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Comment by FanaHOVA | Hacker News Reader

Even with that, you'd still have to be good enough to pick the best roster. I don't think it's as useful as the article makes it sound.

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Not true. If anything, it's even more useful than the article makes it sound. If you knew absolutely nothing about sports, but had access to this data and a fairly basic understanding of probability and statistics, you could use this data to be basically +EV in any large field contest you enter. The lottery analogy by slg is a great metaphor to understand it.

This Deadspin article does a solid job explaining it: http://deadspin.com/draftkings-employee-with-access-to-insid...

Another very illuminating read: https://rotogrinders.com/threads/draftkings-ownership-leak-8...

Huh? You just use the company's internal pricing model and use it on other sites once you know discrepancies. It's not "simple" but it's not genius level derivatives trading, either.

What? I can see the prices of players on DraftKings and other sites as a player. That "internal pricing model" is public knowledge.

The controversy isn't about knowing player price points. That's like the gameboard and it's known to everyone. It's about knowing ownership percentages - which is the overall percentage of lineups in a contest that drafted a certain player.

That info gets published once the contest starts (it's very compelling data), but having access to that ahead of time is the equivalent of insider trading - because you have knowledge other people don't have when they make their picks, which provides you a completely unfair advantage.

Yes, I realize that player owned percentages is a huge advantage (to bet against the field thus having a better chance of coming up). But not player pricing.

Oh.. right. I think we're saying the same thing then ;)

Those are the advertised pricing for players. If you do not believe that these companies have a private, internal model to set those "prices" to maximize their returns...

Their return is constant and only dependent on the number of players. They have no need for "secret prices"

No, but the parent comment is not that far off. Their prices are public but with the weight and velocity of betting coming in, it informs them what the lines probably should be instead.

You are correct. My comment is wrong.

Except Draft Kings lets you enter 1,000 games per week so one can use portfolio theory with this information to increase the expected value of playing.

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