Poker’s “Non-Level Playing Field”

Saw early Friday that news about DraftKings and FanDuel both filing lawsuits against the New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman following his declaration earlier in the week that both sites would need to skeddaddle from the Empire State.

Can’t say I’ve studied both lawsuits too closely (you can find both here at The Boston Globe). Unlike in past years when proposed bills and legal action regarding online poker would provoke several hours of reading and link-chasing in an effort to get a handle on every last detail, the DFS saga can’t really capture my attention as thoroughly.

I did read both, though, as well as several articles surrounding this new development in New York. Both lawsuits seek injuctions against Schneiderman to stop him from stopping them from operating in his state, and both sites make similar points to support their arguments. The tone is more strident in the DraftKings one, I think, or at least that’s my impression. And there’s one other item unique to the DraftKings suit that kind of stands out for poker players bothering to sort through these DFS defenses.

In his declaration last week, Schneiderman announced that a review by his office “conclude[d] that DraftKings’/FanDuel’s operations constitute illegal gambling under New York law.” (Last month the Nevada Gaming Commission likewise ruled DFS to be gambling and thus subject to that state’s licensing procedures.) Schneiderman also highlighted other objections to allowing DFS in NY -- “not on my watch,” he writes -- including describing DFS as “neither victimless nor harmless” in its effects and charging that the sites “consistently use deceptive advertising.”

Responding to the characterization of dailiy fantasy sports as gambling, DraftKings in its lawsuit goes down the road of trying to emphasize DFS’s skill component. FanDuel does this as well in its lawsuit, but in a more general way that doesn’t overstate their position or introduce too many non sequiturs (as far as I can tell).

But get this from DK...

“DFS is... fundamentally different than other games about which the issue of skill versus chance has been previously debated, such as poker,” notes DraftKings. “Unlike poker, where players start each hand on a non-level playing field based on the cards they are randomly dealt, in DFS, each user starts in the exact same position and has complete and total control over the lineup the user chooses, within the consistent constraint of the salary cap.”

Set aside for the moment what is being said in the second half of that sentence about DFS and how everyone starts similarly with the same player base from which to choose, the same salary cap, and the same “complete and total control” over their entries. Look at the first half and how poker is being described. Is that not one of the strangest ways of highlighting the chance element of poker (and minimizing its skill component) anyone has ever tried before?

A hand of hold’em does certainly begin with the deal, and it cannot be denied that each player’s hand is going to be unique, thus creating what might be called a “non-level playing field.” You could also talk about the players’ different positions and uneven stack sizes making the playing field “non-level,” too. But to do so absurdly reduces the game of poker down to a single hand, ignoring the fact that the game is almost never actually played that way.

Over the course of many hands, the chance element introduced by “the cards they are randomly dealt” more or less evens out (more so with the more hands played, of course). Inequalities of position are also removed with the rotation of the dealer button. And if we want to talk about stack sizes, in a tournament players start with the same number of chips, and in a cash game there’s always the option to buy in for the maximum.

The playing field in poker is entirely level. The cards can introduce an element of chance that make it possible for the more skilled player to lose to the lesser skilled one. I think it’s safe to say something similar happens in daily fantasy sports every single night. After all, even if DFS players have “complete and total control” over who they select when completing their line-ups, they hardly have control over how those players perform.

In fact, if we really wanted to pursue a comparison here, DFS is essentially the reverse of poker. In poker you cannot dictate what cards you are dealt, but from there you do have “complete and total control” over your actions, with those actions necessarily affecting whether (and how much) you win or lose. Meanwhile in daily fantasy sports you do get to choose your “hand” or the line-up you set, but once the games begin there’s nothing you can further do to improve your chance of success (or to lessen your chance of failure).

Both involve skill (differently). Both involve luck (also differently). And both are gambling.

Not going to go further into the details of the lawsuits nor the many other ways DFS and poker are both similar and different. Was just struck by that one errant characterization of poker by DraftKings, seemingly out of place within the larger argument for DFS’s skill component.

There is one way, though, that poker has definitely suffered from having to be played on a “non-level playing field.”

Legally.

Remember a Day, Before the UIGEA

Fantasy sports actually came up as a topic during last night’s debate among Republican presidential candidates, although only long enough for one candidate (Jeb Bush) to make a weak joke about his own fantasy football team then add a generic reference to the need for regulation, and another (Chris Christie) to complain about it being a trivial issue then add a generic reference to the need for the federal government to leave fantasy sports alone.

It reminded me a little of people in poker back in the day sometimes wondering -- usually in a humorous way -- if online poker was going to come up in debates or speeches. Of course the topic never would, being so tangential, so it was kind of remarkable to think that daily fantasy sports (DFS) had made its way far enough into the cultural center to get that mention last night.

Of course, it took a few weeks worth of drama including lots of legislators on both the state and federal level wanting to examine DFS for that to happen. Against that backdrop, ESPN shared an interesting article yesterday titled “The true Congressional origin of daily fantasy sports” that provides some historical perspective on the legality of fantasy sports, in particular looking at the years preceding the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 which some have argued made the DFS industry possible, even if the bill’s authors never quite envisioned what that industry has become.

After looking into that history for several weeks, ESPN points out how the inclusion of fantasy sports as a so-called “carve out” in the UIGEA wasn’t actually the result of lobbying by the NFL or other sports leagues (as many have stated). About a month back I posted a list of UIGEA-related items here without comment that perhaps suggested as much, but according to ESPN this really wasn’t the case.

In that post I quoted the line from the UIGEA stating how “the term ‘bet or wager’... does not include... participation in any fantasy or simulation sports game or educational game or contest in which (if the game or contest involves a team or teams) no fantasy or simulation sports team is based on the current membership of an actual team that is a member of an amateur or professional sports organization.” Remember the UIGEA prohibits businesses from facilitating the funding of “unlawful Internet gambling” which refers to placing, receiving, or transmitting a “bet or wager” online, so saying fantasy sports doesn’t involve bets or wagers means funding online fantasy sports is not prohibited.

The whole idea for what eventually became the UIGEA arose in response to the growth of the internet in the 1990s and the initial appearance of gambling sites, including both poker and sports betting sites. But as the ESPN article points out -- and as many others have been explaining, too, especially over recent weeks -- the “fantasy sports” being exempted back in the late 1990s when legislators first began sharing early versions of online gambling-related legislation wasn’t at all like DFS.

There are references in the article from various folks (including legislators) characterizing those earlier fantasy leagues as being similar to friendly home games in poker -- that is, mostly between friends and for small stakes. There’s also a distinction made between longer (e.g., season-long) fantasy sports contests and shorter ones such as what has become the daily or weekly games. Only one brief exchange between former Arizona senator Jon Kyl (one of those often called an orginal “architect” of the UIGEA) and an attorney alludes to the possibility of shorter-interval fantasy sports contests, and that’s only in passing (and without any subsequent effect on how the law was ultimately worded).

Interestingly, the Department of Justice offered an opinion in 1999 that there should be no fantasy sports exemption in any federal legislation regarding online gambling. Then the topic wasn’t revisited at all over the next several years, making it seem as though the language relating to fantasy sports just kind of lingered there to be quietly included in the final version of the bill that was passed into law.

“There was no evidence in the Congressional Record that the final version of the UIGEA was openly debated in the lead-up to the Sept. 29, 2006 vote,” reports ESPN (a vote that technically didn’t finish until after midnight that night, thus 9/30/06). A lot of us well remember that part of the story. After it passed some legislators complained about the carve outs (including for fantasy sports), and of course there followed the ultimately unsuccessful efforts of Barney Frank and others to pass new legislation regarding online gambling. But the UIGEA remains the law of the land as far as federal legislation focused on online gambling goes, despite its abundant ambiguities.

The article concludes with some forward-looking thoughts about how things might proceed from here when it comes to this reconsideration of DFS’s legal standing. Included are quotes from current major sports leagues commissioners on the subject.

It’s obvious that DFS is almost entirely different from what “fantasy sports” was intended to signify in the UIGEA, which I suppose will be a central part of the debate among legislators going forward. In any event, today I’m lamenting we didn’t think to start calling online poker a “simulation sports game” at some point prior to October 2006.

DFS Now Listed as DTD

It was only three months ago that we learned Amaya Gaming had acquired the small but established fantasy sports site Victiv, which they then rebranded as StarsDraft.

StarsDraft quickly showed up in the PokerStars client, and we U.S. players were able to play on the site right away. I’ll admit I got a kick out of seeing that, reminding me faintly of how things used to be some four-and-a-half years ago.

I never deposited any money on StarsDraft, only playing a few freerolls and one of the free “Bankroll Builders” games they offered. (Indeed, I’ve never deposited on any DFS sites, having only played with money won in freerolls on a few of them.)

All of which is to say, if being able to play something for real money on PokerStars (even if I weren’t doing so) represented a dim echo of my experience playing on the site before, receiving the news of suddenly not being able to do so (again) wasn’t similar at all.

Amaya sent out a presser today saying they were choosing to limit their DFS games to just four U.S. states for now -- New Jersey, Massachusetts, Kansas, and Maryland -- meaning my state (NC) is now on the no-play list.

Those four states are ones described in the release as having “favorable existing daily fantasy sports guidance.” In other words, they’ve either passed legislation or otherwise made explicit that legally speaking things are relatively hunky dory for DFS within their borders.

Last week we were hearing about Florida becoming an uninviting place for DFS sites, then late Thursday the Nevada Gaming Commission made its announcement declaring DFS to be gambling and thus subject to licensure, a move which likewise drove the sites out. This amid reports of legislators’ calls for inquiries, the FBI taking an interest, and other clamoring about the sites’ business models and legal status.

While federal regulation may well come for DFS (and possibly sooner than later), it could go the other way. The whole thing feels at present like a player listed as “DTD” (day-to-day) -- i.e., making him a less-than-recommended play.

Is DFS Helping or Hurting?

Daily fantasy sports were already of great interest to poker players even before all of the hubbub began surrounding the industry not quite two weeks ago. Since then, DFS has attracted the attention of many others, too, including the mainstream media, legislators, and even the Federal Bureau of Investigation according to a report appearing late today in The Wall Street Journal.

I was writing last week about how the histories of online poker and daily fantasy sports have intersected and (in a few ways) even paralleled one another. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 that played an integral role in removing online poker as an option for most U.S. players also made online gambling on fantasy sports possible, which in turn led to the birth and eventual growth of DFS into a highly conspicuous option available to those in all but a small handful of states.

As the probing of DFS continues, I can’t help but believe it hurts the prospects for online poker in the U.S. a lot more than it helps. But I could be wrong.

I’ve seen a few folks suggesting how the calls for federal regulation and other inquiries into DFS could eventually lead to a revisiting of online gambling laws in the U.S., including the UIGEA, with some change on the federal level regarding online poker being a possible consequence. But to me it looks more like online poker will get buried further underneath the weight of moral outrage at DFS and the “loophole” it has found to permit legal online gambling (as some view it).

What do you think? When it comes to the future of online poker in the U.S., is DFS helping or hurting?

The DFS “Scandal” and Online Poker’s Past

Late last week I was following a few tweets and read a post on what appeared to be a yet-to-explode forum thread regarding this story about a DraftKings employee accidentally releasing ownership data for the Week 3 NFL games during the afternoon that Sunday, including ownership for games that hadn’t started yet.

The post appeared on the RotoGrinders site in a forum thread titled “DraftKings Ownership Leak.” Like I say, the thread didn’t seem to have gotten much attention, although if I remember correctly subsequent posts (which I don’t see today) made it seem like the thread might have been locked early.

The first response (that remains) was from someone at RotoGrinders saying he was talking to a person named Ethan at DK who was about to post a statement. The RotoGrinders guy defends Ethan and DraftKings. Then Ethan’s statement appears, and he explains how “I was the only person with this data and as a DK employee am not allowed to play on the site.” An innocuous-seeming, nothing-to-see-here-please-disperse kind of exchange.

This back-and-forth sat there quietly for a couple of days, but over weekend Twitter picked up the story in a big way, and by yesterday it had developed considerably with more details about the data leak as well as information about the employee Ethan Haskell’s successes on the rival FanDuel site, including a massive $350,000 win for finishing second in FD’s $5M NFL Sunday Million during Week 3. More on Haskell himself has been made more generally known as well, including his position at DK (Written Content Manager) and his previous experience as a content editor for a couple of years at RotoGrinders (perhaps explaining the RG guy’s defense of him in the thread).

It should be noted that there is no evidence that Haskell used any of the info he accidentally leaked to help him land the big prize in the FD contest (or in other games). In any event, the story has now ballooned into a larger discussion about daily fantasy sports, in particular about potential problems with game integrity.

Legal Sports Report has been a good site to follow for coverage of the many issues arising with this story as well as other DFS-related topics. This article from the weekend titled “DraftKings Lineup Leak Rocks Daily Fantasy Industry: Questions and Answers” provides details of the original story, a full explanation of why “insider” knowledge of DFS player ownership data ahead of time can provide a huge edge, and other issues having to do with the sites’ policies and current lack of regulation. The article also includes new statements from both DraftKings and FanDuel from Monday about their intentions to review their “internal controls” and policies.

The story has now moved into the mainstream as well, with even The New York Times reporting on it yesterday in “Scandal Erupts in Unregulated World of Fantasy Sports.” Thanks in large part to the highly conspicuous blitz of television advertising by both DFS and FD, the topic of daily fantasy sports is no longer interesting just to those who play but to others, too, who have been inundated so aggressively with all the ads.

Those of us who were involved with online poker when it first appeared and began to grow in popularity can’t help but notice several parallels seeming to emerge with regard to this story.

Like with DFS, online poker was around for a few years before suddenly catching fire. Planet Poker was the first online site to deal real money games, doing so on January 1, 1998. A little over five years later came the first episodes of the World Poker Tour, then Chris Moneymaker’s win at the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event, and then the “boom,” generally speaking.

Last week I noted the anniversary of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, a piece of legislation that interestingly has had the dual significance of helping jettison online poker from the U.S. while introducing a means for what has now evolved into the DFS industry to be introduced. The first DFS site (Fantasy Sports Live) went live in June 2007, with that industry’s “boom” (as it were) also not occurring until several years later.

As online poker grew more popular, the potential for scandals began to grow as well with much discussion about possible industry-threatening problems on the horizon. Lots of stories about collusion, ghosting, multi-accounting, and other violations of sites’ terms and conditions were circulating, as were instances of player funds being lost with the boom-preceding PokerSpot controversy the biggest early example to occur.

Then on September 12, 2007 a player going by the username POTRIPPER won the $100K Guarantee on Absolute Poker after correctly calling an opponent’s final hand all-in with just ten-high. My first reaction -- chronicled in a post here a week-and-a-half later -- was to wonder about AP getting hacked somehow or perhaps there having been an “inside job.” As we would come to learn, the latter was indeed the case, something AP would initially try to cover up (thereby making the scandal worse). The story then quickly took off in a big way both within the poker world and in the mainstream (including an article in The New York Times).

The loser of that crazy ten-high hand versus POTRIPPER was poker pro Marco Johnson who emailed AP afterwards to request hand histories from the tournament. Johnson didn’t initially study the response, but after buzz about the hand and other possible shenanigans at AP had begun to build he went back to look at those hand histories again and discovered something remarkable. Not only were his hole cards listed, but so, too, were the hole cards of all the other players. The hand histories then became a “break in the case” helping prove POTRIPPER was able to see others’ hole cards and a first step in unraveling the “superuser” scandal.

The larger superuser scandal that would follow at AP sister site UltimateBet (a story that first broke in early 2008) would similarly start out focusing on a single player -- “NioNio” -- who won at an insanely high rate on UB right up until the week the AP scandal broke at which time the player suddenly disappeared from UB. (That scatter plot graph above created by Michael Josem famously illustrated NioNio’s dominance.) Other suspicious accounts were then identified, and the story and scandal got bigger and bigger from there, never being truly resolved (despite former UB part-owner and representative Phil Hellmuth’s revisionist claims to the contrary).

At least a few parallels can be seen here -- an accidental “leak” of information by a site suddenly opening the door to closer scrutiny and suggestions of wrongdoing, a focus on “insider” information allegedly helping an employee to win (in the DFS case by going onto a different site to play), and remarkably high win rates inspiring accusations of an imbalance in the playing field.

The unambiguous advantage of seeing others’ hole cards and the less obvious advantage of having access to ownership data before games close in DFS perhaps don’t seem analgous (to most of us). But those who understand DFS strategy and how the games work have persuasively put forward the parallel. Again, this issue isn’t unrelated to other ones affecting the game, including the huge knowledge gap between number-crunching DFS regs and everyone else, something that is also akin to what we’ve often talked about in online poker where third-party software and other aids have created a significant advantage for a segment of full-timers over those who don’t benefit from the information provided by such tools.

Online poker survived (and mostly continued to thrive) despite the AP and UB scandals, with the sites themselves even able to remain in operation until both collapsed post-Black Friday (resulting in another huge loss of players’ funds). There continued to be serious problems with game integrity thereafter, of course, and the Black Friday indictment and civil complaint would dramatically demonstrate even larger issues for the industry.

I’m actually not quite ready to join the torch-carrying crowd currently storming the gates of DFS. I will say, though, as someone already not hugely inspired to get involved with DFS, recent developments are hardly encouraging me to give it an earnest try.

That said, knowing how similar things unfolded and turned out with online poker, it will be curious to see where the faster-moving DFS “scandal” goes next.

Positions and Juxtapositions: Nine Years Later, the UIGEA Then and Now

I’m just going to juxtapose a few items here today, inspired both by an anniversary and some items I’ve read and heard this week.

On this date nine years ago -- just a few months after I started the Hard-Boiled Poker blog -- I wrote a post here called “Deals in the Dead of Night” noting how the night before, after midnight in fact, a federal bill had passed through both houses that thereafter change the course of online poker in the United States once it was signed into law by then-president George W. Bush a couple of weeks later.

As it happened, that same bill -- the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 -- helped pave the way for the birth of a new online industry, fantasty sports.

1. “Senate Passes Bill on Building Border Fence” (The New York Times, Sept. 29, 2006)

“At the urging of conservative groups and the National Football League, among other interests, the port security measure carried legislation cracking down on Internet gambling by prohibiting credit card companies and other financial institutions from processing the exchange of money between bettors and Web sites. The prohibition, which exempts some horse-racing operations, has previously passed the House and Senate at different times but has never cleared Congress.”

2. “Frist Statement on Passage of Internet Gambling Legislation” (Sept. 29, 2006)

“U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D., (R-Tenn.) made the following statement after the Senate passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act:

‘Gambling is a serious addiction that undermines the family, dashes dreams, and frays the fabric of society. Congress has grappled with this issue for 10 years, and during that time we’ve watched this shadow industry explode. For me as majority leader, the bottom line is simple: Internet gambling is illegal. Although we can’t monitor every online gambler or regulate offshore gambling, we can police the financial institutions that disregard our laws.’”

3. “Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006” (Oct. 13, 2006)

“The term ‘bet or wager’... does not include... participation in any fantasy or simulation sports game or educational game or contest in which (if the game or contest involves a team or teams) no fantasy or simulation sports team is based on the current membership of an actual team that is a member of an amateur or professional sports organization....”

4. “NFLPA Adds DraftKings to Partnership Lineup” (Sept. 25, 2015)

“The NFL Players Association (NFLPA), via its licensing and marketing arm NFL Players Inc., and DraftKings, a leading destination for daily fantasy sports (DFS), today announced a group licensing partnership that will allow some of the NFL’s top-rated players to participate in DraftKings’ marketing efforts this season.... The NFLPA licensing partnership will provide DraftKings the right to employ active NFL players for in-product and promotional campaigns across broadcast, print, social media, digital and mobile properties, as well as via experiential, memorabilia and content activations....

As the popularity of fantasy sports continues to grow with more than 56 million players in 2015, a nearly 40-percent year-to-year increase according to global market research company Ipsos, the deal provides DraftKings with a new degree of connectivity by directly involving a group of active NFL players in the marketing and promotion of its daily fantasy sports experience to fans.”

5. “Fantasy Sports Sites DraftKings, FanDuel September Spend Tops $100 Million” (Advertising Age, Sept. 30, 2015).

“According to iSpot.tv estimates, DraftKings and FanDuel together have funneled $107 million into the networks' coffers since Sept. 1. Nearly half ($50.3 million) of that outlay was spent on national NFL broadcasts on CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN and NFL Network....

DraftKings ads have aired a skull-clutching 16,259 times over the course of the month, which works out to 135 hours and 25 minutes of 30-second spots. That's more than five-and-a-half days, or a full work week, of commercial messaging that's been hammered out in the span of a 29-day period.... By iSpot's reckoning, FanDuel ads have aired 9,463 times since Sept. 1. That translates to nearly 79 hours of total airtime, or a little north of three days.”

6. Dan LeBatard and Jon Weiner (Stugotz), The Dan LeBatard Show with Stugotz (ESPN, Sept. 29, 2015)

LeBatard: “DraftKings is spilling money all over the place, and now they have made an allegiance with the NFL Players Union where they are able to put players in their advertising. And I’m trying to find exactly the right analogy here, because what DraftKings and FanDuel and what the fantasy phenomenon has captured here is, it’s not quite legalized cocaine... because cocaine has a stigma with it.... But we are in an area right now where DraftKings and FanDuel... and their ilk have found this place.... They’ve found a place where it’s gambling -- it’s obviously gambling -- [and] they’re able to spill and sponsor everything in sports and everyone is taking their money.... People want it.”

Stugotz: “I agree with you about the stigma, but wasn’t online poker... didn’t they ban that?”

LeBatard: “Yes... but online poker is a little sketchier, not nearly as popular as this is....”

Stugotz: “I agree, but I’m just trying to figure out the difference between the two.”

LeBatard: “Oh, there is no difference. One’s legal and one’s not.... One is legal because it’s a game of skill, the other is illegal because, poker players will tell you, it, too, is a game of skill, but it’s the same thing.... It’s amazing to watch the arbitrary moralities that we have with this.”

LeBatard: “I just think it’s weird that we are always applying arbitrary moralities, and in this case we are doing it with our legal system and we’re doing it with our government. It doesn’t make any sense to me that this is legal and online poker isn’t.”

The DFS “Boom”

Heard on the radio what I thought to be a remarkable statistic today regarding the fantasy sports site DraftKings and its ubiquitous advertising campaign. Went looking online afterwards to find out more, and found iSpot.tv’s list of the “Top 10 Spenders in TV Advertising this Week.”

That’s a screenshot of the top of the list at left (click to embiggen). Over the last seven days, DraftKings has spent more on TV ads than anyone else in the U.S. -- a whopping $16,488,346 on 4,910 commercials. Also in the top 10 at No. 7 is DraftKings’ biggest DFS rival FanDuel who spent $11,467,852 on 2,710 ads.

In truth, the last seven days haven’t been the biggest for DraftKings of late. During the first week of September they spent over $24 million on 6,749 TV ads, according to Legal Sports Report. That article points out how DK had suddenly ramped things up here with the start of the football season, having spent about $82 million during the first eight months of the year. There’s more than TV ads, too, of course, as anyone listening to the radio or surfing online well knows. I’d estimate they’ve already spent more than half that total here in September alone.

The stat I heard on the radio, though accompanied by some of these figures having to do with the amount DK has spent on ads, was a different one -- namely, that over the last week more than 1 million had opened new accounts on DraftKings.

This New York Post article from yesterday notes how DraftKings had 1 million users total back in April, so a gain of a million more this week is something else. With the recent surge, DK now has 4.5 million accounts. It’ll be interesting to learn how many it has by the end of the month.

For those of us who were playing online poker every day over a decade ago, all of this seems more than vaguely familiar. That the law that led to the eventual destruction of the game for American players -- the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 -- in fact today serves as a kind legislative linchpin around which the fantasy sports phenomenon currently revolves suggests another connection of sorts, in an ironic way. (See this interactive timeline of DFS history, with the UIGEA marking the industry’s origin.)

The online poker “boom” saw a game that had already been played for nearly two centuries suddenly explode in popularity over just a few years, not long after the internet had become part of all of our lives. Televised poker -- in particular the first World Poker Tour shows and ESPN’s World Series of Poker coverage from 2003-2005 (discussed some yesterday) -- contributed mightily to the game’s growth, too.

Online poker attracted many live poker players, a segment of those who enjoyed other kinds of gambling, and a lot of others who didn’t otherwise play poker or gamble at all. It also drew in a few sports fans lingering after the game had concluded to watch the WSOP shows.

Meanwhile “fantasy sports” per se has been around for just a few decades, more or less starting with those “rotisserie” baseball leagues in the late 1970s and 1980s (a tiny, tiny niche), then growing in popularity more recently with the season-long contests and leagues. The “daily” games only began popping up over the last few years. The first DFS site to launch (Fantasy Sports Live) came online in June 2007. FanDuel started up in July 2009, while DraftKings staged its first contests in January 2012.

The online poker ads were pretty frequent back during the “boom,” but I’m going guess none of the sites ever came anywhere near to topping biggest ad spenders lists the way DraftKings has over the last few weeks. Would be curious to learn how much the poker sites did spend on TV ads back in the day, and try to draw some meaningful (adjusted) comparisons.

The DFS growth is getting noticed by legislators. One -- Frank Pallone, Jr., a Democrat Congressman from New Jersey -- just this week requested the House Energy and Commerce Committee on which he serves to look into the legality of fantasy sports. There’s one more thread that will be interesting to follow. Other less-than-sanguine stories about the DFS are circulating now, too, including several about how hard the game can be for the casual players and others about how everyone is growing tired of all the damn ads.

I’ve mentioned here before several times how no matter how I try, I just can’t make myself get that interested in playing DFS. But I can’t help but be interested in the fast-moving story of DFS at present.

On the “50/50”

Was looking this afternoon at the structure sheet for that new DraftKings-sponsored “50/50” event on the World Series of Poker schedule for tomorrow (Event No. 55).

You’ve no doubt been hearing about this one -- the first time, I believe, that the WSOP has featured a “sponsored” event like this, with the daily fantasy sports site having paid to have the tournament branded with its name in the event’s designation.

The structure sheet isn’t that interesting for the most part, given that it is identical to the other $1,500 NLHE events on the schedule. It’s the line about the payouts that is notable, reflecting that “50/50” idea also in the event’s name.

There’s a somewhat popular DFS format called “50/50” in which half the entrants make the money. The times I’ve tried it, it has always been a “double-or-nothing”-type payout with all of the cashers winning an equal amount. I put “double-or-nothing” in scare quotes because in truth winners don’t exactly double their buy-ins because of the juice taken.

For example, in a 10-player $50 buy-in “50/50” event on DraftKings, the top five players each win $90 and the bottom five win nothing. I’ve occasionally played these, which aren’t so bad for casual, novice-types like myself who isn’t really willing to put in the time required to try to build top-flight line-ups.

Speaking of, I was mentioning here many months ago how I had won a couple of freerolls on what was then a new DFS site called Fantasy Draft. Things never really seemed to get off the ground over there, and so I barely visit the site these days, but I did happen to play a small buy-in MLB contest with a guaranteed prize pool this week.

I hilariously picked a starting pitcher who gave up eight earned runs in less than three innings of work, sending me to the bottom of the leaderboard. I think I finished something like 34th out of 35. In fact I think I only beat a dude who forgot to fill in a line-up.

I still made a profit, though -- as did the non-line-up guy -- because so few players had entered and the top 50 were guaranteed to make the money. (Wished afterward that I had entered 10 line-ups.) It was way better than a “50/50” -- it was a “100/0”!

The WSOP’s version of a “50/50” event will similarly feature the top 50% of players making the cash, but that’s where the similarity ends. As the structure sheet spells out, after 10% of the buy-ins are taken out for entry fees (7%) and the tournament staff (3%), the remaining prize money ($1,350 per player) will be divided as follows: “Payout - 25th-50th percentile = $1000, 10th-25th percentile = $1500, Top 10% = Standard percentage payout with remaining prize pool funds.”

In other words, while 50% of entrants will technically “cash,” half of those players actually will be losing $350 while those making the next tier will earn just $150 for their efforts. Then the top 10% -- who would otherwise be dividing up all of the prize pool -- will be paid with what’s left. Depends on how many take part, but I’m guessing something like a third of the prize pool will be used to cover those extra payouts (going to the 10th-50th percentile finishers).

While I kind of like the idea of the sorta-but-not-quite-double-or-nothing “50/50” DFS games, this doesn’t really strike me as a very enticing payout structure for a poker tournament. Then again, I guess there was no way to mimic exactly the DFS model, as they couldn’t well have hundreds of players tying for first.

Forward-Looking With Amaya

I took close to an hour out of the day today to listen to that Amaya conference call in which the new owners of PokerStars and Full Tilt (since August of last year) discussed earnings from last year’s fourth quarter. Or rather I should say I listened to the sucker while performing various farm chores, as an .mp3 of the call has been uploaded here.

Chris Grove of Online Poker Report has also spent some time listening to the call, and in fact has transcribed the whole thing here, if you’re curious.

Among the headlines coming out of the call were CEO David Baazov’s statements -- “forward-looking” and thus subject to the usual disclaimers about such, natch -- regarding the future growth of poker (“we are still a poker-first business” he reiterates), as well as about other areas of interest for Amaya in the coming months and years.

“Our goal is to double the poker sector in the next five years,” stated Baazov, adding that the “three primary ways” Amaya aims to achieve that goal will be “entering new markets where we currently have little or no penetration in real-money poker,” “creating consumer demand and excitement through innovative marketing and promotions,” and “continuing to innovate the product to attract more players and reactivate lapsed players.”

Immediate response to the idea of doubling the poker sector within five years varied from expressions of doubt to outright cynicism, although if you think about it in the context of online poker five years is a lifetime.

Baazov spoke further of particular areas of the world Amaya desires entering, including those states in the U.S. with current online gaming legislation and those considering it (in which Amaya is actively lobbying). He talked as well about the other “verticals” including casino games and sports betting, the latter having only modestly launched in a beta version this week.

The other big headline coming out of his comments had to do with the declaration of an intention to enter daily fantasy sports, an area currently dominated by FanDuel and DraftKings. That latter intention obviously raises eyebrows here in the U.S. where the majority of us aren’t currently included in discussions of online poker or online casino games (and likely won’t be for some time).

CFO Daniel Sebag came on after that to talk specifics regarding the 4Q bottom line and what’s anticipated going forward, then Baazov hopped back on to talk briefly about the current investigation by the Autorité des Marchés financiers (AMF) regarding some trading occurring around the time Amaya acquired the Rational Group as well as the company’s application to be listed on NASDAQ Global Select Market. He also alluded to Amaya’s sale of the gaming machine supplier Cadillac Jack, announced earlier in the week.

The Q&A that followed touched on further specifics, mostly reiterating points made during the statements. There elaboration was made regarding Amaya and daily fantasy sports, with Baazov responding to a question by saying “the goal is to be up before the NFL season starts.” He also mentioned specifically the U.S. folks who were “formerly PokerStars players” and how Amaya is banking on “a clear, strong crossover with poker.”

It is always curious to eavesdrop on these sorts of discussions. And to look back on them at some future date as indicators of what a company was thinking at a current moment in time. You know, when backward-looking rather than forward-looking.