[WarmWash]

They can take any position they want and do whatever they want, the point is that these oddball markets are very thin so there just isn't much money there to harvest. You can only bet $50M at your chosen risk if you can find enough people to take the other side, and these markets simply don't have many participants betting much money.

Think of it like kids betting pennies what subject the teacher will open with the next day. The teacher doesn't care about winning $0.89, but the kids do.

[freejazz]

It seems like it's a huge assumption on your part that the bets you are describing are in the "0.89" range and not something significantly higher, even disregarding what others pointed out about this having already provably occurred.

[solenoid0937]

I don't think the markets are thin, there are some bets that have made people many millions.

[somenameforme]

It depends on the market of course. In looking it up the only markets that have ever come even close to that sort of payout are things like presidential elections where the risks of insiderism or gaming are negligible, and there's extremely large public interest in it.

Nobody's making millions betting on things like the weather.

[freejazz]

>where the risks of insiderism or gaming are negligible, and there's extremely large public interest in it.

So what's the point of polymarket, then? If at best we get "negligible" "insiderism", how is it that we are supposed to be benefitting from this as a society the way OP and others insist that revealing insider preferences "would"

[WarmWash]

Because it's the most effective tool we know of for surfacing the true odds of something (Which also includes the fact that insiders will place outsized bets to move the needle towards the truth.)

An example would be the latest presidential election, where professional pollsters at them at almost 50/50, but the prediction markets had trump by a landslide. He went on to win even the popular vote.

The benefit comes to people who don't even participate, and just take notes.

[freejazz]

>An example would be the latest presidential election, where professional pollsters at them at almost 50/50, but the prediction markets had trump by a landslide. He went on to win even the popular vote.

Trump didn't win by a landslide and he barely won the popular vote...

>The benefit comes to people who don't even participate, and just take notes.

Praying someone has an example besides the election, to which it seems to have made absolutely no difference at all

[somenameforme]

It's not supposed to make a difference but to provide information to people, which it does a great job of. Go browse Polymarket and the odds they lay on most of everything are about as close as one can get as to the "real" odds of that thing. They're essentially like a superhuman pollster. I'm a big fan of them but have not placed a single bet. It's simply that if you want to see what's happening in the world, a browse of their front page is way more informative than browsing a e.g. news website, especially in modern times.

As for the election, a Republican winning the popular vote by a couple million can't be called a landslide in nominal terms, but it is in terms of normal results. The DNC currently completely controls California and New York. After those 2 states alone Trump was down 7 million votes in 2020. The rest of the states tend to be either very small or relatively competitive. To make up the popular vote amongst them requires a very large edge. Polymarket had Trump as a 2:1 favorite the day before the election, and he would indeed go on to win every single swing state. The corporate media and their associated pollsters had Harris ahead.

[WarmWash]

Correct, but there is a direct correlation between the size of the market, and the power of the people determining the outcome.

Then there is also the fact that the power of the people determining the outcome is inversely proportional to their care about betting markets.

Put this together and you get "The larger the size of the market, the less the people who can single handily swing it care about doing so".

If you are someone who can command hundreds of thousands of people to bet millions for or against you, you almost certainly lose more than you would gain by gaming it.

Mind you the market also naturally prices in this risk of the one person going rogue and taking them winnings for themselves. You will never find a market for "WarmWash will post nothing for 3 days straight on HN" because no one will take the other side of it.

[fer]

When they're not thin they're popular (sports, awards), they favor insiders and/or various levels of manipulation (throwing dildos at a match), or both (military strikes, stock market, etc). They're full of natural or artificial drama, and people love to throw money at that.

I have a bot betting on a handful of what I consider (so far) markets that are impossible to cheat (bar UMA shenanigans): nobody has any control over the outcomes, previous knowledge is very limited. It makes some money, but looking at the depth, the volume, and my metrics, even being the fastest 100% of the time without worrying about bankroll, one of them would gimme roughly $1-2k a week.