Elliot.Muldoon
Footballguy
Hi,
Before I say anything else I would just like to clarify that this is speculation, not an accusation or allegation or anything of that sort. I don't want to believe any of the following could be possible and would really appreciate if someone could provide info verifying that what I'm imagining is more or less impossible.
So, I was just wondering if there exists anyone online addressing/investigating the issue of DFS sites potentially using bots to fill out their contests and return significant portions of the prize pool to the company. After the Ashley Madison hack and the revelation that they were using rather sophisticated bots to trick men into pouring money into the site to talk to fake women, it occurred to me that there is absolutely no reason at all why FanDuel and DraftKings couldn't do the DFS equivalent with just a handful of algorithms so simple I could probably write them, and I'm not a great programmer. While I don't want to be paranoid, I am not sure how anyone would ever find out if these random inexperienced users winning big prizes and filling out multiplier games were bots, unless they were deeply and meticulously investigating contests as they were happening. Who has time to check all the lineups of 200,000 users from a GPP game during the course of the day to make sure they are not changing in response to what is happening in the games? No one is going to be looking at an opponent's roster unless it's already near the top of the contest, and at that point you have no way of knowing whether its a real human, or a bot that took advantage of already-high-scoring players to set itself up for a good result.The more I think about this the more I feel like I am not entirely comfortable with continuing to throw my money into GPP contests unless there is some proof I'm playing against real humans, and only real humans.
I try not to think about this because I don't want to believe my money is being handled unfairly but the recent Fanduel million contest and its 1st time winner with a hilariously perfect roster has re-ignited my suspicions. I noticed in week 1 that there seems to be a disproportionate amount of successful Fanduel users with usernames that follow exactly the same pattern: generic word then a random number then possibly a few extra letters, and more names follow this pattern than I usually see anywhere else online. Anywhere! I have never seen such homogenous usernames in my life than on Fanduel. It's like someone's distilled idea of what internet usernames are like, but lacking the diversity and personality that real usernames tend to have. Maybe there really are that many boring, samey people out there playing fantasy football, but it doesn't quite pass the smell test that these are also people picking creative, clever rosters that go against the grain, as required for success in GPP. I'd expect someone named jeremiah1974db to go with the crowd. No offense to jeremiah1974db if he/she is a real person...in that case, many kudos and please share your crystal ball.
Of course, having a genericly named person win a GPP would be fine if it happened occasionally...but take a look at your next GPP winner's list sometime (and even the larger 50/50s and multipliers) and look how half or more of the top 10 always follows the "short word or phrase then number" pattern. It feels like the result of a random name generator to me. Real human beings choose at least slightly more diverse names than I see always populating Fanduel win lists.
I really don't want to believe they could be doing this. But it's just so very very easy to do. And it would explain the meteoric rise of the two major players, in a way that I don't think the rake can; the money they're bringing in is just too huge in relation to the number of people who can reasonably be expected to be playing DFS. Now granted, maybe between hearing about the Ashley Madison bot scandal and losing $600 to Mike Zangrilli last year, I'm a bit paranoid, but both of those things involved established, trusted companies cheating and scamming loads of money out of their customers after years and years of good faith, and I can't see any way to be sure Fanduel and DraftKings aren't doing the same thing. I see I am not the only one, as there is already a thread questioning the perfectness of good ol Jeremiah's fluke Travis Benjamin-enhanced roster. But I feel even worse about it than just "it seems suspicious", because as a programmer I can see exactly how it could easily be done. Does anyone have a good counterargument to restore my peace of mind?
Before I say anything else I would just like to clarify that this is speculation, not an accusation or allegation or anything of that sort. I don't want to believe any of the following could be possible and would really appreciate if someone could provide info verifying that what I'm imagining is more or less impossible.
So, I was just wondering if there exists anyone online addressing/investigating the issue of DFS sites potentially using bots to fill out their contests and return significant portions of the prize pool to the company. After the Ashley Madison hack and the revelation that they were using rather sophisticated bots to trick men into pouring money into the site to talk to fake women, it occurred to me that there is absolutely no reason at all why FanDuel and DraftKings couldn't do the DFS equivalent with just a handful of algorithms so simple I could probably write them, and I'm not a great programmer. While I don't want to be paranoid, I am not sure how anyone would ever find out if these random inexperienced users winning big prizes and filling out multiplier games were bots, unless they were deeply and meticulously investigating contests as they were happening. Who has time to check all the lineups of 200,000 users from a GPP game during the course of the day to make sure they are not changing in response to what is happening in the games? No one is going to be looking at an opponent's roster unless it's already near the top of the contest, and at that point you have no way of knowing whether its a real human, or a bot that took advantage of already-high-scoring players to set itself up for a good result.The more I think about this the more I feel like I am not entirely comfortable with continuing to throw my money into GPP contests unless there is some proof I'm playing against real humans, and only real humans.
I try not to think about this because I don't want to believe my money is being handled unfairly but the recent Fanduel million contest and its 1st time winner with a hilariously perfect roster has re-ignited my suspicions. I noticed in week 1 that there seems to be a disproportionate amount of successful Fanduel users with usernames that follow exactly the same pattern: generic word then a random number then possibly a few extra letters, and more names follow this pattern than I usually see anywhere else online. Anywhere! I have never seen such homogenous usernames in my life than on Fanduel. It's like someone's distilled idea of what internet usernames are like, but lacking the diversity and personality that real usernames tend to have. Maybe there really are that many boring, samey people out there playing fantasy football, but it doesn't quite pass the smell test that these are also people picking creative, clever rosters that go against the grain, as required for success in GPP. I'd expect someone named jeremiah1974db to go with the crowd. No offense to jeremiah1974db if he/she is a real person...in that case, many kudos and please share your crystal ball.
Of course, having a genericly named person win a GPP would be fine if it happened occasionally...but take a look at your next GPP winner's list sometime (and even the larger 50/50s and multipliers) and look how half or more of the top 10 always follows the "short word or phrase then number" pattern. It feels like the result of a random name generator to me. Real human beings choose at least slightly more diverse names than I see always populating Fanduel win lists.
I really don't want to believe they could be doing this. But it's just so very very easy to do. And it would explain the meteoric rise of the two major players, in a way that I don't think the rake can; the money they're bringing in is just too huge in relation to the number of people who can reasonably be expected to be playing DFS. Now granted, maybe between hearing about the Ashley Madison bot scandal and losing $600 to Mike Zangrilli last year, I'm a bit paranoid, but both of those things involved established, trusted companies cheating and scamming loads of money out of their customers after years and years of good faith, and I can't see any way to be sure Fanduel and DraftKings aren't doing the same thing. I see I am not the only one, as there is already a thread questioning the perfectness of good ol Jeremiah's fluke Travis Benjamin-enhanced roster. But I feel even worse about it than just "it seems suspicious", because as a programmer I can see exactly how it could easily be done. Does anyone have a good counterargument to restore my peace of mind?
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