So the problem with this gambling site, which defends itself as being a game of skill, is that some players are far more skilled than others and so win regularly. I see.
I think DFS fails in two ways:
1. Corruption - All the stories in the last 6 months about FanDuel employees using insider knowledge to gain an edge on DraftKings, for example. That is screwing the fan, pure and simple.
2. Creating a Predatory Environment - The issue here is allowing power players to "rape and pillage regular players". In the same way that I'm not going to enter the WSOP, I'm going to have a much better experience playing against those at my skill level.
You could probably throw "false advertising" in there, too, but we'll let the FCC deal with that.
I'm not sure if this is really on-topic, but I think you'll find this interesting if you're not aware of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skill_testing_question
With lots of legit, liquid money in play, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that you can corrupt players and coaches to massage the stats, or those same players and coaches can participate through proxies.
With horse racing, which is the closest thing to this stuff, there are a few different sets of stakeholders with different interests. Owners, trainers and jockeys who are cheating are pretty easy to identify.
End of the day, you're better off trusting the dice.
In practice, who typically ends up drawing this distinction? Appellate judges?
It's also misleading since in, for instance, blackjack, even when you play at the highest (casino-allowed) skill, you will lose. That's not true of poker or DFS.
There's still plenty of nuance (luck prevails in the short term while skill prevails in the long term).
`(D) does not include--
`(ix) 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 (as those terms are defined in section 3701 of title 28) and that meets the following conditions:
`(I) All prizes and awards offered to winning participants are established and made known to the participants in advance of the game or contest and their value is not determined by the number of participants or the amount of any fees paid by those participants.
`(II) All winning outcomes reflect the relative knowledge and skill of the participants and are determined predominantly by accumulated statistical results of the performance of individuals (athletes in the case of sports events) in multiple real-world sporting or other events.
`(III) No winning outcome is based--
`(aa) on the score, point-spread, or any performance or performances of any single real-world team or any combination of such teams; or
`(bb) solely on any single performance of an individual athlete in any single real-world sporting or other event.
`(III) No winning outcome is based-- (aa) "... performances of ... any combination of such teams;" `
So illegal?
It's like going to your weekly office poker game and, after losing, discovering that you're actually playing against pros, not your coworkers. And to make it worse, the pros are doing this in hundreds of games all at the same time!
If you had bothered to read the article, this would have been apparent.
OK, I also enter other games, but in those, I typically go for the games that are small, and almost filled, so I can look at the list of other players and only enter if there are no very experienced players there.
If I bet you five dollars that I can win a foot race, and then get on a motorcycle, I didn't win because I'm more skilled.
An interesting parallel would be the HFT "market-makers": I could argue that's exploiting the architecture of the markets, not "playing the game".
This is the same issue that people have with card counting, wheel spin analysis, prng analysis, hft, dice throwing, etc. People who are good at math use that skill to make games of skill of what people incorrectly believe are games of luck.
Rich people always get upset when they think they are fucking over someone dumb when really they are getting fucked over by someone extremely smart. Then they write articles about how unfair it was that they were too dumb to realize the game wasn't rigged how they intended to rig it.
Hence we end up with articles like this, that it's 'unfair' that the author is a poor gambler and repeatedly accepts wagers that are not in his favor. He even made a spreadsheet of how dumb he is and then refuses to accept the math that proves he's dumb.