Reviewing the first year of my betting project, Stealing Lines

Come join us at Stealing Lines if you're looking for in-season bets

I haven’t done a good job of promoting this, but for those of you who are new around here, I want to mention my betting picks service with Dalton Kates called Stealing Lines. Dalton and I launched Lines together last summer, where he is a huge grinder that hits tons of player props and digs for alternative lines worth playing every week, and I focus on picking games with sides and totals. Altogether, we had a very successful first year, with Dalton really crushing the props market and me also turning a profit picking games. We also had a limited NBA product we’re not sure will return, but that also turned a profit, as well as covering the NFL draft in the offseason… which was also a profitable period.

One of the biggest things we have said from the beginning over there is we don’t promise anything. We’re just two guys making the bets we like available. What we prefer is our subscribers are people who think we have a strong process and want to bet along with us, but understand that there are no guarantees in the betting landscape.

Still, it’s obviously exciting to have had a strong first year for subscribers, where the results were there. You can find a recap of our first full year over at our Stealing Lines Substack, which is also where you can sign up if you’re interested. As a Cliff’s Notes, I went 54-44-3 on 101 bets on spreads and totals, resulting in +6.34 units for a 5.83% ROI, as graded by our pick tracker. Dalton took over 1,000 props across the NFL season, many of which were alt lines with bigger payouts, so while his W-L record on bets was less relevant (342-729), he finished the year at +75.66 units, for an 11.96% ROI.

(In both mine and Dalton’s cases, our track record in these markets extends earlier than 2022, where we were previously making picks at other sites and had been graded as profitable there. For me specifically, I was profitable on sides and totals in both the 2020 and 2021 seasons while picking games at OddsChecker, giving me three straight seasons in the black in these difficult markets, which again is not to guarantee anything, because I read that and think I’m absolutely due for a losing year.)

Here’s one note on Dalton’s successes from last year, relevant to that comment I made about taking alt lines with bigger payouts, because I’ve heard feedback that suggests how he built his ROI is misunderstood:

That said, out of 259 bets during the 2022 season with a potential profitability of 2 units or more (i.e. +200 or greater on a 1-unit bet, or even longer odds if the unit size was smaller than 1), Dalton was more or less breakeven (-0.79 units, by my count). I share this because I had conversations with a subscriber last year who felt we were taking too many longshots, and that it was important to clarify the ups and downs of that type of betting style. I agree about the clarification note, but that individual also seemed to believe Dalton’s profitability was juiced by only hitting on longshots.

In fact, Dalton grinded out that record one unit at a time, with your far more typical prop bets. That doesn’t mean he’ll stop playing longshot markets; Dalton’s going to play whatever market he thinks is profitable, as he recently wrote about. But the point I’m driving home is his profitability was in no way dependent on big hits, for anyone who might have sustainability concerns related to that.

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The betting landscape can be a tricky one to navigate, but the big thing I want to drive home is we’re trying to do things the right way over there. One of the real perks — as I see it — is we’re a small group, meaning we don’t necessarily move the market anytime we hit a line, which is just an unfortunate reality for some of the larger (and very good) betting services. I do think the future of sports betting packages is in smaller groups, likely charging more money than we currently are at $39/month or $199/year (a number that gets you access for a full 12-month period). That is a pricy figure for some, but it’s also a number that our subscribers last year easily made back, several times over, on the bets we offered. (Again, I must be clear that we don’t guarantee you’ll win the money you invest in the service back multiple times over. That’s merely what happened last year, which I do want to note because many probably wanted to see us prove ourselves in our first year, and I’m proud to say that we very much did.)

If you do want to come join us, you can sign up through our Substack at stealinglines.substack.com, and make sure to follow the instructions to join the Discord (free to join after you’ve subscribed through Substack), where you’ll get access to all of the bets and on the quickest timelines (we try to also send bets out through Substack, but in some cases lines will move making the bets obsolete before we have a chance to write them up fully, which is the reason the Discord exists, for immediate notifications).

Again, I recognize this won’t be for everyone, but wanted to make sure to get it in front of anybody who might be interested. Good luck in any final drafts for those of you still drafting in the next couple days! I’m excited for a quick trip to Vegas for my final in-person drafts in the FFPC and NFFC contests, so you likely won’t hear from me again until I pop in Monday for the first in-season edition of Stealing Signals.

Can’t wait!