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Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

nytimes.com

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Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#91

Post by joosters »

phillc73 wrote: post #82

I can't really see the problem here. The employee made a bet. Sure, he used information not commonly available, but he didn't do it on his own site. And it was still a bet, not something that was guaranteed to win. If I was employed by a horse racing trainer, and I happened to know certain information about the preparation of a particular horse, which the public hadn't factored into the available odds, and I placed a…

Horse racing (and other sports) insider information is an odd edge case in betting. You can't get rid of it, since the owner/trainer will always know more than the public. So it is grudgingly accepted. Using it as justification for other, preventable insider-information abuse is plain wrong.

The fact that it is a bet, and might not always pay out, is irrelevant. If you keep using insider information, on average you will profit from it.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#92

Post by joosters »

jessaustin wrote: post #29
icelancer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. If 60% of people pick Player X, his value goes down. This is parimutuel betting. You don't want significant overlap if you can help it; how would you beat the crowd otherwise? You find outliers and apply a pricing model that finds the best gaps. The information is incredibly valuable. Take it from someone who did this for a living at one point.

This isn't quite parimutuel, because in that system all the bet totals are published in nearly-real-time. If you wait until 1 MTP to place your bet you have a very good idea what the odds will be. It isn't obvious to me why the sports gambling sites need to keep this information secret, other than to create exploitable situations like those described in TFA.

They don't need to keep the information secret. They could operate just like pool betting if they wanted to. The problem comes when the information is kept private but insiders can see it. This would be equally bad for pari-mutuel betting.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#93

Post by _xzu »

rlpb wrote: post #89
phillc73 wrote: post #82

I can't really see the problem here. The employee made a bet. Sure, he used information not commonly available, but he didn't do it on his own site. And it was still a bet, not something that was guaranteed to win. If I was employed by a horse racing trainer, and I happened to know certain information about the preparation of a particular horse, which the public hadn't factored into the available odds, and I placed a…

I have no idea about the legality, but the implications of this might be bad enough for the betting industry that they could ban this themselves. Otherwise the general public might be less likely to want to bet because they know that the insiders will get a disproportionate amount of the winnings, effectively lessening their odds.

Does someone really think that insider information is not widely used in betting? Every bettor I know, professional or casual, tries to get as much insider tips as possible. Difference is that usually pros have better connections and statistics.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#94

Post by firegrind »

joosters wrote: post #91
phillc73 wrote: post #82

I can't really see the problem here. The employee made a bet. Sure, he used information not commonly available, but he didn't do it on his own site. And it was still a bet, not something that was guaranteed to win. If I was employed by a horse racing trainer, and I happened to know certain information about the preparation of a particular horse, which the public hadn't factored into the available odds, and I placed a…

Horse racing (and other sports) insider information is an odd edge case in betting. You can't get rid of it, since the owner/trainer will always know more than the public. So it is grudgingly accepted. Using it as justification for other, preventable insider-information abuse is plain wrong. The fact that it is a bet, and might not always pay out, is irrelevant. If you keep using insider information, on average you w…

Try opening an account with a sports book company using a gaming industry email address. See how long it stays open and unthrottled.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#95

Post by bluecalm »

startswithaj wrote: post #78
bluecalm wrote: post #70

I don't know much about DFS but it seems to me there is a simple solution to information leakage problem: 1)players construct their line-ups and have a local program compute a secure hash of it (with some player specific data in it like arbitrary 10 digit number at the start) 2)only hashes are posted before the game starts (or once a deadline for submissions is reached or w/e) 3)then a player is allowed to post a mat…

I guess, the trivial inconvenience of the user having to return, recreate the lineup from scratch and remember the 10 digit number/salt (or pull from local memory/localStorage if its the same device) . They would have to do this after the start of the first game but before the end of all the events in the event group. I.E before winners are calculated. If you didn't force the players to do this early on, you wouldn't…

Of course the hash posting and remembering the digits would be done by a DFS client you are using. There could also be intermediares to which you "deposit" your line-ups and they post them for you once the deadline arrives - all is needed is a line-up matching the hash, no authorization from the player required.

Editing the functionality is easy as well, you just replace the hash again. It just requires a local client to do so instead of doing it on the server directly.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#96

Post by wozniacki »

downandout wrote: post #52
icelancer wrote: post #3

As someone who worked in the Internet gambling industry and has to sit and see these Daily Fantasy Sports idiots run their loophole into the ground, I can only laugh. You can't flout your "legality" in front of a bunch of US Senators, advertise fraudulent returns, and have zero regulations and expect to get away with it.

Anyone that wants DFS to go away is almost certainly going to wind up disappointed. Unlike sports gambling, all of the major sports leagues have bought in and decided that this is going to be a major portion of their revenue. DraftKings and FanDuel, in conjunction with the NFL et al will use lobbyists to help draft legislation that makes everything appear kosher while blocking future competition. There is simply too…

  It worked for Facebook, whose massive growth was fueled 
  by deals with large email providers that gave their 
  spammy friend invites a 100% inbox rate.
Could you elaborate on this or cite sources?

Genuinely curious.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#97

Post by downandout »

wozniacki wrote: post #96
downandout wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone that wants DFS to go away is almost certainly going to wind up disappointed. Unlike sports gambling, all of the major sports leagues have bought in and decided that this is going to be a major portion of their revenue. DraftKings and FanDuel, in conjunction with the NFL et al will use lobbyists to help draft legislation that makes everything appear kosher while blocking future competition. There is simply too…

It worked for Facebook, whose massive growth was fueled by deals with large email providers that gave their spammy friend invites a 100% inbox rate. Could you elaborate on this or cite sources? Genuinely curious.

I read about this in The Facebook Effect, a book by David Kirkpatrick. You can actually read the passage here [1] (beginning at the bottom paragraph of page 241). Basically, Hotmail was blocking friend invites from Facebook altogether on some days, and on those days growth would drop by 70%. So, they cut a deal with Microsoft to unblock them. It stands to reason that they did this with at least some other providers as well, although at the time Hotmail was by far the most important roadblock that they successfully removed.

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=RRUkLhyGZVgC&pg=PA241&lpg=...

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#98

Post by Shivetya »

icelancer wrote: post #3

As someone who worked in the Internet gambling industry and has to sit and see these Daily Fantasy Sports idiots run their loophole into the ground, I can only laugh. You can't flout your "legality" in front of a bunch of US Senators, advertise fraudulent returns, and have zero regulations and expect to get away with it.

having a relative who used to work in the TV industry decades ago when games were taped all I can say is, insider information has always driven betting

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#99

Post by kxs »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #66
npkarnik wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think this exactly...but now, given how heavily the NFL, NFLPA, and individual teams have been promoting Draftkings/FanDuel, it's obvious that the business model involves paying kickbacks to all the important stakeholders in the sport. And regarding how relatively chummy the NFL is with elected officials, don't forget that commissioner Roger Goddell's father was both a senator and representative from NY sta…

Draftkings have been running ads heavily on Saturdays for college football. I think it's more than ESPN; I remember seeing the commercials on CBS as well.

Has been featured in the recent episodes of The League on FX as well.

Re: Fantasy Sports Employees Bet at Rival Sites Using Inside Information

#100

Post by jegutman »

harryh wrote: post #67
swang wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can enter multiple times I believe with different lineups. So you enter some lineups with high variance low % picked players.

But if your system is to pick high variance players that are also underrepresented on other players rosters how many lineups can there be? I remain skeptical that this is a viable strategy.

Here's an experiment: Go enter some giant free-roll and a $10 tournament with a huge guaranteed prize pool. I would bet that the top score (not the average) in the free-roll will have higher score. Now take the points that each player scored and their original cost and you can use a variant of the knapsack problem[1] to figure out the optimal lineup. You'll see that quite often the optimal lineup wasn't picked by anybody (mostly because the player costs are pretty good and the optimal lineup sometimes doesn't use the full salary).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem

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