Dueling with Kings: High Stakes, Killer Sharks, and the Get-Rich Promise of Daily Fantasy Sports

Veteran sports writer Barbarisi was covering the New York Yankees for the Wall Street Journal in 2015 when he became intrigued by daily fantasy sports, an online world of “fantasy baseball married with poker married with traditional sports betting.” He takes a fascinating look at this betting world, dominated by two companies—FanDuel and DraftKings—with millions of users competing for million-dollar payoffs in an atmosphere of abandon that reminds Barbarisi of “stock traders in the 1980s before the market tanked.” After an initial effort with losses that turned him into “what the industry calls a fish”—a big-money loser—and fed his anger that the industry gives an advantage to big-spending “sharks” and is “ruinous to the little guy,” Barbarisi took a new path. He decided “to get in with these sharks, convince them to help me, and study under them.” The result is a funny and entertaining inside look at a gambling industry in which big players use complex algorithms but nevertheless can lose to the most average of rubes; it is here where Barbarisi himself becomes a winning shark in the world of fantasy hockey. (Mar.)