Sitting in a second-floor conference room of a downtown Toronto hotel, Rob Warendorf, a Canadian Sports Trader for FanDuel’s Sportsbook, asked, “Want to see how it works?”

How could I say no?

With the click of a button, Warendorf was able to run a model that would simulate the upcoming Canadian Football League season 5,000 times.

The model, custom-built by Warendorf, will help play a role in FanDuel setting win totals and Grey Cup odds for the 2022 season.

“Rob actually built the tournament simulator for Canadian Football,” said Will Twinn FanDuel’s Vice President of Trading. “Something we never would’ve had before we never took much action on it. But Rob went and built it, so we’ll use that to help the pricing.”

However, Warendorf and Twinn’s jobs are more than just numbers and algorithms.

“When I tell people about my job, usually the first word out of their mouth is algorithm.” Warendorf said. “We do, obviously, have a lot of data that we work with in terms of getting our lines as sharp as possible. But there is no algorithm, Vegas does not know. It’s just a lot of qualitative skill in addition to quantitative skill.” 

By now, you’re probably wondering who Warendorf and Twinn are and how they got here.

After graduating from the University of Delaware with a Bachelor of Engineering in 2018, Warendorf spent two years working as an environmental engineer. In March 2020, he bet on himself and changed career paths.

“Making these kinds of spreadsheets is something I was doing for my own betting interest before getting the job, so this was kind of the perfect marriage,” he said.

Twinn, a former lawyer, has been in the industry for 12 years and considers himself lucky.

“It’s really fun. You get to work with a great group of like-minded people that share the same interests,” he said.

That group of like-minded people that Twinn is talking about is the team of oddsmakers at the FanDuel Sportsbook.

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Or, as Twinn referred to them, “traders.”

Every day, their team of traders, located around the world, has to have their fingers on the pulse, whether it be in the single-game market or futures.

This includes keeping up to date with where the money is going and who people are talking about.

“We try to be as accurate as possible,” Twinn said about setting the lines. “If you start to take some sharp action from respected bettors, we will move the lines slightly.”

While sharp money (professional bettors with long track records of success) can have a slight influence in the single-game markets, it’s also important that this team of traders at FanDuel is always alert for breaking news.

“We have tweet notifications for all sorts of news outlets. Occasionally, people will see it before us and we’ll see a few bets that stand out,” Twinn said. “So, well done to them. Sometimes they beat us.”

The traders at FanDuel make it their priority to not only get the odds down as quickly as possible once news breaks, but also to adjust on the fly and get the odds live again.

“The big thing we drill into our traders is that everyone is talking about this now so let’s get it on the board as quickly as possible,” said Twinn. 

“We’re not going to wait for the market to form,” Twinn added.

A good example was last NFL season.

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers tested positive for COVID-19 just days before a marquee Week 9 matchup with Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.

“We were pretty much the first book back on the board,” Twinn said about the situation.

The process was simple: Take the line down, reassess Rodgers’ value and adjust accordingly. 

Other examples include Tom Brady announcing he was coming out of retirement and Russell Wilson getting moved to the Denver Broncos.

“Those are the best days in the trading room,” Twinn said with a big smile. “Literally, we’ll turn around and start throwing some numbers out, maybe get everyone to post a number and find some consensus in the middle.”

The group will have an open discussion, challenge each other and try to poke holes in theories to ensure the best number is agreed upon.

“Within a minute or two we have a consensus and post the number,” Twinn said.

From there, the team of traders keeps an eye on how the new number is received, how the rest of the market looks and adjusts if needed.

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FanDuel, and every other sportsbook that offers player props, faced a big test earlier this season thanks to Draymond Green.

Minutes before tipoff, Shams Charania of The Athletic reported Green would be in the starting lineup for the Golden State Warriors alongside Klay Thompson.

Thompson was making his return to action after a pair of serious leg injuries that kept him out of the lineup for 941 days. Green wanted to be a part of that return, despite a calf injury flaring up during pregame warmup.

Green got the start, but only played seven seconds that night after committing a foul immediately after the opening tip.   

Bettors rushed to their sportsbooks and hammered the under on Green’s player props. 

However, FanDuel was quick to react.

“That was a really interesting one,” Twinn said. “I was incredibly proud of the way it was handled. And it speaks to the large-scale professional team we have across the world.”

Charania’s tweet was quickly flagged by one of the team’s traders located in Melbourne, Australia within seconds and the team acted fast. 

However, some lucky bettors were able to get their bets in that night.

“We’re not perfect, we get things wrong.” Twinn said, “If you know what you’re doing, if you do your research and if you understand the sport better or a team better that’ll help you win.” 

“We just try to be right more than we’re wrong,” Twinn said.

One way that FanDuel believes they can be right more than wrong is the way they set their odds.

While most sportsbooks will round their numbers to the nearest zero or five (-120, -125), you will see some odd numbers appear on FanDuel’s sportsbook.

When asked why they do this, Twinn said it’s simple.

“We want to have the most exact numbers.”

While the trade-off for having exact numbers is that they don’t look as clean, that’s something FanDuel doesn’t appear too concerned about.

“We believe customers will go ‘If I can bet that at +102 at FanDuel, and it’s +100 everywhere else because it looks neat, I want to bet the +102,’” Twinn said. 

When it comes to live betting, FanDuel’s team of traders have a lot at their disposal.

“For live games, we have some outstanding models,” Twinn said.

The models are great, but the traders still have to manage the lines.

Twinn added, “It’s almost like a pilot in a plane, the pilot, (trader) , takes off (gets the game going) and is there tracking and continually monitoring things.”

The trader will occasionally step in and change things based on factors like wind, other environmental conditions and injuries, something FanDuel believes they do better than most.

A recent example that came to mind for Warendorf was this year’s Sugar Bowl when Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral went down with an injury.

“I wasn’t working that day, but I was on my phone and noticed nobody had adjusted their lines, and we had moved ours a full three or four points towards Baylor.”

Baylor went on to win the game 21-7 after entering the game as a slight underdog.

“Those situations are where the traders make the biggest difference, in my opinion. It’s something the algorithm or model can’t catch,” Warendorf added.

While FanDuel has a ton of bonuses, boosts and offers to go along with their wide selection of day-to-day sports betting options, one thing is important to their team of traders.

“Responsible gaming, that’s something we’re incredibly passionate about as a business because we think it’s incredibly important,” Twinn said.

His other piece of advice?

“Follow what interests you. If you're a fan of soccer you can click the soccer tab and see the 20-plus Canadian World Cup specials. That’s all anyone is talking about [in Canada] in terms of soccer, so I said ‘Rob, let’s get a bunch of Canadian specials up.’”

“Betting should be fun.” Warendorf said. “Have fun with it, know your limits and find the best experience for you.” 

One way for FanDuel users to enjoy the experience is by exploring their promotions and boosted odds offers.

After watching our friends south of the border have all fun on FanDuel with boosted odd single-bets and parlays, Ontario was able to get into the action on April 5, cashing the Raptors to score at least one point against the Atlanta Hawks at +100 odds.

 

Just days later, another boost appeared on the FanDuel Canada page – the Toronto Maple Leafs to score one or more goals against the Dallas Stars. 

With original odds at -2000, the number boosted  to +100.

Opportunities like these will pop up from time to time, and it’s something this team at FanDuel keeps an eye on to see how the public reacts. 

“Our aim is to give the customers what they want.” Twinn said. “A lot of our playbook is from the U.S., and we’re trying to localize it for the Canadian market. Rob and our new Toronto traders will be tasked with continuing to give the Canadian audience what they want.”