
Top fantasy sports player uses software, analytics to reap millions - livestyle
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/12/23/from-boston-penthouse-world-best-fantasy-player-plunges-into-startup-world/QHNpLh0O3QMyUDqTd4t27N/story.html
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swanson
It's a selling shovels during the gold rush move.

There are tons of people popping up that sell lineups on Twitter (similar to
stock picking 'schemes', split your audience and keep selling to the ones that
you gave good picks). There are paid analytics tools like the one in the
article (and others endorsed nearly every other top 10 player). You can buy
projections built on someone's machine learning model, or the aggregate of 50
top fantasy analysts. For a few bucks, you can get an Excel addon to optimize
your lineups and script enter them for you. There are "group pools" that stake
players to enter high-limit contests.

Take every business idea or angle from stock trading and online poker and they
either exist already or will be released before next NFL season for DFS.

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asdfzxc
Funny I came across this line recently, in an article about trading terminals
like the ones manufactured by Bloomberg etc. Maybe this guy's company is
offering something to that effect - A glorified Data visualization software?
(edit: Bloomberg's offering probably has much more value) It's a pretty smart
move.

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jonathanberger
The fact he's investing his time in building tools for others rather than
putting all his time into winning on his own, raises doubts about his actual
winnings.

One explanation might be that he's maxed out how much he can win.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Another, perhaps more cynical explanation, is that he's actually being paid by
one or more Fantasy Sports companies to help promote the notion that playing
is a skill based activity rather than a gambling activity. Since the latter
gets you banned in NYC :-)

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knowaveragejoe
But both skill and luck are at play in DFS.

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nickodell
Sure, but that's also true of, for example, poker. However, many states
consider poker to be gambling.

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TheLogothete
Gambling does not mean that poker is not a game of skill.

~~~
dragonwriter
As a key issue with DFS is state laws in which "gambling" is _legally
distinguished_ from "games of skill", yes, in context, it does.

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TheLogothete
I'm not from the US, so didn't know that, but it is stupid. Gambling and game
of skill are not mutually exclusive. Gambling means that there is some
variance, some risk involved. You gamble on the outcome. That doesn't mean you
cannot develop a skillset which will make taking the risk profitable, over the
long term. Any law that says otherwise is ill-written.

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akerl_
By that definition, every action you undertake is gambling. Driving to the
grocery store is gambling. But since regulating driving your car to the shop
under "gambling" laws doesn't make sense, "gambling" as a legal concept
involves wagering money on games of chance, and "games of chance" is a
distinct concept which is separated from "games of skill". This is the line
that DFS is trying to walk, because the skill side of the line is the side
that lets them operate in places where gambling is more strictly regulated.

~~~
TheLogothete
Like I said, any law that insists on making a mutual distinction between games
of skill and gambling (risking money on a probability of an outcome) is ill-
written.

Poker is a game of skill just like backgammon. You can wager money and there
is risk (chance) involved, but you can develop skills which will ensure that
you are a winner over a less skilled opponent. Just like golf. There is always
the chance that you will not make the necessary strikes and a less skilled
opponent takes a game from you, but over the long run, you can sufficiently
influence the outcome and achieve a positive win rate. This is what makes it a
skill-based game. You influence it by your skills. You can place wagers and
gamble on the outcome, but that doesn't suddenly make it any less not a game
of skill.

I'm not very familiar with fantasy sports, but to the best of my knowledge,
the same holds true there too.

A game of chance cannot be distinguished from games of skill. All games
involve chance. This problem probably arises from the poor understanding of
"chance" and probabilities by the people who wrote the law (presuming Hanlon's
razor here). They wanted to ban games where the operator bleeds the players
dry, like slots, lottery, etc., and called them "game of chance", but there is
more to the story of "chance", like i outlined above.

~~~
dragonwriter
Actually, I think your argument rests on a poor understanding of the laws you
are criticizing, as you presume incorrectly that they rely on definitions of
"game of chance" and "game of skill" such that the former must have no element
of skill and the latter no element of chance.

The definitions are different in each case, but none of them work that way. In
New York, for instance, the outcome depending materially on chance, whether or
not skill is also involved, makes it a game of chance.

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TheLogothete
The outcome of which game, exactly, is not dependent on chance, in some form,
or another?

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geococcyxc
If you've never heard of "fantasy sports", John Oliver to the rescue:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq785nJ0FXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq785nJ0FXQ)

~~~
daurnimator
(video not available outside of america)

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plinkplonk
plays in India

~~~
agiamas
plays in EU

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jah
I built a system that scraped projections off
[http://apps.fantasyfootballanalytics.net/projections](http://apps.fantasyfootballanalytics.net/projections)
and joined them with weekly salary information from DraftKings. I then ran
that data through a genetic algorithm that maximized projected fantasy points
while keeping the team salary under the limit.

I entered about 10 matches ... and I lost every single match.

I don't know if my projection data was bad, my sample size too small, or if I
was just unlucky. I gave up after a few weeks.

~~~
quaffapint
I scraped from about 6 different sites - went through millions of combinations
and only did so-so. I think it's simple - the people that win play A LOT of
rosters to cover their bases. That seems to be what the person in the story is
doing and what I've read other big players are doing.

~~~
micwawa
I'm curious if there is a way to scrape the historical roster data, so one
could figure out how much variance the other players are getting. On FanDuel
you can browse through the other rosters by hand, but the API doesn't appear
to let you scrape the entire contest.

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kriro
The juice in DFS is ridiculous but the player pool is full of really bad
players. As soon as the player pool gets a bit better the edges get too small
in my opinion. I have no access to DFS as I'm in Europe once I do I'll
probably adapt my dynasty FF points predictor to it for fun :)

Good time to switch to selling the software if you anticipate the edges to get
smaller. Quite similar to the poker world where people that used to win big
sell coaching at high rates and quite often people figure out that those
coaches don't beat the games anymore etc.

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phillc73
I'm in Europe and have played DFS with Mondogoal.

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akoumjian
Wouldn't commercializing these tools reduce his own potential earnings?

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has2k1
As the top ranked player, selling his "methods" could be more lucrative than
his competition earnings. If the he considers the barrier to be sufficiently
low, then he would expect his earnings to drop with time. There are ways of
looking at it that make his decision rational.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Wouldn't sales drop with time as the market is saturated with identical
players?

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has2k1
If you have high earnings in a market that you think has a low barrier of
entry, you can expect worthy competitors to show up. If you are the worthy
competitor (No. 2) but maybe just cannot dethrone the number one, then you
could decide to sell methods that make you a worthy competitor.

When more worthy competitors join because the No. 2 guy decided sell his
secrets, top guy makes even less as the each participant's winnings are drawn
from the pool. In this case profit margin is proportional to the _difference_
in skill.

If you are the top guy, you could look on as the No. 2 guy establishes a
solutions market (as your profits drop) or you could start the solutions
market.

It seems like if you are the top guy, the main consideration is How
special/unique is my secret sauce? The answer to that and guides the second,
When is the right time to become a solutions provider?

There will be market saturation with either your product or that of another
entity. With time the game approaches to pure gambling and the money paid for
the solutions becomes a Vig of sorts! Along the way sales would drop
according.

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mr_turtle
I think this is less an argument for how much skill is involved in DFS - there
is, but how slim the chances are for recreation players to win against the
pros. This seems like a scam for recs who stand no chance.

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TheLogothete
How slim are the chances to win a chess match against Magnus Carlsen?

~~~
jegutman
Probably the better comparison would be how likely an amateur is to win
against the world backgammon champion. Backgammon has some luck in it with
dice rolls, but if the skill difference is big enough luck has a much tougher
time making any difference.

