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

Daniel Barbarisi quit his job as a New York Yankees beat writer and began a quest to join the top one percent of Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) players, the so-called sharks, in hopes to discover the secrets behind this phenomenon--and potentially make some money along the way.

DFS is fantasy sports on steroids. Its the domain of bitter rivals FanDuel and DraftKings, online juggernauts who turned a legal loophole into a billion-dollar industry by allowing sports fans to bet piles of cash constructing fantasy teams.

Yet as Barbarisi quickly realizes, what should have been a fun companion to casual sports viewing was instead a ferocious environment infested with sharks, a top tier of pros wielding complex algorithms, drafting hundreds of lineups, and wagering six figures daily as they bludgeon unsuspecting amateur fish. Barbarisi embeds himself inside the world of DFS, befriending and joining its rogues gallery as he tries to beat them at their own game.

In a work equal parts adventure and rigorously reported investigation, Barbarisi wades into this chaotic industry at the very moment its existence is threatened by lawmakers sick of its Wild West atmosphere and pushy advertising. All their money made FanDuel and DraftKings seem invincible; but, as Barbarisi reports, they made plenty of dubious--perhaps even scandalous--moves as they vied for market supremacy.