SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The New York Times reports that in a major blow to a multibillion-dollar industry that introduced sports betting to legions of young sports fans, the New York State attorney general has ordered the two biggest daily fantasy sports companies, DraftKings and FanDuel, to stop accepting bets from New York residents, saying their games constituted illegal gambling under state law. "It is clear that DraftKings and FanDuel are the leaders of a massive, multibillion-dollar scheme intended to evade the law and fleece sports fans across the country," says NY attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, "Today we have sent a clear message: not in New York, and not on my watch."
Fantasy sports companies contend that their games are not gambling because they involve more skill than luck and were legally sanctioned by a 2006 federal law that exempted fantasy sports from a prohibition against processing online financial wagering. "Fantasy sports is a game of skill and legal under New York state law," says FanDuel. "This is a politician telling hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers they are not allowed to play a game they love and share with friends, family, co-workers and players across the country." The attorney general's office also said that ads on the two sites "seriously mislead New York citizens about their prospects of winning." State investigators found that to date, "the top 1 percent of DraftKings winners receive the vast majority of the winnings." Schneiderman's investigation was spurred after reports arose that a DraftKings employee used internal data to win $350,000 on rival site FanDuel, which the operators denied. While both companies had allowed employees to place bets on the others site, they have since banned such practices.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MrGuy on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:19PM
Neither of these maps well to a game being a game of skill.
The house take is utterly irrelevant to whether a game is skill based or not (unless you count basic math skills about payouts into your definition of skill). Single-zero roulette has no more skill to it than double-zero roulette (despite the second zero effectively doubling the house take).
A pari-mutuel system for assigning payouts doesn't make a game a game of skill. The payoff odds for any given lottery number increase as other players bet on other numbers (because they increase the overall jackpot, thus increasing my payout), and decrease with the number of people who bet on the same number (because we share the jackpot). The fact that the payoff adjusts to the actions of other players doesn't make it a game of skill.
Your assertion that horse racing should be considered a game of skill simply because it uses a pari-mutuel system is nonsense to me. How is predicting which horse should win a race qualitatively different than predicting which team will win a basketball game? Both have some return to knowledge of the sport, history of the teams, the physical condition of the athletes, and the nature of the event. Being good at all those might qualify as "skill" in forecasting such events.
By your definition, however, the fact that you bet against the line (or the spread) at a sports book for basketball means the game is NOT a game of skill, but betting at the window of a horse racing track IS, simply because of how the odds are determined?
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:45PM
You're correct about horse racing versus betting on basketball or football.
What's deeply problematic about these games is how they're set up. They could change the way the games work so that they function more like poker at which point it would be a game of skill. It would probably also scare off a ton of less serious players because they'd have to put in a lot more work creating their teams.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SubiculumHammer on Wednesday November 11 2015, @10:57PM
Your points are well taken, but my brevity misled you, i think.
I will not argue that takeout is sufficient to determine whether something is a game of skill...that is just silly.
I generally define games of chance as a game in which even the top %1 of skilled players cannot net a profit over time. One might argue even so, if high skill can let you lose more slowly than low skill , then it is a game of skill. I reject this notion as pedantic and not useful.
One might argue that this definition is fuzzy. Yes. But one could also describe roulette a game of skill, if only one were skilled enough to calculate the relevant physical processes.
Under my definition takeout has big impact on whether a game is one of skill or chance because takeout is a guaranteed loss, lowering ROI dramatically.
I also dislike the house setting the odds. The house has lots of resources and can derive powerful predictive models, when combined with the take out, the skilled player cannot hope to profit over time. I prefer paramutuel odds making because (ignoring) takeout you just need to better than the majority of players to turn a profit, not better than the house odds maker which susidizes the unskilled.
Let's say God runs the sports betting company. Being omnipotent he knows the odds perfectly, say 50/50. Being God he doesn't have a takeout. Can a skilled player earn more than an unskilled player at God's sports betting? No. The odds are set to reality.
The devil sets odds perfectly too, but takes a cut. Now you cannot win, but will definitely lose over time, no matter your skill.