When I did that had to reload the OS

I'll bet on anything I think I have an edge in. That could range from a Canadian Football League game to Nascar and everything in between.

Most of the bets I make come from other handicappers. Before I started playing DFS, I was making an effort to handicap myself and did develop a few systems for NFL and the NBA that were profitable but still the majority of my bets come from following other people. The systems I did develop were strictly numbers based. I pay attention to line movement but rarely make bets specifically on line movement alone.

There were a few reasons for this. First I absolutely love sports and have always loved sports betting. Sports betting has always been in that legal grey area though. There also are a number of drawbacks to sports betting aside from it's questionable legality. One of the biggest is that very few bookmakers are going to accept your bets if they realize you're sharp. Even the online books are quick to limit your action or shut you off if they realize you're sharp. It's also an industry where it's not uncommon to get stiffed when you win, particularly if you're dealing with local bookmakers.

DFS has a lot of similarities to sports betting without all the other headaches. I was able to take a lot of my sports betting knowledge and apply it DFS though which gave me a great head start.

I do think there are similarities between poker and DFS which have helped expedite the learning process as well. Specifically, if you can anticipate your opponent's strategy in DFS, you can leverage that against them. For example, if I know Peyton Manning is going to be 50% owned in a tournament this week and I estimate he only has a 20% chance of outperforming his salary, then I can limit my exposure to him or even completely fade him depending on the risk I want to take on. In that same example, if I knew Manning was going to be 0% owned, then I'd want to increase my exposure to him. I'm essentially exploiting my opponents in this example and if I wasn't sure of how Manning was going to do this week, then I could mirror my opponent's exposure and make it an EV neutral spot.

So there is a game theory aspect to DFS that I think mirrors poker in some ways. But my transition to DFS was made due to a love of sports, the legality of it, and the earning potential.

Hey Jon,

I think it depends a lot on whether you're playing GPPs or 50/50's. And then it further depends on your GPP strategy assuming you play those. The consensus seems to be 10% of your bankroll on any given day if you're playing 50/50's. That seems a little bit high to me though. You need to win 55% at those to breakeven so even assuming you win at 60% which would put you among the elite, getting down 10 units would certainly be possible. So I'd probably lean more towards 5% and possibly even less.

If you're playing GPPs, it depends a lot on your player diversification. Using NFL as an example, you could enter 30 LU's with completely different players in every lineup and comfortably risk a fairly high % of your bankroll. By spreading out your player exposure, you're basically ensuring that you're going to hit on some of those lineups and cash.

If you were to take those same 30 LU's and say start them all with Peyton Manning and Demarius Thomas, then you're taking on a lot more risk since if those two players put up bad weeks, all your LU's are in trouble. I suppose the same could be said for 50/50's actually. I don't play a lot of 50/50's but I am noticing the top players will put multiple LU's into those as well. If that's the case, then I think you can get away with risking a higher % of your bankroll assuming you're diversifying.

I know this didn't answer your question and honestly I don't have an exact answer. But I would think of if it in terms of your exposure to players more than in terms of money risked.

No clue.... I mean No comment

Hey Doug,

I guess I missed the memo on KOTH even though everyone believes that's the status quo. I never heard PokerStars make an official statement that it was KOTH. I realize they went to one table at each limit but players still have the ability to join the table as the 2nd player and sit out waiting for a 3rd to join. So it just as easily could be called KO 3-handed.

What bothered me about this whole situation were heads up players coming to the tables, essentially booting the other players, and then starting their own tables with the button. Keep in mind, these are 6-max and 10-max that they're doing this on. I'm not sure why heads up players would have some inalienable right to be table starters and start with the button at 6-max and 10-max tables.

That said, I don't blame the table starters for the problem. And I don't blame the table-starters for taking the seat that assure them the button. I also don't blame the change to one table per limit for the problem either.

The blame lies squarely on PokerStars for not fixing the non-randomized button. I also blame Poker Stars for not clarifying the rules of what's acceptable and what's not. They created the mess that exists today. The current online environment is a product of Poker Stars inability to fix a software issue and inability to communicate to the players what's right and wrong. It's totally inexcusable.

I'm very interested in the profitability of DFS. Where can I research this myself? Are there tracking sites, graphs being posted on DFS forums?

Well the Kelly criterion formula is SD^2/Winrate

It's a little more complicated than just applying Kelly. Kelly alone doesn't tell you which game you should play, given a choice.

Let's say we have two games, one with a WR of $10/hr and SD of $150/hr, and a much higher variance game with a WR of $20/hr and SD of $600/hr. And also let's say for comfort we want to have four times the Kelly bankroll. And for comparison let's say we play both games for 40 hours/week.

Bankrolls for each game are:

• A: 4*150*150/10 = $9,000
• B: 4*600*600/20 = $72,000

Is it worth investing an extra $63,000 to make an extra $10/hr? Yes, as long as we have the money and put in enough hours, the extra $10/hr will beat any passive investment of the $63,000. But what if you don't have the money, and had to borrow the $63,000 at 10% APR? Then it will cost you about $3/hr to play game B over Game A.

What if you could get a job for $15/hr after expenses, and no variance? Do you still want to play game B on borrowed money for just $2/hr more?

Forgetting about the job, what if game B only made $11/hr? The bankroll requirement would be just under $131,000. It would be crazy to choose game B over game A in that case, even though game B earns more.

I'm just making up numbers, and this would probably be more interesting if I used ones that were more realistic, but the point is that in order to make these decisions, you need more information that just WR and SD. You need to know the alternate uses of your bankroll (investment income, or forgone borrowing costs), and alternate uses of your time (job prospects).

Hey guys, I had an exceptionally busy weekend with DFS. I will get back to some of the questions this week though.

Oh man, I could do another whole well that would just be pool room experiences.

This was one of the better ones:

I was managing a pool room outside of Boston, MA one day when a guy probably in his early thirties and clearly intoxicated or high walked up to me at the table and was basically begging me to play him for money. I just kind of laughed it off because it made no sense. I was one of the better players in Mass at that point and pretty much knew all the good players in New England. So it made no sense that some random guy would walk directly up to me asking to play.

After saying no three or four times he proceeded to take a paper bag out of his coat that was filled with hundred dollar bills. He's still begging me to play at this point and I'm still saying no but wondering what the heck is going on.

At this point he takes out a lighter and lights a couple hundred dollar bills on fire saying something like "see I don't give a F about money, just play me". I know he's totally serious about playing now and I ask what he wants to play for. He says $1000/game 9-ball. My eyes light up and then I remember I have about $60 to my name. I tell him to hold on and I walk behind the counter and call a bunch of different people, explain the situation, and they come down with the money. It ends up being three different people that are "backing" me in this game for various percentages.

The details are a little fuzzy on the games we played but I can remember being extremely nervous. For anyone that's played 9-ball, you know you can run all the balls and if you miss the 9-ball and your opponent makes it, you lose. So it's a high pressure game that doesn't always reward the best player. The first game I believe I ran a bunch of balls and missed the 7-ball. He either missed the 7 or made the 7 and missed the 8. This guy can barely hold a stick and I realize this as I see him take a shot. After he misses I run the remaining balls and win the game. The second game he misses the 3-ball and I run out the table. He's angry at this point saying I'm too good. We get into a little bit of an argument and I don't remember all the specifics but he's just upset that he's lost. He ends up leaving the pool room and pays me the $2000. Before he leaves he opens his coat to show me he's carrying a gun.

Nothing really eventful happens for a few days until someone I don't recognize walks into the pool room. We have some booths to the corner of the room and this guy that's walked in tells me he wants to talk to me and asks not so politely that I take a seat in the booth with him.

He explains to me that the money I've won didn't belong to the person that I "hustled" and that it belongs to the mob. I explain to him that I didn't hustle anyone and that this guy was begging me to play. We go back and forth and he eventually says, "Look that money doesn't belong to you, it belongs to us. You can either pay the money or we'll put you in a hospital. And when you get out of the hospital, we'll put you back in it again". I'm obviously very scared at this point especially because I only have a small percentage of the money.

I call the friends that were backing me in the game, explain the situation to them, and all but one of them agrees to give the money back. The lone holdout is a pretty bad guy himself and basically says tell that guy "he can go F himself".

So I round up the money over the next day. This guy returns, I pay him the money and explain the situation with the remaining money. He seems satisfied and leaves.

Maybe two weeks later, one of the old-timers in the pool room, tells me I've been scammed. He says the guy that came in demanding the money, saying he was associated with the mob, isn't associated with anyone. He was just a scam artist who had heard about the whole story, knew I had won a lot of money, and came up with an angle to get it from me. I'm confused and pretty sick about the whole situation. I just chalk it up to another lesson learned and try to get over it.

The story doesn't end there though.

Maybe a week or two later in the early afternoon there is an ambulance across the street from the pool room. It's pretty unusual for this to happen. There are some bars and restaurants in the area but generally it's pretty quiet at this time. I don't think too much of it other than it's odd.

That night someone comes into the pool room to tell me that the guy who scammed me got beat up so bad that an ambulance had to come get him - that was the ambulance across the street this afternoon. I'm really confused at this point but find out the rest of story later that night:

The original guy that came into the pool room and played $1000/game actually is part of the mob and is a runner. A runner is a person that runs around and collects money for the mob. Apparently he had heard that I had been scammed by this guy and wasn't happy that the scammer was impersonating being a mobster and had stolen his money (that was really my money).

So the end result of the whole story is that the scammer pretending to be a mobster that's going to put me in a hospital ends up being put in a hospital himself by an actual mobster.

A++

Awesome. Please post more here.

that is an amazing story

Not just great stories, in general. You seem very knowledgeable about the game and I'm sure your expertise would be greatly appreciated.

JR-

Thanks a lot of the compliments, much appreciated.

I do think there is potential to make as much or more money in DFS as poker. It still isn't as big as poker was and at the highest levels I don't believe people are making what poker players at the highest levels were in poker's heyday. But I agree that DFS is still developing and growing and the potential is definitely there. Right now there are at least a handful of players making mid 6-figures a year.

I am concerned about the long-term prospects of DFS however. The rake is 10% across a lot of the industry which in my opinion is unsustainable long-term. It's not a big deal right now because there's a huge influx of recreational players and a lot of tournaments with overlay. But in time as the overall skill level improves and presumably the sites reduce overlay, the rake could potentially be insurmountable. My hope is that the competition among the sites drives rake down.

Yes, the equity required to peel out of position is in the neighborhood of 35%.

I think you nailed it at the end. There is a huge difference between a 34/5 and a 55/13 limper. One of the more common mistakes I saw at mid/high stakes was isolating limpers with inferior hands and without considering the range they're limping with.

In general you can be very liberal raising limpers but when you're playing with limpers that are more in that 34/5 type of mold, you can't be nearly as liberal. The most important consideration is the range they're limping with and adjusting your range based on that.

If you have a marginal opening hand and the bb is a very loose and bad player (rarely folds flop and turn and will never fold a pair and is also never folding his bb preflop), are you more or less likely to play the marginal opening hand.

I've been in a quandary about this. On the one hand, it's good to play hands against bad players. If you hit your hand, you're likely to make good money. On the other hand, you are never stealing his bb and it is often going to showdown and your hand is marginal. So do you open tighter or looser against a rec player in bb? If you play looser, how do you proceed postflop when you miss? Thanks.

Money you donate from the blinds is indeed dead money, but it costs us less to play from the blinds than from the other positions.

This is not because of players left to act (as the original opener had more players left to act than us). It is because we don't want to play many minus EV hands against his range (which will roughly be the bottom half of his range).

For example, imagine you know the opener opened with a range of exactly AA, KK or QQ and we look down and see we have QQ. You can see that QQ is going to be a big loser against his range (even though it is a hand in his range). That's why we have to lop off roughly the bottom half our range against the opener. The fact that we have position and initiative when we 3bet as well as probable dead money from the blinds means we can open up our range a bit more, but we definitely have to be tighter than the opener's range.

Hi Jagnje,

Thanks for the offer, I don't have interest in this though. I've played enough poker to last a hundred lifetimes and have no interest in pursuing anything poker-related unless I'm financially forced to at some point.

Definitely 54s. There aren't any reasons other than it fairs better than Q7o from the button. Q7o was essentially a breakeven hand for me over thousands of opens. I don't know my 54s results off the top of my head but they were better.

More pool stories

Pool story, bro!