The best ball world got jolted out of its peace-and-love vibe over this past weekend when players went ballistic over a new drafting tool the website Establish the Run (ETR) debuted last week under its “Solver” product line.
As a result, Underdog Fantasy issued guidance Tuesday afternoon about just what is and what is not allowed when it comes to tools.
“We’ve seen the new Draft tool that has been the focus of discussion this week and would like to provide some clarity,” read the statement. “We have always monitored what tools are out there, we’ve allowed some, we’ve blocked others, and we’re grateful that various creators have played ball in making sure their tools do not break our TOS. In general, we do not allow scripts, we do not allow strain on our APIs, we do not allow automation. We do allow suggestions and overlays and have for quite a while. We understand the concerns and the various viewpoints on this, but suggestions are allowed, automation is not. We will continue to monitor new tools to ensure they are in compliance with applicable fantasy regulations and our TOS.”
Previously Tuesday, ETR apparently made a minor tweak to its draft tool, forcing subscribers to provide their own settings for the tool, taking out a layer of automation that was originally built into the process.
In English
Underdog best ball fantasy football is a game in which users draft 18-man teams, and there is no in-season management. This year’s top prize in the signature tournament, Best Ball Mania VI, is $2 million.
Strategy abounds when drafting, whether it’s “stacking” players from the same team, or optimizing for the potential of making the Week 17 championship, or planning for bye weeks, or different ways to draft running backs, and so on.
While many drafters intuitively know all this as they draft, overlay tools — such as the one offered by Establish the Run — have become popular in recent years. Spike Week offers a “Draft Hacker” product that shows schedules and how much exposure you have to any one player, among other items. The “LegUp Sidekick” from Legendary Upside dynamically adjusts rankings as drafts progress. Fantasy Life’s “Best Ball Hub” tracks team exposure, correlations, and more.
ETR’s product does just about everything above.
And while these overlay products are not new, the anger about their use was.
A sampling from X:
“I hope you’re really happy with yourselves with this product. Lame af.”
“Bummed ETR has succumb [sic] to the solver takeover. [Evan] Silva and [Adam] Levitan are such purest [sic]. From a business perspective I get it, eat or be eaten. Still love those guys, and ya gotta think they made the move with a sigh. Sad day boys.”
“Y’all getting crazy flack and rightfully so. Hate this.”
“Assholes like you all have already run casuals out of DFS. Now you are going to ruin best ball. Guess you can’t build a tool to show you that without them, none of these things will stay around. Good job. Hopefully @Underdog has the balls to ban you all since @DraftKings won’t.”
And on it went.
The view from ETR
In an interview with InGame, Levitan, co-founder of Establish the Run, expressed surprise at the backlash.
“I normally can tell when things might be controversial,” he said. “I did not think that this would be controversial in the slightest.”
He stressed that the tool isn’t what many critics seem to think it is.
“It’s not really doing anything besides dynamically shuffling rankings,” he said. “It’s not making the picks for you and it’s not AI. And it’s certainly not solving best ball. I think that people have it in their head that it’s something that it’s not. They think it automates picks. They think it’s some AI-like black box thing. No, it’s just helping people make solid teams, helping them understand stacking and draft capital and all that.
“It’s helping people to be more efficient with their drafts and I think raising the floor on less experienced best ball players.”
Additionally, Levitan said it makes it possible to manage multiple drafts simultaneously — something that would be much harder without technological assistance.
“I’m going to do like 10 Puppies (a lower-priced contest) at once, and I never would have done that without the tool,” he said. “But with the tool, I can do it and it gets to my pick and I can just quickly see what the top three options are.”
The tool also helps users understand important strategic concepts.
“If you take Lamar Jackson, don’t take Jalen Hurts with your next pick, or if you take Jalen Hurts, you need to bump up Devonta Smith and Dallas Goedert,” Levitan said.
Having said all that … Levitan gets where people are coming from.
“I think people have a fear of technology, and I get it because I was much happier — and I was winning more in poker and DFS — before technology. But it’s just crazy to complain about,” he said, “Because it’s inevitable.”
Not a solved game
The anger stems from the belief that this tool somehow “solves” the game of best ball, when in fact — at least to the eyes of this BBM II finalist (#Humblebrag) — it’s not all that different than what’s already on the market, and, quite frankly, not all that helpful to people who already know what they’re doing (#HumblebragRedux).
Does it make tracking things easier? It does. Does it make winning a best ball tournament any easier? It does not, as winning a best ball tournament is incredibly difficult, takes a ton of luck, and there’s no effective way to “sim” it out at this point (or probably ever).
Online poker? Solvers are an obvious help. DFS? The rise of sims (simulations) has undoubtedly tilted the game toward those who understand what they offer, and what their limitations are.
Best ball overlay tools, however, are simply tools. They make drafting a little bit easier, and give a slight boost to players who aren’t entirely sure of the nuance to drafting what’s considered — at least in this very early stage of the best ball season — a potentially winning team.
“We had no intention of even building this when we saw when this stuff come out two years ago,” Levitan said. “But our customers are like, ‘Why don’t you guys have this?’ They’re just going to leave and go to somebody else’s site if we don’t build it.”
