Hey NVG - this is tech DFS, and I haven’t been here in a while, but it’s all old poker pros. Can anyone illuminate or articulate the current battle between EM2 and (at least) AE Jones and the rest of the cast of characters. It’s hard to follow on Twitter and there’s a headsupforrollz kind of thing going on. Make this forum fun again?

Alex "Awesemo" Baker is a nice nerdy dude who owns a fairly large DFS training/touting platform. He is #1 ranked player on the RotoGrinders ranking, which is very volume and GPP oriented. So think of it as the HendonMob ranking.

EM2 is a twitter troll and probably wrote something about Alex. Alex tweeted some nerdy joke back. EM2 said he'll play him HU and give him +120 in any sport.

EM2 is probably the best or among the best cash DFS players (aka - HU, 50/50 etc) players in the world.

Alex declined, but they settled for a bet - they each play 10 high stakes tournaments (5k entry) and whoever wins the most money at the end gets additional 50k.
EM2 then offered side bets on it giving up to +130.

Another very good DFS player named David Mok accepted the side bet. Mok's 500k vs EM2 650k, Mok winning if Alex wins the bet. Dan Smith, Fedor etc all have some stake against EM2.

The first tournament started yesterday on some PGA tournament.

In the middle of all the drama AEjones managed to get a +110 HU bet against EM2. They will play HU each week of the NFL season for aejones 100k vs EM2 110k.

A lot of bad trolling continues. Quite amusing, but also everyone are closer to 40 now so also a little bad sad.

^lol sick cliffs Yuv, nice one


Shoutout to EM2 for being like "I'll HU anyone in the world in any sport +130 come at me" and accepting all action. Sicko

Thanks Yuv! Amazing post.

Guy has a lot of free time on his hands, tweets 24 hours a day











throwback to cringey victorypoker video from empiremaker showing off diamond watches and cash https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfpvmx

Awsome-O is the GOAT in every single way

+120 become +110 with aejones and evens with aweseomo. he also turned down petteytheft89 in anything NBA related.

I think there's a chance he's -EV in GPPs these days. he plays very very chalky. that's basically what awesemo was calling him out on, and what started this entire thing

No, he didn’t offer +130 hu to anyone. He’d be flat broke if he did.
He offered +130 on the winner of EM2 vs Awesemo.

What does it mean to say a DFS player is chalky? I play season long fantasy football so I follow some guys on Twitter this time of year and I see that often.

EM2 has been playing this character since back when he was playing poker. I’m starting to think he really is that guy...like the biggest tool alive. It’s funny when he calls other people nerds. He seems like their king.

I think it's even money with Awesemo because Alex himself didn't want to take odds (as he probably thinks it's bad for his brand, which he promotes as being the #1 DFS player in the world).

He never actually offered +120 to anyone in the world. But being a jock-type dude he couldn't completely backdown so Aejones took advantage.

Chalk just means popular.

EM2 plays cash games, where having team very similar to others isn't a bad thing, because you're not trying to win a tournament, you're just trying to place in the top 50% or edge out your opponent.

In tournaments (GPP) it will be extremely -EV to have a popular lineup, because even if it does well you have to beat out 10ks of similar lineups and possibly share first place with tons of identical (duped) lineups.

EM2 specifically is sharing his lineups or model with Bryce Mauro and they routinely have identical lineups in the same tournament, which is the jab Awesemo was pointing to.

Its astonishing online poker is illegal in most states and the cluster**** that is salary cap DFS is legal is astonishing.

These companies couldn't care less about offering a fair game. I play a little bit of NFL, but I have no doubt I can't win with all the **** going on with these guys.

No offense, but you're not losing your milly maker entry because EM2 is sharing his lineup with another guy in the Thunderdome (they are actually hurting their EV in certain tournaments).

The rake is ridic high which is the biggest problem in DFS.

And in the milly is what 500k + entries with ppl spreading 150 entries over 4-10 ppl, collusion is DFS is what makes it so tough

I'm happy to bash the DFS industry, but I don't think collusion is what makes it so hard. What makes it hard is that you are -EV to begin with (most likely), you are paying almost unbeatable rake and you are entering 1 time vs 150 entries of a person who is better than you.

The milly maker entry is $16.8+$3.2. You'd laugh at an MTT buy-in with that type of rake but people just accept it for DFS.

There are tons of single entry tournaments you can enter if that was the real issue you'd be rich off DFS by now.

I happen to know these guys pretty well. Awesemo is someone that played poker professionally for years but then found his stride in DFS and really grinded his way up to the top of the food chain by playing tournaments in every different sport. EmpireMaker2 is just some dude who made a ton of money off bitcoin and now plays DFS. Based on how willing he was to throw big money down on this challenge at bad odds just shows how much he has a desire to be less wealthy than he is today.

Well I know a group of guys 4-5 that max out their 150 entries and spread out 600-750 with all separate rosters, and I’m sure there are even bigger groups out there so if you are tossing in 20 or less entries you are just punting, rake being lower won’t matter playing in massive high variance top heavy tournaments

Obv playing hu and 50/50 rake is far more important

And you don’t think is massive collusion in single entry tournaments?

What do you think massive collusion does for your EV in a single entry tournament? You just adjust to the ownership percentage. I doubt collusion in the MM is even close to effecting your ROI.

I like how Awesemo just hopped by to talk some **** at EM2.

Yes, the best players having thousands of entries does nothing to ROI. Its not about "collusion". Its the fact multi-accounting effectively isn't against the rules. The only real collusion in the big tournaments is them not duping lineups.

These sites are big, but they tolerate this bullshit because they probably can't fill those tournaments without allowing these guys to have thousands and thousands of entries.

No, but if they can get away with duping entries constantly at the highest stakes and the sites do nothing what does that tell you about how many entries these guys have in the big tournaments(if they believe they are profitable in them)?

It’s like saying Jason Dufner has the same roi if there is 1 Justin Thomas or 50 in a tournament because he will lose every time anyway

EM2 is sharing his lineup with another dude in the same tournaments, that increases your EV if you think your lineup is good. At the same time you're talking about people spreading their entries over more than 150 lineups by colluding. Which is the exact opposite.

Duplicates are not a big thing in large NFL GPPs to begin with.

There are plenty of different game types to choose from if you want to avoid 150 max GPP's. Thinking that you're losing because of MA just makes no sense.

The problem with DFS is rake, it's extremely top-heavy payouts, it's a predatory cash game eco system, exactly the same issues with Poker. These companies are making the exact same mistakes but since all they care about is stock value and not profits, it might be the right call in the short term.

Awesemo is 6/20 and EM2 is 12/20 after day 2 out of 4 of whatever PGA tournament is running. Only 4 itm so anything under 4 is meaningless.

Thread has good posts by Yuv, bad posts by everyone else. Except the part where he implied I was getting close to 40! I'm still in my early 30s, obv (late 20s on Tinder)

DFS world needs more of this, some good old fashioned ego wars

Also the fish that are drawing dead before kickoff help with the rake

It really is lol. You are drawing way slimmer to win in DFS than you are in poker.

DFS is so much softer than poker though because it's mostly players from the USA and Canada along with a few European and Australian players. With online poker you got a ton of sharps from countries that hardly have any recreational players that play decent stakes.