Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 298 posts

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#181

Post by fooker »

Majromax wrote: post #179
fooker wrote: post #52

Don’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…

Leverage is not the steamroller here.

It’s the 90% chance of making 1$ vs 10% chance of losing 100$.

The exact numbers vary, the expectations even out with high volume stocks but prediction markets do not because of rounding that favors the house.

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#182

Post by dlgeek »

bargainbin wrote: post #111
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 73% of all polymarkets do resolve to No though. I bet the average price for a no bet across these markets is 73 cents.

71 cents*, the bookie gets a cut either way it goes.

Wouldn't it be 75 cents then? (The cut would come out of higher pricing, since the payout is always a dollar).

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#183

Post by okhobb »

jfengel wrote: post #180
some_random wrote: post #119

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.

If they're appropriately priced, you can't win money at all, unless you have insider knowledge.

The purpose of prediction markets is to communicate insider knowledge.

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#184

Post by r0fl »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #74
sterlingcrispin wrote: post #44

Earlier 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

> 73% of all polymarkets do resolve to No though. I bet the average price for a no bet across these markets is 73 cents.

I’ll take the “no” side of that bet ;)

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#185

Post by dakolli »

There's usually more edge baked into the No side in all prediction markets, because a little too much money usually gets poured in to yes, for obvious reasons. Its been this way in sports markets for decades, there's no fun in betting no so lots of dumb money ends up on Yes.

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#186

Post by cortesoft »

Majromax wrote: post #173
cortesoft wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, but in the limit of a one-sided irrational market, the rational actor is going to be given as much capital as he can take.

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#187

Post by anonym29 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #176
zahlman wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Happy IBKR customer here. ForecastTrader has absolutely horrific liquidity outside of maybe 30-40 large contracts. The rest is all market makers that only offer 10-100 or so shares at each price point before bumping up a penny or two. No knock on IBKR as a whole, but you can't even effectively buy on most events or outcomes without slippage eating away your entire edge, and forget about real serious positions above a few grand entirely outside of those 30-40 big contracts.

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#188

Post by khimaros »

okhobb wrote: post #183
jfengel wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're appropriately priced, you can't win money at all, unless you have insider knowledge.

The purpose of prediction markets is to communicate insider knowledge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#189

Post by altmanaltman »

okhobb wrote: post #183
jfengel wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're appropriately priced, you can't win money at all, unless you have insider knowledge.

The purpose of prediction markets is to communicate insider knowledge.

and facilitate insider trading, like how do people miss that part

Re: Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets

#190

Post by hamasho »

jfengel wrote: post #180
some_random wrote: post #119

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.

If they're appropriately priced, you can't win money at all, unless you have insider knowledge.

I hate that many people or even the news and scientists have already started to see the odds of prediction market as fact.

I'm sure in the near future, policy decisions or war strategies will be decided by prediction markets' odds, if they are not already being used.

Post reply on HN