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A comment on How the Daily Fantasy Sports Industry Turns Fans into Suckers. Parent comment

Re:How the Daily Fantasy Sports Industry Turns Fans into Suc... by roymurdock on Wednesday January 06, 2016 @02:22PM (#10852901)
"Whales" are rich guys who are addicted to gambling and lose a ton of money at the casino. Casinos love whales and will try to track them with rewards cards and lure them into their casino with huge upfront losses (free shows, food, drinks, entertainment, airfare) because they know they'll make it up when the whale starts to gamble. Once a whale starts to bend the rules at a struggling casino too much to win money on average, he stops being a whale and starts being a huge liability.

The only people who win money (on average) at casinos are "professionals" who play games against other players rather than strictly against the house - poker being the prime example. Many poker pros will hang out at "amateur" tables and pose as suckers to draw in less experienced players, then hustle them.

So ultimately the casino does not redistribute money to the whale - it reaps money indiscriminately due to its "house edge" on every game and slot machine.

Here's a breakdown of the house edge and std deviation for a bunch of different games [1]. Craps and blackjack have the smallest house edge due to historical rules of how the games are played, whereas games such as slot machines have a high house edge as the casino can tailor the software that determines the payout. For example, slot machines in Nevada are only legally required to pay back 75% to players on average while the rest goes to the house - a true gamble for suckers. [2]

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The article implies that DFS is different because FanDuel and DraftKings are unable to implement strict rules that collect from players indiscriminate of size.

D.F.S. high rollers similarly come with demands, and because there’s no powerful regulatory body involved, DraftKings and FanDuel have been mostly free to set the parameters of play, which, as it turns out, is near anarchy, especially for the D.F.S. elite.

This gives experienced players an advantage over new players that (very arguably) isn't true of poker because the players adhere to a stricter, more heavily regulated set of rules and have more of a choice of competition between hundreds of casinos vs. 2 sports betting websites.

It's definitely a tenuous argument though. At the end of the day, it's gambling, just like the stock market is gambling. Unless you have insider info, you're at the whim of the market and the traders with high powered hardware/software and connections.

[1] http://gaming.unlv.edu/casinomath.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine#Payout_percentage

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Re:How the Daily Fantasy Sports Industry Turns Fans into Suc... by joezydeco on Wednesday January 06, 2016 @03:52PM (#10853656)
For example, slot machines in Nevada are only legally required to pay back 75% to players on average

The most important word in Vegas is that last one...average.

As long as all the machines in the house average 75% in payout, the house is in compliance.

What it means for the average player is that the low-denomination slots (nickel, quarter) can pay significantly less than 75%, and by setting a few high-denomination slots ($1/$5/$100) above 75%, everything comes out clean.

So it's an even worse situation if you play the cheap slots.

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