Episode 40

Shane Mercer [00:00:00]:

So you saw the ad, you signed up, and then what?

Zanoose [00:00:04]:

Went to the fucking moon. That's what we did.

Shane Mercer [00:00:19]:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Behind The Lines, the only podcast purified buying the sports betting industry. Remember to, like, download, follow us on all the socials @inplayLIVE. And if you want to see what it's all about behind the scenes, we've got a promo code for you. That is the 'BEHINDTHELINES' all caps promo code. And after today's episode, I think a lot of you out there who are listening and watching, who aren't a part of the community, are certainly going to want to join because today is all about college basketball, and we have an amazing college basketball strategy. All right, with me, as always, Andrew Pace, the founder of inplayLIVE. And today we've got an inplayLIVE legend, a member of the Million Dollar Club, and the brains behind one of the most effective sports betting strategies maybe the world has ever known, Zach Zanussi. Welcome to the show, buddy.

Shane Mercer [00:01:17]:

Really glad to have you on. And we have another member who has flourished by learning and applying those strategies that Zanoose has developed to the tune of more than six figures. We've got Matt Geurten joining us as well.

Matt Geurten [00:01:29]:

Glad to be here.

Shane Mercer [00:01:30]:

Welcome to both of it's, really. I'm really excited to have you guys on the show.

Zanoose [00:01:34]:

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Shane Mercer [00:01:37]:

All right, so I want to start this off by talking a little bit about my experience with college basketball that began at the beginning of this calendar year, January 2023. I was sort of finding my way through inplayLIVE. My bankroll had grown a little bit in the previous six months, but not to the point that I had sort of been hoping for. And I was really sort of searching for ways. And I was actually planning on beginning that month of January in the new year with a middling mindset. And I was going to do a lot of middling. And that was my plan. And then very quickly, I started to see our college basketball strategies in play and in use.

Shane Mercer [00:02:11]:

And I was thinking, whoa, wait a minute. There's something here. This is working. And it's not just like, oh, it's working. And we're winning 55 56% of our bets. No, we're hitting these at 75 80% to the point where the ROI was just enormous. And it became my sole focus for the next two, three months. And during that time, I ran my bankroll up to the mid five figures, which I was really, really happy about in that short amount of time.

Shane Mercer [00:02:38]:

And ever since then, I've been waiting and waiting and hoping for the day when I can do it again when college basketball returns, which is now. It started just last week. At the beginning of last week. We have a week behind us. And man, I just had an incredible week. It was a lot of fun tackling the books again. So for me, college basketball, I am super excited for the full season ahead and to have a full season of college basketball because I only started doing it in the back half of the season through January, February, and then into March Madness. So I'm really excited to have November and December as an opportunity.

Shane Mercer [00:03:19]:

So with all that out of the way, obviously I'm excited to talk about college hoops, but I want to get to Zanoose's story on how he developed the strategy because we've got a guy here who created a strategy from nothing. But before we do that pace very quickly, what does college basketball mean to the inplayLIVE community and how would you say that the community approaches it?

Andrew Pace [00:03:43]:

Well, I can tell you from my standpoint, I had never filled out a March Madness bracket in my life and I didn't follow college basketball at all. And that wasn't to say that that was right or wrong. I think these guys can definitely attest to this. When it comes to betting, you really focus on what it is that works for you. And there's a huge element and I think Zanoose can really touch on this given some of the things he's been through since he joined inplayLIVE, but there's a huge element of balance when it comes to this kind of stuff. More specifically this time of year, you're hard pressed to find a night that is not busy with sports. Whereas just a couple of months ago, sometimes you just have Monday Night Football on, literally. And there's no hockey on, there's no NBA on, and now everything's on.

Andrew Pace [00:04:32]:

And then when you bring college basketball into the equation, especially with college football this time of year, because there's college football on Tuesdays and Wednesdays as well, you can really just kind of be nonstop, which is a good thing from the standpoint of having the ability to step into the arena whenever you want to. But it can be challenging to step out of the arena and actually take that breath, have that balance and things like that. Now, college basketball means a lot to me because I think it is one of my single greatest accomplishments that I never made it was building this community. And a guy like Zanoose and the guys close to him in the community who turned the lights on where they didn't look at inplayLIVE as I'm going to follow this guy who's made money. They looked at it as I'm going to learn from him and see what else I can find. And that for me, when these guys so I remember I didn't even bet on college hoops with them this season, but they had informed me of some of the things that they were doing and I was kind of just keeping an eye here and there and hearing about their journeys and things like that. But when it came time for March Madness, I was kind of like, hey, you know what? March madness is pretty popular. Maybe I should listen to these assholes and see if I can't make some money.

Andrew Pace [00:05:53]:

And it was a bit of an outlier, I will say, but I think we went something like 26 and two or something like that in March Madness. Betting on some of the strategies that these guys had brought to me. And what was nice about it, too, is you take a lens when it comes to betting, where you go, okay, these guys have worked on this, and then you bring it to fresh eyes. And in my case, it really was fresh eyes, because not only could I not name you a college basketball player or maybe even team, then I can't really today I still try to relate all the names to some variation of your name. Shane when the lens was brought to me, that allowed me to also go, hey, guys, have you looked at this or have you looked at that? Which helped us, I don't want to say develop new strategies, but I think it helped the whole group sort of come together with a few different angles to something that was already working as well. And that isn't me. Many other people have done the same thing. So I know there's a number of people in the community that have applied similar things to different arenas in the game that have been very effective.

Andrew Pace [00:07:00]:

So college basketball means a lot to me, even though I don't even know a single player's name.

Shane Mercer [00:07:05]:

I think I'm probably part of that group, too, especially when it comes to women's basketball, which I bet heavily on as well, men's and women's. But when it comes to women's basketball, I can name one, and she's amazing, Caitlin Clark. What a star she is. But you ask me, anybody else, I probably couldn't name anyone in the game. Which is a testament to the strategy because you don't need to know the players, you don't need to know the coaches, you don't need to know all of these things that people tend to think they need to know if they're going to bet on a specific sport, which is a real testament to the strategy itself. And for anybody out there who's listening right now that isn't a part of the Mplve community and wants to know what the strategy is and the ins and outs and sort of the inner workings of it, I encourage you to sign up and join. And if you are a part of theinplayLIVE community but you don't really understand the strategy, watch the course, watch the course. Take notes, watch the course again, take more notes and then apply it, because this strategy can change your life.

Shane Mercer [00:08:01]:

I am not saying that from any kind of place of not knowing. I have personal experience, all right? I want to get in and get into the mind dig into the brain of this guy that we have here that helped develop this strategy from the ground up and maybe really kind of birthed it. It's incredible. Zanoose, talk to me about how you found the inplayLIVE community, because I think Pace told me that you signed up on day one. I'm wondering, how does anybody even know that it existed on day one?

Zanoose [00:08:34]:

Yeah, I just found it, like pretty much everybody else on a Facebook ad. Right. And like, anything you find online, you don't know if it's true, if it's going to work this or that, but at some point you just got to take a leap of faith and kind of figure it out on your own. Right.

Shane Mercer [00:08:51]:

So you saw the ad, you signed up, and then what?

Zanoose [00:08:55]:

Went to the fucking moon. That's what we did.

Shane Mercer [00:09:02]:

You must have been betting on sports already, though, right? I'm guessing that you saw it and you're like, hey, I'm already doing a little bit of this, so let me give it a try.

Zanoose [00:09:11]:

Yeah, I remember back in the day, I think I've told a story on a previous podcast about going to the Ponies with my old man at like ten, 11-12 years old. I think most of us probably did that here in the city or in Canada, whatever, right. And then from there, betting on proline. I remember we used to have this little system. It was like a 16 box system where you pick five games, so you have one five teamer, a couple of four teamers, and then three, three teamers. Right. I'd be like 17-18 years old, walking to the store, putting in the system just for $2, cost you $32 for 16 teams. Right.

Zanoose [00:09:48]:

Stuff like that. It was a lot of fun. Right. But now it's turned into a real big passion and it's been financially incredible, to be honest with you.

Shane Mercer [00:10:02]:

Well, yeah, and I believe that. I think it's affected a lot of people in the inplayLIVE community and really helped impact their lives in a positive way. So tell me about how you arrived at this college basketball strategy and then how did you sort of develop it into something bigger?

Zanoose [00:10:21]:

I think the biggest thing is I've always enjoyed college basketball the most out of every single sport, so it's always been a passion of mine. I've always watched the games. I try and get to know the players, because to be honest with you, it transitions into the NBA as well. Because if you understand these players that are coming out, you can then find player props in the NBA because they might not be starting, they might be in the six, seven, eight hole, who knows, right. Depending on how much time they get in the NBA. So I think at a young age, I've always enjoyed the game. Right. And then as for the strategy, if you're going through books, you might as well look and see what they offer.

Zanoose [00:11:02]:

Right? So if something's not supposed to be open when it's open, if you understand the lines in general and stuff like that, and then you go to the community, you ask questions, you tell people, hey, listen what I found. How can we make it better? How can we use this to off it? And, yeah, that's kind of how it.

Andrew Pace [00:11:27]:

Just became about it's amazing to hear that, because he puts it in such a simple term that it essentially is like, hey, so you wake up in the morning and you walk down the street, and there's $100 sitting there. And you pick it up, and then you turn to the guy next to you and you go, hey, do you want to find some more ways to pick up money off the ground?

Shane Mercer [00:11:48]:

Where can we find a few more $100 bills?

Zanoose [00:11:50]:

Yeah.

Shane Mercer [00:11:54]:

There must have been much more to it, though than sort of identifying one moment in time. Right? And then, like you said, you brought it to the community and then where.

Zanoose [00:12:02]:

Did it go from mean, I think it's been a huge stamping point for inplayLIVE and the members. Right. And I think that's kind of what I'm most proud about is being able to help others more than just myself, obviously, right? Yeah. It's a weird feeling, man, being able to develop these strategies and bring it to people who can put it even. I guarantee there's people in that community that probably apply those strategies better than I do. And that makes me proud, you know what I mean? But going back to what Pace said about trying to disconnect, especially at this time of year when you're stuffing pillowcases full of cash with these college strategies, how do you disconnect? Right? How do you disconnect? It's tough. You got to find that happy medium balance. Yeah.

Andrew Pace [00:12:58]:

Well, Zanoose, I think you sent me a picture of you front row at the Leafs game on opening night of college basketball. And I remember opening and thinking to myself like, fuck man, this guy's dialed because he's not concerned about opening day.

Zanoose [00:13:12]:

At it wasn't that was Monday, right? Yeah, Monday as at the game, we're two rows up from the glass. Was that Friday as well for the Calgary game? Life's good.

Shane Mercer [00:13:27]:

It sounds like it. Sounds like it's. Know, you mentioned about other know, taking the strategy and sort know, maybe applying it better than, you know, having a ton of success with it. That's a great opportunity to bring Matt into the conversation here. Matt, talk to me about your early days at inplayLIVE and then leading up to sort of your discovery of college basketball.

Matt Geurten [00:13:49]:

Yeah, so I'd say similar to Zanoose, right. I was betting on sports since I was like 18-19 years old with made that first BoDog account, still running that original Bodog account. And I kind of knew a little bit about how to bet on sports and understand it. And then I was just scrolling through Instagram one day and I saw an inplayLIVE ad, and I decided, you know what I think it was? I can't remember. It was like $150, $200, whatever it was. And I figured, I'm betting that anyways, I might as well try it out, right? If it doesn't work for one month, it's $200. I'll just leave and move on, do something else. But I figured I'll give it a shot.

Matt Geurten [00:14:28]:

And then almost now, two years later, I'm still part of the group. I've always been a big college basketball fan, probably starting back in the late 90s, early two thousand s I know the Toronto Raptors got their team ran. Their star player was Vince Carter. And at that time, Vince Carter had gone to North Carolina. So I'm like that's kind of when I started following, like being a big North Carolina fan now, seeing them win national titles in five nine and then another one when they beat Gonzaga a couple of years ago. I think that was 2017. It was, but yeah, I've always liked the game, too. It's just so unpredictable.

Matt Geurten [00:15:04]:

And when you're looking at college kids playing, right, you just never know what's going to happen. You get the certain teams like the Kentucky's, the Dukes of the World, who are starting five freshman kids, and then you get the mid majors. That's why you get the upsets. They have the five senior kids who are four or five years older, where you're going to have these young kids who are all their goals to go to college for one year, right. And then move on. The NBA, that's kind of all these one and done. The Duke stars, the Kentucky's and North Carolinas, and then you had those mid major teams like those Butlers, those Cinderella teams like the VCUs, who make the runs, the George Masons, and they can still kind of compete in college. Right.

Matt Geurten [00:15:43]:

These guys are more likely to go on to places like Europe and play professional basketball later in life. But growing up as a team, when you're together for four years, you can really gel. And then that's where we see all these big upsets, right. These veteran teams are able to upset the big star, big money schools.

Shane Mercer [00:16:04]:

Yeah, it is a lot of chaos in college basketball. Absolutely. But I think the beautiful thing is that these college basketball strategies have found a way to apply a certain amount of order to something that is so chaotic, which is what I think is the most incredible thing. And one of the great things about our college basketball strategy is that the rules are so well defined. The parameters are clear. There is no gray zone for how it works. Zanoose, how did these rules become so clear over time?

Zanoose [00:16:48]:

I think they kind of just speak for I don't are we allowed to talk about certain things or what are we doing?

Shane Mercer [00:16:57]:

I mean, we don't want to give away those strategies because all the people out there, we want to encourage them to come and join us and learn the strategies, but I think we can talk about them on a surface level. Absolutely.

Zanoose [00:17:07]:

Yeah. I just feel like there's certain windows that you want to be in. Right. And then if it fits the criteria and it checks off every box, you make the wager. There's probably some people out there that lean one way or the other where they stretch it a little bit. But me personally, I'm very disciplined. I stick to what I know works, and I stay within those limits and those markings, and then I just go from there. Really? Yeah.

Andrew Pace [00:17:32]:

I mean, I can provide some clarity on what he's referring to. So if you're an outsider looking in, you're going, what the hell are these guys talking about? They're just talking about this elusive strategy or whatever it is. It's not one strategy. There's about, I'd say, five or six strategies with college basketball that we're looking at on a regular basis. And to speak to what Zanoose said before, and I think this is really powerful, he said, hey, guys, I found this opportunity. And oftentimes a strategy is born at inplayLIVE college basketball or not from some sort of discrepancy in a sports book. So to give you an example of something like that, bet 99 used to offer power play goals in hockey, and you could bet them before they were on the power play once they were on the power play and after they were on the power play. And more or less, they paid the same regardless, but they had a cash out feature, so you could bet a power play goal once they went on the power play.

Andrew Pace [00:18:23]:

And if they didn't score, you could cash out. After the power play was over, you could only bet maybe $100 on this. But if I wagered $100 and the power play didn't hit, you could cash out for $80. And I risked $20. But if it won, I would pay like 3.0 or 4.0. So I risked $20, and I potentially won $300. And that reminds me a lot of middling in the sense that it was very low risk. This lasted Zanoose, what would you say? One day or maybe three days?

Zanoose [00:18:52]:

Yeah, three days, max.

Andrew Pace [00:18:54]:

So it lasted three days. And then what happens with something like that is we all go, okay, where can we find this market? And I can tell you guys with confidence that market doesn't exist. We found where it was, and it's gone. But if you find some sort of opportunity like this that leads you to go, okay, where can I find this? And you start searching through books and searching for opportunities and talking to other people and connecting and communicating, and maybe you don't find that market, but you might have found something else, and you start working through, is this similar? Is it the same? So the cat and mouse element of sports books oftentimes can be, are they still offering this market? Are the lines open or closed? What time are they open or closed at? And then piecing that all together to potentially build some sort of strategy that does have a positive expected value over time. So I know with what we're referencing with college hoops, what Zanoose and the guys were doing at the time were going, okay, this sports book is open, and there's an opportunity here. Now it's closed. What can we do next? And then searching for a set of rules that actually dictates taking action or not. And those rules exist to keep things at a positive expected value.

Andrew Pace [00:20:19]:

And for anyone that's watching this, when you are given a call on a wager by a true professional, not some tipster guy that's selling trash, not to say that there aren't good tipsters out there that can sell picks effectively, there are. But the line that is called is where that positive expected value is. So if you don't get that line, you are taking something that potentially could be the difference of a 10% ROI over time, a 2030 40% ROI over time, and no ROI or a negative ROI. So when it comes to those rules, that's where the whole community actually was very involved, or maybe not the whole community at the time was very involved in locking some of those things in. And you know how you do that? You lose. You're like, Guys, why are we losing these ones? And you track your data and your information, and you go, this is what's costing us. If we just took these, the expected value goes from 52% hit rate to 60 70% hit rate, and then that's all the difference in the world. And, like, he touched on requires discipline.

Matt Geurten [00:21:34]:

Yeah, if I can just add to that, too. So take college basketball, for example. Like, I was explaining earlier how unpredictable it is from one team to win compared to the other team.

Matt Geurten [00:21:42]:

Like, you just never know. But the nice thing about the way college basketball finishes games is it's very consistent, right? The way the rules are set up for college basketball, the way the end of games are played for college basketball, it's been the same way for the past 2030 years. So that's where the strategy helps, too, right? Where, sure, who wins, who loses doesn't really matter to us. It's the consistency that we find at the end of the game that helps us bring the value. I would even say my main objective for our first week of college basketball was just kind of sorting through books. So I usually have 1012 different sports books open at one time, and then there'll be a lot of bad games that just don't fit our strategies. So what I'll do with those games, I'll just kind of look and see what books offering, what price, what books offering another price, see when they close. And what I've already discovered this year is one of our main books we used last year for college basketball.

Matt Geurten [00:22:36]:

We may not use for the same strategies this year because they've almost overcorrected the numbers they did. So let's say last year they give us one number, this year they're giving us a completely different number and it doesn't fit our strategies. So what we kind of want to do now is since they've overcorrected one way, well, then now we kind of have to adjust a little bit and hit them the other way. And then you can play that book that overcorrected off a book that's keeping the same lines, and then you can just play books off each other. So I think that's the main thing you want to do in the first week or two is don't go too heavy in what you want to bet. Spend a lot of time getting your books set up, getting them prepped, figuring what's going to work for the next four or five months into March, and just set yourself up for success.

Shane Mercer [00:23:20]:

I love that you guys both touched on some key elements there that have almost nothing to do with sports. One is tracking and then learning from your lessons. And the only way you can do that is by tracking and then, as Gerten pointing out here, and a lot of it too, is just having the books, having them open, right, and watching for things, looking for discrepancies, as he put it. All of this has absolutely nothing to do with the game being played or the multiple games in college basketball, the thousands of games that are going to be played out there. And so I think a lot of average recreational sports bettors out there, kind of get lost in that, right? Like, oh, this team's great, or this team know traditionally really bad, or they got these players, all those sort of other factors that are almost completely irrelevant for what we're actually doing and how we are capitalizing on this sport and on this game. Matt, I wanted to ask you, did you have a light bulb moment with college basketball? I know you said you were a big fan already, and because Vince Carter went to UNC, I'm surprised you. I mean, as a Raptors fan, I get it. But obviously there's another very famous basketball fan that went to a player that went to UNC.

Andrew Pace [00:24:35]:

I know that one, guys. I know that one.

Shane Mercer [00:24:37]:

You know that hopefully everybody out there knows who I'm talking but but did you have a light bulb moment, Matt, when it came to college basketball? That, holy crap, I can win consistently at this.

Matt Geurten [00:14:27]:

I basically so I've always been a big college basketball fan. The thing I like about it, too, it's such high volume. So there's nothing like, let's say you're looking at like a Monday Night Football game, right? A lot of people just bet the game because there's one game on to enjoy it. Whereas college basketball on a Saturday, you can have upwards of 150 games, right? So it's very easy to just be selective and pick and choose. And that's kind of why I like it so much. I think I really got into it was my first year when I joined inplayLIVE at January last year, right. I kind of watched the course, went through it, and then I saw the college basketball strategy. I started off doing like $50 here and there.

Matt Geurten [00:25:26]:

And then after the first two or three nights, I'm seeing like my bankroll is doubling, tripling, quadrupling. And I'm like, I think there's something here. And then my focus just became college basketball, right? I'll be betting college basketball. I started on Monday. I'll be doing it through April, whatever the first weekend of April is, till the national championship game. And that's going to be my main focus, right. It's just every single day there's 20, 3100 games on. And like I said, what I like about it is there's going to be runs.

Matt Geurten [00:25:58]:

I remember last we started off a stream last Saturday. I think we lost our first four college basketball bets for the 12:00 slate. And I think the rest of the day we went something stupid like 25 and two, right. So we know the strategies work. We just have to be patient and apply. You can't force anything because that's where you're going to make mistakes. And as Denise was saying, the number you get is so important. There are some people where I'll call a bet that I can't take myself because I just don't have that sports book.

Matt Geurten [00:26:28]:

But I advise people, like if we call a number, if there's something less than that, perfect. But don't stretch because that's where you're going to lose these bets by one or two points when you're trying to take a bet just for the sake of joining in everybody else.

Andrew Pace [00:26:41]:

Well, I mean, I see that constantly, Matt, with any sport, right. Kenny is pretty adamant about what number is a key number referencing the NFL. Those key numbers we just touched on, obviously with positive EV versus not, but where bets come through. And then you see people that didn't win where they say, I had this or I had that, and it wasn't what we called. Well, that all comes back to the discipline thing, right?

Zanoose [00:27:10]:

For sure. Just quickly on that, too. If something is called, this is for people that are in the group. If something is called, it's okay if you can't get it. But at the same time, why not write that number down? Let's say 37 and a half. Write it down when it pops back up. Maybe you can take it then, right? There's nothing wrong with. Missing something.

Zanoose [00:27:29]:

But remember the number that was called and maybe there's another opportunity that you can get in with that number, you know what I mean?

Andrew Pace [00:27:36]:

Or better.

Zanoose [00:27:37]:

Or better. Exactly.

Andrew Pace [00:27:38]:

Well, I mean this speaks to Zanoose in general as a sports bettor. This is getting away from college basketball. But there's been times where as a Community. We've been into something and one of those times was an odds provider called Scientific Gaming. They were producing a consistent college total for college Football, not basketball and this college football total that they were producing would be what we call normal Juice. So like a typical vague line like a 1.9 -110 up to maybe -115 -120 where other books would have the exact same line -200 -250 so you could ARB those books against each other if you wanted to and the access to this particular book was somewhat Limited. So there was people that had it across the United States. There's people that had it in British Columbia, but across Canada, not in BC.

Andrew Pace [00:28:32]:

People didn't have it and this was creating a Real uproar with the people that didn't have it they were getting pretty frustrated, pretty on edge because we would have a Big day and they'd be like, fuck this, I don't have access to this. And behind the scenes there's this guy named Zanoose, he's not saying much about it at all. He's keeping pretty calm and he sends me a screenshot of a bet three six five at $280,000, which is just like the most unprecedented thing I've ever seen. Because if you can get a three six five these days to 10,000, it's a miracle. But 50,000 would have been really good. And I responded like, what the fuck? And he's like, you know those advantage plays that you're calling in college football? He's like when you like one side in one game and the other side in the same game for the two different teams, he's like, I've just been hammering the minus for that team all season long. And I'm like, you're kidding me? He's like, no. And he says the classic line like, focus on what you do have, not what you don't.

Shane Mercer [00:29:33]:

Right.

Andrew Pace [00:29:33]:

And that's the way he thinks. So recently to the Community I had said the best bettors don't look at what they don't have in those spots, they look at what they can do that's maybe the same or similar. And that's what Zanoose has been so exceptional at from day One is Going, okay, he's talking about this strategy in football, but I'm going to apply it to college basketball it's not the same strategy at all, right? But I'm going to apply similar concepts to another Sport. He's talking about this strategy in college football. I don't have that sports book, but let's start trying this that's similar and see how I do with It. If it wasn't working, he'd be off It Instantly. Instantly. But he's got an amazing mind for low volume, highly effective strategies that have produced him significant results.

Andrew Pace [00:30:28]:

And I can assure you, I mean, he's the kind of guy, he doesn't need the advice of us anymore, but he looks at it as, hey, maybe I can pick something up along the way still that will help me on my journey, right?

Shane Mercer [00:30:39]:

Absolutely. Love hearing these stories and that mindset. And Zanoose, you're clearly a guy who's given a lot to this community in the form of this strategy. And guys like Matt, myself, we owe you a debt of gratitude because we've been able to flourish using this strategy. So I want to say thank you for what you've given the community. But also, I know, I understand that when you've needed the community, it's been there for you. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Zanoose [00:31:10]:

Yeah, it was about, I don't know, two and a half years ago now. I was in a pretty serious accident. I almost lost my leg and for sure, the community was there for me from day one pulled together. They got me some gifts, which was great, but at the same time, it's not about the gifts, it's about the emotion. People caring, right. That's the biggest thing in life. You want people that care about you, right? Yeah, they got me through some pretty dark times. We're still not out of the woodworks yet, but slowly but surely we're getting there.

Zanoose [00:31:46]:

But, yeah, community has been great since day one, to be honest with you. Me and Pace had our little riff at the start with Facebook, so I couldn't get the stupid messages to pop up. Remember that, Pace?

Andrew Pace [00:25:25]:

I was just trying to weed you through the cracks to see if you could survive the long haul. I remember though, Shane, the first inplayLIVE event, he showed up and his leg had literally just been chopped off. And we're like, hey, how are we going to get this guy here? Right? So he's got this surgically repaired leg, he's like high on painkillers and he showed up and I think he's like, hey Pace, you want to play some beer pong? And I'm like, sure man, do you need to play from a he's like, no, no, I'm good. I had to leave him. We were undefeated. I think we'd won like eight or nine in a row. I had to leave him so that I could interact with other people at the event. And then he picked up Roger as a partner and he ran the table for the whole night on one leg playing beer.

Andrew Pace [00:32:44]:

He's a, he's a multi talented human.

Shane Mercer [00:32:47]:

It speaks to that mindset of looking at what you do have and not what you don't. You know, it's a perfect example of know. Matt, I want to come over to mean, how would you say know? Obviously college basketball has helped you so much, but how has the community itself helped you?

Matt Geurten [00:33:07]:

So it's really helped, like, because you can bounce ideas now off people too. So back when I was doing this by myself, I was doing all my own research. Like I was scanning books, scanning lines and stuff like that. Whereas now as a community, right, when you're doing these streams every single day, you're going to have times where there's lines I don't have on a book and then someone else will call it out. And even, like I said last on Saturday, this weekend, right, there was a bunch of stuff I didn't have that I couldn't take because I didn't have the books. But as a community, we can call these lines out so other people can win. And even from that standpoint, too, I think it just helps to have this group mentality where we can kind of grow and learn as a team together. Because the more sharp minds you have working on anything you do in life, the better you can succeed as a team because you just have so many different eyes and ears helping to learn, develop and just work together.

Shane Mercer [00:32:42]:

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And we get to see it in action. But for everybody out there who's listening and not a part of inplayLIVE, I can't speak highly enough to the power of the community itself. Strategies aside, sports aside, money aside, the power of the group in the community is really, I think, almost like the secret superpower of inplayLIVE, if you will. You're talking about putting eyes on things. When we talk about college basketball, you talked about the 30 or 100 potential games on. I did a little research before our episode here to just have a look.

Shane Mercer [00:34:40]:

Well, how many games are there? Actually, I think last season there were more than 5800 NCAA Division One men's basketball.

Matt Geurten [00:34:51]:

And that's where it helps. Usually on the weekend, it's kind of spread out, but I know a lot of weekdays you'll get like, I know night one, I think there was like 60 or 70 games at 07:00. So you can only kind of focus on so much at a time. So you can kind of like divide and conquer, right? If someone looks at a certain amount of games and someone else looks at another portion of games, you can all bet them. And then you can have five or six people saying, you know what, queue up this game, get ready to bet it. While someone else is saying, hey, queue up this game, get ready to bet it. And you can have multiple tabs open. So someone's like, okay, it's time to take this number, take it, and and then you can focus on those games while someone else is focusing another set of games.

Matt Geurten [00:35:29]:

And then, like I said, that group aspect. I can't follow 60 games by myself at one time. So having what I know as much as it is, I try to star as many as I can on my three, six, five to just kind of track them in. But heck when you get that many games right you're just kind of hoping that you get those couple of good, good games, right? And that's the big thing too. You have 60 games, games coming in. You don't need to bet 60 games. Find those five, six, seven that fit the strategies perfectly and that's where you want to deploy your money is on the best of the best opportunities. And then you know, like Shane just said, there's 5800 plus games.

Matt Geurten [00:36:04]:

Take the ones that are good, bet those. If there's something that doesn't fit don't worry about it because there'll be another game coming in in 30 seconds.

Shane Mercer [00:36:11]:

Absolutely. And 5800, that was just division one. Men's, you start rolling in other divisions or you start rolling in women's, there's another 5000 women's games that are going to be played this season. We're talking 10,000 plus games and it's more volume than I think anyone alone can handle. But even in a group it's a lot to handle. Zanus, you talked about being at the Leafs game for opening night. You didn't care that you were missing opening night of college basketball and I'm guessing that's because of the high volume that you know is about to come. Am I right?

Zanoose [00:36:47]:

Yeah, 100%. I mean it's a busy, busy time of year, right? You still have college football. We got NFL, we got NBA, NHL, college basketball. It takes up a lot of your time but yeah, I always like to try and wait. I have obviously been a few games. I sent Pace a little screenshot. Was that Tuesday or Wednesday? I come back.

Andrew Pace [00:37:13]:

The four nothing game you went to. A four one game you went to? Is that what you're referring to? Oh no. The bet slip that you made. Oh yeah, he just casually just flicks me over a screenshot. It's like a $10,000 bet at like 3.5 or 4.0 or something like that. He had won.

Zanoose [00:37:35]:

Yeah. I always like to try and wait a week or two, let a few games get under their belt and then ramp up from there personally.

Andrew Pace [00:37:43]:

Can I actually add to that Shane? So Zanoose, I'm actually genuinely curious because this is the highest volume time of the year and you have silently developed yourself as an extremely low volume sports bettor you didn't used to be when we started. So can you maybe just touch on how or why you have reverted to such a low volume and can you maybe touch on the volume itself? Like, if we do have a big college basketball slate and you are tuned in, maybe how many wagers you'll have made at the end of the day or maybe at the end of the week. And if you're tracking them and how you're managing just your because I know that just because it's low volume doesn't mean it's low time. I know, the time is still being put in. So maybe walk us through that a little bit because that's something as a sports bettor myself, I'm always curious because, you know, I'm a high volume guy with everything I do, but I think.

Zanoose [00:38:44]:

That would change for you. Like for us, we have access to all these new books here in Ontario, so I can get the amount of money that I want to get on a single wager right. Back in the day, I'd only be able to get about $3,000 in on a certain wager or I'd have to bet it multiple times. But now with these new books here in Ontario, I can get 510, 1520, 5000 in on a wager, which is where I want to be. So that's where it keeps me in discipline because I can get that amount of money on one single wager. Right. And that's kind of helped me in my journey along the way.

Andrew Pace [00:39:17]:

But I'm not referencing volume from the standpoint of betting, say, seven times on the same thing. I'm referencing volume in actual placing of a wager on a game. What has caused you to go lower volume than what you used to be?

Zanoose [00:39:35]:

I think the biggest thing is just sticking to those strategies that I know work and not going within those limits. Right. And the biggest thing is if I know it's an A plus opportunity, I'm going to play it, but if it's an A minus or an A, I might just leave it and I'm okay with that. Right. I don't need to get that volume in anymore as opposed to back in the day. So I don't know if that answers your question.

Shane Mercer [00:40:00]:

Yeah, I don't want to add to that. I just want to be clear for everybody then. So before you did used to take maybe even go as low as a B plus wager or an A minus, an A, and obviously you're going to take an A plus wager. You would stretch a little more.

Andrew Pace [00:40:15]:

I was calling them. He took some, like D minus wages. There's some bad bets in there. There's some bad bets in there. But anyways, go ahead.

Shane Mercer [00:40:26]:

Yes. That's what I'm trying to get at. How low would you go? How much were you willing to stretch? How did you rein it in?

Zanoose [00:40:35]:

I guess yeah, I don't know. I honestly don't know how to answer that question honestly. Things just kind of clicked when these new books came here because new opportunities, number one. Number two, I can get in the amount of money that I want to get in on a certain wager, which is a big thing for me. And to be honest, if I miss an opportunity, I'm okay with missing it. I don't have FOMO, that doesn't matter to me, you know what I mean? Or if there's a game where I really liked it, but I didn't click it in time to get it in, that's okay with me as well. Right. As long as I know that I stick within my limits of what I'm looking for, I'm happy with the decision that I made.

Matt Geurten [00:41:14]:

Yeah. Think that's the most important thing, too.

Shane Mercer [00:41:16]:

Right.

Matt Geurten [00:41:16]:

You see a lot of people where if you miss one bet and it wins, right. They get upset. They didn't get the one bet. I know there's probably ten or 20 bets on the weekend where I'm like, I didn't have the line or I didn't have the book or something like that. And if it wins, that's just great. Like everyone else got the money, right? They did well. I'm happy for them and I'll just look for the next opportunity. I think that's why it's just so important, as Denise was saying, to stay disciplined.

Matt Geurten [00:41:41]:

Where I'll go into a Saturday at college basketball and I have no idea how many wagers I'm going to make. There's been some Saturdays where the game just haven't met the bill. I've made 15 wagers. I think my record last year on a Saturday, I made 40 or 50 different wagers because it was kind of the end of the year where you have teams battling to make March Madness get into the tournament and you just see the desperation from these teams and you know how they're going to play the games. Whereas I'll say earlier in the year, right, let's say week one, week two, some teams just they don't care as much. I want to say where they still play the end of the game, how they would, but they're not as desperate as now. If you lose a game, week one, week two, it's not a big deal. Whereas let's say you get into the ACC, the SEC, all these tournament games.

Matt Geurten [00:42:29]:

Sometimes teams know if we don't win the tournament or like our conference tournament, we're not getting into the NCAA tournament. And that's where you see that desperation, especially with some of the smaller conferences where you get the automatic bids where only one team from that conference will make it in. So game two, three, these teams aren't very this it doesn't matter as much to them, but then you see that those weeks in March, these teams know, you know what, it's a brand new season. We could be five and 25 in the year, but we know we win these four games, we're in the tournament, we make the dance. And you see how much harder these kids try because they know a lot of them this will be the biggest moment of their life, right. They make March Madness, they play in the big stage, and then that's going to be the pinnacle of their sports career. And that's where you see, okay, you know what? Now, you don't want to stretch too much, but you're like, okay, maybe we'll stretch on maybe one or two points now because we know these teams are going to be going as hard as they can to win these.

Shane Mercer [00:43:27]:

Know, I love that you really talk about sort of speaking to the idea of aligning with a team's motivations and calling it the biggest moment of the pinnacle of their sports career is very likely because I think a lot of people out there think, oh, all these college basketball players will then move on to the NBA. But no, right. A vast majority, the vast majority are not going on to the NBA. Only a very small percentage are moving on with their basketball playing careers to the NBA. So it's so important to know what those mindsets are. As you kind of said there, Matt. But I want to ask and sort of flip it back over to Zanoose. You kind of mentioned, okay, there's 150 games on on this Saturday, and if not a lot of them are fitting the bill.

Shane Mercer [00:44:09]:

I might bet 15 games on the day. Zanoose, when you hear that, are you thinking, I might only bet one game still out of those 15, where does the difference lie?

Zanoose [00:44:22]:

Yeah, I could very easily probably bet five out of the 15. I'm probably an outlier when it comes to I'm okay with sitting in there for 12 hours or 13 hours on a Saturday and only making a handful of bets. That's just me, right. I don't know what it is. I don't know if other people can do that, probably not. But I'm not just going to click a button for the sake of clicking a button. I'm going to stick to what like I said, what I know works and that's just the way I do it.

Andrew Pace [00:34:40]:

Now, Matt, you had a pretty crazy story from March Madness last year. I know we're far from bracket season, but you had a bet with an inplayLIVE member and you threw out some statistics. Can you tell us that story real quick?

Matt Geurten [00:45:00]:

Yeah. So basically the bet with the member was so he gave me a certain amount of teams. I can't remember if it was seven or eight different teams that I could choose, and then he gets the rest of the field. Now, you can use historical data for this as well. So a team has to rank in the top so much on offensive efficiency and top so much defensive efficiency in order to win. So I think I believe I had Duke, Kentucky. I had Gonzaga. Sorry, no, I didn't have had I can't remember the whole list, but I ended up winning because I had like, Yukon was my team.

Matt Geurten [00:45:36]:

So as far as the March Madness tournament goes, week one is the week for upsets, right? Twelve seeds win all the time. You see eleven seeds, you've seen the 15s over the twos. You've actually seen even the few years back when Virginia was the first ever one seed to lose to a 16 seed. But as the tournament goes on, it almost always gets really chalky. So first two weeks of your college basketball. That's where you put your Cinderella team. Sure, you'll get the VCUs, you'll get the George Masons of the world to make the Final Four. Even last year with FAU going as far as they did, I would say last year was probably the craziest March Madness term I've ever seen in my life, with the amount of offsets and the amount of lower ranked teams making there.

Matt Geurten [00:46:22]:

But then once you get to the Final, it was still the best team, right? Yukon, offensively and defensively, were the best team. And they're a Blue blood, right? You have your blue blood you have your Indiana's, your Carolinas your Kentucky's, your Dukes Villanova's, UCLAs. And as the tournament goes on, that talent just tends to show up. Now, I'd say more in recent years, you've seen the kind of smaller schools close the gap due to the fact the whole Nil rules now, where you see a lot of players kind of leaving college and going to the G League, going to play overseas. Like last year, like Scoot Henderson played in the G League, you had the Thompson brothers who were playing over I think it was an overseas elite. So the quality is not as there as it was, let's say, back in the days where you had Michael Jordan, who stayed in college for four years, or Tim Duncan or any of those other star college basketball players, used to have four year seniors starting against four year seniors. Now you have five freshman 18 year olds starting against, like I was mentioning earlier, starting against these senior laden teams, where, sure, the senior team is not as talented as, let's say, these freshman kids, but over time, that experience of playing together for four years really helps. And that's where we've seen the upsets happen early on.

Matt Geurten [00:47:44]:

But like I said, if you're filling in a March Madness bracket, have fun early on, picking those upsets, cheering them in. But you get to the Final Four, man got to go with the blue.

Andrew Pace [00:47:56]:

Matt had I think you had eight teams and you were down to one. After like, week three, everyone was following in our community, following this intergroup bet in of Matt picking he got any eight teams or any I thought it was like any four teams.

Matt Geurten [00:48:13]:

Yeah, it was seven or eight, but basically, yeah. So I think week one looked pretty good. And then I think it was the Sweet 16, the lead eight, where it kind of got a little nervous in there. I know we got down in the Final Four where the guy was against he had three teams, and then I had Yukon. But I was pretty confident, the way they were playing that tournament, just how sound they were playing and how all the metrics, right? So I'm a big data guy, too. All the metrics in their offensive, defensive, just how they played as a team, they would come through, but I think that was the first time ever where I've seen that many just not bad teams but just underdog teams play as well as they did. I've never seen that in college basketball before. And maybe that's just kind of the way it's.

Shane Mercer [00:49:00]:

You know, we did see that come through with Yukon last season. You saw that pedigree rise to the top and you kind of saw it throughout the tournament. It was a lot of fun. We'll have to do another March Madness episode, Pace, when the time arrives. But a lot of people out there are probably wondering, well, why the heck are you talking about college basketball now? Well, that's because the season did just start about a week ago and it is a pivotal point of success within our group. So that's why we thought we would do the show now. So I want to go around the horn here because we are running out of time. But I want to go around the horn, and I want to get each of you to kind of just give one sort of piece of advice, a tip, something, some kind of guidance to a average recreational sports bettor.

Shane Mercer [00:49:39]:

When it comes to college basketball. So this could be somebody who's not a member yet and is thinking about joining or somebody who's a new member and was maybe like where I was last November and had no clue that college basketball could provide this sort of pot of gold at the end. Pace, we'll start with you.

Andrew Pace [00:45:00]:

Join inplayLIVE. Follow Matt Geurten. Do not bend on a single number under any condition.

Shane Mercer [00:50:03]:

Love it. Geurten, over to you.

Matt Geurten [00:50:04]:

Yeah, see, like, my main thing is, you know what, you stay disciplined and never be afraid or upset to miss a bet because there's going to be so many times where you don't have the number, you don't get it in. You see, everybody celebrating, oh, they won and I didn't win. And you kind of get upset, but you can't think that way. You have to think, you know what? I didn't get it. Move on to the next one. Stay disciplined, stay focused and just win.

Shane Mercer [00:50:30]:

And final word over to one of the masterminds behind the strategies, the Noose.

Zanoose [00:50:36]:

Final piece of advice, ask questions, try and understand why they're going through the steps that they're going through and then apply that yourself.

Shane Mercer [00:50:46]:

Love it. Guys, this has been a lot of fun. I look forward to a very fruitful college basketball season ahead and maybe, who knows, maybe we'll bring you guys back around tournament time and we'll sort of revisit the conversation and talk about how the season went and have a look at the brackets and that kind of stuff. All right. Well, thank you, Zach, Matt and Pace. As always, guys, this was a lot of fun. Until next time, keep beating those books. Thanks for tuning into another episode of Behind the Lines.

Shane Mercer [00:50:02]:

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'.