One of the guys in my circle invests and does fairly well, but as you note in the article below, it's a rip off for the casual player. The scandal(?) last week was a set up to promote the game (like they need to with commercials on every channel running every 30 minutes) and confirm to the pubic that's it's legit.

Basically you have two major companies in the game right now. I'll call them "A" and "B". So last year when my friend came to town for a visit, he showed me some numbers. He was playing $100 50/50 games at both sites. He quickly learned how "A" is ripping off it's clients with "filler" entries.

Example... He took the same line up, with the exception of the TE (to fit under salary cap) and played 6 entries on both sites ($50 & $100 - 50/50).

On site "A" every single entry was ranked 51st or 52nd....oh so close. Where on site "B" he was in the top 25 on every entry.

Same thing occurred on several 250 entry leagues with short buy ins ($10 - 25) when they pay off the top ten. On one entry he finished third on site "B", while site "A" he finished 15th or so.

Anyway you stack it up, this is a scam. In addition, this will also prolong IMO a move to allow sports wagering on a national scale not help.

It won't take long for Capital hill to stick their nose in it.



Descent read.


Haralabos Voulgaris, also known as Bob Voulgaris or H-Bob on Bill Simmons' podcasts, is a professional sports gambler, and has been called "the world's top NBA gambler."

Voulgaris has made a name for himself identifying patterns, locating edges, and developing models and algorithms to beat the sportsbooks.

According to ESPN, he had accumulated "a fortune" before turning 30, and routinely bet $1 million on NBA games in a single day.

Voulgaris was a guest on ESPN Radio's "The Dan Le Batard Show" on Wednesday to talk about the scandal that has hit the daily-fantasy-sports industry.

In this recent controversy, The New York Times reported that one employee for DraftKings was shown to have access to valuable data the same week he won $350,000 at rival site FanDuel, raising questions about who had access to what data.

According to Voulgaris, this is not really a big advantage as the data can be found by regular players if they do the right research, at least for NFL games.

"The advantage that he had is not even really that big of an advantage in the NFL," Voulgaris told the show. "The information he was using is basically publicly available on a Thursday. So basically, if you enter a bunch of contests on a Thursday, you can see the ownership of all of the players that you selected and that's representative of that Thursday for the following Sunday's NFL."

In other words, a player can see the ownership data on Thursday and the patterns will likely still be the same on Sunday. Voulgaris does explain that this type of data would have a bigger advantage in MLB daily-fantasy-sports games since the games are played and completed in a single day instead of over a five-day window.

But this doesn't mean the average player isn't getting screwed. In fact, Voulgaris says the casual player sitting at home and watching NFL games for fun is getting "fleeced."

"The real issue is, that I think people don't realize, is the fact that the person who is tuning in and seeing these commercials, and signing up to play in these multi-tournaments, where the winner gets a million dollars, I think if they knew that they were going to enter maybe three, or four, or five entries, but a pro is going to enter 1,000 entries, they wouldn't think it was that exciting to enter these contests. I think that's the part where there is some impropriety.

If the actual casual viewer, watching these commercials and signing up, knew they weren't competing against other like-minded people like themselves, that they're competing against professionals who have algorithms and thousands and thousands of entries in all these tournaments, they would realize that their chances of winning are really not that good and it's really not as exciting as they think it is ... the pros are winning all the money and they are also entering all the contests.

It's a giant partnership between the pros and the sites, and the unsuspecting customers who are doing this for entertainment are literally getting fleeced."

What Voulgaris is describing is not unlike playing poker, something else he has excelled at. Playing regular fantasy sports, at sites like ESPN.com, is like playing poker with your friends for a few bucks. Playing daily fantasy sports is like going to Vegas and sitting down at a poker table, where two or three of the other players are secretly pros, and thinking the game is going to be just like the one played in your coworker's basement.

It's not, and it won't be, and you are probably going to get fleeced.

Just checked my email after starting this thread...

What a bunch of malarkey.



As the three co-founders of DraftKings, we want to speak to you directly about what has been going on.

We know that you play DraftKings because it's fun and because it gives you a chance to showcase your skills against millions of other fans, and we know that you cannot do that without a level playing field.

The fairness and integrity of our contests has been at the heart of everything we have built since we started the company three and a half years ago.

Over the past week, questions have arisen around an employee of ours who won a significant prize on a competitor's site. While our internal investigation has reflected absolutely no wrongdoing on his part, this has still pushed us to reevaluate our processes.

Long before this happened, the wheels were in motion for an external review of our policies and procedures. Given the pace of our growth, we felt that an audit was critical to ensure the security of our platform, so we hired an external law firm experienced with these issues to conduct a full review.

But that is not enough. In addition to this audit, we have put in place a set of core measures that we believe are central to this process:
• We expanded our existing policy prohibiting DraftKings employees from playing on our site to prohibit participation in any public daily fantasy sports contests for money.
• We also will prohibit employees from any other Daily Fantasy Sports contest operator from participating in games on DraftKings.
• We are actively reviewing our organizational structure and will add resources to ensure compliance with all recommendations stemming from internal and external findings.
• We are working with multiple third parties to strengthen all internal policies and procedures.
The events of the past week have caused us to take a broader look and to ask those both here and externally to widen the scope of their analysis of our business.

We are aware that there is room for growth, regardless of the strength of our current platform. We will work tirelessly to improve all aspects of our customer experience, which is every bit as important to us as the effort we put into our product.

You will no doubt continue to hear from the media about both DraftKings and the industry. It is our prerogative to keep driving that conversation ourselves. We will work to respond to your concerns in complete transparency and to inform you of the steps we are taking to inspire your full trust.

Please know how grateful we are for the passion and loyalty you have shown DraftKings throughout our history and especially over the past week. You remain our greatest priority.

Thank you,

Jason Robins, Matt Kalish & Paul Liberman
Co-Founders, DraftKings

That other shoe has a name and it is called Full Tilt Ponzi or the third shoe called Absolute UB software con. When that amount of dollars is involved and human nature being what it is there are enough shoes for a couple centipedes South Park or otherwise

The US Attorney’s office in Tampa, Florida has reportedly convened a grand jury to investigate whether daily fantasy sports (DFS) operators are acting in violation of the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA).

Gaming law attorney Daniel Wallach (@WALLACHLEGAL) broke the news late on Friday, the perfect capper to what is undeniably the single worst week in daily fantasy sports history. If you’ve just emerged from a coma and wondering why your favorite DFS operator is wearing tar and feathers, start here, then go here, here and here.

The IGBA defines an illegal gambling business as one that is operating in violation of a state law and Wallach has written extensively on the quirk in Florida law that could prove dangerous for DFS operators, who have long argued that their product isn’t gambling due to its reliance on skill.

Florida law prohibits wagering on “the result of any trial or contest of skill, speed or power or endurance of human or beast.” The prohibition applies equally to bettors and those who facilitate such wagers, including operators, financial institutions and those who “aid, assist or abet in any manner” this activity.

In 1991, then-Attorney General Robert Butterworth issued an opinion which said this prohibition applied to any “fantasy sports league whereby contestants pay an entry fee for the opportunity to select actual professional sports players to make up a fantasy team whose actual performance statistics result in cash payments from the contestants’ entry fees to the contestant with the best fantasy team.”

Butterworth’s opinion predates the rise of DFS and has yet to be tested in court. Prior to the reports of the grand jury investigation, Capitol News Service had quoted Florida’s current Attorney General’s office saying it was “not currently investigating” any DFS companies.

Florida is currently examining its gaming market following the expiration of the state’s compact with the Seminole tribe, and the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) hopes DFS can be included in the conversation. The FSTA recently ramped up its lobbying efforts in Florida to help ‘educate’ legislators on “the dynamics of fantasy sports” and has given $10k apiece to four political action committees in the past two weeks.

Rob Bradley, who chairs the state Senate’s Regulated Industries committee and acts as the Senate’s lead negotiator on gambling issues, apparently has yet to receive his FSTA check. Bradley told the Miami Herald that he’d seen some of DraftKings and FanDuel‘s ubiquitous DFS TV commercials and believes “they are promoting a product that looks a lot like sports betting.”

MEANWHILE…
In the day’s other DFS developments, Yahoo has joined the chorus of DFS operators who have banned their employees from playing real-money DFS contests at rival sites. The National Hockey League, which has a multi-year partnership with DraftKings and already bans its players from playing real-money hockey DFS contests, announced it was extending the prohibition to league employees.

Following a solo media blitz by CEO Jason Robins, DraftKings’ three founders sent emails to all their players on Friday asking them to ignore the mainstream media’s torches and pitchforks. For anyone who’s been following this story, the epistle by Robins, Matt Kalish and Paul Liberman won’t break any new ground.

The trio acknowledges that the mainstream media drumbeat regarding the scandal will likely get louder but insists it is “our prerogative to keep driving that conversation ourselves.” They promise to “work to respond to your concerns in complete transparency” but one gets the sense they live in houses with frosted windows.

For instance, the trio continues to insist that the scandal hadn’t driven their decision to hire law firm Greenberg Traurig to evaluate DraftKings’ internal policies and procedures, yet the company continues to employ very non-specific language that fails to articulate a definitive timeline of events. Instead, players are told that “long before this happened, the wheels were in motion for an external review.” And remember kids, Bill Clinton did not have sexual relations with that woman.

The summarization of the Bob Voulgaris radio interview is a must read. Well presented and very enlightening. Too bad the NY Times reporter who broke the story didn't call Bob. Some of the opinions in the Times presented as fact were way off.