sudden you have one side of it uncovered. You didn't get in. And let's say all of a sudden that team scored a goal or whatever the case may be and flipped to -200 and we're now in a situation where we can't win money arbing anymore. We have to make a decision as to whether or not we're going to get out of the bet or not. And if we get out of the bet here, you can see in order to do that, we're going to take a $36 loss. So back to that plus 120 with that $4 profit. 4.13 cent profit. We just lost ten of those. Well, nine of those with one quick change of the lines where we didn't get both sides in. So we need to do this $4 ARB nine times to get back that loss. I don't even think that was a mistake. That's a common problem. That happens on the regular no matter what. That's number one. Number two, the reasons why the sports books would want you to do this is you actually didn't identify an ARB. And we see this at inplayLIVE all the time with new members where they're like, hey, I'm seeing plus 200 on the Dodgers. And you look and you go, hey, dude, that's tomorrow's game. So on one book, they've got the live menu open.

Shane Mercer [00:24:59]:

I might have bet the wrong game once or twice.

Andrew Pace [00:25:02]:

Exactly. So forget about which team it even was. You might have been doing this and forgot to switch over to one game on one screen and you're on the wrong game and you spun in the wrong bet. So now if we actually just remove that and go, okay, we lost the side that we put in, and we lose that full $100. Now, those $4 ARBs that we built obviously, we have to hit it 25 times to get the bet back. But Even Worse Than that, let's Say That You Spun In The Losing Side on One Screen and you bet on tomorrow's game or the wrong game on the other side and we lost $100 on both sides, we have to do 50 of those $4 ARBs to get all of our money back. So the execution of this is a lot trickier than the basic concept implies. So is that me saying don't do it all? No, it's a great learning experience, and you want to start out with small stakes, even though you, quote, can't lose, to make sure that you iron out the kinks of you doing this type of betting so that those mistakes are not costly early on. And then once you grow your bankroll and start becoming more and more comfortable, then hopefully these problems become few and far between. And I would say from an arbitrage standpoint, I mean, Shane you could speak to this. I probably end up arbing a bet or two a day in a busy betting day. So if it's a full slate of baseball or a full slate of football, I'll probably do one or two in a day when I probably could do hundreds. And the reason why I only do one or two in a day is because of the path that I've evolved on in my own personal betting journey. However, going through this process and learning how to do this, it puts this into the toolkit into your back pocket so that you can succeed over time.

Shane Mercer [00:26:58]:

It's sort of a great practice or a great skill to kind of practice especially early on. I think one if you're not familiar with the odds this will help you get familiar very quickly. But the other side of it is that it can help you build a bankroll and grow a bankroll to a point where hey now you can make sizable wagers that are a lot bigger than maybe where you started at. So if you can do this consistently over time and you learn how to do it, you can grow your bankroll from one thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars totally. And sort of help build it up that way, where now you're in the $10,000 space and you can make larger wagers than you would have when you were in that $1,000 space. So a great way to do that. But I want to ask you pace now, in the example that you gave us, there the -110 plus 120 example and that pitfall where the plus 120 disappears. And it goes to -110, would you say in those moments, when you're sort of out there ARB hunting and you're looking for these moments, would you take that plus 121st and lock in that wager first and then go and look for the sharper side second?

Andrew Pace [00:28:13]:

Yeah, I think that's a great question and I think the answer totally is that it depends the -110 might have been the soft side in this particular example. It's based on the soft side. If there's one outlying line, I'd say get the. Outlying line in first and then work from there and now. Guys, unfortunately, there's a third reason not to do this. It's that the outlying line is a broken line of some kind, a palp, as they call it. And the sports books, some pay them out, but a lot of them might not. So you can lose twice doing that as well, where the sports book says, these were incorrect odds, and as per rule, blah blah blah blah blah, we avoided the wager, or we have switched the odds to blah blah blah blah blah, which is just total garbage. And that does happen, and even some of the sharp books that happens at which I don't think is fair. I'm sure, Shane, there's some wagers that you and I have made that maybe we had a drink during or whatever, that we'd love to have taken back after the case and said, we placed this at Incorrect Mindset. So section blah blah blah, lets us take this bet back. No, that's the other side of this that can be nasty is those outlying lines actually not paying out.

Shane Mercer [00:29:25]:

Right. A lot of times, depending on the book. You got to know the book and you've got to know what is the sharp side, what's the soft side, and how do you sort of figure that out, right? But one way you can figure it out is by knowing a book like Pinnacle is going to almost always, maybe not 100% of the time, but a vast majority of the time is going to be the sharp side because they're allowing guys like Andrew Pace to keep playing there and keep sharpening those lines.

Andrew Pace [00:29:54]:

Totally. Yeah. So something we haven't brought up with the arbitrage calculator, but this is really valuable. It's also a hedge calculator, so Arbitrage and hedging are the same thing. You can use this to get out of a bet. So we don't have an ARB, but you don't like your bet anymore. Let's say we have minus 110 on the other yeah, whatever the case may be. And you might go, hey, I don't like my bet anymore and I want to get out of this. What the recreational player will do here is they'll cash out. So I have a question for all the listeners here. Do you think the sports books offer a cash out for the player's benefit or for their own benefit?

Shane Mercer [00:30:34]:

Do the sports books do anything for the player's benefit?

Andrew Pace [00:30:39]:

The reason why cash outs exist, and we could do a whole episode on cashing out because there's a lot of philosophy there. But big time, the reason why sports books let you cash out and also this first reason falls in line with why some sports books have promotions for early payouts. So a team going up three goals or a football team going up 21 points, they pay you out early. So an early payout, the same philosophy exists with the cash out. If you see a bet that you have that has a positive or negative cash out, they charge a premium for you to cash that bet out. So typically speaking and looking at this hedge that we have here, even though it's not an ARB, you can see that we lose $9 by hedging out. A cash out will charge a premium on that where the cash out might actually cause us to lose about $14. There they usually charge about another five points, give or take on the cash out itself. The second reason and it goes in line with the early payout is they know that that game is likely to win and even if it doesn't win, they've given you a balance back to play with earlier. And a lot of people recreational bettors they cash out when they have $0 in their bankroll. Let's say that their payout on something was $500 if they let it ride. But they take the $400 right away so that they can make their next bet and they don't care about that next $100 to be paid out. But every time you do that, you increase the margin and the edge that the sports books have against you. So what my lesson here is is never cash out, never is with an asterisk beside it. Because I am certain in my life I have for very good reason at the time that I did but never cash out, as a general rule. And now this is where getting into a hedge might be something really worthwhile to discuss. So let's say that we placed a futures wager. So this is where let's say we took Joe Burrow to win the MVP in the upcoming 2023 NFL season. I don't think these are the odds. I think they're closer to about plus 700 but let's say now that it's week 16 and it's a really tight race between him and Mahomes. And no one else is in the conversation, they're not even relevant. So the next highest person and we can bet on Mahomes as a hedge, like a true hedge, let's just pretend no one else is in the equation. Now right and Mahomes and burrow are both now -110 well that might scare you a little bit and you can use this to determine how much to hedge out of your futures. Bet on Joe Burrow MVP by hedging on mahomes and you can see that here I bet $100 on Burrow at plus 1000, which is 11.0 in decimal odds. My payout is $1,100. Now. Burrow and mahomes. Are both paying -110 so I put the odds in for Mahomes as a hedge here and you can see if I wager $576.22 on Mahomes, I have staked a total of $676.22 and locked in a profit of 423 dollarsventy, eight cents and a payout of $1,100 on both borough and Mahomes. That gives us a perfect hedge so that we guarantee ourselves a profit. There are so many people that make parlays at Big odds and they hedge out of the last game because they get scared. But what do most people do? Of course they hit the cash out button. And all the sports books on social media, they all say the same thing, cash out or let it ride. It's like, no, there's actually option number not. I almost never hedge out of a bet.

Shane Mercer [00:34:23]:

I want to stop you there because I know a lot of our audience is seeing these all the time on their Instagrams. They're seeing it on Twitter. They're seeing these sports books posting these images of a bet, a big parlay, and exactly that, cash out or let it ride. Cash out or let it ride. And hey, let's get the Internet all riled up here and fueled up and let's have them fight over whether this guy should do A or do B. But like you said, those images and they repeat over and over and over again and it reinforces this idea that there's only A and there's only B. But there isn't. There is C. Yeah.

Andrew Pace [00:35:00]:

And it's a trick question, right? So hedge out almost always is the better or best option, especially when you can go over and scan lines and find an outlying line that's better than what the book that you place the wager at is. Right? So hedging out. Like I said, if we were to give this borough mahomes example again, where we bet $100 on Joe Burrow to win the MVP and we got 11.0 or plus 1000 and it pays out $1,100, my cash out right now is going to pay less than me taking this $576.22 and placing it on the Mahome side. You're going to make less money. So the answer is always to hedge out. And obviously this arbitrage calculator gives you these ARBs but also gives you these hedge opportunities. So, Shane, I do want to do the change over from American to decimal here. So what's really nice about American odds is that sum of the two sides in a two sided ARB, equaling zero means it's fair. A negative number means there's an edge to the books with everything else aside. And then a positive sum means there is an ARB or a theoretical edge on one of the two sides of that wager. So American odds are amazing in identifying ARBs quickly. Well, there's a real benefit to decimal odds. You might be like, why would I ever use decimal odds? So whenever we have an ARB, I'm going to go back to that same example that I was using before and I'm going to put in plus 120 is 2.2 in decimal odds. Now, what's amazing about decimal odds is that once you've identified an ARB, all you have to do is flip the odds and multiply the amount by your unit size. I think the easiest thing is to round to the nearest 110, 101,000, 10,000 and so on. So in this case, I'll continue to use $100. So if our unit size is $100, we're just going to multiply this 1.9, which was that -110, we're going to multiply that by 100. And we're going to bet that on the other side of this ARP. So I'm just going to put in that amount here. So the odds that are being offered at minus 110 or 1.99, I multiply that by 100 and I place that on the plus 120 or 2.2 side. And on the 2.2 side or plus 120 side, I bet that there I can't fill out because it's automatic. And that is going to give you basically a perfect ARB every single time. And what's great about that is when you just flip the decimal odds and place them on the other sides, it saves you a lot of time in figuring out how much to wager. So if I go over here and I'm going to switch this side to 2.0 now or plus 100, that means that I would place 200 here and I enter that amount and 220 on the lower side. And you can see the payout is 440 and now we have a $20 ARP. So that is a great trick. And one of the number people that love American odds will be like, why would I bet decimal? Well, there's a really good reason to bet decimal and people that love decimal odds go, why would I bet American? And then I would say, well, to identify them in the first place. And then going back to our previous tool, knowing what American odds are in decimal odds means that I don't have to be switching everything to figure this out. It means I can do it quickly on the fly. And with practice and execution, that becomes a lot easier over the course of time to do. And if my unit size was $1,000, I simply just add a zero to this and you get these.

Shane Mercer [00:38:49]:

That's what I was going to say. And it makes things easy when you do it in whole numbers like that, right, especially if you're just starting out, it's an easy way to just kind of visualize and see it. But after you practice it a little while, you become really good at it and you can start betting all sorts of different values and different sort of numbers in there. 500, 450 if you need to, on another side. It almost becomes second nature after a while, right?

Andrew Pace [00:39:14]:

100%, yeah, absolutely. And also is a really good practice from the standpoint of our first ARB that we looked at. I think it had us betting like, I don't know, some weird number with decimals to the penny. It is a best practice when you are doing this type of betting to be betting whole round numbers and not very specific small amounts. The books don't like those specific small amounts and it tends to be a potential red flag in getting limited over the long term.

Shane Mercer [00:39:46]:

Yeah, when they see those funny numbers, you bet $191.35 on a side. So that was the arbitrage. That is definitely one that I suggest everybody out there go out, try it. If you've never done an ARB before, go out, look at live lines, you're going to find more ARBs. Sort of doing that during games, during events, or a big slate of games right now, baseball, but we got preseason football right around the corner. In fact, we've already had the hall of Fame game. Football is basically here now, another great one where you can go and find a bunch of ARBs and sort of practice that. But when we're doing that two pace, is there any kind of books out there that you think pair up really well with Pinnacle or any suggestions maybe on a soft book to pair with a book like Pinnacle?

Andrew Pace [00:40:40]:

All of them.

Shane Mercer [00:40:41]:

All of them?

Andrew Pace [00:40:47]:

Again, you don't need Pinnacle to do any of this. Right. This is just the calculator itself. But yeah, if you are going to be doing it, I would say that a lot of the newer books with some different odds providers or new odds providers I know, like Fanatics is just released in Tennessee and I think it's in New Jersey or is coming to New Jersey soon. I'm not saying they're softer than anyone else, I'm just saying that would be a good example. Know a new book, a new odds provider, you go, hey, you know, like I should probably have my eyes on this because not only is there an opportunity to make money there early, they're competing for market share, which means they might be less likely to limit winners, number one. Number two, they're probably going to make corrections to any issues that you see repeating with any level of normalcy. So if you're not one of the early people there, you might lose out on that potential money making opportunity. So yeah, I would say new books. New books or new odds providers. Or a book that just changed odds providers. I know we touched on that recently in an episode where we knew that Barstool Sportsbook had changed odds providers. I'm not saying that that's the best opportunity specifically, but that could always be an area to catch them kind of with their pants down.

Shane Mercer [00:42:10]:

Right, okay, so there's another one we want to get to. Here another tool on the list. This is the margin calculator and this is sort of telling you, I guess, how the books are essentially getting an edge over you. Right. I like the margin calculator here, but I want to say that it is a bit trickier. At least I found it a bit tricky when I was sort of playing with it and looking at it, but it might be one of the tools here that really kind of peels back the curtain a little bit on how the sports books operate, and it sort of reveals how they're getting an edge over you, the bettor.

Andrew Pace [00:42:48]:

Right. So, if we just enter in one odd on Option one here, you're going to get some important information here and that's the percent that the bookmaker needs to hit at to break even off of you. Okay, but because we will use the standard example of minus 110 or 1.9 on both sides, which is just such a very typical pregame line, by the way. In those particular situations. The fair price, which means the frequency that you would need to hit at to break even, when it's exactly the same on both sides. It doesn't matter if it's 1.9 or -120 or -115 when it's the same number on both sides and it's negative odds. You have to hit that at a rate of 50% not to break even. You're going to lose money over time. But it's implying that that's what that particular odd is when it's the same minus odds on both sides. So that's how the sports books make money. That's the vig. And that's the difference between that price of 50% hit rate. You have to hit at 2.0 or plus 100 for a fair price over time. Well, the difference in that 2.0 becomes the edge that the sports book make. So What I love about this Calculator is that you could go to A Pregame Menu and you could look at a game and look at a spread where you Go, okay, let's say that The Chiefs are playing The Raiders and The Chiefs are -13 and A Half Pregame Favorites at Home. That means that they have to Win by 14 or more points to cover the spread. The Sports Books are saying that that is only going to happen 50% of the time. That's what the sports books are saying in this case. So in order for you to have a theoretical edge, you have to ask yourself the Question, will this happen not 50% of the time, but Will this happen greater than 52.38% of the time? That is the bookmakers percentage that they hit at for that number to be Fair. So if you're telling me that they're going to cover 53% of the time, that's where you're starting to get a really small edge so if you think about things in that way, you're training your brain to be Sharper and to be A much better Sports Bettor. The Flip side to that is of Course, will The Raiders cover 52.38% of the time and what's causing you to say yes or no to that Question. Once you start thinking that way what you will start doing is you will start Going, okay, the books probably are right in this particular Case. This is a 50 50 coin flip. So betting either side of this is a sucker's Bet. There's no right or wrong answer. There it's again secret Option C. And we say this at inplayLIVE sometimes The Best Bet is The One that you didn't make this calculator allows you to see this stuff. So we have this minus 110 or 1.9 on both sides. This pregame line, we know that we need to hit at 52.38% to break even, but they're telling us here what the actual fair price is. And when you take this discrepancy, you see that the margin for the books is 4.77%. And when you look at the sports books profitability over time, if they're running their sports books properly, you're usually going to see that on their pregame bets they make about 4% over time. On parlays, they make closer to 40.

Shane Mercer [00:46:28]:

That's crazy to think, right? No wonder they want you to parlay, right? And then they want to ask you the question, let it ride or cash out.

Andrew Pace [00:46:38]:

Yeah, exactly right. But then you see over time it's usually closer to 6% of their handle is actually profit once all things are said and done. So this calculator allows you to look at those probabilities. So when you actually go and open up a menu and then you go enter the odds here, you can ask yourself those questions as to whether you think that this is something that you are going to profit over from the long term. And just back to the parlay thing, if we were to add a whole bunch of these pregame stakes onto this calculator, the margin percentage that the books make multiplies. So this 4.77% will multiply with the next picks vig and it becomes increasingly profitable to the sportsbook and less profitable to the player. So keep that in mind when you are making your decisions.

Shane Mercer [00:47:33]:

Can we use this tool to see that? Like if we took 1.9 and times it by another even money place, say 2.0, right? No, it won't show us that here. Okay.

Andrew Pace [00:47:45]:

No, we can go back to the odds calculator or the pick calculator and we can enter in what things will pay. There are other articles and things in a part of this whole tool suite that will explain those types of things to the player. Now, if we do have an ARB, you're going to see here that the margin. See, we have an ARB here plus 110, 2.1 on both sides. We're going to see that same margin that we just saw flip into our favor. And that also would be the profit that we would make on that particular ARB for $100, which we kind of already looked at. And you can see here that the bookmaker, the fair probability of hitting here since we have 2.1 on both sides is still 50%. But we've just identified an ARB and that bookmaker percentage flipped in our favor. So that's continuing our discussion. You can look at this kind of stuff, play around with it, and obviously gain that knowledge over the course of time.

Shane Mercer [00:48:43]:

Yeah. And you mentioned some articles there that if you want to read more about it and sort of go over things a lot more closely. They have that available to you. Now, there's something else here that I want to sort of mention that's on here. The last thing they have on here is they have a handicap table, which I think is kind of interesting, because right now, I think the one on Pinnacle very much focuses on Premier League soccer, which is coming up. It's about to begin. So if you're into European football and soccer here in North America, they've got a whole table that sort of gives you a handicap and shows you how often a certain team is performing against the spread. And it's pretty cool that they offer this to you. There are other sites out there where they will charge you money to be able to see these things that are sort of readily available public information, but they sort of aggregate it and then charge you to see it. Pinnacles here offering it up for free. It's like, hey, have a look at it. And here it is. And so I think that that's pretty cool, but it's just another sort of option and another way that the book is trying to help Sharp Bettors be Sharp Bettors, because Sharp Bettors are helping their sports book.

Andrew Pace [00:50:06]:

Totally. And I think that speaks to everything we kind of talked about to start this thing off know, why would they do all this? Well, we have to be a part of the ecosystem as Sharp Bettors. And in order to do that, why not cater to us? Which is why at inplayLIVE is pinnacle perfect. Have I seen them do some stuff? Sure. But at the end of the day, they represent what this industry needs to get to in order to satisfy this lack of discrimination. And I'm all for it. So great tools that everyone can obviously use and really sharpen the axe and add to their tool belt and knowledge, information is power. So some of those tools, for me, I don't actually actively use them, but even just going on there and playing around in some of my free time, I'll be, oh, that's that's cool. So again, you can access that. We'll put the link below this video on YouTube and in our other podcast channels. But if you don't have access to that link, just head over to inplaylive.com and click on the Free Tools link. On top of all of those tools, there's some other great tools that we use with our members that are available to the public for free in that free tool suite. So definitely check that out. And hopefully everyone has taken their game to the next level after today.

Shane Mercer [00:51:28]:

I hope so. The whole purpose of the show purifying the sports betting industry. Pinnacle, it seems, is interested in that, and that's why they're doing this. And so they align with our values and the values of inplayLIVE and everything that it stands for. So it makes a ton of sense to sort of share tools and that kind of thing. But as you mentioned, Pacer, there are other tools on the inplayLIVE website as well that aren't affiliated with Pinnacle that can also drastically help you become a better sports bettor including the tracking tool, which I think is a phenomenal tool. I've talked about it quite a bit here on the podcast before, but if any of you sort of want to play around with that, too, I strongly encourage you to go have a look. And if you're not tracking your wagers, well, then you're not trying. I would just leave it at that. If you're not tracking, you don't really care about winning. If you want to care about winning and you want to win long term, start tracking your wagers and go play around with that tracker as well.

Shane Mercer [00:52:25]:

All right, Pace, I think that does it for today. Till next week, keep beating those books. Thanks for tuning 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'.