By Drew Harwell, Washington Post

After sitting through your 30th DraftKings or FanDuel commercial of the day — Scott H. won $15,000 off a $5 bet! — you may find yourself thinking: Maybe I should try my hand at daily fantasy sports. It’s like that fantasy-football league at work, just sped up a little, right? How hard could it be?

The game, as the ads say, is straightforward: A bettor pays an entry fee (between 25 cents and about $5,000), joins one of the site’s many contests and then starts crafting a fantasy team, by choosing professional athletes (each with a price; the team can’t go over a “salary cap”) and then getting scored on how well they play on the real-life field.

DraftKings and FanDuel’s betting ranks have exploded: Even after a week of controversy, the two sites’ guaranteed-prize games just pulled in more than $45 million in entry fees, their biggest Sunday of this National Football League season, according to industry tracker SuperLobby. But beyond its simple concept, daily-fantasy gameplay is loaded with quirks, risks and hidden pitfalls that critics say can stack the deck for veterans and lead casual players to lose out.

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