Diving into Gambling Twitter is like diving into a pool. A pool consisting of wet cement. Filled with glass shards. With the “Infected” from The Last of Us as lifeguards.
Put another way: Liars and touts and bad actors, oh my!
But there’s one section of the gambling industry that seems immune to the backbiting. One that’s downright friendly. One that is like diving into a pool, but a shimmering pool in the Maldives on a beautiful 80-degree day.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Best Ball Twitter (yes, the site is now called “X,” but almost everyone still refers to it as Twitter), where the takes are hot and the people are … nice.
“It attracts a strategic and generally more reasonable crowd than people who believe they can beat a sportsbook — or, even worse, pay money to someone to tell them how they can beat a sportsbook,” said Justin Herzig, a contributor to Establish the Run and winner of the inaugural Best Ball Mania contest at Underdog, uniformly considered to be heavyweight title of best ball contests.
A quick best ball explainer for those who haven’t dipped in their toes: It’s a fantasy football format where a large team — 18 players, for example, at Underdog — is drafted but weekly lineups are not set. The highest-scoring players at each position are automatically counted toward your point total. It combines the fun of drafting with zero in-season management.
Adam Levitan, the co-founder of Establish the Run, agrees with Herzig’s sentiment.
“I think sports betting is ‘easier’ to the average person,” Levitan said. “They think they can just watch games, they know ball, they can win. And if they’re betting main market sides close to post, they’ll win roughly 50 percent of the time, so they think they are sharp. Whereas fantasy is deeper. You have to know a ton about all the players, all the schemes, all the injuries, all the transactions, all the usage. The people attracted to that are more thoughtful, less angry.”
BBMVI is here
This discussion comes on the heels of Best Ball Mania VI — BBMVI, for those in the know — being dropped into the world by Underdog on Monday.
The payouts on the flagship contest have changed a bit over the years, with wrinkles added and taken away, and this year is a bit of an amalgam of everything they’ve tried.
With each entry costing $25, the $15 million contest will give the winner $2 million, the second-place finisher $1 million, and everyone else in the top 15 at least $100,000.
Additionally, 10% of the pot will be doled out to the top 10,000 finishers in regular season (weeks 1-14) points, with the highest scorer banking $100,000.
All in all, it’s probably the flattest payout structure to date.
When Underdog took to Twitter to post these numbers, Best Ball Twitter responded with their torches and pitchforks safely stowed away.
“Perfection,” said one user.
“F**k yeah,” said another.
Someone posted a Leo DiCaprio clapping GIF from The Wolf of Wall Street.
“This looks even better than last year! Well done,” said another.
But it’s not just the strategy involved that makes Best Ball Twitter such a hospitable place; it’s also the very long odds everyone is facing together. After all, there will be at least 672,600 entrants in BBMVI.
Hard to get mad
“It’s hard to get mad when you know you’re going to lose,” quipped Davis Mattek, host of the Taekcast podcast, co-host of the Swolecast, and very public best ball drafter.
His Swolecast co-host, Peter Overzet, can confirm.
“It’s basically impossible to know who is actually good at best ball. We’ve had essentially five slates to this point,” said Overzet, creative lead at Fantasy Life and all-around best ball bro. “It’s pretty hard to d**k measure in an environment like that.
“Compare that to sports betting or DFS, where the scoreboard is constantly being updated and ROI and longevity is all that matters. Because best ball contests take months and months to settle, there is constant hope in the air. I think that optimism breeds a less hostile environment where people are in it more for the entertainment and the friends made along the way.”
Oh, yes, the friends. Best ball content — of which there is plenty — feels more like an extended family reunion than it does a competition. Content creators bounce from podcast to podcast, YouTube channel to YouTube channel, boosting eyeballs and Q scores for all involved.
“The majority of best ball personalities and content creators have become friends in real life and it sets an overall model of decorum for the greater community,” Herzig said. “The rare people that are rude or aggressive often end up getting drowned out by the larger, more uplifting and familial community. Sure, you still have a few bad eggs, but their voices aren’t amplified as it feels to be the case on Gambling Twitter.”
While the competition for that top prize is fierce — we’re talking about $2 million, after all — the sense of community doesn’t seem diminished by the stakes.
Best Ball Twitter stands out because, despite being a gambling product where people are competing for significant money, the atmosphere remains surprisingly supportive. Perhaps it’s because, as Mattek suggested, “99.99999 percent of us are going to lose.”
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go draft that .00001 percent team, specifically before RJ Harvey gets steamed into the third round.
