Episode 36

Shawn Schroeder [00:00:00]:

You're going to watch the game, why not make money doing it? And why not make it with your friendship?

Shane Mercer [00:00:15]:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Behind The Lines, the only sports betting podcast purifying the sports betting industry. Well, how do we do that? We teach you about how the books work, the tricks, the traps, all of the things they do to try to take your money so that you learn how to navigate it and become a profitable sports bettor over time. If you like our content, follow us on all the socials at inplayLIVE. Remember to like, download, subscribe. And if you want to see what inplayLIVE is all about on the inside, we have a promo code for you that is the 'BEHINDTHELINES' all caps, and that will get you the very best pricing to join our great community. And today I am very excited to introduce all of you to one of the members of that community. He's not just a member, he is a pro. And he is our pregame pro, Shawn Schroeder.

Shane Mercer [00:01:07]:

Thank you so much for joining the show. How are you, man?

Shawn Schroeder [00:01:10]:

I am doing great. Thanks for having me on the show. And I am loving that hoodie.

Shane Mercer [00:01:14]:

Yes, it's like we coordinated. It's hilarious. We are definitely already on the same wavelength here we are showing up with this awesome hoodie. Schroeder. I've got a few pieces of IPL gear, as I'm sure you do as well, but this is probably one of my favorite because it really encapsulates what our community is all about mindset, community value, constantly searching for value, and there are a lot of ways to do it. Now, we on this podcast often talk about all of the stuff we do lives betting on sports live, how we capitalize and find value. Betting on sports live in the moment. But most sports bettors, recreational sports bettors especially.

Shane Mercer [00:02:01]:

But a lot of sports bettors, especially. If you're in the early stages of sports betting, chances are you're focusing on pregame and schroeder. That is exactly what you do. You are the resident pregame pro at inplayLIVE. You know how to find value before the games begin, and I want to dig into all of that with you here. So first, just start off by giving us all a sense of how you got into betting on sports, how you got into pregame betting and kind of where it's developed. How long ago did you start?

Shawn Schroeder [00:02:35]:

I started in college. Honestly, sports have always been important to me. Growing up, I didn't really come from a lot of money, didn't have a lot of those positive things other than sports. Sports was my foundation to everything. It helped me to fit in, helped everything just work out well. And as I grew up and I was accepted because of sports, I just watched it all the time. And in college, money is tight. So you try to make a little bit of money here and there, and I would bet on games, and I would typically lose those games.

Shawn Schroeder [00:03:11]:

In college, I didn't know what I was doing, and it kind of burned a fire in me. I'm like, okay, this can be done. Why am I losing? And then it introduced me to data and how to fine tune my selections and start to actually win. So I always tell people you can't start being good at something until you lose enough money at it and you actually improve. Right. Whether it's stock market, sports or whatever it is, you have to fail a bunch of times before you get better. And I definitely failed a lot in college when I started to do the sports betting pregame. So definitely got started in college and then kind of fine tuned in 1% every day, tried to get better at it.

Shawn Schroeder [00:03:50]:

Right. So started about almost 20 years ago, roughly.

Shane Mercer [00:03:56]:

I wasn't going to ask you how long ago college was.

Shawn Schroeder [00:03:59]:

Yeah, I still pretend I'm 20. Those of you who are at the Vancouver retreat, you see, when I'm playing softball, I pretend like I'm still in my high school days. And you got to stay young. Right. And I don't want to date myself, but I just did that's.

Shane Mercer [00:04:15]:

Okay, so you've been doing this for a couple of decades, though. I mean, that is a significant amount of experience no matter what you're doing.

Shawn Schroeder [00:04:22]:

Absolutely. And the best part about it is just learning along the way what works, what doesn't work. We had an example of that this year in baseball. Baseball pregame is really tough and in the moment. Right. It's tough when you're going through that, but in the grand scheme of things, you ride those storms and you improve now on what didn't work, so that I would not have been able to do if I didn't have 20 plus years in doing this. And I haven't seen the variance in volatility, so I'm kind of glad that that happened because now I know it's just part of the process.

Shane Mercer [00:04:58]:

Yeah. Well, since you brought it up, let's talk about that. What did you do? You had a bit of a tough run doing pregame baseball this past summer. How did you handle it? What did you do?

Shawn Schroeder [00:05:12]:

We talk about 1%, right? So you always want to be betting 1% of your bankroll in theory, depending on the strength of the play. And a lot of times people come into sports betting, and whether you have $100, $1,000, or $1,0000, let's just say you have ten grand, you're not betting $100 a game. People want to hit the home runs. They want to bet 1000 a game. And if I go in five, you're done, and then maybe I win twelve out of 15 after that. But your bankroll is already exhausted. And I try to compare it to like, a 401K. If you have a you're investing in stocks.

Shawn Schroeder [00:05:50]:

Would you put that much into a stock? You're going to be more diversified, right? You're going to have many positions, typically mutual funds, which I look at a mutual fund like Sports investing, you're having a lot of games and you're hoping to just grind out profits. It's no different than a mutual fund having a lot of companies and just trying to grind out a little bit of profit. So with baseball, I stepped back and lowered those percentages and ultimately I stopped doing baseball this year. And we've seen how good football has done. We've seen how good everything else is done. We've more than made up for those losses in a very short period of time. So just ride out the storm, know, ride the waves when the success is there. And we've definitely seen very good success so far with football, especially NFL.

Shane Mercer [00:06:34]:

Oh, it's been unbelievable. The success with the Pregame in NFL is just like off the charts, man, you are crushing it. So I have to thank you for the work that you're putting in in that effort because it's benefiting my bankroll. So thank you very much for all of that. But I think what people within the community who see your picks and see how successful they are, and for those of you who aren't in inplayLIVE right now, and you're just sort of listening and you're thinking about know, take my word for it schroeder here is a killer with the pregame. And chances are everybody who's listening and watching us wants to know, well, how do you do it?

Shane Mercer [00:07:12]:

How do you do it?

Shawn Schroeder [00:07:14]:

Well, I got a lot of questions on that. What's a filtered play? What's the data that you use to come up with a play without going into specifics? I will tell you I have a lot of different data sources, including databases. Some of you guys know the programs that I use. I won't get into specific names, but with pregame you typically have a 1% to 2% edge. There are some games where that can be a little bit higher and honestly, you're trying to be as contrarian as possible. I always tell people who are new to sports, does Vegas make or lose money? And everyone is quick to say, Vegas makes money, of course. So you do the opposite of what everybody else is doing and you're going to have, you know, maybe step one and then you start to ladder different filters without going into specifics on those filters that kind of came into play. Rick Ridge and I, another IPL member, had a conversation about that and his exact words were, schroeder, you have way too many plays.

Shawn Schroeder [00:08:15]:

How do I just take your best of the best? And that's what kind of brought in some of the stronger filtering process. So there are days I have 50 plays pregame and some people would just, I could see Pace right now just shaking his head like that's crazy. We can't do that. We clearly can't do that to the community. So how do you hone in and get the top 3510, whatever that number is? And there are a lot of factors there without going into specifics. There's certain numbers I look at with RLM and certain numbers I look at with steam movements and percentages and ticket count and all those things are factored in. But systems that have been created without getting into the names, again, you factor all that in and when it all lines up, then it typically becomes a filtered play if one factor doesn't. Like yesterday, for example, I had some plays, but they weren't my strongest percentage, and I denoted that in the plays and we saw that in the outcome.

Shawn Schroeder [00:09:18]:

So not a big deal because they were half a percent and we see with higher percentage 2%, 3% plays. 3% is usually the max that I'll recommend on a pregame bankroll play. Those I think, are undefeated right now.

Shane Mercer [00:09:32]:

They are, yes, they are.

Shawn Schroeder [00:09:35]:

When you average it all out, we talk a lot about quarter percent or drive units. And if you don't have your bankroll management down pat, you're not going to be successful here because bankroll management, that is the foundation to build the building. And I struggled with that early on and sometimes I still struggle with it, to be honest. When Kenny, who's one of our best pros, when he calls a play and he really likes it, I sometimes will over bet because it's Kenny. And how do you stay grounded to your bankroll and own your own numbers and not get away from that 1% or 2%? Because variance is going to happen, volatility is going to happen. Whether you're 15 and one, it's going to average out. The gambling gods always put you in check. So when you start winning, like right now, I've been doing really well with Pregame, and if you haven't been riding, now is not the time to jump in and just start betting aggressively with Pregame.

Shawn Schroeder [00:10:36]:

Right. You want to be in it for the entire duration. And then when I get cold or hot, you keep slowly grinding and you're going to see a return on investment.

Shane Mercer [00:10:44]:

Okay, so a lot I want to dig into there first. Let's talk about the 3% wagers. So this is essentially your best bets of the week, right? These are the highest level, the ones that you expect the most from, and they've certainly delivered for you. So last season you went 17 weeks. Every week you had a bet that was in this 3% realm and it went, I think, 14 and three, is that correct?

Shawn Schroeder [00:11:12]:

Yeah, I think that's right. I have to look at this.

Shane Mercer [00:11:16]:

I've got it in front of me here. It was 14 and three. That's what you had posted this year. We are five weeks in and this wager is four and one week. I think it was week four, you didn't have a 3% play, so you didn't have the best bet, the top level bet in week four. So out of five weeks, you've had four of those bets and they are undefeated so far this season. So 14 and three last season. Undefeated so far this season.

Shane Mercer [00:11:45]:

You talked about filters. How many filters are you applying to arrive at these best bets?

Shawn Schroeder [00:11:56]:

The best bets, there's a minimum of five filters. Trying to think if and what are.

Shane Mercer [00:12:02]:

We looking at exactly and want you to tell me what you're using to sort of determine the filters in terms of the programs that you're using and that kind of thing. But what are you looking at for those five filters?

Shawn Schroeder [00:12:15]:

Yeah, so there's a lot of factors in there. I mentioned some of those earlier and those are kind of key. So over the years I've built a lot of systems with a lot of different factors that I keep wanting to say the name of the program I use to build that. So I have a system in place and then once I have that system, I then put the filters to the system to make sure that it's going to pass. So I've mentioned ticket count. Ticket count is huge. Right. So that is like the later night games, the bigger profile games, the Georgia versus Alabama in the NBA, if the Lakers are playing when whatever team Tom Brady was on when he was playing, it's the game that everyone's talking about.

Shane Mercer [00:13:02]:

Right.

Shawn Schroeder [00:13:02]:

Those games typically have the most value because the public's all over them. So that's a great gateway to start filtering that game. I tend to do really well on those higher ticket games, and that's the first step. If that passes the eye test, I'm looking at other things from again, reverse line movement is a factor, price movement in general with the line. I really like opening line movement because who's betting a line right when it opens? You've got books out there that their sole intention is to sharpen the line. Sunday they'll release the NFL games for the next week and they'll open it for 30 minutes to an hour and the Sharps will do exactly that. They'll sharpen the line, they take them off and then the other books open up after that sharpening has happened. And that kind of tells a story, right.

Shawn Schroeder [00:13:57]:

So when you see, oh wow, the Colts opened up plus ten. Now they're plus seven. Obviously the Sharp saw some value at ten. Now is there still value at seven? Maybe not, maybe now it's a play on the other side. And that's where I have some other things that I look at to kind of determine that. So without giving away everything, those are some of the key foundational things that I look at before I say a play or not. And if they all line up, those percentages go up higher with how I bet it. So if everything passing that eye test, it's going to be a 2% or 3% play.

Shane Mercer [00:14:33]:

It's interesting because aside from saying that there's a lot of eyeballs on the game, meaning that there's a big player involved, like maybe it was Patrick Mahomes or Joe Burrow or Josh Allen or one of these sort of superstar players on one of these teams. For the most part. You're not looking at players, you're not looking at coaches, you're not looking at the team's know, you're certainly not looking at some of the skill positions like wide receivers and running backs and stuff like that that I think a lot of sports bettors out there would be thinking to themselves well, all of that stuff really matters but clearly it doesn't. You're not looking at it.

Shawn Schroeder [00:15:08]:

No. I don't even care if I watch the game. It's all about the numbers. It's all about the numbers and data. You give me 100 sample size, I know I'm going to win 55% to 60% of them just based on what the numbers are telling me. And then when you shop those lines and get the best price and you do all those little things to make it even better. Pace the last time we had done a podcast, he shared a clip from Billions where he said, you watch the numbers, they tell the story. It's the same.

Shawn Schroeder [00:15:39]:

Again, whether it's stocks, futures, sports, there's a reason that movement happened, and it typically is big money that moves. It your bet. My bet probably aren't going to move the market. Now, Kenny and some of the other heavy hitters in our group, we know what happens. Why? Why are they taking that bet? There's a reason and then the books adjust because of that. And it's a waterfall with all the other books and it's good if you know how to call it reading the tea leaves. You can literally look at that data and know you have a weighted coin that you know is going to hit heads six out of ten times. Why would you not take as many of those bets as you can when you have a probability in your favor and then you take that and you marry it with our live strategies.

Shawn Schroeder [00:16:27]:

And now you've got avenues to not only win both, but if your pregame analysis is wrong because factors have changed live, you actually could come out ahead even though your pregame was wrong. Because now you know how to get out of that with a live strategy play that has a higher probability of hitting than what your pregame analysis was with that 1% edge.

Shane Mercer [00:16:47]:

So let's talk a little bit more about that. So you mentioned unit sizing. Talk to me about how you do your unit Sizing for pregame versus what you're doing live.

Shawn Schroeder [00:16:57]:

There are two separate bankrolls for that. So I have a pregame bankroll and then I have a live wager bankroll and my spreadsheet, I track my pregame stuff so I know how to allocate my percentages. And then I track kenny pays everybody else's calls. And honestly, I look at what's winning and what's doing the best for me. On the videos that I've created for Teachable, for the pregame analysis, I say to allocate 10% of your bankroll towards pregame and 90% towards live. Some people would say that maybe it should be a different balance. I would say this. I would say exactly what Azan has said in the past.

Shawn Schroeder [00:17:35]:

And for those that don't know Azan, you should get to know him. He is one of our best bettors that we have in the community. Seven figure guy, great guy. But he always talks about ownership, right? Like, own your own bankroll. Don't blame anybody else for a win or loss. Why are you taking the bet? If Schroeder calls a play, why are you betting it? What's the percentage you're betting? You need to know that. Don't rely on somebody else. But to answer your question, 10% of your overall bankroll should be dedicated to pregame.

Shawn Schroeder [00:18:07]:

And then that one, two, 3% should be of that 10%. Do I personally bet that my numbers are higher? I will be honest. I bet a higher amount on my own end because I trust my data. But the primary thing about inplayLIVE is the live wagering, right? So we want to hone in when we have the highest probability of winning. And pregame isn't the highest probability. It's a slow grind and it's a slow, steady ROI. And some of the live wagers, we can see in one day what I may make in a month on pregame units. So once you understand that we've seen Kenny, we've seen what Kenny can do in a day.

Shawn Schroeder [00:18:47]:

I think he's had some seven and days. Right. So in their high probability situations. So you don't want to have a day where pregame sways your opinion on, say, an under. If I have a pregame under 38 and the team's down seven or eight and they're driving, it's probably a good chance that that under needs to be thrown out the window and we need to focus on that live call. So there's a lot of factors that go into that. And that also being said, if I have an under pregame and then Kenny calls unders, you better guarantee I am laddering those unders because I already liked it pregame and now Kenny likes it too. So that 1% or 2% call.

Shawn Schroeder [00:19:29]:

There's a good chance I could get up to 4% on an under with ladders.

Shane Mercer [00:19:34]:

With your live bets and your pregame bets combined.

Shawn Schroeder [00:19:37]:

Absolutely. And there's nothing better than when the script follows pregame and then the live calls also coincide with that. And you have that confluence that you need. Pregame data said this. We're seeing that happen. Like yesterday I called, I think Pacheco's rushing over 74 and a half yards.

Shane Mercer [00:19:58]:

Yeah.

Shawn Schroeder [00:19:59]:

Didn't hit. But I would take that bet 100 times over because the Broncos defense have allowed that yardage every single time. And you figure Kansas City is going to be up 1420 and they should have if they would have converted, right. Kansas City could have been up two, three touchdowns yesterday. And what are you going to do? You're going to run the ball once that happens.

Shane Mercer [00:20:17]:

Yeah, they just didn't capitalize in the red zone.

Shawn Schroeder [00:20:21]:

Yeah, had they done that, that script would have worked. But what's nice about the live wagering is you could see that it's not working and go the other way or you can stay on that pregame call. And now his yards are 74. Maybe they drop to 58 and you hedge a little bit on that 58. There's a lot of ways to get to that profit point with the live calls and seeing the game with your own eyes and comparing it to other books to get a good line on it.

Shane Mercer [00:20:50]:

So for everybody out there listening to this, they're probably thinking, though, wait a minute, so I'm placing one wager before the game and then I'm going to bet against that wager live in the game. And it doesn't sound right or it's not necessarily computing. I totally understand that and can sympathize with that because I went through my own sort of process of taking your pregame calls, but also taking the live wagers and sort of trying to figure it all out along the way. But I want to ask you because you were betting pregame in college and you sort of started that 20 years ago, when did you start live betting and what was the transition like for you?

Shawn Schroeder [00:21:29]:

I started live betting. I mean, honestly, with inplayLIVE is when I really started to dial in on it, when I saw the strategies. But I would test my own theories probably roughly around five years ago. What I like to do, and I'm not saying this is the right thing to do, but I loved when favorites were getting crushed, especially college football or college basketball. There's times where I would see Kentucky or Duke down 15 to five or they didn't start playing ball yet and you're like, okay, there's no way this team is going to lose to this no name school. And now you have value on the live line. Now you can also argue that point and say, well, there's value on the dog as well, right. So you have to look at the number and see what makes the most sense.

Shawn Schroeder [00:22:21]:

And for me, I used to chase favorites and I had this mentality that a good favorite can't lose. And I've shifted from that to see there's actually more value on the dog live since joining inplayLIVE. But you can middle and you can do all these other strategies that are out there that we teach in the course to help you win both sides. And there's nothing better than taking a team that starts out slow, maybe they're plus eight and then now they're minus two because the flow of the game is going to constantly EB and flow. And if you hit those key numbers, which we typically talk about live on the streams, then you have a really good chance of hitting both sides. Or if you see somebody hit Steph Curry hits three or four three pointers in a matter of 30 seconds, typically that's a great chance. Maybe you swoop in and grab an under where I have three hit four threes in a row, and you're just constantly laddering and taking what the books give you and trying to hit them at their extreme edges on a line. And then I like to use that and compare it to that pregame line because it usually will normalize.

Shawn Schroeder [00:23:27]:

If the pace is 20 points over the total or under, it tends to come back to that. Mean for those that are in the stock market, we call it like a VWAP or 200 moving average tends to always come back to that. So when you can get it at its edges, take advantage of that and try to build a ladder around it.

Shane Mercer [00:23:49]:

You've made a few reference now to stocks, stock market and that kind of thing. That's because you're actively involved as a trader or you work in the stock market landscape, right?

Shawn Schroeder [00:23:59]:

Yeah.

Shane Mercer [00:24:01]:

So how does that kind of inform your sports betting? I mean, you sort of touched on it a little bit so far, but do you feel like you're essentially using the same principles I do?

Shawn Schroeder [00:24:12]:

I think there's a correlation. There the irrationality of people's mindsets, people overreact to everything. You share some bad news on the markets and what does it do? It tanks 200 points or whatever the number is. If you're a Nasdaq, let's just say it dropped 200 points. Every market is different. Typically, once that happens, it's going to come right back up. It's no different than I'm trying to think of a team to even use the Bills playing Jacksonville. It's maybe not the best example now because the Bills aren't doing great right now, but Pregame favorite 1417 points and there's a pick six, a fumble, a Muff punt, and they're down 17 nothing in the first five minutes of the first quarter.

Shawn Schroeder [00:25:00]:

That's going to normalize, or it should. Right. So total, same thing. Everything tends to normalize to the mean of what that Pregame number was. In most cases, not always. And there's going to be value if it doesn't later on in the game, too. So you have time to look at it. And the public always overreacts.

Shawn Schroeder [00:25:23]:

And we've seen that when quarterbacks get hurt. We've just seen this happen with our NFL strategies. Up. Starting quarterbacks out. Aaron Rodgers is out. What do you think most of the people did when they saw Aaron Rogers get out? They probably hammered the other side and right wrong or indifferent right, wrong, or indifferent? Did you maintain your 1%? Probably not. Did you maintain whatever that allocation was? Probably not. Was there maybe value on the other side to take the quarterback on the jets that everybody talks shit about, that everybody mean, you ask anybody, nobody gives any credit to that quarterback.

Shawn Schroeder [00:26:04]:

There's probably some value there because Vegas knows that vegas is seeing the numbers come in, they're seeing the money come in and they're adjusting their numbers and juice live as the Kenny's are betting X amount of dollars. It's a volatile market. It's the same with stocks and knowing those key numbers and those key price points without revealing our strategies, right? Like we do that every NFL game with totals when's the right time to take. We know what that is. But to people watching this, you probably don't because I guarantee you, you're not winning more than Kenny is on those calls. So you got to take that volatility with the number, match it with the price being offered at the book, and you're buying or selling, you're over, under, you're plus your minus the correlation of the stock market is very similar. And I think if you're a good sports analyst, the markets just make sense. And I think the circles join and I think you find yourself somewhere right here in the middle when you do both.

Shane Mercer [00:27:04]:

I love that you call buying and selling because that's exactly what you're doing, right? You're buying and selling a position on something. And for anybody out there keeping score at home, zach Wilson and the jets did win that game against the Bills week one. We started the season off with a big upset, which was kind of awesome. Okay, so there's another reason that you do pregame and you do a lot of work, obviously, as you've kind of outlined so far, applying those filters and tracking the line movement throughout the week and where things are going. This isn't something that you just sit down and do on a Sunday morning for an hour before the games. There's a fair amount of work going into this. So why is pregame so important for your process when you're only using 10% of your bankroll, or maybe a little bit more than that in your case, but you're using a smaller percent of your bankroll than you are with your live wagers? Why is pregame such an important part of your weekly process and your sports betting strategy?

Shawn Schroeder [00:28:07]:

So there's a couple of answers to that, right? So it's a great question. And I would tell you again, that 10% number that I threw out there, that's going to be determined by you. If you want to make pregame higher or lower, do it. That's just what I recommend because our focus is on the live wagers. Now, that being said, when you're busy, you're a family guy. And most of our actions on Saturdays and Sundays, typically you have things you have to. Do. And there's days where I can't get on a live stream, but I still want to be part of the action.

Shawn Schroeder [00:28:39]:

I still want to be checking the scores and seeing how I'm doing. And Pregame can allow me to do that. So I love the fact that I can still be profitable and still bet on games and not have to be in front of the screen trying to catch each movement on the live game. There's a couple of members that have texted me in the last few weeks that said that exact thing, like, hey, I had a family party. Couldn't be on the live stream, but still made four units with your plays. Pregame. Thank you. And that's exactly what it's about, right? Like being able to still be part of the action if life takes over.

Shawn Schroeder [00:29:12]:

And most of us in this group, we're type A, we have multiple businesses, we're constantly doing something, and our books are getting limited because we are having success. So for those of you listening out there, if you haven't had a book limited, you're doing something wrong. Because everybody in our group that's had success, we've either been limited or kicked out of books. In the pregame, we call it buttering. You pregame bet at a book and you do it quite a bit. These books have larger handles on that market, so you can go into Bavada at any time and type in Bet Max on a pregame NFL game. You're probably going to see, I'm going to say 20K, maybe more, try to do that on a live wager in a third quarter on a Suns Bulls game. You're not going to see that market have as much depth of the numbers that you can bet.

Shawn Schroeder [00:30:07]:

Well, why is that? The reason is because you have a higher probability to win that quarter bet and they know it. So they don't want to put that exposure out there to the book. Do you know that though? We know it inplayLIVE, but the people on the outside may not realize that. Not only that, if you're betting that your book's going to get limited quicker, I mean, I've opened MGM books and been limited in under an mean, that's real. So when I hear people talking about, hey, MGM has a line, I'm like, how do you even have an it? How do you have an MGM book? Right? Like bet three, five, same thing. And those are in theory, good problems to have because it means you're doing something right. And if you've buttered that book well enough to maybe get ten, twenty k or whatever your number is out of that book, I think that's a win because there's times where I only get two or three book before I get limited. So to answer the question, the buttering element, the time element, because you still have a life to live and you can't be in front of the computer all weekend doing sports.

Shawn Schroeder [00:31:09]:

Although we do that right a lot of times, we are in that position where that's where we're making our money. I mean, I'm not leaving on a Sunday. I'm in front of the screens all day and there's no place I'd rather be than making money watching the games with all my friends and celebrating. That because you're going to watch the game. Why not make money doing it and why not make it with your friends?

Shane Mercer [00:31:30]:

Absolutely.

Shawn Schroeder [00:31:32]:

And like, shane, I got to meet you in Vancouver. It's so great to put faces with names, the camaraderie, the community, the shit talking, if you will, the lifting each other up. We've got each other's back. And I really believe the community of roughly 1000 people, we row the boat the same way. And synergy is everything. When you've got one plus one equaling three. With 1000 people, we're going to make more money than somebody that's just betting on their own in most cases. And we really help each other improve and grow and adapt by sharing that and having a community and a forum like this that allows us to do that.

Shane Mercer [00:32:15]:

Absolutely. And I like that you brought this up, you called it Buttering. But essentially what buttering is, is getting a longer leash with a sports book. Because when you win and we've talked about this at Lakes here on this show, on this podcast, when you win, you get limited, which essentially means you can't bet anymore on the site or you can bet a quarter or something like that. And if you aren't getting limited on sports books, chances are that means you're not winning. So we want people to be getting limited on sports books because it means they are winning. And so what we do though, in order to sort of lengthen that leash, to let that sports book let us play for a longer amount of time, is getting those pregame bets in or as we call it, buttering, to just sort of show the sports book, hey, we are going to make pregame wagers. We're not only going to bet live, even though live is where we're going to make a vast majority of our money, we are willing to make those pregame wagers.

Shane Mercer [00:33:16]:

And I love your pregame calls for that reason. Because I've got specific books where I'm like, this one needs a little love, it needs a little butter. Let's put that pregame wager over here and hopefully it wins. And it often does because your pregame is just sort of off the charts right now, especially with NFL, which is really awesome. Okay, where do you go from here? What does your pregame process look like? Because I know you're the kind of guy that is continually looking to grow, looking to refine things, looking to improve upon what's next for you.

Shawn Schroeder [00:33:52]:

If it's not broke, don't fix it. But at the same time, if it is broke, fix it right now. I'm still bitter about baseball. I hate that I did not make money in baseball and I've got to get back to the grindstone and figure that it's it's one of those things that keeps the wheels turning. Right. Like I am going to make money in baseball next year because I am stubborn and I will figure it out and I won't stop till I do. Now NFL is doing well so I'm not going to make a ton of changes there. That being said, I do expect some variance to happen.

Shawn Schroeder [00:34:24]:

We're not going to keep hitting at the percentages that we are. We are well over 60% right now in NFL and that's going to level off a little bit but you have to know that like going into it, right? So where do I go from here? It's just constantly trying to refine and retune know, talk to the other pros on different ideas and create other systems. JW and I talk quite a bit about different systems that we're working on. We know how brilliant his mind is and shared something else with someone else and you put that together and you just come up with new stuff. Right? Like my NHL isn't the best. I do okay at it but I need to improve there. College basketball is ever changing because the entire teams turn over almost year over year with the one and done type of players. So how can you build a handicapping model when Kentucky's and Dukes of the World the whole new team every year? So you need that data to kind of get that sample size in to build off of.

Shawn Schroeder [00:35:23]:

You know, where I go from here is just trying to constantly improve that and constantly evaluate where the money is being made. Ae created that tracker. I think that's huge. You got to know the score for everybody's bets and how to allocate your bankroll to those bets. So constantly trying to get better with that stuff.

Shane Mercer [00:35:43]:

Yeah. It's so important right, to continually be. I'm a big proponent of tracking as I've brought up many times here on the show and trying to figure out well what works best in deploying your bankroll in those specific areas. It really is everything at the end of the day, right?

Shawn Schroeder [00:36:05]:

Absolutely. Yeah. If you're not in the game you're going to miss that wave. Right. Like when someone goes on a 25 heater, you're already out because you overexposed yourself when they were two and ten and you lost your confidence. But if you have that tracking and you know long term they're going to be a winner. You're going to keep grinding and we've seen it whether it's in hockey or NFL. I've had last week people message me and said, hey, your pregame kept me afloat on a tough week for NFL.

Shane Mercer [00:36:34]:

Thank you.

Shawn Schroeder [00:36:34]:

Like I actually made money with your pregame. Lost a little on Live now normally that's the opposite. You never know what that is going to happen. But when they're both hitting and you're getting a win win, that is going to exponentially be larger than on a win loss day. And again, I talk about grind because it is a grind. You're not going to get rich overnight on this, but you are going to get a lot of base hits. And if you can win 52 point let's just call it 53%, you're going to make money. And if you're not paying too much for juice and you're shopping lines and you're taking numbers that make sense, you're going to win long term.

Shane Mercer [00:37:15]:

Just to go back to things a little bit, too, you said you're hitting at over 60% and you expect it to level off a little bit and maybe come down underneath that. But those top wagers, those 3% wagers, 14 and three last season, that is well over 80%. And I'm not a math guy, but I think that's over 80% and so far undefeated this season. So, I mean, those wagers are just off the charts and I don't want to jinx it in any way, but man, let's just keep that ball rolling. Yeah.

Shawn Schroeder [00:37:52]:

And something I'll say to that, it's important that people don't go all in on those 3% because that day that that 3% does lose, your 1% wagers may have been up two units, and that offsets that, right? Like the 1% are hitting over 60% right now. And I do know some people are only taking my two and 3% calls. That's fine. But I would argue you're leaving a lot of money on the table because there's more 1% plays and they're hitting at a high clip, too. So from a unit standpoint, you're going to make more units on the 1%, depending on how you if you aggregate it over the long haul and say you win 55 out of 100 on 1% plays, but there's 1000. Of them and you go six out of ten on the 3%. But there's only 50 of them unit wise. You're going to come out ahead on that smaller grind.

Shawn Schroeder [00:38:47]:

So in relative terms, you just have to allocate appropriately to all the plays. And I'm a big fan of saying you should bet everything at that percentage and you'll make more money long term than if you just take the top play only and bet those. Because if I go Owen two or Owen three on a 3% play, you're going to be hurting. And usually when that happens, the 1% kind of stabilize that. So I always definitely preach the all or none type of thing with my plays.

Shane Mercer [00:39:13]:

Great advice for everybody within the community and for all of you listening that aren't within the community and you want to get his picks every week. Well, again, we have that promo code for you 'BEHINDTHELINES' all caps. Come on in, see what it's all about on the inside. Check out Schroeder's picks and learn how to bet live with inplayLIVE. All right. Schroeder, buddy, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate having you and sort of shedding some light, sharing some insight on your process. I know many people within the community really wanted to sort of hear from you and kind of get a sense of what you're doing.

Shane Mercer [00:39:43]:

So thanks again for coming on the show. And for all of you out there who aren't in, this is the kind of pro that you get to work with when you know there's guys like Schroeder. And we've introduced you to many others. Kenny, John, Wilson, several others, coulter, Ta, so many guys within the community to get to know. You mentioned Azan. He's another guy I want to get on the show very soon because NBA basketball is coming up. Azan, if you're listening, please come on the show. We want you on.

Shane Mercer [00:40:13]:

All right. The invitation is open, but so many excellent pros within the community that have such a vast wealth of knowledge like you. So, Sean Schroeder, thank you so much again. And until next week, buddy, keep beating those bucks.

Shawn Schroeder [00:40:30]:

Let's go.

Shane Mercer [00:40:31]:

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.