blonde poker forum

I have been spending a bit of time in the past week or so looking into these new daily fantasy sports businesses that have popped up over the past year or so and appear to be becoming fairly popular in the States.

The concept is fairly simple in that you pick a fantasy team for that days baseball, nfl, nba or whatever and it is entered into what is effectively like a poker tournament and the best teams win.  You have a salary attached to each player and can only spend up to, say $50k.  The format is very similar to poker tourneys in so far as that there are sit n go's, 50/50's where half the field get paid, big runner games with large guaranteed prize pools.

Now my thinking is that coming up with projections for fantasy players values is very similar in principle to what I do when I am betting sports and there should be, at the very least, some crossover.  I am sure that there are some tweaks to be made to ensure that your rosters work correctly with the scoring systems on the various sites but I think I could figure it out and wanted to see if there was any interest here in forming either some kind of syndicate to give these a go or alternatively just some kind of a staking deal.

The obvious risks would be that I haven't done this before and the market is significantly more sophisticated than I expect.  I doubt this will be the case as, well it is largely Americans,  and it is in its infancy and I have significantly more experience at predicting sporting events than the population i expect participates in these things.  I could this on my own (and might) but there are two reasons I don't want to.  Firstly, I have just bought a house and am working off a slightly smaller roll than usual.  I am earning fairly well off that and the opportunity cost of diverting some of that money elsewhere is pretty high at the moment.  Secondly, we have some amazingly bright guys here that know some of these US sport well and, importantly I think, I have been winning punters and have experience of how to adjust to structures etc. 

At this stage it is just an idea but one that i am willing to put a bit of time and money into and wanted to see if there was any interest from anyone else here in either a) contributing and b) putting some money in.   At this stage I would be lying if I said I had any great ideas about ROI or exactly how big an edge we would have and I suspect it depends somewhat on game selection etc.  Any interest?

Never seen or heard of them but up for gambling on it

Oh the other important factor is that there is a massive landgrab going on between these sites at the moment for marketshare so they are giving away big bonuses which should make it pretty close to +EV without any skill in the early days.  If we started with a roll of a $3-4k we could probably add 50% to that in bonuses on day one.

Presumably you're talking about draftstreet, etc.

I'd be interested - keep getting special offers to sign up with them from everywhere, so just doing that could be +EV in some way!

can't help with a) but would be happy to put in $100 or so if that's any good? Imagine that it would be easier for you with fewer investors putting in more money.

Are the sites reputable as in do they pay up OK? I think the cardrunners guys do one don't they?

I know nothing about US sports but definitely up for investing a couple hundred bucks or so. As you say, early days of this with a modicum of knowledge will be like the golden days of online poker. Shooting fish in a barrel.

From what I can see there are 8-10 reputable looking sites of which about 6 seem to offer 100% signup bonuses up to a couple of hundred.  There has to be a risk of one or more of them going belly up but they also seem to be getting a lot of attention from VC''s and are swimming with money for now.

can you link to some of them please Red?

Only if you promise to come in with us and not against us ;-)

www.draftkings.com (http://www.draftkings.com)
www.draftstreet.com (http://www.draftstreet.com)
www.fanduel.com (http://www.fanduel.com)
www.draftday.com (http://www.draftday.com)

I think those are probably the bigger ones.

haha will take a look mate

It looks great, I can prob get a decent MLB guy involved if we needed one.

MLB would definitely be my weakest sport of the big three and it is the one where you probhably need to be best maths wise as I can imagine there are a bunch of Sabermetricians involved.

In for investing some $'s.

I knew that I had read about it on Pokernews last month, here is an interview with an online guy that has quit poker for it.

 http://www.pokernews.com/muck/interview-jon-aguiar-retires-from-poker-for-daily-fantasy.htm

Actually it was that article that made me think about it and do a bit more research in the first place.  Over the years whilst I have seen a fair few different gambling booms and have done okay I have never really been knuckled down but this feels like something that I have the expertise to take advantage of.  With poker so many others were ahead of the curve in terms of the knowedge base but here I think I should be theoretically.

piece please.

I have fallen in love with this already Red. Looks a great idea.

I have no significant knowledge of any of the sports but would like to be in the syndicate.
I'm also very happy to help with any "administration" required.

No idea what's going on, but in.

I don't know if they have NHL leagues for this but as someone who has been in a 15 team NHL dynasty league (28 man rosters, 28 prospect farm) for 8 years, and is currently reigning champ, I reckon I could have something to add there. Interested in the syndicate for sure.

Vince! Good to see you here.

Cannot contribute, but would be very interested in a small stake if possible.

Know absolute zilch about yankee sports but am willing to throw some dollar at it

are there uk sites that do this for football, rugby, cricket etc? if not would there be a market for them do you think?

That crossed my mind, too......

The amount of people that play Sky Sports Fantasy Football is mind-boggling, it reallly is. But their monsta database helps, of course. 

In !!

There's at least one Premier League football one that I have played on and off since the end of last season. It has less liquidity/smaller prize pools than the US sports ones though - https://www.playon.co.uk/

Would be interested, have heard of draftday mainly through 2+2 promoting it.

Not sure I could help too much but would be interested in learning.

Up for a slice of action pls

Deffo in for some action!

In for as much as possible. This idea kind of occurred to me too having read that article but I don't have the knowledge or mathematical skills.

Willing to contribute financially if you get a syndicate going.

Looked at these a while back after reading an article, some lads were playing 150+ games a day with a 5% roi, called themselves grinders.

Stats n stuff here, http://www.rotoworld.com

They do premier league too.

Definitely interested pending finer details.

In obv

I actually remember thinking of yourself, Tighty and Curtis when I read the article. I was doing something else at the time, so wasn't really paying complete attention and it must have just slipped my mind.


No clue about US sports, but would definitely be up for a punt if it's nothing too heavy.

I have hit a bit of a snag with this in the short term in that they only appear to take US and Canadian residents and citizens as customers which I find a bit bizarre.  Unfortunately until early next year at the earliest I am neither although my wife is but I wouldn't feel that comfortable running a syndicate using an account in someone elses name.  I am still going to take the opportunity to play about with it and hopefully we can look to do this sometime early next year and, on the positive side, I should be able to get a bit of proof of concept in the meantime.

In for when this gets started

Anyone any experience of playing dfs in the UK? Any superior sites with plenty of participants? Can only find one called mondogoal from a quick search.

Mondogoal is the best out for UK users at the minute imo. Biggest guarantees and squad selection. DraftKings will be opening over here soon though so I expect that to trump Mondo.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/magazine/how-the-daily-fantasy-sports-industry-turns-fans-into-suckers.html

Fascinating read. Some interesting crossovers between poker and daily fantasies.

Former Leggo poker coach/founder AEJones just shipped the $15m draftkings main event for $5m. Just shows how much bigger it is over there, top prize in any Fantasy League tourney in UK hasn't been over £5k http://contenders.draftkings.com/

Draftkings UK launched today, app only atm website launching soon. $3 $12k guarantee best football comp for tomorrow.

Any promo codes?

Not that I know of, they do a 100% signup bonus on first deposit.

Are there any tips/strategy articles for this?

I've had a shot at it on a few occasions but performed pretty badly.   

I find the draft kings website quite clunky. 

GoldenDonkey is pretty good. He has a twitter and twitch stream. Basic fantasy league start applies for mondogoal and there are tons of websites/forums, just google it. Draftkings just go heavy on set piece takers.

It will be way easier/better when we can play on computer and not just on the app. Hope they get up and running shortly. First impressions of Draft Kings, I like it but I think the scoring system for Premiership is pretty weird. I've had a few teams today though. Actually I think PGA is a great game to play for getting used to the software.

Have done some pretty extensive work on the format this week, and built a pretty nice algorithm. Didn't quite have time to get the Saturday games in but intrigued to see how it goes for the Sunday. Definitely think the Saturday 3pm double ups will be hugely beatable.Will post up some lineups tomorrow.

I signed up to Draft Kings UK last week........I think there is an edge in the football but avoid US sports...deffo some dead yankee money in the double ups I think.

Can only deposit with Paypal which is a snag at present.

I bubbled 3 double up's yesterday at various buy-ins all because I spent way too much time trying to organise a private league for mates that ended up not going ahead as it never filled, don't like that they cancel a custom game that doesn't fill.  The annoying part was in the games I bubbled i had 3 - 5 players in each eam that never started.   My plan was to build my team around a few top scorers whom I believed would have good days and then just fit in other players who were of low value.  As it planned out, it seems like a good plan but you need to get your non-starters out and just fill the team with players who will have marginal scores.   

Looking forward to this!

We've got some DraftKings fantasy advice up over at http://fairwaywedge.com/2016/02/24/draftkings-tips-honda-classic/ (http://fairwaywedge.com/2016/02/24/draftkings-tips-honda-classic/). Seems pretty soft so far. Also have some iPools picks up for those of you that play there.

Will post my football line ups on Sat once the starting XIs are announced too. Love fantasy sports!