Daily Archives: January 27, 2008

Heres an example of the total crap that the BetFair blog is publishing.

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Betting @ BetFair - Home

Betting @ BetFair - Sports

Betting @ BetFair - Specials

Betting @ BetFair - Poker

Betting @ BetFair - Casino

BetFair blog:

Pamela Anderson&#8217-s Poker Guru

PAMELA Anderson says she is &#8220-done with the marriage thing&#8221-.

Pammy is divorcing her third husband. The marriage lasted four months. Says Pammy: &#8220-My mom wishes I was born gay&#8221-. She adds: &#8220-I am in the market for a good divorce attorney.&#8221- And, who knows, maybe the attorney is the market for a wife. Of course, before her next marriage, Pammy has to complete her divorce from the man we call [?] Rick Salomon and Metro newspaper calls a &#8220-poker guru&#8221-. A guru is a recognized leader in a field, an acknowledged and influential advocate of a movement or idea. Rick Salomon is the man best known for appearing as &#8220-him&#8221- in the first Paris Hilton sex tape. He is not a poker guru. He is just someone who plays poker, sometimes&#8230-

Don&#8217-t be a Rick, play online&#8230- [link to the BetFair Poker site]

The posting is anonymous, as always, on that crappy blog.

No external link to the original news source &#8212-of course.

Pointless content, as usual. Why thinking before writing, when a vomit can do the trick?

As for rhetoric quality, my 6-year-old nephew could do better, if encouraged by a Hershey kiss.

Is there any adult in Hammersmith monitoring what the kids are doing on their computers?

Is professor Leighton Vaughan-Williams wise to write for that crappy blog? Justin Wolfers&#8217- association with the Wall Street Journal seems more adequate for a university professor.

Author Profile&nbsp-Editor and Publisher of Midas Oracle .ORG .NET .COM &#8212- Chris Masse&#8217-s mugshot &#8212- Contact Chris Masse &#8212- Chris Masse&#8217-s LinkedIn profile &#8212- Chris Masse&#8217-s FaceBook profile &#8212- Chris Masse&#8217-s Google profile &#8212- Sophia-Antipolis, France, E.U. Read more from this author&#8230-

Read the previous blog posts by Chris. F. Masse:

  • A case of advertisement mistaken for content
  • Michael Shermer’s The Mind of The Market
  • A prediction market panel… where only 2 out of 5 are truly prediction market experts. What a nuclear joke. This poor line-up is the reflection of the poor state of the prediction market industry in the US… and the inherent mediocrity of the conference business.
  • VentureBeat makes it like established veterans NewsFutures, Consensus Point and Inkling Markets are contemporary of just-out-of-the-egg Xpree.
  • 13 lines for Justin Wolfers, but only 2 lines and one word for Eric Zitzewitz — Mat Fogarty, what were you thinking of?
  • Ducted Wind Turbines (DFWT)
  • The Betting King — The ATP Tour was his NASDAQ.

Midas Oracle is the only popular, independent, exhaustive, multi-author, multi-exchange, Web-based resource on prediction markets.

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Dear Midas Oracle readers,

I&#8217-m happy to report progress in building the architecture and content of our group blog, Midas Oracle. Let me introduce you to our 2 master pages: &#8220-PREDICTIONS&#8221- and &#8220-BEST&#8221-.

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#1. PREDICTIONS

Predictions

http://www.midasoracle.org/predictions/

= our explainer on prediction markets + the best charts of prediction markets

Following the New Hampshire brouhaha, I believe that the way to go is to systematically associate (when time and space permit) a short probability explainer to any published chart of prediction market. You can see such an association at the top of our blog frontpage. I will do that in some blog posts, too, in the future.

Political charts from InTrade and NewsFutures are published there. Charts from more exchanges will be added there over the coming weeks, months, and years. Suggestions are welcomed.

Thanks to Michael Giberson and Emile Servan-Schreiber for some tiny input in establishing that brand-new page.

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#2. BEST

Best

http://www.midasoracle.org/best/

= the best external weblinks on prediction markets + the best Midas Oracle posts on prediction markets

This file has been quite popular &#8212-see the web stats report, in the appendix. I will, of course, augment this file with many more pointers, in the coming weeks, months, and years. Suggestions are welcomed.

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#3. ARCHIVES

Archives

http://www.midasoracle.org/archives/

You can now search the archives of the Midas Oracle blog posts &#8212-by date, by category, by tag, by poster, etc. Bo Cowgill will now be able to dig the Midas Oracle archives to unearth all &#8220-the inaccuracies&#8221- that I have printed &#8220-over the years&#8221-. :-D Good luck for your quest, Bo.

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#4. LOOKING FORWARD

Forward

More pageviews for the blog.

More coverage of the prediction markets (as opposed to coverage of the prediction market industry) &#8212-on the other two blogs (Midas Oracle .NET and Midas Oracle .COM).

More academic paper reviews.

A sense of what could be prediction market journalism (pioneered by Justin Wolfers in the Wall Street Journal).

A discussion on the usefulness of a prediction market plugin for WordPress.

And, maybe, the building of an advisory board for Midas Oracle &#8212-if that makes sense and serves a purpose.

Step one towards our ultimate goal: WORLD DOMINATION. :-D

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APPENDIX

Below are pageviews of the most popular Midas Oracle webpages, since September 2006. For the posts (as opposed to the pages), to get a more complete picture, you should add the number 1,050 (estimation) to the numbers below &#8212-to account for the feed subscribers (900) and the blog frontpage readers (150), who both also consumed the posts in question.

Please note that these stats are from Google Analytics. When assessing the popularity of Midas Oracle against other websites, do use the Google Analytics numbers, and not numbers from other web stats services. (I also have server stats, whose numbers are much more impressive, but they don&#8217-t count the same things.) Thanks.

Stats

Stats2

Read the previous blog posts by Chris. F. Masse:

  • Our good doctor EJSS laughs at the “Web 2.0” concept on TechCrunch, but touts it as an essential part of the NewsFutures offerings on his website.
  • NewsFutures do *NOT* favor event derivative management by traders.
  • Who will win Super Bowl XLII? Patriots vs. Giants
  • NewsFutures presidential widget
  • Win Florida, win the nomination.
  • Barack Obama’s victory in South Carolina won’t stop the Clintons.
  • eTech 2008 — Google’s enterprise prediction markets

Journalism Failures – Big Time

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– In February 2001, Fortune magazine named ENRON the &#8220-most innovative company&#8221-.

– In October 2007, Robin Hanson, on the Overcoming Bias blog, re-published the falsehood that James Surowiecki (and 3 other book authors in their respective book) made a mistake about Francis Galton in his book, The Wisdom Of Crowds.

– In January 2008, the &#8220-BetFair Prof&#8221- (Leighton Vaughan-Williams) claimed, on the BetFair blog, that the &#8220-betting markets&#8221- foresaw the Republican race in the Michigan primary.

– In January 2008, Risk magazine named SOCIETE GENERALE (recently busted by one of its traders, which lead to a loss of 7.2 billion dollars) the &#8220-equity derivatives house of the year&#8221-.

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TAKEAWAY: Either by complete incompetence or by lack of investigation means, journalism is not up to its lofty goal &#8212-telling the truth to people.

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Risk magazine

(Via Marc Andreessen.)

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Jerome Kerviel, soon to be named &#8220-person of the year&#8221- by Risk magazine? :-D

Jerome Kerviel

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Societe Generale Logo

Societe General Tower in Paris

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • A second look at HedgeStreet’s comment to the CFTC about “event markets”
  • Since YooPick opened their door, Midas Oracle has been getting, daily, 2 or 3 dozens referrals from FaceBook.
  • US presidential hopeful John McCain hates the Midas Oracle bloggers.
  • If you have tried to contact Chris Masse thru the Midas Oracle Contact Form, I’m terribly sorry to inform you that your message was not delivered to the recipient.
  • THE CFTC’s SECRET AGENDA —UNVEILED.
  • “Over a ten-year period commencing on January 1, 2008, and ending on December 31, 2017, the S & P 500 will outperform a portfolio of funds of hedge funds, when performance is measured on a basis net of fees, costs and expenses.”
  • Meet professor Thomas W. Malone (on the right), from the MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence.