Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't matter if 99% resolve no, if they're priced appropriately betting no on every single one won't make you money.
That's a massive "if".
Of course, they were just explaining the basics of statistics.
Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets
171–180 of 298 posts
Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If you had access to all the tips and data and insider information that sportbooks operate with Can you give an example of what you're talking about here? Because it sounds like you're accusing these large publicly trade companies of participating in organized crime. There is regulation when it comes to sports betting that doesn't exist with general prediction markets. An athlete can't just feed a sportsbook "inside…
Books like DraftKings and FanDuel get their lines from market makers like Circa. Market makers use a variety of information for setting initial lines (you'll have to go ask them), but one of the main ways they move lines afterwards is professional action. That is, if some person or entity who Circa knows to be a profitable professional better puts down a large bet in a certain direction, Circa will move their line in…
>That is, if some person or entity who Circa knows to be a profitable professional better puts down a large bet in a certain direction, Circa will move their line in that direction.
Well that's the source of our confusion then. I agree with this, but it conflicts with what you said a few comments up:
>because bookmakers don't move the odds with the action.
Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I bet the average price for a no bet across these markets is 73 cents. Behavioral economics has already answered the question of whether humans are, on average, perfectly rational economic actors. They are not. To the contrary, there is substantial evidence indicating a meaningful number of humans will mis-estimate the likelihood of uncommon future events.
It doesn't matter if a vast majority of people are not rational economic actors. It only takes 1 rational actor with enough capital to take the other side of all the bad bets, and the market will be priced correctly even if the other 99 people are irrational.
'Enough' [capital] is doing a lot of work in that sentence. In the limit of a one-sided irrational market, the 'rational actor' would need to take the other side of every open transaction.
Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not. But also a lot of those stats thrown around are misleading.
If the average no costs less than 73 cents, but the 73% of all polymarkets resolve to No, that would imply that the nothing-ever-happens strategy here is profitable. Are you claiming that it is profitable? Or are one of those premises incorrect? Edit: conversely, if the average no costs _more_ than 73 cents, but the 73% of all polymarkets resolve to No, that would imply that an everything-always-happens strategy is p…
> Edit: conversely, if the average no costs _more_ than 73 cents, but the 73% of all polymarkets resolve to No, that would imply that an everything-always-happens strategy is profitable (neglecting slippage)
Or just the bid-ask spread; price no at 73.25 and yes at 27.5 and you have a profitable but theoretical mid-market price.
Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
This all really depends on the efficiency of the market. I think these prediction markets would claim that is their goal, but even Wall Street isn't perfectly efficient. I would also guess that sports betting sites like DraftKings or FanDuel would be even less efficient and less likely to be swayed by a popular GitHub repo. Once again, it goes back to the share of the market that is participating for entertainment pu…
> I would also guess that sports betting sites like DraftKings or FanDuel would be even less efficient Your strategy doesn't work on sportbooks to begin with, because bookmakers don't move the odds with the action. That is, there is no such phenomenon as "the over is exciting therefore overpriced". Bookmakers price purely based on facts and statistics. Their pricing isn't affected by excitement nor by how many people…
> Bookmakers price purely based on facts and statistics. Their pricing isn't affected by excitement nor by how many people are betting a certain way.
A bookmaker is a market maker, and they ideally want to end up with no net interest in a position. They then take guaranteed profit in the bid-ask spread, which in sportsbooks is the 'vig'. Bookmakers who adjust their odds in real-time don't have to be particularly clever about the fundamentals, just responsive to the competing demands on either side.
A bookmaker who intentionally takes a position on a game is the equivalent of a proprietary trader or hedge fund. It's potentially more profitable, but it's also adversarial against 'sharp' traders.
Bookmakers who set odds at the beginning and don't move with the action must set larger bid-ask spreads to compensate.
Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
71 cents*, the bookie gets a cut either way it goes.
Even if a cut isn't taken and there aren't other inefficiencies, any money tied up in long-term predictions is earning 0% instead of whatever the current risk-free rate of return is.
IBKR relentlessly advertises on the radio, so I’m aware that on their scheme you earn an interest like incentive coupon for every day you hold open the position.
Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets
#177Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
71 cents*, the bookie gets a cut either way it goes.
This is the truth of the matter, ultimately nobody wins except the bookie, who profits either way.
On Polymarket you can be the bookie and put up a yes at $0.72 and no at $0.74 if you’re confident in that 73% estimate.
Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets
#179Don’t be gullible enough to fall for this bad math. Say 70% of the time it resolves to ‘no’, you still don’t make money by blindly choosing ‘no’. Guess why? Hint: This strategy is also described with the macabre analogy: picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. Do you want to pick up pennies in front of a steamroller?
> picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.
This or any other statistical play is only 'in front of a steamroller' if you do it with leverage, especially if notionally uncorollated bets suddenly move together. Bets on Polymarket have limited downside by design, and bets in different categories are obviously unrelated to each other.
Without having looked into this in detail, however, I suspect the problem would be limited capacity; markets that are both deep and so trivially irrational are probably fairly infrequent. You might pick up pennies but only pennies.
Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes exactly. The bot has zero risk management and I have a strong disclaimer on the github it is essentially a meme. 73% of all polymarkets do resolve to No though. There's a good dataset on huggingface if you wanted to do some data science https://huggingface.co/datasets/SII-WANGZJ/Polymarket_data
It doesn't matter if 99% resolve no, if they're priced appropriately betting no on every single one won't make you money.
If they're appropriately priced, you can't win money at all, unless you have insider knowledge.