DraftKings employee wins fanduel 350K with Inside Informatio

[Tom Kessenich]

The fact that most of the money is being won by a small minority of players has been one of the most underreported aspects of DFS. Obviously this isn't something the companies themselves want to advertise but it is something players should be aware of - especially if you intend to play in the huge prize contests.

[BillyWaz]

1. It wouldn't surprise me if employees are using non-public information for their own benefit
2. It wouldn't surprise me if teams were added after the deadline
3. It wouldn't surprise me if there are "house teams" when overlay exists. The site pays for the team through a "dummy owner" and the profits are split between the site and "dummy owner"

------------------------------------
1. Agree.
2. This one, I doubt. You are able to see the number of teams that are competing at all times.
3. Absolutely right. I've thought this from the minute I found out about DFS. I'll bet you that half of the teams in these events, are computer teams and have nothing to do with a human being.

This is just another reason to trust a company like the NFFC.

You see EVERYONE'S LINEUP as games start, and you know EXACTLY who is winning money.

After this debacle, won't shock me one bit if the government intervenes OR one or both of these company(ies) closes up shop.

These "tournaments" are very sketchy.....H2H is OK, because you see EXACTLY what you are going against.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Not sure what to make of this. If these companies do not reveal percentages to employees, we're good. Not sure why employees need to be able to see that that info before anyone else can anyhow.

Obviously both companies have a lot of work to do to ensure integrity of all of their games going forward, but I think that Fanduel took some positive steps today:

Statement to Our Users

Media reports yesterday raised issues concerning an employee from another fantasy site participating in our NFL Sunday Million contest last week. Trust with our players is core to our business and has always been our primary concern so we take any potential game integrity issue very seriously.

Based on everything we know thus far, there is no evidence indicating that the integrity of FanDuel’s contest was in any way compromised, or that non-public information was used for unfair advantage. That said, the incident has raised questions about the trust-based relationship we have with our players so just relying on what we know right now isn’t enough. That’s why we’re taking the following steps:

We have permanently banned our employees from playing any daily fantasy games for money, on any site. We will also require all customers to confirm that they are not an employee of any other third party fantasy site, and if they are, they will not be allowed to access our site.

We have asked former federal judge and United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey to review the facts and evaluate our internal controls, standards and practices. His mandate is to conduct a review to identify ways that we can ensure we are doing the right things to maintain the trust we have with our players. He will have the freedom and authority to look at any areas he thinks appropriate. We will ask him and his team at the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton to develop a set of recommendations for us to adopt and to highlight any areas where our controls can be strengthened.

We are also creating an internal advisory board, led by Michael Garcia of the Kirkland & Ellis law firm and former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The advisory board will provide on-going advice, recommendations and guidance to ensure that we are always taking every step possible to ensure the integrity of our site and our games. We also look forward to speaking with regulators across the nation about how to define the right set of rules for our industry as it continues to grow.

FanDuel is one of the fastest growing companies in the world. The way fans have embraced our games is a clear sign that fantasy sports is here to stay.

It’s our job to ensure that as our company grows, so does our ability to ensure that our fans can be confident in the sanctity and integrity of every game, every day.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Greg I know you are a board member on the FSTA, with the CEOs of Draft Kings (Jason Robins) and FanDuel (Nigel Eccles).

What/if any discussions have been had with the DFS mgmt regarding this?

Anything you guys can do to make sure they don't drag season long down with them?

When we started the Fantasy Sports Players Association in 1999 our major goal was to protect the consumers from getting ripped off. The biggest company in the industry at that time had just gone bankrupt without paying prizes to players and this was a huge concern. We started this trade association knowing that 12 heads were better than one.

I think we've done a lot of good things for consumers over the last 16+ years and obviously we worked hard on the licensing issue, which was defined by the courts as not needed. Legislation worked in our favor in 2006 as well, defining fantasy sports as a game of skill. So there's a lot of good to see here.

But DFS has gotten almost too big for the FSTA to self-regulate. There have been discussions of a third party to help and I think Fanduel has addressed some of that today. These companies need to have third parties look at their operations now that they have gotten so big and advise them how to protect the integrity of their games and to set guidelines for their employees. I think "insider trading" was the wrong word to use for what happened with the Draft Kings employee, but any additional information is certainly a worthy edge that anyone would pay for. But it's not like "insider trading" of a stock where it's guaranteed that the value will go up the next day. His information didn't guarantee anything; but it certainly had the potential to help and in a big way.

My concern too is that it doesn't spill over and tarnish other sites and other games like season-long games. Heck, we have our own problems in the high-stakes space and we seem to have stabilized here since the demise of WCOFF in 2011. We seem to be self-regulating this space without any problems, but problems can still occur. I don't think the FSTA is the answer here (and they weren't with WCOFF or Fantasy Jungle or AFFL or any of the other sites that didn't pay prizes), so we shouldn't expect them to be the answer with DFS, either.

But yes, Fanduel and Draft Kings are both on the FSTA board and discussions have taken place about self-regulation and how we do this. Now there's talk about government regulation. It's fast moving and we'll see what takes place. It's kind of out of our hands now. Hopefully these two companies get it right so that the entire space can continue to grow and prosper.

[Fourslot40]

Not sure what to make of this. If these companies do not reveal percentages to employees, we're good. Not sure why employees need to be able to see that that info before anyone else can anyhow.

Obviously both companies have a lot of work to do to ensure integrity of all of their games going forward, but I think that Fanduel took some positive steps today:

Statement to Our Users

Media reports yesterday raised issues concerning an employee from another fantasy site participating in our NFL Sunday Million contest last week. Trust with our players is core to our business and has always been our primary concern so we take any potential game integrity issue very seriously.

Based on everything we know thus far, there is no evidence indicating that the integrity of FanDuel’s contest was in any way compromised, or that non-public information was used for unfair advantage. That said, the incident has raised questions about the trust-based relationship we have with our players so just relying on what we know right now isn’t enough. That’s why we’re taking the following steps:

We have permanently banned our employees from playing any daily fantasy games for money, on any site. We will also require all customers to confirm that they are not an employee of any other third party fantasy site, and if they are, they will not be allowed to access our site.

We have asked former federal judge and United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey to review the facts and evaluate our internal controls, standards and practices. His mandate is to conduct a review to identify ways that we can ensure we are doing the right things to maintain the trust we have with our players. He will have the freedom and authority to look at any areas he thinks appropriate. We will ask him and his team at the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton to develop a set of recommendations for us to adopt and to highlight any areas where our controls can be strengthened.

We are also creating an internal advisory board, led by Michael Garcia of the Kirkland & Ellis law firm and former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The advisory board will provide on-going advice, recommendations and guidance to ensure that we are always taking every step possible to ensure the integrity of our site and our games. We also look forward to speaking with regulators across the nation about how to define the right set of rules for our industry as it continues to grow.

FanDuel is one of the fastest growing companies in the world. The way fans have embraced our games is a clear sign that fantasy sports is here to stay.

It’s our job to ensure that as our company grows, so does our ability to ensure that our fans can be confident in the sanctity and integrity of every game, every day.

The problem I have with this is that banning employees from participating doesn't fix anything. The only fix is to secure critical information that can lead to an advantage over the public. As is, employees are still going to play through others and spilt winnings.

[TR]

Not sure what to make of this. If these companies do not reveal percentages to employees, we're good. Not sure why employees need to be able to see that that info before anyone else can anyhow.

Obviously both companies have a lot of work to do to ensure integrity of all of their games going forward, but I think that Fanduel took some positive steps today:

Statement to Our Users

Media reports yesterday raised issues concerning an employee from another fantasy site participating in our NFL Sunday Million contest last week. Trust with our players is core to our business and has always been our primary concern so we take any potential game integrity issue very seriously.

Based on everything we know thus far, there is no evidence indicating that the integrity of FanDuel’s contest was in any way compromised, or that non-public information was used for unfair advantage. That said, the incident has raised questions about the trust-based relationship we have with our players so just relying on what we know right now isn’t enough. That’s why we’re taking the following steps:

We have permanently banned our employees from playing any daily fantasy games for money, on any site. We will also require all customers to confirm that they are not an employee of any other third party fantasy site, and if they are, they will not be allowed to access our site.

We have asked former federal judge and United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey to review the facts and evaluate our internal controls, standards and practices. His mandate is to conduct a review to identify ways that we can ensure we are doing the right things to maintain the trust we have with our players. He will have the freedom and authority to look at any areas he thinks appropriate. We will ask him and his team at the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton to develop a set of recommendations for us to adopt and to highlight any areas where our controls can be strengthened.

We are also creating an internal advisory board, led by Michael Garcia of the Kirkland & Ellis law firm and former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The advisory board will provide on-going advice, recommendations and guidance to ensure that we are always taking every step possible to ensure the integrity of our site and our games. We also look forward to speaking with regulators across the nation about how to define the right set of rules for our industry as it continues to grow.

FanDuel is one of the fastest growing companies in the world. The way fans have embraced our games is a clear sign that fantasy sports is here to stay.

It’s our job to ensure that as our company grows, so does our ability to ensure that our fans can be confident in the sanctity and integrity of every game, every day.

The problem I have with this is that banning employees from participating doesn't fix anything. The only fix is to secure critical information that can lead to an advantage over the public. As is, employees are still going to play through others and spilt winnings.

Yep the employees will just have family members or friends play for them..no different than sports gambling high rollers like Billy Walters, who casino sportsbooks are afraid of, having ppl go and place bets for him. They need to give us all access to the same information..let us see player owned percentages before the tournies lock...also let us see win/loss percentages and $$$ won on other DFS players profiles to help decide who we want to face in H2H matchups. If that information is available to independent websites that can make ppl pay to access it, then fanduel needs to explain how those websites are getting that information and make it available to everyone.

[JETS SB]

Just because I was bored (and curious) last night and today, I reviewed Ethan Haskell's major dollar contests at FanDuel, that I had access to, over the past two months. His win/loss percentages are AWFUL to say the least. He hit it big a few times but the amount of entries is mind boggling, compared to the amount of winning teams.

[Erok]

I feel that this is going to ruin it for all of us now.

I hope im wrong but it doesnt look good imo.

Once the gov gets involved they are going to ban and or regulate or terminate
everything with the word "fantasy" in it.

I almost wish DFS was called something different.

The scary part is that you are going to have politicians deciding the legalities of this industry who dont understand the difference between DFS or season long. They will lump all fantasy into the regulation im sure.

[The Franchise]

Total Shit Storm!!





So I've held back from posting for a couple of days as I emailed DK directly to get their perspective but since they completely ignored my emails to people that usually responded within minutes in the past, I wanted to share two observations (one direct and one indirect but obvious) of intentional misuse of proprietary information by DK employees. I'll preface this by saying I played nearly 9,000 paid contests this year through Oct 1. I had some decent scores but overall am not a profitable player nor do I play for a living. I originally alluded to this 19 days ago before the DK scandal so this isn't exactly new but I'd like to elaborate in detail.

1. VIP DraftKings Event - in July, I was invited to a VIP event August 8. Here is a link to the invite Dk rented out an incredible box at the nats game and invited a lot of big action players. Everyone was awesome but during my introduction to their Head of VIP Services who I won't out by name here, we began discussing general game theory and it came out I had faded Strasburg who was returning from the DL. Said VIP rep thought that was a gutsy play and checked his phone saying Strasburg was "pretty chalk" in tourney play that night. This was a few minutes before 7:05 and given that I hadn't told him what contests I was playing in, broadly applied to ownership across the board. If that wasn't sketchy enough, said rep mentioned casually how he and many others play on fanduels and other dfs sites. At that point, I went back to my seat feeling like a total moron and realizing that it was pretty obvious that with insider information and "VIP" connections to top players in a loosely regulated forum, guys like me were f'ed in the long run.

2. Rick Sawyer For the month of July, I was challenged 5 or more times a day everyday by a mysterious player named Rick Sawyer who I had never played on Fanduel, where I had a very very small and spread out sample size. He'd challenge me to baseball matches every day heads up and eventually I had to create a flow in g-mail to mark his emails as auto-read as they became so spammy. When I googled Rick Sawyer to my surprise, I was led to a "business planning manager" from DRAFTKINGS. That's right, folks... a guy on the inside at DraftKings was pegging my play on their channel as sub-optimal and hunting me on a competitor site when I didn't even play heads up much or have a meaningful bankroll. I eventually emailed my VIP manager at DraftKings when I put two and two together and the shit stopped.

If DraftKings can defend these two actions, I'd love to hear it from Jason or Matt K directly. Until then though, my $ is out of DK and Fanduels.





1. Let me clarify very specifically: I saw the player rep look at his phone in the specific context of the SP for the game we were attending's ownership percentage in the 1 hour HH prior to the game starting. He explicitly said to me, "I shouldn't have pulled that up in front of you, haha." I didn't view the reps phone but don't know what else he would have been looking at when specifically saying that Strasburg was highly owned (and implying that my fade was ballsy at best).

2. I never accepted Rick's actions as I had no freaking clue who the guy was challenging me all day everyday was but in the bottom of some of the emails, the range looks to be $5-$500 as the prize range is $9-$1000 mentioned. See a threaded day of Rick's barrage here with some numbers. I cannot confirm though but can you give me a plausible reason other than viewing my play on DK in h/u forums as a reason to challenge me? In my entire fanduel playing career, I have legitimately never received another h/u challenge bc I don't play h2h matches much if at all.

[TR]

Re: DraftKings employee wins fanduel 350K with Inside Inform

Unread postby The Franchise » Wed Oct 07, 2015 8:55 pm
Total Shit Storm!!





So I've held back from posting for a couple of days as I emailed DK directly to get their perspective but since they completely ignored my emails to people that usually responded within minutes in the past, I wanted to share two observations (one direct and one indirect but obvious) of intentional misuse of proprietary information by DK employees. I'll preface this by saying I played nearly 9,000 paid contests this year through Oct 1. I had some decent scores but overall am not a profitable player nor do I play for a living. I originally alluded to this 19 days ago before the DK scandal so this isn't exactly new but I'd like to elaborate in detail.

1. VIP DraftKings Event - in July, I was invited to a VIP event August 8. Here is a link to the invite Dk rented out an incredible box at the nats game and invited a lot of big action players. Everyone was awesome but during my introduction to their Head of VIP Services who I won't out by name here, we began discussing general game theory and it came out I had faded Strasburg who was returning from the DL. Said VIP rep thought that was a gutsy play and checked his phone saying Strasburg was "pretty chalk" in tourney play that night. This was a few minutes before 7:05 and given that I hadn't told him what contests I was playing in, broadly applied to ownership across the board. If that wasn't sketchy enough, said rep mentioned casually how he and many others play on fanduels and other dfs sites. At that point, I went back to my seat feeling like a total moron and realizing that it was pretty obvious that with insider information and "VIP" connections to top players in a loosely regulated forum, guys like me were f'ed in the long run.

2. Rick Sawyer For the month of July, I was challenged 5 or more times a day everyday by a mysterious player named Rick Sawyer who I had never played on Fanduel, where I had a very very small and spread out sample size. He'd challenge me to baseball matches every day heads up and eventually I had to create a flow in g-mail to mark his emails as auto-read as they became so spammy. When I googled Rick Sawyer to my surprise, I was led to a "business planning manager" from DRAFTKINGS. That's right, folks... a guy on the inside at DraftKings was pegging my play on their channel as sub-optimal and hunting me on a competitor site when I didn't even play heads up much or have a meaningful bankroll. I eventually emailed my VIP manager at DraftKings when I put two and two together and the shit stopped.

If DraftKings can defend these two actions, I'd love to hear it from Jason or Matt K directly. Until then though, my $ is out of DK and Fanduels.





1. Let me clarify very specifically: I saw the player rep look at his phone in the specific context of the SP for the game we were attending's ownership percentage in the 1 hour HH prior to the game starting. He explicitly said to me, "I shouldn't have pulled that up in front of you, haha." I didn't view the reps phone but don't know what else he would have been looking at when specifically saying that Strasburg was highly owned (and implying that my fade was ballsy at best).

2. I never accepted Rick's actions as I had no freaking clue who the guy was challenging me all day everyday was but in the bottom of some of the emails, the range looks to be $5-$500 as the prize range is $9-$1000 mentioned. See a threaded day of Rick's barrage here with some numbers. I cannot confirm though but can you give me a plausible reason other than viewing my play on DK in h/u forums as a reason to challenge me? In my entire fanduel playing career, I have legitimately never received another h/u challenge bc I don't play h2h matches much if at all.

This is crazy....I played MLB on fanduel regularly over the summer and also got at least 6 emails in late July from this same RickSawyer dude wanting h2h matchups. I have never played DK but feel he must have some auto script as well as access to win/loss percentages so he can hunt down his "fish" as I didn't do particularly well this summer. Like I alluded to in previous posts, their are independent sites like fanduel fish finder where u can pull up win/loss percentages, money earnings...yet fanduel won't be transparent enough to let everyone view that info on each other's profiles..very shady!