Yup. I think I do more than most as far as NFL DFS. I'm only playing $3-$40 a week, but I've taken the time to build software to help me find pricing inefficiencies. Others are doing the same thing full time. If any of them had insider info on top of the advantage they already have, it would be murder. From reading up on the top players, and listening to interviews with them, most are making about 8% on a given week or set of games, and they make most of their money in sports other than Football. I've heard from more than one "shark" that the NFL is the most difficult game to "moneyball".
There is difference between stock market analysis and this. For stock, the information is availble to everyone. If you're smart enough to use it in a new creative way -- more power to you. For daily fantasy, information about other people's selection is NOT available to everyone, this is what makes it "insider".
And you're just using publicly available information. If you had material non-public information, like access to the Fan Duel or Draft Kings data base of what every FF player is playing on every game, I'd imagine you'd win more. That's the issue, not about being able to predict what player is going to score more TDs because that's impossible. _
That's the misconception about insider trading. Oftentimes it's knowing something about a company because you are and insider or have been given information by an insider. Acquisition target, sales figures, patent filings, material adverse litigation ruling, etc. But there is information that may not relate to a specific company but is still material non-public information that will give someone buying or selling securities an unfair or illegal advantage. Knowing that a player is not going to play or the severity of an injury while know one else knows that is insider information. Knowing what a million FF players are doing is material enough to give someone with that information an unfair and potentially illegal advantage. _
I understand that. I just don't buy that knowing how often players are picked guarantees success or an advantage. With insider trading in a company, the information DIRECTLY affects the stock value, so you are guaranteed to make money if you act accordingly. In fan duel, it's still a guess. You don't know that somebody is going to succeed, just because more people picked him or didn't pick him. To me that's the huge difference in the situation with Fan Duel. To be fair, they probably should disallow employees to participate in the games OR make the knowledge about the percentages of picked players public knowledge. I will agree with that, although I still don't see a big advantage in knowing those figures.
Of course it's a huge advantage to know the percentages of players picked when winning the big pots requires you have player(s) not many people picked but had big games. It's not a guaranteed win but it's an obvious advantage when you can build your rosters off the lower percentage picked players. The fact that you don't "buy it" doesn't mean it's not an advantage. It just means you're dense. If it wasn't an advantage they could have quickly eliminated any skepticism by just showing the percentages publicly.
Are you a mathematician or a quant or have a degree in advanced statistics? Again it's not about having inside information about players. It's about having inside information about a game of chance based off of statistics. I don't think guys who are winning big or are winning consistently enough to do it as more than a hobby are playing because they are big football fans. I think they've figured out a way statistically to tip the odds in their favor. The more and better info you have, the odds favor you. Having information on who everyone else is playing might be just that advantage to make you a consistent winner. And if that information was derived because you work at Fan Duel, that is material non public information and you are gaining an unfair advantage. And if you worked at a finance firm or securities firm like me, that is highly illegal. Again, it's not always about the target of an acquisition or a patent application being approved. Information that you got from an insider. It's about trading on material non-public information regardless of where the information came from. I guess if you don't believe having information --reams and reams if it-- about who is playing whom in a game of chance is an advantage, then maybe you have a point. I'd bet the quants who do this for a living would pay dearly for that information. _
http://www.businessinsider.com/fand...-rival-sites-using-inside-information-2015-10 “It is absolutely akin to insider trading,” said Daniel Wallach, a sports and gambling lawyer at Becker & Poliakoff told the New York Times. “It gives that person a distinct edge in a contest.” _
And this should start the digging of the grave or at least make it only legal inside casinos http://www.reviewjournal.com/busine...regulators-ban-daily-fantasy-sports-the-state
Well... the proof is kinda in the pudding, ain't it? The guy with inside knowledge won $350K. Unless you want to tell me that you believe his winning the very first time he tried this shit is accidental. But then it'd make for a very weird belief system.
Hmm, I didn't know that. Can you give a realistic example, not with actual company name, but real-life scenario?
If you consistently give me correct information on picks people are making, I'm quitting my job -- no BS, no kidding. I'll cost me a little time and money to develop custom program (say.. 5-7K and ~ 1.5 months) and I'll need another ~ 2K in seed money. After that my biggest worry will be to stay just under the radar of the wise guys (both of legal and illegal variety).
Sure. In my business (we finance companies and we also trade in their debt securities) it's all about parity of information. We may have a unique role in the financing--Agent, LC issues, bookrunner etc where we may be in possession of material non-public information--not the type of inside information that would make a stock price rise or fall (like an acquisition or a patent approval or the like) --but still more or better information than the market as a whole--say projections and forecasts where the long term price of a debt instrument might be effected. We may also finance a competitor OR we may do a different type of financing for the same Company by another one of our divisions that will give us a unique insight to the Company that the holders of other debt securities in the class we hold don't have. We can't trade those securities while we have that material non public information until our counterparty has parity of information. Once we determine we have that info, that Company goes on our restricted list and we can't buy or sell its debt securities OR it's stock--my company OR any of our employees. In fact, as an investor in these types of debt securities--you can choose to receive only public side information (so you can continue to trade) or private side information in which case you are restricted. But there are many people who hold the private side info--again, it's not as if we've been tipped off to an event or events that will cause an immediate and significant swing in a stock price. _
Is he winning every week? If so, you may have a point. Anyways, I respect yours and Stokes' opinions, I just don't agree that there is a real advantage to knowing any of that, at least not as much as insider trading, where you are pretty much guaranteed to make money. I'll agree to disagree on this. I did say that it would probably be fair to either release that same info to the public or not allow employees to play. I was looking at it from an NFL perspective, but I could see how something like baseball would give a bigger advantage due to larger sample size. Day to day, however it's still very difficult to predict even knowing patterns and who the public picks.
Yeah that's what I meant when I said, "Others are doing the same thing full time. If any of them had insider info on top of the advantage they already have, it would be murder." The issue for me isn't the ownership percentage, as a matter of the fact that one of their bloggers/experts can call up an IT guy and get a report of non public information. It tells me there are weak data governance controls in place, which means wackier stuff can go on. How do I know DK/Fanduel employees aren't swapping players after they're locked?
Yeah I guess that was my point. I don't play daily FF (I'm in a one season long FF league and I really don't enjoy it) and I am not a mathematician, nor a quant nor do I have a degree in advanced statistics. But when you are playing a game of chance and one side has access to information a competitor does not have, when that information could be in the billions of bits, when there are astrophysics engineers building algorithms that can use that information to gain an unfair (and in my mind illegal) advantage, then that's akin to insider trading. Admittedly, I have no idea how the information is being used, but it's the concept that one side has more and better info and the other side has less and worse info that makes it clear non-insiders are at a significant disadvantage and will, on balance, lose more than they win. It's no longer a game of chance. _
Too much opportunity for shenanigans. How do we know if Refs, Players or NFL team personnel have accounts? Imagine what could be done with insider information OR as has already happened, a (replacement) Ref has a fantasy FB account with a player in the game he's officiating... From what I've read, already several states are investigating insider info trading regarding these 2 titans of Fantasy Football. http://www.democratandchronicle.com...orts-attorney-general-investigation/73581918/ http://www.democratandchronicle.com...orts-attorney-general-investigation/73581918/ The potential here for cheating is astounding. Some of this shit makes Pete Rose look like an amateur. How do you police this? How do you keep a bench guy with insider info making a ton of cash on FD or DK? How do you keep players from getting accounts? That Robert Kraft owns a percentage is a conflict of interest that even an idiot like Goddell could win in court. If the NFL is serious about curbing gambling, they need to disassociate themselves from FD/DK today. Not only that, they also need to forbid any NFL associated person from having an account. If they fail in this, fixing games will become the reality instead of a paranoid fantasy.
