I am a gaming attorney, but not a New York gaming attorney, so what I say is strictly my personal opinion offered for discussion and not legal advice regarding NY law. (I have not re-read the reversal by the Second Circuit in DiCristina, but do believe poker, where the actual skilled play itself affects the outcome offers better argument than DFS ....)

There is no "unstated premise" .... I just think the statute which prohibits operatng a sportsbetting business does not require a determination of whether or not assembling a DFS roster takes "skill". Having drafted a "team"; that team's players take the field and perform .... there is no control over the outcome.

Sportsbetting also takes skill, however picking either the money line or against the spread over a range of "real" teams and real games gives a bettor zero influence over the outcome.

Basically, DFS allows a participant to assemble his own "prop bets" and match his prop bet outcome in a betting pool, which can raise the payout level, but neither activity gives the participant any more "control" over the outcome than someone who bets the Cowboys money line every week for entertainment. (Consider whether "table selection" in poker, while certainly important, dominates over the element of skill in actually playing poker after sitting down.)

Oddly, in my view, the Humphreys v. Viacom decision under a NJ qui tam law stated that DFS entries were not bets or wagers, yet expressly disavowed that "skill" or its absence was a factor. (I happen to think the opposite outcome may be appropriate under NY law; while assembling a team certainly takes skill, the outcome of the stake is dependent upon the real world performance of athletes in the field, something over which the various DFS participants exercise zero control.)

Consider someone offering a HU DFS cash contest; how is that any different than offering the market a matchbook betting service ? Would the Viacom Court felt that a HU matchbook sportsbetting service somehow did not involve any bets or wagers "as a matter of law" ?

Wouldn't the DFS sites just point to the UIGEA bill. Pretty sure there's a special carveout regarding Fantasy sports. Obviously in 2006 nobody expect 1 day/week leagues but still wouldn't that still fall under the UIGEA. How can you say DFS is gambling but season long fantasy isn't. In my opinion they are both one in the same one just takes longer than the other.

I think one of the more interesting arguments was that DFS players all start with the same options. They've each got a blank slate and a bunch of differently priced players. From there they put the puzzle pieces in place and then wait and see if they come together. In poker the outcome is determine in part by the cards that are dealt by chance. In scrabble, if by chance you pick the higher valued tiles, you increase your chances of winning.

I think DFS would be wise to find skill games to compare itself to rather than trying to contrast itself from known gambling games.

UIGEA does not preempt state gambling laws. It specifically addresses that point.

the other thing is whether you define fantasy as skill or not and i'm guessing you can make an argument either way which doesn't do good for it

Dont the sites have beginners games?

Yeah DK does. Don't think FD does.

You can play for $1 though as well.

i think the easiest change that needs to happen to level the playing field is to not let the pros play the small buy in games. as a matter of fact im pretty dumbfounded that something this simple hasnt happened yet. like just a rule that if you play $25 or higher games you cant also play $1-$5 games or something like that. its not that hard. but no lets continue to let kcannon use his scripts to instascoop $1 h2hs posted by guys with double digit wins.

Even if this solution isn't done, it's really silly that Fanduel makes you sign up for H2H and Leagues like they do.

You should simply click a button saying you want a H2H, and it should match you with someone.

Same goes for Leagues. Completely eliminates scripting and bum hunting.

yup, i like the pooled hu/league idea, but i could see it killing volume. victiv had it, but it would be fun/interesting to try out on a site with a real user base like fd.

if not based on the highest $$ levels you play at, there should be some sort of ranking system like nearly every video game has. imagine hopping on 2k for the first time and getting matched up with someone who's 234-21 or something... just silly

yeah i liked victivs anon h2h thing but the problem is you end up with a lot of h2hs vs players youd never play against otherwise.

Personally, I don't think it would be fair to ban certain players from lower stakes simply because they're doing well there. What if you've done well in higher stakes, but suddenly run bad and want to drop in stakes? Or what if you just want to make a big withdrawal and rebuild your bankroll at lower stakes?

I think the better answer is a reasonable limit on the number of contests any player could enter. When the limit is 5,000 a day, you can play whatever you want. But limit it to 100 a day and it naturally forces the higher volume players into higher stakes and gets them out of the way of the folks who are just risking $1 to $5 a day.

i just meant on a per slate basis. thought that was obv lol. theres no way a guy should be playing like a hundred $109 50/50s and also $1 h2h on the same slate imo.

If you just mean cash games, yeah, but any site doing that would lose histakes traffic because the $5 and $10 players won't take shots. Like, imagine if poker sites did this. Kids in lostakes live to take shots.

I think letting people put 24-hour stop losses would be better or a 24-hour limit on lostakes games with a chess type of rating system. Guys would almost have to sandbag to play those games, which keeps money in circulation.

A bowling/golf style of handicapping, maybe, which could help with legislation.

No, this is the solution to the problem

Limiting traffic is not the answer and it cannot be based on stakes. Even worse would be combining those two. The pro players will just max out on every site regardless and you're only restricting growth.

If I'm an average or worse player, competing H2H against a pro, at any stakes, I should be getting points or extra lineups to make it fair. It has to be based on performance either way.

Yes let's take a game of skill and add handicaps so it becomes more of a game of luck

lol wtf ofc it can.

I'd have it work like this...

You signup for a H2H, and you can tell the system how many you want. The system then waits a random amount of time to pool together H2H entries. Then it randomly assigns opponents.

This would prevent some guy from doing 50 H2H's at the same time as another dude doing 50 H2H's and playing all of them against the same dude.

Or hell, you could literally just match every H2H @ 11:45am on Sunday's.

Even better why don't we all just play a 100000 man multi entry head to head matrix

Yeah Victiv just put every entry into a pool and matched them up at lock. It worked really well in the lower stakes games as even the MLB $2 would go 300-400+ runners $5 almost as many, and no it wasn't all sharks, not close. That said I agree with Ray in that the exact same system would be great on a bigger site.

John Oliver talked DFS today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq785nJ0FXQ

Been watching him for a while and thought that there was no way he could be spot-on about this given his probable lack of involvement but I was wrong. Stated the obvious about it being gambling and had some fun with it but didn't get preachy about it and basically said he doesn't care if people do it. He's also from a country that allows you to bet on matches at the actual site of the matches so he's probably wondering why this country makes such a big deal about gambling

This is not the only (or even the main) thing for which people use scripts.