
In Fantasy Sports, Signs of Insiders’ Edge - caminante
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/sports/fantasy-sports-draftkings-fanduel-insiders-edge-football.html
======
klenwell
If your takeaway from this article is "if only I had more time to write an
algorithm" or "if only I could get my hands on some better data", you're
missing the point here.

That geeks with computers were going to win all the money should have already
been obvious to anyone who hangs around here. The scandal here is that
employees of these two sites have been effectively colluding with each other
to dominate each other's contests. So even if you had implemented your
can't-lose algorithm, you'd still be losing.

As to buried ledes, how's this?

 _Neither company would say how much its employees had won, but Justine Sacco,
a spokeswoman for FanDuel, said DraftKings employees had won less than $10
million in her company’s contests._

Infamous Twitter pariah Justine Sacco is working again. Good for her.

~~~
caminante
Wow re: Sacco! Good recall -- assuming it's the same person. I guess her PR
spin abilities apply to her career too.

P.S. I find the language re: $10M funny. $1 less is still a big number, and I
sense weasel words.

------
ssharp
I signed up for an account on Draft Kings last year after seeing a ton of
advertising for it. I had been seeing the daily fantasy sports stuff for years
after the U.S. destroyed online poker but allowed for betting on fantasy
sports, but hadn't tried it and it didn't seem all that popular. After signing
onto Draft Kings, I saw that it had obviously become extremely popular.

I dabbled around a bit in the NBA games and quickly saw some strategies that
would likely work if tailored more. However, it was entirely clear that the
way to win money in those contests would be to build a model that could spit
out lineups. In the big tournaments, a model could easily create a large
number of high-variance lineups. In head-to-head or smaller games, it could
create lower-risk lineups.

I started to draw up a lot of ideas on what the model could do to try and
predict things like playing time, share of points/rebounds/assists, etc.

When it came time to actually build it out, I shelved it, largely because it
was going to take time and money to work with the type of stats I needed, but
also because I'd assume there are already a lot of people on these sites doing
this. In fact, I'm assuming everyone who is profitable on those sites is
running model-generated lineups. There are still lots of fish pumping money
in, but the people taking it out would be at least as, and likely more,
sophisticated than what I could do.

There is an extremely popular NBA bettor and he runs a multi-million dollar
operation, hiring several analysts to help him make his predictions. In fact,
he's actually consulted privately with several NBA teams because his analysis
was ahead of what many NBA teams were doing several years ago.

If those are the types of people you're up against, it's a battle of
algorithms, not people.

~~~
MSM
I had/have an algorithm that I use for MLB games. The stats are relatively
easy to find and past that it's just trying to figure out what things
"matter". I had a lot of fun day dreaming about which things are important to
factor in. Some parks are hitters parks, some pitchers walk batters more
often, most batters have a better average depending on the handedness of the
pitcher, etc. There are thousands of things you can factor in.

If I'm being honest, it didn't make a whole lot of money before I shelved it
myself. The most important factor is that the lineups are rarely submitted
early enough for me to bet on a full day. Usually I found myself being able to
only play the late games, which is typically 4-6 total teams. It really limits
the creativity of the lineups.

In the future I'd like to try it with some other sports (NBA is a big one,
because the lineup issue shouldn't be as big of a factor, same with hockey).
But I don't expect to make millions, it's just a programming problem that's a
ton of fun to solve for.

~~~
swanson
Yeah, it's very hard for it to be a completely "hands-off" process. Just some
warning though, NBA is actually one of the worst offenders in having
incomplete lineup information until right before games start because NBA teams
are not required to list their inactives (NFL teams are with at least one hour
notice before kickoff).

I liked playing NBA last year, but you have to basically block off 6-7pm EST
to just track injury news, late scratches, and changes to the starting lineups
:(

------
coldcode
I still find it hard to understand why fantasy sports that pays money to
winners is different from bookmaking. Betting on players instead of teams is
hardly different; all you are doing is narrowing the odds a little. You are
still betting money for a chance to win money. Maybe people think it's more
like playing Powerball.

~~~
jegutman
Here's the simplest explanation. Neither should be illegal, they made a law
that explicitly banned one and not the other.

Also there's fundamentally a difference between playing against other players
and playing against the house. If the professionals on draft kings / fan duels
got to play the house in a similar setup it would be even worse for the people
playing for fun.

Why are people allowed to go to the movies? In New York a movie ticket is $15
and 90% of the movies are, in my opinion, absolute crap. So that's $15 with a
10% chance of getting your moneys worth and a 90% chance of losing all of it
and 2 hours your time!

I think the one reason why it's different for the leagues is that daily
fantasy doesn't really create as large of incentives to throw games or rig
games as much from the refs or players point of view (not that it's common,
but it's definitely happened in the past).

~~~
dbot
I'm not going to disagree, but...we are chemically-driven machines. Gambling
triggers addictive releases of pleasure/pain that aren't equivalent to most
other forms of entertainment. Most forms of gambling are successful because
they are excellent at delivering random reinforcement to players, which is key
to many addictive behaviors. But the games themselves are not intrinsically
interesting to most people.

DFS takes applies the same principles of gambling and couples it with the most
popular sport in the country.

~~~
jegutman
I agree with your general assessment. I think one sane area for regulation is
tracking large losers and having mechanisms to help addicts create self-
enforcement (banning themselves effectively).

However, I think the mobile gaming industry is probably just as responsible in
this way. Clash of clans has people spending 50k+ per year (outliers of
course) on the game and also tries to trigger a similar gambling-style
positive feeling. They also are some of the most effective mobile advertisers
tracking individual customers all over the internet. Do you think these
"whales" get enough control on how they're targeted by companies?

------
swanson
I've had decent success at buying this kind of "edge". There is a ton of free
information out there, but if you are willing to shell out a little money
upfront, you can get pretty close to the same tools the "pros" are using.
$50-100 for a season can get you access to algorithmic/machine-learning backed
predictions (with secret sauce) and $20/month for high quality lineup
optimization tools and automated entry scripts. The vast majority will not pay
for tools/projections but for an outlay of ~$100, I won around 10x that on NBA
games last season (plus had a lot of fun).

~~~
samsnelling
Would you mind sharing a few links? I've been interested in the prediction
engines for NBA games for a few years now.

~~~
swanson
Sure, here is what I used for last season:

[https://basketballmonster.com/](https://basketballmonster.com/) for
projections (terrible website, but really good). Don't have much information
on their approach, but the common wisdom for NBA is to project fantasy points
per minute and then predict how many minutes each player will get. Factors
also include pace (how many possessions each team will get) and DVP (defense
vs position).

[https://twitter.com/baskmonster](https://twitter.com/baskmonster) the best
twitter account for posting injury/lineup news

[https://www.fantasycruncher.com/](https://www.fantasycruncher.com/) lineup
optimizer and scripting auto-entry. Also has a really nice free feature called
"Lineup Rewind" that you can use to "back test" previously days/weeks data.

Fantasy Cruncher comes with their own projections, but I didn't use them; you
can import the BasketballMonster projections into the tool instead.

------
exhilaration
_On Wednesday, he posted his story on Reddit.com. Twenty minutes later, the
DraftKings co-founder Matt Kalish called him. On Friday, Robins, Kalish and
Liberman — the founders — sent an email intended to mollify their customers,
many of whom are concerned._

Can anyone find this Reddit discussion? I'd like to see what the public thinks
of all this.

------
Bostonian
No one is forced to bet on fantasy sports, so I hope the government does not
get involved trying to make it "fair".

------
durzagott
Does anyone know why American headlines are written in this way? It would
sound more natural if it was "Signs of Insiders' Edge in Fantasy Sports"

I've seen this a few times before, so I'm guessing it must be a cultural
thing.

~~~
stygiansonic
It might be a New York Times thing, or at least one that has perhaps spread to
other American journalists: [0][1][2]

 _" The new-style headlines are a far cry from stereotypical Times headlines,
which have been mocked for the prepositional phrases that often introduce
them, like this one from last Monday’s paper, “After 8 Shots, a Quiet Officer
Now Scorned.” Their frequency years ago once led to a Twitter meme in which
book titles were rewritten in that style. (Among them: “Of Oz, the Wizard.”)"_

0\. [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/public-editor/hey-
google-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/public-editor/hey-google-check-
out-this-column-on-headlines.html)

1\. [http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/193943/on-twitter-
book...](http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/193943/on-twitter-book-titles-
rewritten-as-new-york-times-headlines/)

2\. Yes, the irony is that this is also a New York Times article.

------
chillydawg
Just as with sports betting in general, there will be a very small cabal of
bookmakers and pro punters who absolutely clean up and everyone else who funds
them.

