Draftkings Sneakily Raises Cash Game Rake

On Saturday, myself and a few other high volume players (aejones, hoop2410, benstunner, Eric Crain, Brit Devine) engaged with Draftkings co-founder Matt Kalish on twitter on the unreasonably high rake in cash games.

A few years ago, Draftkings cash game action was concentrated on 50/50s: essentially half the field receives a 1.8x payout. Over time, Draftkings has moved towards double ups: rather than paying out half the field, pay out ~45% of the field and give them a 2x payout. These were roughly equivalent rake wise. But over the past few years, Draftkings has added more players to the doubleups while not increasing the number of people who 2x their buyin. For example, the 22 man $5 double-ups that paid out 10 people are now 23 man. 33 man contests became 34, 44 became 45, 56 became 57, etc. And they also increased rake on triple-ups: we used to be able to play 30 man contests that paid 9 people, now they are 31 man.

During our twitter discussion, the players let Matt know the rake is becoming unbeatable for cash games. There are simply too many good players and too many touts giving lineup advice so it's very hard to overcome large rake. We compared the situation to fanduel, a site that is basically inferior in every way, showing how fanduel has constantly regenerating 100/50/20 man 50/50s that we can play at lower rake than the Draftkings contests. Matt played dumb:

Yes, Draftkings has the same contests, but they are hidden at the bottom of the lobby while the higher rake contests are showcased, so the ones we would prefer to play get no action. Further, for certain stakes, we are limited to how many of these contests we can enter, while the higher rake contests have no cap.

I made the plea to not change the contests they promote, but simply to lower the rake to acceptable levels: 22/33/44/55/88/110 man doubles rather than 23/34/45/57/91/114 man ones with tons of extra rake.

Three days later, Draftkings raised the rake even more.

25/57 -> 27/62
15/34 -> 17/39

This is a blatant slap in the face. Immediately after we engage him pleading for lower rake, they raise it. And not only did they raise it, they raised it in a sneaky way, changing the number of players to non round numbers hoping that people wouldn't notice.

It's getting to the point where my time will be better spent doing something else. Sure I'm good enough to still beat the rake on large game main slates for NFL, but they aren't taking into account what this does to other sports or slates. I don't think 3-5 game slates are profitable in most contests anymore, and I don't think NBA where everyone has a similar lineup will be profitable either.

Rising rake sucks, but the insulting way they do it and the timing of the rise is even more bothersome. This is not the only thing they've done to decrease edges in the past year:

• Reduced Main slate by 1 game with elimination of Sunday Night Football (a year after eliminating MNF from the slate)
• Removed Sunday-Monday slate from play, one of my highest edge slates
• Removed late swap for NBA last season

The end is near for DFS.

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My name is Ryan Daut and I am a professional gambler. My interests include dogs, poker, fantasy sports, football, basketball, MMA, health and fitness, rock climbing, mathematics, astrophysics, cryptocurrency, and computer gaming.