So since everybody decided poker was bad for you and we can't play it inside the United States I have been pretty much doing nothing. Realistically I probably been doing "more" than I was when I was at my peak of playing online, but in regards to actively making money and challenging myself intellectually I have been doing nothing. This past summer though, I found a way to combine my three favorite things, Gambling, Sports, and Math, and make money doing it. What combines all of these things? The answer is daily fantasy sports.
What are daily fantasy sports? Daily fantasy sports use classic rotisserie scoring, but instead of picking a team for the entire season of football, baseball or whatever, you pick a new team every day. They offer a variety of buy ins and structures, very similar to what online poker sites offer for poker. For example, they have their large field tournaments where they pay 10-15% of the field with 50+ players often registered. This closely mirrors MTTs. They also have 3-10 man tournaments where they pay 33% of the field, much like the Sit n' Go for poker. They also have the 50% of field gets played structures, aka double ups. I would recommend draftday.com to get a feel for the industry.
My friend and I had dabbled with baseball the summer before, but basically just got a feel for the different sites and the concept of DFS. This year we started the summer with specific bankroll guidelines and areas where we thought we could gain an edge over our opponents. As the summer rolled on, my eyes were opened to how much the sites were failing at pricing players. They neglected many factors, giving the observant player a significant edge over the casual fan. Using the available advanced statistics that attempt to counter the effect of luck in the short term, and interesting park related and match up related discrepancies in player performance, one could win enough to beat the site fees and then some. This summer we won the Draft Day DOCOFs Baseball Championship main event for $6,200 and gain not one, but two seats into the Draft Street DSBC( Draft Street Baseball Championship) valued at $2,500 per seat. We had success in other smaller tournaments on a variety of sites, giving us a very solid profit for the summer. All while doing something that was fun and mentally stimulating. The best part of DFS is we were operating within the law of the United States(Fantasy sports are given a skill based exemption under UEIGA) and receiving very fast payments on Paypal.
What interested me the most about playing Daily Fantasy Sports though was the strategy and theory behind selecting your team. Do you play the same team in the small 3-10 mans as you do in the big multi-entry tournaments? Is it wise to enter more than once in a tournament and if so what level of overlap can your team have and still be profitable? With specific regards to baseball, should you select a lot of players from one team in hopes that they score a lot of runs (stacking)? If so, what tournaments do you you do this in? There are plenty more questions like this that deal with the theory of DFS, and there isn't really a formulaic answer to any of them, but I do think I have come up with some basic guidelines to help in these situations that I will share in later blog posts. But anyway, just wanted to get that up there that I have a new focus and it's pretty sweet and I will be posting about it.
Thanks for reading,
-jshilling09
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Back
After a school year where I played almost no poker, I am back at it. Basically spent the year balancing overcompensating for only playing poker the year before by not playing it this year. But I really can't stay away from poker, as proved by my constant refreshing of high stakes db every few hours this year. I played a little on ACR(America's Card Room) where I had a pretty sick $15---->$8k----->BUSTO PLO run (10/20 not good brm???). I didn't really notice it because I don't usually check my bank account, but without money coming in my funds started to go south pretty hard during the year. I was pretty shocked at where they were at the end of the spring semester which was probably due to having a lot of fun. Going into the summer I knew I had to work for my dad and the way that works is I make not a lot of money but i get a lot towards my college. So I knew I had to get back at it Matt Damon style. Reasons14 served as my Edward Norton and before I knew it I was sitting at Foxwoods playing 2/5.
First day of summer and I won $500, but I played like shit. I had no idea what was going on and was lucky in card distribution/ some very easy straight forward spots that came up for me. Driving back I was thankful for the money but very aware I was rusty. I was also aware that for the first time in at least two years I wanted to improve my game more than anything else. I had switched to PLO cash from NLHE, but Foxwoods only has a 1/2 plo game and that only runs on weekends. I needed to learn no limit again.
Back at my house I hit the training websites hard. I looked at 2+2 forums for all the live hands I could find, I started watching High Stakes Poker and other cash games shows(mostly entertainment value, but it fueled the fire to learn). I started figuring stuff out, especially about live poker. I have an EP limping range(crazy I know), am 3-betting slightly less, and I am picking up on some live tells that I think have been pretty helpful to me. I am basically becoming a live pro. I also have messed up though. I made a live misclick in a big pot that ended up going my way. I don't take enough breaks and don't pay attention to the action enough when I am out of pots. I am also unsure as to if I give off massive live tells or not. But I feel like I have hit a stride with playing and have been reading hands very well. I am up about $7.5K this summer in live cash games playing 2/5-5/10. It's a small sample, so these results are not super significant, but what is significant is that each time I sit down at the table and each time I leave I feel more comfortable and confidant. I have had a sick lucky run of 5 winning live sessions in a row, so expect me to slow down a little, but I think in general my live future is bright.
After talking a lot with Ben(reasons14) I started to play online tournaments the last two days. And by deciding to play online tournaments I mean I had $15 left in my blackchip account and entered what I thought was a $11 fo because I was up watching hellmuth and ivey try and ship bracelets(yep im a fanboy too now). I then realized it was a 11 1R1A and ben shipped me an extra $20. Obviously I won the tournament for $900 and am back on the online grind as well. Feel like I played the tournament well, but I really dominated HU play. I switched my game up at 30+ bbs a lot (possibly because I was watching Ivey play a 30bb HU match) and played smaller pots where I could exert my edge post flop more, and chipped him down from him in the lead to me with a 2.5-1 chip advantage without a single all in. I then re-shipped A5s for somewhere around 15-18bbs into A8o but chopped than won A9 against KJ i think. But the point is im running hot as shit right now and feeling good. I am also doing a lot of daily fantasy sports with my friend and we are up like 2k on the summer. We bet on this website called Draftstreet.com , (promo code jshilling09) and it's a lot of fun.
Long story short I am back in the poker/ gambling scene and ready to go. This is usually the section where I set goals and then try kinda hard to achieve them. But for the first time ever I am not going to set $ goals or volume goals. I have made over $10k so far this summer and it has been less than a month, so right now I feel like I can really focus on improving my game and getting me in a good spot for when I return to school and am much closer to Foxwoods. I want to play a lot of tournament sessions, but i am cutting my tables back a little, and never having over 6 because I want to be thinking and learning. I do want to play this deepstacks series at foxwoods in two weeks, it looks like some good buy ins/prize pools to get my feet wet in live tourneys again. The only specific goal i have is to be at next year's WSOP for at least two weeks. To do that I need to build my bankroll and continue to improve my game. A goal that feeds off that one is winning the $2,500 Razz event. Im like 2/1 to win that I am sure so it won't be hard. So I apologize for the tldr nature of this post, but I had to put something out there after i saw Frenzuh and BigBluffzinc putting out some recent blog posts.
Good luck everyone,
jshilling09
First day of summer and I won $500, but I played like shit. I had no idea what was going on and was lucky in card distribution/ some very easy straight forward spots that came up for me. Driving back I was thankful for the money but very aware I was rusty. I was also aware that for the first time in at least two years I wanted to improve my game more than anything else. I had switched to PLO cash from NLHE, but Foxwoods only has a 1/2 plo game and that only runs on weekends. I needed to learn no limit again.
Back at my house I hit the training websites hard. I looked at 2+2 forums for all the live hands I could find, I started watching High Stakes Poker and other cash games shows(mostly entertainment value, but it fueled the fire to learn). I started figuring stuff out, especially about live poker. I have an EP limping range(crazy I know), am 3-betting slightly less, and I am picking up on some live tells that I think have been pretty helpful to me. I am basically becoming a live pro. I also have messed up though. I made a live misclick in a big pot that ended up going my way. I don't take enough breaks and don't pay attention to the action enough when I am out of pots. I am also unsure as to if I give off massive live tells or not. But I feel like I have hit a stride with playing and have been reading hands very well. I am up about $7.5K this summer in live cash games playing 2/5-5/10. It's a small sample, so these results are not super significant, but what is significant is that each time I sit down at the table and each time I leave I feel more comfortable and confidant. I have had a sick lucky run of 5 winning live sessions in a row, so expect me to slow down a little, but I think in general my live future is bright.
After talking a lot with Ben(reasons14) I started to play online tournaments the last two days. And by deciding to play online tournaments I mean I had $15 left in my blackchip account and entered what I thought was a $11 fo because I was up watching hellmuth and ivey try and ship bracelets(yep im a fanboy too now). I then realized it was a 11 1R1A and ben shipped me an extra $20. Obviously I won the tournament for $900 and am back on the online grind as well. Feel like I played the tournament well, but I really dominated HU play. I switched my game up at 30+ bbs a lot (possibly because I was watching Ivey play a 30bb HU match) and played smaller pots where I could exert my edge post flop more, and chipped him down from him in the lead to me with a 2.5-1 chip advantage without a single all in. I then re-shipped A5s for somewhere around 15-18bbs into A8o but chopped than won A9 against KJ i think. But the point is im running hot as shit right now and feeling good. I am also doing a lot of daily fantasy sports with my friend and we are up like 2k on the summer. We bet on this website called Draftstreet.com , (promo code jshilling09) and it's a lot of fun.
Long story short I am back in the poker/ gambling scene and ready to go. This is usually the section where I set goals and then try kinda hard to achieve them. But for the first time ever I am not going to set $ goals or volume goals. I have made over $10k so far this summer and it has been less than a month, so right now I feel like I can really focus on improving my game and getting me in a good spot for when I return to school and am much closer to Foxwoods. I want to play a lot of tournament sessions, but i am cutting my tables back a little, and never having over 6 because I want to be thinking and learning. I do want to play this deepstacks series at foxwoods in two weeks, it looks like some good buy ins/prize pools to get my feet wet in live tourneys again. The only specific goal i have is to be at next year's WSOP for at least two weeks. To do that I need to build my bankroll and continue to improve my game. A goal that feeds off that one is winning the $2,500 Razz event. Im like 2/1 to win that I am sure so it won't be hard. So I apologize for the tldr nature of this post, but I had to put something out there after i saw Frenzuh and BigBluffzinc putting out some recent blog posts.
Good luck everyone,
jshilling09
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