Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Ed Miller is back to talk about Daily Fantasy Sports, his writing, and finding edges not just on the felt but in life. All that plus a strategy segment from Nate!
This episode is sponsored by Shark Clock and Tournament Poker Edge.
Timestamps
0:30 hello
5:05 strategy with nate
24:33 ed miller
DFS has been a fun distraction for me lately, so great to hear from Ed … great show as always!
Great book idea by Ed at the end- you should go for it and write the thing.
Always nice to hear from Mr Miller, agree the book idea at the end sounds cool and worth doing re changing economies and finding new edges. A note to Ed: Depending on whatever structure and flow you opt for with the content, something like this could work: intro chapters which set the scene and put forward the main premise followed by 3 real world case study style examples. Those could be based on research / interviews with people you admire / consider pioneers in the approach. End with forward looking analysis and inspiration – voilà!
There is a theoretical advantage to having multiple entries in a tournament when they are GTO balanced and you cover the range of possibilities. He gave the example where you can choose a poker hand – let me simplify it even further – we are tossing a coin and the have 2 guesses and another 4 players separately have 1 guess each – we all bet one unit with the winnings divided among the people who guess correctly….
We cover both bases by covering 1 head 1 tail.
If the other players split 2-2 it’s a push for us. (37.5% of the time)
If the other players split 3-1 we profit 1 unit or lose 0.5 units for an average of + 0.25 units. (50% of the time)
if the other players split 4-0 we profit 4 units or lose 0.8 units for an average of +1.6 units (12.5% of the time)
so our profit playing the game is +0.325 units for every game played with 2 units staked, or an ROI of +16.25%.
So if he is submitting GTO balanced entries in DFS he has an advantage in the tournaments over players who are not coordinating entries in the same way.
First of all, I love the Ed Miller shows and you can tell listening to him why his books are so well written. And Ed’s breakdown of DFS was spot on– clinical and helped the layman understand.
Except that I agree with Richard’s comment above. Ed pointed to certain tools and edges that pros have access to that rec players don’t that gives a significant edge. One idea that most of us understand is that you need to play high variance (high risk/high reward) and he explained in the payout structure why that high variance approach makes sense. But then he said that just getting to enter a tournament 200 times doesn’t really give you an edge because (1) anyone can do it and (2) you are playing against yourself.
Counter to (1): Sure, anyone can do it, but the definition of a recreational player is that they don’t do it. They spend 10-15 minutes and put together 1-2 lineups. They can be very knowledgeable about baseball and select a high variance lineup that could do well, but probably won’t. It’s fun… but I have to tell you, it’s not AS fun knowing that pros are playing EVERY high variance lineup. They have tournaments that you can have only 1 entry– imho they should all be that way… and DFS pros would wither away. I’m not against people finding and taking advantage of edges, but these are not edges the companies like DraftKings should support.
Counter to (2): Sure, but as Ed pointed out, the payout structure is weighted so heavily to top prize(s) that (as Richard articulates) allows pros to find the sweet spot in # of entries to produce a much higher ROI than the loss of competing against yourself.