Episode 120

Getting Better Odds in Betting Exchanges: "You could go up and put plus three sixty up there or, plus two I said plus what did I say? Plus two fifty? You could go plus two sixty or plus $2.70 and offer the best line on the other side, and there's a good chance that that bet's gonna be taken instantly, And you got a way better number that's posted anywhere in the betting world."
— Andrew Pace [00:06:33 → 00:06:51]

Sports Betting Taxes Chaos: "But I've never paid any sports betting taxes because we don't get taxed on our winnings. And, I absolutely love that fact. And I can't imagine what it must be like to have to, you know, hire an accountant and go through it all to to do your taxes when you're a professional sports bettor in The US. It just sounds like a huge, huge headache, and the headache is getting much worse."
— Shane Mercer [00:08:40 → 00:08:59]

Sports Betting Tax Change Explained: "A bettor who won a $100,000 worth of wagers and lost a $100,000, so broke even, netted no money, would only be allowed to deduct 90,000 from their tax bill, meaning they would have to pay taxes on $10,000 of taxable income, income that they actually never even made, which is which is just crazy to think."
— Shane Mercer [00:09:39 → 00:10:00]

The Tax Trap in Sports Betting: "And as you bet more and more and your ROI is less and less, the amount of tax you owe relative to the amount of money you're actually making rate increases, substantially. So it effectively would kill things like arbitrage betting or, stuff like that where people are making one to 2% ROI. You'd end up paying you'd end up essentially having an ROI, you know, in the negative double digits after you're paying taxes."
— John [00:11:46 → 00:12:10]

The Truth About Offshore Gambling and Taxes: "Just simply going and playing offshore isn't gonna, have you escape from any of this. And and simply just leaving the country, you're not gonna escape that. Again, if you're an American citizen and you live abroad, you still have to pay tax, as though you're an American, though you can deduct up to what you might have paid in another nation."
— John [00:12:32 → 00:12:49]

The High Stakes of Celebrity Gambling: "There's billionaires and 100 millionaires out there that are gambling all the time, and they're probably even still, even if they're not winning, they're not losing at a rate that would get them out of the tax bug that you described."
— John [00:13:27 → 00:13:41]

Taxing Gambling Losses Explained: "You should still have to pay tax on money you lost. You know, you might you could have just lit the money on fire. If you lit the money on fire, you wouldn't be able to write it off as a deduction."
— John [00:15:11 → 00:15:19]

How the Wealthy Avoid Taxes: "Whenever taxes are put in that go beyond a certain group of people's threshold, what tends to happen is rather than paying the tax, they pay professionals to avoid the tax, and they find different loopholes and, different ways to, get themselves into lower brackets or move their money through other countries or whatever the case may be."
— Andrew Pace [00:19:10 → 00:19:32]

No Legal or Tax Advice Here: "None of us are tax professionals. None of us are accountants, and and none of us are lawyers. And so I just, you know, we're not we're not giving any kind of advice here on the show as as everybody has stated."
— Shane Mercer [00:21:53 → 00:22:05]

The Double Hit—How Taxes Affect Gamblers’ Decisions: "And they go, well, I'm just not sports betting again. Or, you know, I I am gonna go offshore whatever because I view that as something that can't be, tracked. But why would I why would I go play, blackjack or roulette in Vegas? Why would I do that ever again? It's already negative EV. And then if I do play by the book, I'm I'm just bleeding tax instead of not only are you bleeding the juice in the house edge to the casino, you're bleeding tax as well."
— Andrew Pace [00:25:05 → 00:25:31]

Sportsbooks & Legislation Controversy: "It's hard to imagine that this piece of legislation wasn't snuck in there without sportsbooks being aware of it or a sportsbook lobbyist being aware of it."
— Shane Mercer [00:27:43 → 00:27:51]

Vague Betting Law May Impact Bettors: "It's expanded the definition of swindling and cheating, and it includes a vague reference to placing a bet with information not available to the general public. And so that has some people kind of scratching their heads a little bit because so much of of sports betting, especially pregame sports betting is based off of, you know, tips and information, people who have inside knowledge of something, this player is injured, that player is not playing, you know, and and are able to sort of get to market before the news becomes public."
— Shane Mercer [00:28:30 → 00:29:04]

The Consequences of Proxy Betting in New Jersey: "And when we talk about the grade of the offense, well, it all depends on how much money we're talking about. You know, if it's playing with a thousand dollars, you know, the the crime isn't as serious. But as soon as you get into, you know, somebody who's who's done this to earn more than 75,000 in profits, it becomes a second degree felony."
— Shane Mercer [00:29:23 → 00:29:44]

Overbroad Legislation Threatens Casual Betting: "The bill seeks to criminalize players even talking to each other before betting. So, you know, just just bettors working together in any kind of way. He says the language is so broad, it could make Jason Kelsey guilty of swindling and cheating when he gives his pick on his NFL pregame show."
— Shane Mercer [00:30:41 → 00:31:01]

The Reality of Professional Bettors vs. Everyday Gamblers: "I think we get we're stuck in our own world of people who make a lot of money, do who do who we we win, we bet professionally. Like, that's just not even a small amount of people. Like, it's just such a small it's a tiny fraction."
— John [00:31:49 → 00:32:03]

Insider Sports Betting Scandal: "These guys are actually acting with insider information. You know, these we're talking about guys that know the color of the Gatorade bath for every single Super Bowl because they went and saw someone or they had a team that went and saw them, go fill it. Now the sportsbooks can't have it both ways."
— Andrew Pace [00:34:20 → 00:34:38]

The Double Standard in Gambling Taxes: "It's hard to feel sorry for them when they they're just there's it's their job to be to to be smart about the lines and the odds that they offer and to make sure that they're making money off of it because they're they're tight and they're sharp lines. Right? And then they don't wanna put the effort into that. They'd rather lobby to so they just put people in jail."
— John [00:38:39 → 00:39:02]

Who's Really Responsible for Bad Betting Lines?: "Imagine right now taking recourse to the level where we, the people who posted the bad line, become the victim, and, oh, woe is me, when we, as the player that's using this site on SX, have the ability to post a different line, pull the line down, the list goes on and on. We can do whatever we want, not post one in the first place. How is that any different than the sportsbooks themselves in what they post?"
— Andrew Pace [00:39:59 → 00:40:28]

Getting Better Odds Than the Sportsbooks: "If I know I have a price on a team to win a game or a player in, like, tennis to win a match or something, I can just put post that price up there, and maybe somebody will buy it. Like you said earlier, maybe somebody pays, you know, 90¢ on the dollar for it, and I'm getting a lot of value. And so that's why I use it. And so I can get even better lines than some of the bad lines that we're making fun of the books for posting and then wanting to take you to jail for, for beating them."
— John [00:43:28 → 00:43:53]

Viral Growth of Betting Liquidity: "It's it's crazy to see how how much that liquidity has grown across all exchanges because they're because they are getting more popular and, you know, a lot of a lot of sharp bettors are going to them with more money, you know, to to get that liquidity in there because they're they're getting pushed out from all those soft books, and they're, you know, there's there's no reason for them to be there."
— Shane Mercer [00:46:04 → 00:46:25]

Sports Betting Myths: "Women's tennis is, like, the most volatile version of the sport where, you know, we have been on the side of, like, having, say, Coco Gauff at Plus Money who's notorious for I think she was, like, six one five one with 40 love, and she went on to lose the match."
— Andrew Pace [00:55:19 → 00:55:35]