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.

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.

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.

Folding Their Way to the Playoffs

Haven’t been writing here too much over the last couple of months about the Pigskin Pick’em pool in which I participate, largely because I fell well out of contention by about Week 8 or 9 this year, and so haven’t really spent a lot of time thinking about my picks or the race.

I have goofed around a little with some fantasy football this year. I mentioned a few weeks back how I’d won some cabbage in a couple of freerolls on the new Fantasy Draft site, and have intermittently been playing with that money since then although not every week. They still don’t have NBA games up on the site, so I assume they are still in a longish ramp-up mode over there.

The fantasy sports thing has yet to capture my fancy much, I must continue to report. I find it intriguing in a theoretical way, much like I am very interested in the logistics of sports betting without really being too keen on actually placing bets. And I suppose I’m also a little curious about the business behind these daily/weekly fantasy sports sites and the decisions they are making as they try to build themselves up, but even there it’s only a marginal interest for me.

Meanwhile my Carolina Panthers have had a woeful season, yet still somehow find themselves alive for a playoff berth thanks to being located in the worst division in the NFL, the NFC South. Was hilarious during the day on Monday to see them 5-8-1 and leading the division until New Orleans won their game Monday night to go 6-8.

Had to joke on Twitter how it felt like the Panthers were trying to fold their way into the playoffs, since even if they do somehow manage to win the division and get there, they’ll surely get KO’d right away much as happens to the player who survives the bubble bursting with only a few chips.

Will still be watching and rooting, though. A min-cash is better than going home empty-handed.

Catch That Catch?

After cashing in a couple of freerolls over on the new Fantasy Draft site -- winning some “Fantasy Bucks” which I cannot withdraw but with which I can enter real money games -- I jumped in one NFL contest this weekend and ultimately bubbled the money.

I’d built a decent roster and picked up some unexpected points from players like Cleveland Browns’ rookie running back Isaiah Crowell who scored a couple of TDs against the defensively-depleted Atlanta Falcons. But others who I’d expected to produce didn’t -- guys like the Colts’ Reggie Wayne and the Pats’ Rob Gronkowski, both of whom caught passes but didn’t reach paydirt -- and so going into the Sunday Night game I was already essentially doomed to finish outside the “Payout Zone.”

I did have one player left on my team, though -- Odell Beckham, Jr., the New York Giants receiver -- who I’d included as my “flex” player. And yeah, even though I was a bit too far out to make a run at the cash, he made things interesting.

Indeed, he even made it seem for a while like I might even get there. I mean, after that catch, anything seemed possible.

With two TDs, 10 catches, and 146 yards receiving, Beckham earned more fantasy points than anyone yesterday. He also earned a permanent spot in all NFL highlight reels going forward.

The play reminded me a little of Bob Beamon’s record-shattering long jump, something I’ve written about here before, mainly because of the way Beckham quickly hopped up and walked around afterwards as though he didn’t find anything especially surprising or unexpected in what he’d done.

Of course, the big difference was how Beamon (and most watching the ’68 Summer games) actually didn’t initially realize his achievement, in his case breaking the world record for the long jump by more than two feet. With Beckham’s catch everyone knew instantly it was something extraordinary, thus making his subsequent nonchalance all the more entertaining to see.

Folks quickly began passing around video clips of Beckham making similarly eye-popping one-handed grabs in other contexts such as receiving a kickoff or in warm-ups, though none amid such duress as was the case during the second quarter last night.

Those clips might’ve helped demystify the catch a little, but only a little. They made me think a little of watching a card trick, like Beckham had some secret knowledge about how to pull something off that had been previously hidden to the rest of us.

Super slo-mo replays from every angle likewise helped explain what couldn’t be appreciated live and at full speed, but that, too, didn’t take much away from the continued astonishment -- the surprise at being still surprised -- with each viewing.

Fantasy Draft and Relying on (Andrew) Luck

If you read this blog you might follow me on Twitter, and if you follow me on Twitter we might follow a lot of the same people, meaning you very likely saw all of the poker pros and others tweeting about this $20K freeroll that happened over the weekend on this new Fantasy Draft website which is still in a “beta” stage and not quite up and running.

I’ve written here before about how fantasy sports don’t exactly grab my interest, but like almost 2,200 others I decided to sign up and create a team for this past weekend’s NFL games in order to take a shot at the free cabbage due to go to the top 300 finishers.

In truth what was being awarded was “fantasy cash,” not actual scratch, which I assume is money that can’t be withdrawn but which can be used to play in future tournaments (once the site starts having them).

The site is actually very slick and easy to navigate, and it was easy enough to follow how things were going with my team on Sunday as the games played out. There are obviously some elements that are still in development, but I’ll confirm the site is simple enough for a relatively untutored fantasy sports player like myself to be plenty inviting.

I had loaded up on some players in the Monday night game -- specifically Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck and a couple of his receivers -- and so was sitting only in the middling range after Sunday’s games were over. But thankfully Luck had a big night versus the Giants, both my receivers caught TDs, and I grabbed enough points to make it into the money to earn $20 of “fantasy” cheddar. Was nice to win something, at least, as my Pigskin Pick’em entry this year is pretty much in shambles -- not quite #LOLJets bad, but close.

We’ll see how things go with the site once it gets going for real, but if you’re curious about it you can sign up for an account by clicking here. Links to the site from this post contain my referral code, and it’s clear referrals are part of the overall strategy for the site -- a strategy that seems to be working somewhat well so far, actually, considering how many people already seem to be on it without the games having gone live yet.

Still much prefer performing risk/reward calculations on flops, turns, and rivers than attempting the same with yards gained, receptions completed, and points scored. Feels a lot like making those WSOP predictions I was referring to yesterday -- a lot of shots in the dark.

But given how fantasy sports are wholly legal here in the U.S. while online poker continues to be much less available, I might have to get over my aversion to the fantasy thing and figure out a way to make it palatable to me.

Winning in freerolls is a start.

Technical Difficulties

We did end up making it out for a few hours’ worth of fun at Farm Aid on Saturday. Turned out to be a nice, mild day weather-wise with plenty of cloud cover and a lot of good tunes. Felt a little uncanny to hear “Seven Nation Army” on a Saturday afternoon and not be at a football game, but rather watching Jack White perform it.

Got back to our own farm on Sunday where I spent a lot of it camped in front of the teevee for more football while also following various stories online.

As any football fan well knows, the daily (or weekly) fantasy sites have kind of exploded in popularity of late, with two in particular -- DraftKings and FanDuel -- having emerged as the current Coca-Cola and Pepsi of “DFS.” Commercials for both are dominating sports radio and television these days, meaning even non-participants are becoming more and more aware of their existence.

I couldn’t help but see from my Twitter feed during the hour leading up to the 1 p.m. kickoffs on Sunday that the FanDuel site had crashed, no doubt due to the heavy volume of folks entering contests and changing their line-ups at the last minute following injury announcements and other game-related news. I also noticed DraftKings swooping in to offer bonuses to the FanDuel folks should they want to transfer their balances over.

Later in the day there was a similar theme being sounded in my timeline when partypoker’s New Jersey site froze up during the $200,000 guaranteed Main Event of its Garden State Super Series. I believe there were more than 700 players in the $200 tourney -- meaning there was a decent overlay -- when the problems occurred and all the ongoing tourneys had to be canceled. “Technical difficulties” said the site in their explanation afterwards.

Both FanDuel and partypoker acted swiftly when it came to reimbursing players. I’m not sure exactly how FanDuel handled it, although I did see them tweeting to their followers that affected players could email them for refunds. Meanwhile I believe partypoker instantly paid back its players and then some according to their already established tourney cancellation policy, and from the comments of some who were affected it sounded like all was handled as well as it could have been.

That said, just like FanDuel has DraftKings to worry about, the New Jersey partypoker site is bracing itself for a formidable competitor as well as word is PokerStars is coming to NJ sooner than later via its new owners, Amaya.

Customer service is often more complicated than it looks, with the technical just-make-sure-everything-works side of things being as important (or more so) for a lot of people as being prompt with responses to queries, complaints, and the inevitable hiccups. The “online poker 2.0”-era in the U.S. has been a rocky one to say the least. Those who have tried their hand have been earnest with their efforts, I think, but have run up against many challenges that have worked against them.

It’ll be very interesting to see if that changes soon.

Rating the Recognizables

Heading into today, a total of 20 bracelets have been won thus far at the 2014 World Series of Poker. There have been a fair share won by “known” players to this point -- seems like a lot, doesn’t it?

I would imagine most of those who follow poker would recognize at least a third, perhaps half of the players who have won events to this point. I knew of 12 of these players before, a couple of them (Kyle Cartwright and Kory Kilpatrick) thanks to having seen them do well at WSOP Circuit events in the past.

Seems like a pretty high percentage of “recognizables.” I was curious to check that 25K Fantasy game and see how many of the bracelet winners so far were among the 96 players drafted.

Looks like five of the 20 winners were selected -- Vanessa Selbst, Paul Volpe, George Danzer, Brock Parker, and Justin Bonomo -- and really among the ones who weren’t taken, none really stand out as huge misses. No one drafted Ted Forrest or Davidi Kitai (both multiple bracelet winners coming in), but in neither case does that stand out as an alarming oversight.

Was wondering how that clip of picking winners compared to last year’s 25K Fantasy draft, and after a quick run through to compare the 112 players selected (by 14 teams) and the 62 bracelet winners, it looks like a total of nine champs were drafted -- Mike Gorodinsky, Mike Matusow, David Chiu, Erick Lindgren, Jesse Martin, Marco Johnson, Steve Sung, Eli Elezra, and Daniel Alaei. Looking over the undrafted 2013 bracelet winners, only Tom Schneider (who won two) seems like a big miss.

So their rate of drafting winners is better so far this year -- 25% to just under 15% in 2013 -- for whatever that’s worth.

I suppose it’s safe enough to theorize that the better the 25K Fantasy teams do drafting bracelet winners, the more likely it will be those who win bracelets will be recognizable players prior to their victories. That’s not to say that the 25K Fantasy drafters are perfectly representative of the WSOP-following public, but their picks do offer a general idea of who are the best known and highest regarded WSOP tourney players.

Meanwhile, it appears that a third of way into the summer Team Media needs a jump start and PDQ.

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Daily Fantasy Sports Players Griping About Bad Luck

Am in another airport terminal, awaiting the first of a couple of flights today that will be taking me to Las Vegas where I’ll be helping cover the WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio. Looking forward to it, but to be honest I’m also kind of looking forward simply to disconnecting for the next several hours and relaxing aboard my flights.

Was writing here a couple of weeks ago about fantasy sports and how the daily/weekly site DraftKings had hooked up with the WPT as a collaborating sponsor. In that post I was drawing a few parallels between poker (especially the online variety) and these daily games I’ve been playing occasionally on sites like DraftKings and Draft Day.

Haven’t done so well during the last few days of playing these daily games, and in fact some of the “run bad” I’ve encountered is making me think more and more how fantasy sports are not at all like poker.

About a week ago I set a line-up for a night’s worth of NBA games, then to my dismay discovered after the games had begun that my star player, James “Magical Beard” Harden, was suited up for the game -- i.e., in a suit, not a uniform. (That’s a pic of “Dr. Harden” above.) Was a last minute decision, apparently, not signaled by any of the injury update sites (or at least any I check), and thus I was essentially sunk before the night had even begun.

Then a couple of nights ago I screwed up and after having reserved a spot in a Draft Day game and set my line-up, I forgot to save my selections until just a few seconds after the deadline had passed, and thus had entered a fantasy team with no players. Oof!

Finally last night came another bad beat as I had taken Tim Duncan to fill one of my power forward positions, and in fact was doing okay and probably on my way to winning in the double-up game I’d chosen. Then came word that the Spurs-Timberwolves game -- scheduled in Mexico City, actually -- had been postponed due to a fire near the arena filling the place with smoke!

Again, I was sunk, as was everyone else who had loaded up on San Antonio or Minnesota Timberwolves players. It had been an attractive game from which to draft selections, actually, with a high over/under line of 205. But only around half the guys in our game had happened to take any Spurs or Timberwolves, and we all finished out of the money.

Such a situation is handled much like a rain-out in baseball for the daily fantasy players -- i.e., those who have chosen guys in the cancelled game are screwed, and it’s all chalked up to being “part of the game.”

But what kind of game is this?

I was trying to think of parallels from poker, and the only one I could really come up with was the situation of getting disconnected mid-hand when playing online. Or perhaps we might add a glitch occurring on the site’s side, in which case many times the site would refund entry fees or try somehow to accommodate for the disruption.

I’ve mentioned before how tough it is to bet on injuries, coaches’ whims, or other unexpected vagaries of professional sports. Hadn’t thought of an NBA game getting postponed as being a factor, too, though. I guess daily fantasy sports are still like poker insofar as they combine luck and skill, but a fire in Mexico sure is making it seem like luck matters a lot more at the moment.

Putting it behind me, now -- and everything else for the next 10 hours or so as I wind my way westward. Talk to you on the other side.

Drafting Your Players, Playing Your Cards

At the WPT event this past week in Jacksonville, the fantasy sports betting site DraftKings had a presence as the entity throwing the players’ party, sponsoring the final table live stream, and in other ways.

It’s a relatively new partnership, just announced within the last couple of weeks, I believe. In fact, for the upcoming WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic (where I will also be) there will be some contests on the site via which players can actually win seats into the event.

I’ve gotten an account on DraftKings and have played some free games with friends. I’ve mentioned before having played a little on Draft Day, another fantasy sports site, as well as how I find the games diverting though not nearly as engrossing as some.

It’s kind of intriguing, though, to see how the games on these sites resemble online poker in their formats, with large field games with top heavy payouts being like the MTTs, smaller “sit-n-go” styled games with a limited number of opponents, “double-or-nothing” type games, and heads-up games, too. Even the range of buy-ins and the “rake” resembles online poker in many ways.

There are more analogies. In the games the players (i.e., the pros making up the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL teams) kind of exist as the cards -- that is, they are the element of the game that unequivocally exists outside of the players’ control. Some of the pros are shared among fantasy players when different entrants select the same players for their teams, much like “community cards” are shared in flop games. Most teams are unique, just like in hold’em when players’ hole cards make their hands unique, although like in hold’em you’ll occasionally have players playing “hands” of identical worth.

There’s a mix of chance and skill, too, in the fantasy sports games, and I’m convinced that those who put in the hours and genuinely research their selections in constructive ways have an edge on the average opponent, in fact a very large one. I’m also convinced the chance element introduces huge variance into the game, with players’ individual performances subject to a myriad of influences including injury, penalties or suspensions, coaches’ whims, and even the weather.

I continue to be intrigued by fantasy sports -- especially this short-term daily (or weekly) version of it offered by sites like DraftKings and Draft Day -- which I guess is like poker but ain’t poker.

Fantasyland at the WSOP

As everyone reading this blog probably knows, the 2013 World Series of Poker begins tomorrow. Lots of buzz building in anticipation, both for the bracelet events and for the numerous fantasy leagues folks have created as way to make the tourneys that much more interesting to follow.

Daniel Negreanu is again running a $25,000 buy-in WSOP fantasy league, I believe for the third consecutive year. The drafting of players happens tonight, warranting enough interest both in who’ll be participating in the league as well as which players will be drafted for Quadjacks to run a live stream of the event starting at 7:00 p.m. PDT.

Noting all of the interest in Negreanu’s $25K WSOP Fantasy league, I tweeted yesterday that I would be running a Fantasy Fantasy league in which participants would draft participants in Negreanu’s draft. We can assign a point system based on how well the fantasy league players in Negreanu’s league perform according to their point system. I’m hoping if my Fantasy Fantasy league catches on, people will start creating fantasy leagues in which they pick players in my league, and so on and so on.

This is an idea with a lot of potential.

Two years ago I wrote a post about the $25K WSOP Fantasy league in which I noted that first prizes awarded in some bracelet events will in fact be less than the first prize in Negreanu’s league. Thus it could happen -- although one needs to twist oneself in a fairly complicated hypothetical pretzel to imagine it -- that a player could have financial incentive not to win a tournament if doing so meant preventing a player he’d drafted for his fantasy team from winning.

But such a scenario is obviously unlikely, and in the end I don’t believe a fantasy league -- even a high-stakes one -- can affect the integrity of a tournament all that much. In other words, the existence of fantasy leagues hardly affects game play, say, the way the “fantasyland” option in open-face Chinese poker can affect strategy in that game. If you think about it, the myriad backing arrangements and other forms of staking that are such a common part of the tourney poker scene have a lot more potential to matter than the existence of fantasy leagues, I’d think.

One interesting side effect of something like Negreanu’s draft tonight is the way it functions as a kind of ersatz “all star” vote of poker players by their peers -- that is to say, a way for a certain high-rolling subset of poker players to voice their opinions via their drafts who they think to be the best players around at the moment, or at least the best tournament players who they expect to put in a lot of volume at this summer’s WSOP.

I imagine those of us who follow tournament poker relatively closely we’ll recognize the majority of the names of those selected tonight, although there will probably be some with whom we’re less familiar. All chosen will get some attention, though, and perhaps will be followed a little more closely than they would otherwise have been.

I’ll probably have to tune in later to see which players turn out to be the most coveted by the Fantasy league players as well as what dark horses emerge as “ones to watch.”

For those of you participating in WSOP fantasy leagues... who are you drafting?

Giants or Cowboys?

Was writing yesterday about ESPN’s coverage of the 2012 WSOP Main Event. As it turns out, they didn’t show poker last night, opting instead to air this week’s shows tonight. Of course, by doing so they’ll likely lose a lot of viewers.

That’s because tonight the National Football League finally returns, with the season opener between the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants kicking off during prime time. The game would’ve been tomorrow, actually, but I believe was moved back a day so as not to conflict with the last night of the Democratic National Convention when President Obama will again be accepting the party’s nomination.

Once again I’m participating in a pool requiring me to pick every game throughout the season. Thus have I already spent some time this week fretting about my pick for tonight’s game. I’m trying a “Survivor Pool” this time, too, for which I’ll have to select one team each week I believe will win their game, yet won’t be able to choose the same team more than once.

I wrote about the pool off and on last year, including at the end when I happened to end strongly enough to win the sucker. Ended up picking 180 regular season games correctly out of the 256 (straight up, not against the spread), which left me three clear of the field to come out on top.

I much prefer these types of games -- i.e., picking winners -- to the fantasy games that have pretty much taken over the NFL over recent years. I do like occasionally piddling around on the DraftDay site (which offers daily fantasy games), which I wrote about here a while back. In fact, I’ll be playing that PokerNews freeroll on DraftDay this week for sure. But I just can’t get myself too interested in the more involved season-long versions of fantasy football.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the strategy involved with fantasy sports -- i.e., games in which you select certain players (by position) and are rewarded according to their individual performances. It’s just that I prefer watching games in a traditional manner with my rooting interest being focused on a team, not a player.

In poker terms, I’d liken fantasy sports to prop bets such as betting on the flop being all-red or all-black or whether or not the next community card will be a face card or the like. That is to say, a type of gambling that focuses on some particular element of play rather than what is really most important and theoretically the primary motive for the actions of all involved, namely, who wins or loses.

Then again, maybe I just haven’t given fantasy sports a fair chance. Reading Moneyball recently certainly got me in the mood to reconsider them. So before I sign off to go study the Week 1 games further, I’ll end with two questions...

For those of you who play fantasy football, what makes it fun for you?

And also, Giants or Cowboys?

Making Picks, Getting Fix

I’ve mentioned here a couple of times how I’ve experimented a little with fantasy sports, mostly on the Draft Day site started by Taylor Caby and some other online poker-people in the wake of Black Friday.

If you’re curious to learn more about Draft Day, an article appeared on Mashable yesterday in which Caby was interviewed about the site. There we read that after being launched back in September, the site has already attracted 10,000 users, with about a quarter of them regular players.

Caby points out in the article how they are “not going for the people who already spend hours on fantasy sports,” but rather are hoping to attract those “who are more casual sports fans and just looking to have fun.” In other words, the site presents itself as especially attractive to those whom we might call “recreational” fantasy sports players with limited time and/or bankrolls to commit.

That would be me.

Rather than buy into an entire season as some fantasy sports games require, the Draft Day games all last either a single day or in the case of the NFL a single weekend’s worth of games. So, for instance, with the NBA games you draft line-ups of players chosen from that evening’s slate of games, then watch to see how many points your players accumulate and whether or not you come out ahead of the totals put up by others’ line-ups.

The site is especially easy to navigate and I’m really enjoying how simple it is to sweat your teams. Stats are calculated instantaneously as the games proceed, with your ranking within a given game constantly updated as well. And there are freerolls and inexpensive games, too -- as low as $1-- also good for a noob like me who is just becoming acquainted with some of the strategy involved with player selection. You know, like not starting injured guys.

And of course as those of us who’ve spent the last five-plus years fussing over the awful Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 well know, the law specifically (and oddly) identifies fantasy sports as not falling under its otherwise ambiguous definition of “unlawful” online gambling. Which means easy deposit methods (including PayPal and credit cards), fast payouts, and none of the multitudinous money-related hassles to which we online poker players have grown accustomed.

While I’m finding the fantasy sports thing a fun diversion, it doesn’t really satisfy the desire for competition in the same way poker does. Even though we compete against others, it feels a lot more like playing solitaire. None of the decisions we make are controlled by others’ actions. (Not really... although I suppose one could apply some game theory-related arguments to counter that notion.) That is to say, all players are available to everyone, with each player portioning out the allotted salary as he or she sees fit.

And to be honest, I’m not really that into the way fantasy sports force a kind of fragmented rooting interest where you have to pull for individual players to succeed rather than teams.

For instance, last night the L.A. Clippers-Utah Jazz game was the last to complete, a blowout in which the Jazz won by nearly 30. I had the Clippers’ Caron Butler and was hoping he’d add a few buckets late to improve my position. Meanwhile, others still had Butler’s teammate Blake Griffin. Kind of absurd hoping for one player to score over another like that, and even stranger caring at all about what happens at the end of a game in which the outcome has long been settled.

As it happened, Butler did little in the fourth quarter while Griffin sat out. But I did manage to “min-cash” in my game thanks to big nights had by LeBron James, Dwight Howard, and others I’d fit onto my team’s roster.

Anyhow, as I’ve been saying, the Draft Day site is well-constructed and easy to use, and as Caby notes it is particularly aimed at casual players or those who are just curious about how fantasy sports work. If you click here, sign up, then eventually deposit something I get a referral bonus. But like I say, you can play for free, too.

If you do check it out, let me know how it goes. And remember to keep an eye on those injury reports.

WSOP Fantasy Leagues and the “Sport” of Poker

Just a little over 24 hours until the first bracelet event of this year’s World Series of Poker gets underway. At noon tomorrow comes the $500 buy-in Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em event (Event No. 1). Then later in the afternoon the first round of the big $25,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em Championship will get started (Event No. 2). Soon after that the days are going to start filling up rapidly, with six different events happening on Friday. (Later today I’ll put up a post with the full day-by-day schedule.)

During the lead-up to tomorrow’s kick-off, there has been a lot of talk about so-called “fantasy” leagues for the WSOP. They generally work like other fantasy sports leagues insofar as participants each pick a team of players, accumulate points based on their chosen players’ performances, then whoever’s players collectively do the best wins the league.

Although I enjoy all sports, I never really got into the fantasy stuff and so have never participated in any football fantasy league or baseball “rotisserie” league or anything of that sort. I remember a couple of years ago joining a Full Tilt Poker (free) fantasy WSOP league, but you had to keep picking players every single day and so I quickly realized I hadn’t the time to bother with it.

Seems like most of these WSOP fantasy leagues we’ve been hearing about over the last week or so are designed in such a way that league members pick their “horses” at the start and stick with them (i.e., no trades or additions). There are different procedures for “drafting” players, and different ways of rating performance (e.g., WSOP player points, total amount in cashes, etc.), but the basic concept is the same for all.

ESPN’s Poker Club hosted its sixth annual WSOP fantasy poker draft last week. There folks picked eight players each and will follow a special scoring system. That one is just for the glory (i.e., no money is on the line). There’s a new site, OwnIvey.com, offering players the ability to join WSOP fantasy leagues and either play for free or for real money. And I’ve noticed a few other WSOP fantasy-type sites around, too.

Probably the example of a WSOP fantasy league that got the most attention last week was the one organized by Daniel Negreanu. In that one, 15 teams were created, some of which are “owned” by individuals, some by two, three, or four players. I believe a total of 27 folks are involved. They held an auction-style draft, each team bidding on eight players total. You can read all about who participated and how it works in this blog post by Negreanu. Here is a short video as well that Negreanu took of the proceedings (from which comes that still).

Making Negreanu’s league more intriguing is the fact that each team is putting up $25,000 to play, which makes the total prize pool for the league a handsome $375,000. (I’m not sure, but I think the sucker is winner-take-all.) Also of interest is the fact that all 27 of those involved are players themselves, a lot of whom were bid upon and drafted to become part of their own or others’ teams.

That latter point got me thinking a little about how this sort of thing -- i.e., players gambling on themselves or each other such as in a fantasy league, or swapping percentages, or backing one another, or whatever -- necessarily makes poker different from just about all sports.

Last week I had also spent some time reading through the Official Media Guide for the 2011 World Series of Poker, and found myself thinking how all of the statistics and records in there really do create the impression that the WSOP is a sporting event. But unlike baseball, football, basketball, or any other organized sport, players routinely bet on themselves and each other at the WSOP. And that’s a pretty big difference, if you think about it.

If such extra-curricular gambling wasn’t already such a big part of poker, I could see someone raising an objection to something like Negreanu’s fantasy league as perhaps having the potential to affect the integrity of the tournaments.

One could imagine a scenario in which, say, we get to late June and Negreanu’s fantasy team has a narrow lead over the one owned by Frank Kassela and Shaun Deeb, with the other 13 teams way behind. Then comes Event No. 41, the $1,500 Limit Hold’em Shootout, an event for which the first prize is probably going to be less than $200,000. (Last year Brendan Taylor won $184,950 for first in that one.) Let’s say they get down to just three players -- Negreanu, Kassela, and an unknown, undrafted player.

As it happens, Kassela and Deeb have both Negreanu and Kassela himself on their fantasy team. Thus if Negreanu cannot win the event himself, he would probably rather see the unknown player win than for Kassela to win. And in fact, there’s more money on the line in the fantasy league than in the event itself!

Of course, I wouldn’t suggest participating in the high-roller fantasy league would cause any of these guys to play tourneys any differently. As I mentioned, the game is filled with examples of cross-booking, backing arrangements, buying “pieces,” and so forth -- all of which is accepted -- and I think the fantasy league would have to be considered similarly.

We’ve seen examples in the past of how the amounts being wagered on various bracelet bets have sometimes dwarfed the prizes on offer in the events themselves. We all remember Tom Dwan finishing second in that $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Event No. 11 last year, earning $381,855 and missing out on a $614,248 first prize. And while few know for sure how much in side action Dwan had, rumors suggested he’d have earned millions had he won that event, perhaps even something close to the $8.94 million later won by Jonathan Duhamel in the 2010 WSOP Main Event.

Still, the existence of something like Negreanu’s WSOP fantasy league -- even though it might inspire analogies between poker and sports -- does point up how despite sharing various elements found in sports (competition, mental toughness, endurance, etc.), the WSOP and poker in general is always going to be fundamentally different.

You are always betting on yourself in poker, sometimes even more than the amount of the buy-in or the chips on the table. And you can bet on others, too.

Many sports, especially those of the big-time professional leagues, often involve big-time money, so much so that you can often say much of what goes on in those games is “about the money.” But when it comes to those other forms of competition, money isn’t specifically part of the game. Whereas in poker it always is.

(EDIT [added 5/30, 9 p.m.]: Someone has created a website to track the progress of the Negreanu $25K fantasy league: 25kfantasy.com.)