More than half of all “long shot” bets on Polymarket pay off
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I read yesterday 50% of profits go to 1% of wallets. I like going to a casino on occasion, but this is not my kind of gambling. Not even close.
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ubercurmudgeon
Ars Praefectus
Prediction markets just have that although-not-the-ultimate-cause-of-the-failure-of-the-civilization-it-was-emblematic-of-the-moral-decay-that-infected-its-institutions feeling about them, that we all remember from school history books.
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Given how easy these bets are to manipulate, it seems crazy that anyone who DOESN'T have insider info is placing bets at all. And this data just confirms that - most people are just "sources of funding for 'skilled traders' ".
Makes me wonder if there is a money laundering element going on also. i.e. placing a bet you know will lose as a way to "legitimately" send money to the winner.
Makes me wonder if there is a money laundering element going on also. i.e. placing a bet you know will lose as a way to "legitimately" send money to the winner.
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RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha
Ars Scholae Palatinae
How soon before an Arsian posts "I'm shocked!" I'll wager on that...
Also, another to wager on, When will an Redditor post they are living in the wrong timeline?
Not long ago, one would go to their "Bookie" and check the odds on what to bet on. We are witnessing a lobbying company corruptly pushing a gambling agenda "not" as gambling.
Kalshi, Polymarket are facilitating gambling, addiction and greed.
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So naturally our economic and military adversaries are watching these polymarkets closely for a run a of "longshot" bets, cos frankly why bother with spies when insider trading does all the heavy lifting.
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Like the pizza places near the Pentagon, where orders tend to spike just before big operations.
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I confidently predict that 99.99% of transactions on these markets is money laundering. Billions of dollars were ‘won’ on these war bets but only one dumb schlub who made a made a couple of tens of thousands of dollars got flagged? I have a doubt.
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Wagering always goes hand-in-hand with insider information, corruption and rigging.
This has always been the case, from racing enthusiasts cultivating “stable insiders”, to cricketers providing bookmakers with “pitch and weather information”, to flat-out knobbling and cheating.
All terrible, but when it’s restricted to trivial events of no consequence — like horses running in circles or people kicking a ball around on the grass — the damage is somewhat contained.
Allowing wagering on events of real consequence is just plain idiotic. It obviously leads to the inherent corruption seeping into other domains. That is obvious and unavoidable.
This has always been the case, from racing enthusiasts cultivating “stable insiders”, to cricketers providing bookmakers with “pitch and weather information”, to flat-out knobbling and cheating.
All terrible, but when it’s restricted to trivial events of no consequence — like horses running in circles or people kicking a ball around on the grass — the damage is somewhat contained.
Allowing wagering on events of real consequence is just plain idiotic. It obviously leads to the inherent corruption seeping into other domains. That is obvious and unavoidable.
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Even leaving aside the corruption/insider angle, doesn't the fact that long shots keep paying off mean that the prediction market is...bad at predictions?
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Im still a little fuzzy on how gambling on anything is just... de facto legal now? And even more clear why we are collectivly puting up with it?
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I mean, this even infects sports to an unhealthy extent. Now players are under scrutiny if they underperform, ref calls become huge question marks, and the ad campaign to suck everyone even vaguely interested in sports into this vortex intensifies with each passing day.
That's not nothing, either-- that's an enormous and horrific impact on people who already likely can't afford or are having difficulty affording basic necessities. It's predatory and totally emblematic of late stage capitalism.
Oh, and in line with the article this stuff is going to get people killed. USAF, foreign citizens and armed forces, who cares as long as it earns you a buck?
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Back in WWII allied intelligence went nuts because a couple of obscure crossword clues pointed to the names of the codewords for the Normandy landings
This time around we'd get an iconic photo of the troops lined up in a landing craft about to hit the beach with all of them on their phones frantically placing bets on the exact timing of the landing
/But it wouldn't matter for opsec since Strava would have already given away their locations.
This time around we'd get an iconic photo of the troops lined up in a landing craft about to hit the beach with all of them on their phones frantically placing bets on the exact timing of the landing
/But it wouldn't matter for opsec since Strava would have already given away their locations.
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Yeah, while I'd never suggest outlawing gambling itself, I AM absolutely suggesting certain things should be illegal to gamble ON.
I'm also calling this gambling, because it's gambling, because that's what it obviously is. Their quibbling about their gambling really being "conditional investment" is... a lie. A lie about the gambling they gamble on, which I call gambling because it's gambling, and I assert this fully as an undeniable fact and suggest other people act based on my assertion in a way that hurts these companies financially.
I'm no lawyer so I'm not sure how to word it, but in plain speech I'd say that gambling should be limited to trivial outcomes. The flip of a coin, the roll of the dice, and the outcome of games. Not military decisions, natural or manmade disasters, political moves, or anything which affects human lives in a tangible way. I also know that laws already protect "friendly bets" orchestrated at the smallest of scales, between just two people, and can specifically target companies who manage betting. So hey, maybe two people making a friendly bet on the outcome of a goddamn GENOCIDE wouldn't be arrested for it, but polymarket and it's ilk would all be shut down overnight.
Some might argue that investing in the stock market is a form of "gambling", the same who would say every single choice we make is a "gamble on the future". That bores me. One may as well say a political donation is "gambling". But, there is a clear difference between putting money down on a bookie for a specific outcome to directly increase your payment, and giving that money to the person in direct power to MAKE that into a reality, the money itself being the very thing that improves the odds of it happening. There is a clear distinction between donating money TO a political candidate for their use to improve their chance at winning the election, versus giving money to a bookie, that the candidate will never see, which won't be spent in any way to affect the odds. The stock market is also distinct in that you are directly giving money TO the company you are hoping will do better, because they can use your investment to better improve their company, versus, again, just handing the money to an unconnected third party with no way to affect the outcome. Just look at who gets angry to see the difference. If a bookie does something to adjust the outcome, the gamblers will be furious. If a company does something with the money paid in stock to adjust the outcome, the market holders will be delighted. You also very notably can't buy anti-stock or make anti-donations, but you can directly gamble AGAINST specific outcomes.
Anyway, my biggest paragraph is on something I started out saying bored me.
I'm also calling this gambling, because it's gambling, because that's what it obviously is. Their quibbling about their gambling really being "conditional investment" is... a lie. A lie about the gambling they gamble on, which I call gambling because it's gambling, and I assert this fully as an undeniable fact and suggest other people act based on my assertion in a way that hurts these companies financially.
I'm no lawyer so I'm not sure how to word it, but in plain speech I'd say that gambling should be limited to trivial outcomes. The flip of a coin, the roll of the dice, and the outcome of games. Not military decisions, natural or manmade disasters, political moves, or anything which affects human lives in a tangible way. I also know that laws already protect "friendly bets" orchestrated at the smallest of scales, between just two people, and can specifically target companies who manage betting. So hey, maybe two people making a friendly bet on the outcome of a goddamn GENOCIDE wouldn't be arrested for it, but polymarket and it's ilk would all be shut down overnight.
Some might argue that investing in the stock market is a form of "gambling", the same who would say every single choice we make is a "gamble on the future". That bores me. One may as well say a political donation is "gambling". But, there is a clear difference between putting money down on a bookie for a specific outcome to directly increase your payment, and giving that money to the person in direct power to MAKE that into a reality, the money itself being the very thing that improves the odds of it happening. There is a clear distinction between donating money TO a political candidate for their use to improve their chance at winning the election, versus giving money to a bookie, that the candidate will never see, which won't be spent in any way to affect the odds. The stock market is also distinct in that you are directly giving money TO the company you are hoping will do better, because they can use your investment to better improve their company, versus, again, just handing the money to an unconnected third party with no way to affect the outcome. Just look at who gets angry to see the difference. If a bookie does something to adjust the outcome, the gamblers will be furious. If a company does something with the money paid in stock to adjust the outcome, the market holders will be delighted. You also very notably can't buy anti-stock or make anti-donations, but you can directly gamble AGAINST specific outcomes.
Anyway, my biggest paragraph is on something I started out saying bored me.
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Having worked in the public service in the past, there is a certain type of person (who is unfortunately common) that likes to constantly hint at, or directly boast about, the “insider information” he has “heard from a source”, which “isn’t public knowledge”. This person is utterly convinced they know more than everyone else.
Except they rarely know anything much at all. When they do divulge their “gossip”, it’s often clear they know less than the average person who reads a newspaper. The information is often either public knowledge, out of date, or so out of context as to be useless.
But they honestly believe they’re “in the know”. Possibly enough to place some bets on prediction markets based on their fragmentary, mostly incorrect “information”.
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No! Don’t do that!
Or at least, do it to the proles, not Trump’s inner circle - there’s still money to be made from others’ suffering!
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Betting on military actions = people getting psyched about their $5,000 windfall even though it means a bunch of innocent people are dead... empathy isn't just dead, we murdered it and pissed on its grave
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We should all bet on no impeachment. Since this shit is rigged if there is enough money betting against impeachment then that should push it to happen. 8647
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This kind of gambling shouldn’t be on phone apps. You should have to go to a seedy casino in Vegas or Atlantic City and it should reek of cigarette smoke and alcohol.
It should absolutely feel like you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing.
It should absolutely feel like you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing.
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While the general point of the article is correct, the way the data is presented is very frustrating.
If the average odds of all markets on the platform are 14% then a win rate of 14% is well calibrated. That has nothing to do with the average odds of the politics-focused markets; if the average odds of the politics markets are 25% then a win rate of 25% means that is well calibrated. The fact that these different markets have different win rates just means that political markets are in general
The relative win rate does not matter, what matters is the calibration. The fact that the win rate for large bets in military markets is over 50% when the odds are less than 35% is the problem. A rational market would have the win rate at around 35%. This reeks of insider trading and market manipulation.
The proper way to show this kind of data is to plot the realized win rates over the stated odds. This should create a straight line (events with 1% odds should happen 1% of the time, events with 50% odds should happen 50% of the time, etc). Deviation from this line suggests either a small sample size or a poorly calibrated market (in this case due to insider trading).
I suspect a plot of this data would show a decently calibrated line for markets that are more difficult to manipulate (sports) and highly distorted plot for military markets.
edit: Remembered that a higher average odds implies that there is less certainty about the outcome because in a prediction market you can bet against the event. Thus a low average odds implies more confidence that the event won't occur. An event with a 50% chance of occurring is the hardest to predict.
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Sure, that's how the American economy works, but what do you think of Polymarket?
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I read those articles (e.g. Pizza orders near Pentagon ‘suddenly surged in traffic’ during Venezuela attack), but in light of subsequent events I think maybe it was just a cover lie for someone who didn't want to reveal their link to insider information.
I mean, it's a long way from increase in overtime hours at the Pentagon to figuring out which country Trump might attack.
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I am dumbfounded that there are still rubes willing to engage in this racket. Then again, I also find the fact that people can walk around in the opulence that is most casinos and not realize that's a direct result of them being money extraction machines to be surprising too. Some craps can be fun here and there, but I have no illusions that I'm paying for the fun and more than likely leaving a couple hundred bucks lighter in the wallet
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Whilst the events may be trivial the consequences of gambling addiction are anything but.
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Hell, I've been in seedy casinos that don't allow it, that's how fucked up this is. Polymarkets are more like back alley cockfights, but with less shame.
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I'd go a step further and say that these "markets" shouldn't exist at all. I'm not anti-gambling, I played a lot of cards for gas money in college at seedy dog tracks, however, without getting moralistic, allowing and incentivizing this kind of corruption and at scale is utter insanity.
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You should assume every bet on these 'markets' is made with insider info, so if you don't have that info, you're just a sucker being fleeced.
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Very quick, over-simplified, explanation. For a long time people have been able to invest in future events happening, a great example is commodities trading (oranges, coffee, fertilizer, oil, etc.) In that case the investor is promising to pay a certain price per unit at a given date and the seller is promising to deliver the commodity. The investor is hoping that when they receive their commodity they can resell it for a higher price, or more specifically they're hoping they can sell their contract to purchase the commodity to a third-party for a profit because the price for the commodity has increased since the contract was created.
What Polymarket and similar sites do is allow
So, they've taken a long used and (fairly) well regulated tool of business and turned it into a way to bypass anti-gambling legislation and for insiders to bet on the chances we end up in a land war in Asia.
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No, it's just hedging. If a military operation fails, the DoD recoups some of the losses through wagering on a failure. /s
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If you know what's going to happen, you can confidently place a bet buy a contract, but it's illegal. If you actually have information that actually makes you confident that you're going to win, it's illegal to play. So, it's only legal when you don't know what's going to happen. Right? I still don't understand why people gamble trade futures. It sounds so stupid.
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Turning the US into an unlimited casino ... headed by Trump ?
One really wonders how well that will turn out.
One really wonders how well that will turn out.
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I'd say they're making self-defeating prophecies in this case. They establish the "long odds" on something, and that motivates people in a position of power to do what's needed to MAKE that outcome likely, and then gamble on it. Whoever it is they have setting the initial odds of these outcomes is, by the very act of predicting it, guaranteeing it won't come to pass.
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