I don't know what information is in the book (never read it) but you can DL/mine the daily contest results, and run analysis. (and many sharps do.)

yes i have db of every tournament on fd/dk its not hard

he had access to h2h data

Not sure it was celebrity seeking. The genesis of the scandal goes back to late September imo when Haskell posted the percentage owned chart before the start of some of the remaining games. The potentially bad assumption everyone had was this data was protected in a meaningful and significant way. Clearly it wasn't.

95% of the population doesn't understand the edge of having that info but it's a big FU from DK to everyone for supposedly clearing their employee and themselves. All's good, move along.

he is the one who associated his FD account with his job at DK.

If he didn't want to be in the clique he could have stealthily played at FD and no one would have made the association between him and the 350k winner

I thought "Outside the Lines" discussion of the scandal was decent, though I thought it was laughable to link last night's referee error in the Monday Night game to the whole thing. I guess they were trying to point out that DFS is gambling, because there's luck involved. But I think you could reach that conclusion anyway.

In the "Outside the Lines" extra report online, Darren Rovell said Fan Duel had just told him that DK employees were responsible for winning .3% of the money. I think they're assuming that's gross winnings paid out. Not sure how to interpret that, but I'm sure we'll be hearing more about it. A lawyer said he can foresee subpoenas to get DK to release similar information if they don't do so voluntarily.

Anyway, I think its going to be a long time before employees are allowed to play DFS anywhere in light of these developments. That's interesting in itself. Will they become disgruntled and quit, so that they can play DFS? And would they continue to do as well at it?

Others ITT didn't like it but I still maintain there's a big conflict of interest when FD's 'pricing expert' has seemingly tens of thousands of dollars or more of action on a competing site every week. It's an interesting test case. Presumably Matt Boccio is making way more in gambling on DK than his salary at FD (note: I have no idea what his salary is). If he's forbidden from playing on DK, he's seemingly going to lose a lot of money by not being able to play.

Logically, if he's just a savant, he'd quit his job and keep playing at DK. Obviously other variables and factors go into this. But one of those variables might be this: if he was using his role at FD to effectively angle shoot the DK market, and he has to quit his job at FD to keep playing on DK, maybe he deduces its better just to collect a salary.

Amazing how people are comparing having that info to seeing people's hole cards in poker. Its not comparable. To me, the bigger story here is how many who have no idea what they are talking about are making this into something that is way bigger than it should be.

Like others have stated here, any competent DFS player has a very good understanding what ownership percentages will be each day/week. And thats all we know he had, any other info is just speculation.

I think its imperative DK comes out and clears things up, amazing how big this has become, hopefully its not too late.

I really don't understand the people saying this is a problem. It's not like the guy has access to SUPER SECRET STATS because he works on pricing at FD. Frankly, the FD pricing algorithm isn't even a good predictor of player performance.

Lol at u

DK could have cleared this up a full week ago, but they pretended it didn't exist and hoped it would go away. That is not a good PR strategy and will bite them in the ass.

So this scandal is blowing up to the point where I think there's a non-zero chance this whole industry is gone in 6-12 months. The companies aren't equipped to deal with this, the response has been terrible, the misinformation out there is staggering (the data integrity stuff is a real issue, dont get me wrong, but its being portrayed as something much different right now), and minutes and hours count here in terms of controlling message. They need to bring in external help with crisis management expertise like ASAP and government relations expertise or they're going to get trainwrecked by state AGs and either destroy the industry or set it back a decade.

It's likely they don't even know. Most "start-up" companies turn a blind eye to access controls and security because it tends to slow things down when the company is going 100mph. Even if they produce a list of who can access the data, it's likely incomplete or just ignores other other methods someone can use to access the data.

Example: Two DBAs have access to the main database. Company says two employees have access to the data. However, a number of sysadmins have root on the machine and thus could read the data. Also, a number of employees can request ad-hoc reports from the DBAs.

Even companies that are slightly more mature, tend to put emphasis on the following types of data.

PII (Personally Identifiable Information) - Names, addresses, SSN, and email addreses to some degree.
Payment information - Credit cards, bank records.
Credential storage - customer passwords and internal system credentials

Other records tend to be fair game unless there's an internal push to protect it.

I only mention this to set an expectation of how new companies typically handle data and access controls. (Very weak) That's not to say DraftKings falls into this area, but it'd be silly to assume they are doing anything more than industry average for a company their size until some external auditors come in and prove it. (And even that's not fool proof!)

btw, i work in the security/audit industry. I don't actively read this thread, but pm me if you have audit/data security questions. felt like posting this to blow off some steam.

The media coverage has gotten more tame as the day has gone on. OTL gave it a pretty fair look.

Was way more pessimistic at 9am.

This explains it well, and succinctly. Seems like a common sense problem:

http://www.legalsportsreport.com/454...data-leak-faq/

LDO if ALL that the FD pricing expert does to set the prices is watch the games or study his models or whatever, fine. If instead he has access to rosters or other various insider information (and its easy to assume he does, and that is viable information for him to have, as part of setting the price) then all the concerns raised above are entirely valid.

agree

I agree with this and to me this is a startup security and ethics issue and not a DFS issue. However, at this point both DK and FD need to be ready for a long and drawn out battle both on a PR front and possibly a legal front. There needs to be an overnight change in oversight within the firms and I would not be shocked if one or both of them hire someone very experienced in transitioning companies from the startup stage to the mature/public by the end of the month.

Also, I think there needs to be an overall push for security and protection of important information within ALL startup companies even if it does slow down innovation. This is a big ask though because, as you said, the more control and security you add around information the more you stunt growth and the companies following good policies would be left behind.

Oh yeah thats where I heard Fan Duel's PR person's name before, she's the woman who tweeted out "hope I dont get AIDS in Africa, just kidding Im white" a couple of years ago and got fired before her flight landed.

Also read on another site that employees playing on their own site is pretty common, particularly in overlay situations, hope that's not true.

CNBC has been pretty hard on them all day with the parallels to insider trading.

this might be the most foolish thing that i have read in a long time

i am sorry but your "good understanding" does not equal knowing the exact percentage of lineup choices in a GPP contest with a one-entry limit

do i need to explain why you don't have a clue?

anyway, i am glad that people like you play DFS

wait, thats there PR person now? wow if so.

it would make sense/he'd need to have access to past rosters or at least past ownership numbers, upcoming events not so much. so he wouldnt necessarily have to have access to the same kind of data Ethan posted.

regardless, he probably wont be able to play going forward i'd imagine, and will probably quit because he's definitely making way more at DFS.

http://www.barstoolsports.com/chicag...k-in-the-fray/

Either an unfortunate name coincidence or...yup.

I absolutely believe anyone who plays DFS regularly can predict ownership percantages closely enough to the point that is relevant.

Other industry problems is a lack of skilled workers. Plus information security is a wide industry and most workers only focus on a few specific areas. A person who is a expert malware analyst might not be the best person to audit and architect data privacy for a company and so on.