After his stunning victory last week in the Iowa caucuses, Mr Obama is now odds on favourite at 1-12 to secure the nomination .

Spokesman Paddy Power said: “With each passing day Obama is looking more like a certainty to get the Democratic vote and, as far as we are concerned, he is already past the post.”

http://www.bettingmarket.com/

Remarkably, it was only in cross-examination that the very significant limitations and shortcomings in the evidence he was able to give became clear.

In court, Mr Murrihy had said ‘it was not incumbent that I verse myself in UK or other jurisdiction rules’.

Mr Murrihy also said in evidence:

I have not said I was an expert in respect of UK races.

The judge said in his ruling today:

This is an extraordinary admission given that he was purporting to give evidence about 27 races run in the UK according to UK racing rules…. In my opinion, that was tantamount to Mr Murrihy disqualifying himself in giving evidence in relation to the suspect races. In my opinion it is now clear that Mr Murrihy’s evidence was subject to a number of significant limitations and shortcomings which were not evident from his witness statements and his evidence in chief. It is abundantly clear that his evidence fell far, far short of establishing a prima facie breach of UK racing rules. I have reached the conclusion that even if it was appropriate to admit Mr Murrihy’s expert opinion, its probative value is so limited that very little value can be attached to it.

The judge said there was insufficient evidence on which a jury could conclude that the jockeys, and therefore all the defendants, were guilty.

The British Horseracing Authority said after the case:

The restrictions placed on the three jockeys involved in the proceedings expired at the conclusion of the proceedings. Kieren Fallon, who is licensed by the Irish Turf Club, is therefore able to ride in Great Britain, and Fergal Lynch and Darren Williams are able to re-apply for their jockey licences.

Fallon’s spokesman immediately called for two inquiries into the case – one into the police testimony, the other into why the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) proceeded with the trial. He estimated the trial cost taxpayers £10m.

Fallon, 41, from County Clare, Ireland, and two other jockeys, Fergal Lynch and Darren Williams, were charged with conspiracy to defraud customers of Betfair, the world’s biggest online gambling service. The former owner and racing syndicate director, Miles Rodgers, was also charged with conspiracy to defraud and with an offence under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

[External Link: BBC News]

Odds-on liquidity showing interest in Scottish youth

Can it really be more than a month since Betfair’s Mark Davies appeared in print to reject the suggestion that the gambling boom is in any way responsible for the apparent increase in corruption in sport, by pointing out that dodgy dealing has been around since the days of the gladiators? Presumably, reports of 15 football matches from this season being under investigation will see Davis, like Edward Gibbon in a pork-pie hat, return to the fray with another tale from the Colosseum. Meanwhile, far from events at Anfield – figuratively if not geographically – comes news that under-21 games in Scotland are the subject of huge bets by Asian gamblers. Some might think this is a sinister development but not the Betfair spokesman, who told the Daily Record last month that the company would be happy to open a book on the youth sporting market if there was “liquidity and interest”.

With all due respect to the Guardian blogger cited above, I side with Mark Davies. See his verbatim, just below.

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Mark Davies (BetFair’s Managing Director)

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Mark Davies interviewed by The Daily Telegraph (in October 2007):

[Tennis] has always been liable to corruption.

I think that all sport has always been liable to corruption, by the very nature of it producing clear results one way or another. They say that chariot races were rigged for financial reward. I don’t see why subsequent sporting events should suddenly have been less liable to corrupt practice. We would strongly dispute the idea that sport suddenly has a corruption problem because of the boom in gambling.

The amount of money bet in the legal market may have grown — who knows if it has risen or fallen in the illegal one? — but the number of people who can be tempted by that money and use it for corrupt reasons is the same as it always was.

Betting exchange Betfair is to steal a march on its rivals with the introduction of a new service which will boost liquidity and offer punters the chance to make bets at starting prices. Up to now, betting exchanges, such as Betfair, operated by matching bets on either side. But it will now offer a guarantee that punters can get on as much as they need, as long as they are willing to plump for starting price (SP) odds. However, the SPs offered will not be those quoted in betting shops, but prices fixed by the exchange.

A spokesman said the new service was expected to give the business a big boost. “Currently, 40% of all bets are settled at SPs and this type of business tended to pass us by up to now,” he said. Betfair is already the largest exchange operation, ahead of the Dermot Desmond-owned Betdaq business. Estimates put the market share of exchanges at around 5% and this development could significantly boost that figure, the spokesman said.

Well, best wishes to BetFair-TradeFair.

Previously: The BetFair Starting Prices… explained

Hollywood Ending – Trader Daily – October 4, 2007 – by Robert LaFranco

A decade ago, a Wall Street trader and an L.A. dealmaker united to remake the movie industry in the image of the markets. They had capital, ambition, securities-industry savvy and an American public captivated by money and celebrity. So whatever became of the Hollywood Stock Exchange?

In late March 2000, Max Keiser and Michael Burns were tucked away in the VIP lounge of Hollywood’s House of Blues, gleefully presiding over one of the town’s hottest Oscar parties. The duo surveyed the scene: a throng of industry insiders, journalists, style-savvy party crashers, even Ron Jeremy, all descending on a buffet table brimming with enough gourmet fare to feed a small former Soviet republic. Spinning tunes was Moby — among the world’s best-known DJs at the time — while Earth, Wind & Fire prepared for their headline set. Outside, a crowd of wannabes loitered anxiously around the velvet ropes, angling for a way to get in.

It was a heady time for Keiser and Burns, two former finance whiz kids who five years earlier had teamed up to start the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Their dot-com-era high flyer was going to change the movie business by revolutionizing the way movies were paid for — giving independent filmmakers a way to raise money online from the public and other investors. The way they saw it, soon anybody with a credit card and a computer could become the next Robert Evans.

Already, Keiser was a regular on Entertainment Tonight and The Howard Stern Show. Two months earlier, the HSX had proven the surprise hit of the Sundance Film Festival — publicity-wise, anyway — as Keiser and Burns’s rented cafe drew hefty crowds who came for free cappuccino and a chance to check their e-mail. But the best buzz had come a few weeks later, when the HSX unveiled an enormous, colorful ticker in the heart of West Hollywood, offering live updates of “star stock” and “movie bond” prices scrolling along the side of a 7,000-square-foot piece of prime real estate like a newfangled companion to the Hollywood sign.

“We were going to change the way Hollywood worked,” says Keiser today. “It was an industry ready for change.”

But like many rising stars in Tinseltown, Keiser and Burns — and the exchange they created — would eventually flicker and dim. Not long after Oscar night 2000, the already buckling stock market cratered with sickening ferocity and sank into a three-year tailspin. For HSX, it was the moment in the movie when the ship hits the iceberg.

Today the founders and original investors in the Hollywood Stock Exchange are scattered around the globe with little to show for their efforts but a curious line item on their résumés. It’s likely small solace to them that hedge funds and Hollywood are now converging like at no time in history — at least proving that their notion of an impending sea change in the way movies are financed was somewhat prescient. And it’s probably salt in their wounds to know that in June, Dallas Mavericks owners Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner launched their own Hollywood financing firm — in their case, for buying out and bundling profit-sharing deals. For their part, Keiser and Burns remain the hapless protagonists of that rarest of Hollywood productions: a decade-long epic without a happy ending. And for every trader who has ever longed to close his positions, take his profits and stumble from the trading floor in pursuit of his dreams, theirs might be a reminder that not all markets are meant to be made.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 1995, Max Keiser, a 35-year-old former stockbroker and one of Shearson Lehman’s biggest options producers, had come to Hollywood to work on a movie project that his old buddy Alec Baldwin had gotten placed at Miramax. Michael Burns, an investment banker with Prudential Securities in Los Angeles, was a 37-year-old with strong ties to the movie industry. Burns and Keiser met while working together at Shearson Lehman in the ’80s, but in 1990 went their separate ways, Keiser to Paris to live off his Wall Street gains. One day, while sitting in a Hollywood cafe called Barney’s Beanery, Burns and Keiser alighted upon the idea for an exchange in entertainment futures. Perhaps it was the high-octane espresso talking, but the way they saw it, their notion was revolutionary. The inspiration had come to them while thumbing through an industry trade publication, where they had seen a printed weekend box-office tally.

“It looked just like the listings for the S&P 500,” Keiser says. “I suddenly looked at the movie industry like Michael Milken viewed the bond market. The original business plan of HSX was an exchange for predictive products that would lead to re-monetizing the industry and breaking up the Hollywood cartel. Using this platform we would allow many, many, many more people to have access to funds.”

Based on his knowledge of the NYSE, Keiser began mapping out an exchange. He mimicked the double-action trading environment of a real exchange, setting up the whole thing in a virtual environment. He established a currency and treasury function, a virtual banking system, a virtual interest-rate function and other virtual back-end trading functions that he would eventually patent as the Virtual Specialist. Then he and Burns set about seeking approval to operate as an exchange that could democratize the insular movie business.

There was, however, just one little problem. The lack of transparency in Hollywood studio accounting practices made actual deliverables an impossible strategy to execute. Meanwhile, their business plan was hamstrung by Blue Sky laws and their inability to secure the CFTC’s blessing. So Burns came up with a new idea: If they pitched the product as a game and developed the whole thing as a virtual economy, they would avoid the regulations — and still have a robust trading environment that could someday be used as a real-money movie-business exchange. Burns invested $400,000 and sent Keiser to the developers at Cambridge Technology Ventures, who finessed and expanded it, turning it into a robust fantasy market. The result was a completely self-sufficient platform for the creation of valuable predictive data but, sadly for users, completely useless wealth.

Then again, considering that this was the mid-’90s, that seemed as good an idea as any.

“When we saw that Blue Sky rules made it difficult to accomplish the trading aspect of it, we should’ve spent more time talking up the community aspect or even building it up as a MySpace-esque environment,” Burns says. Instead, what the company began leaning toward was a consumer portal that would be not just an advertising vehicle but a source of data as well. Movie studios, it should be noted, conduct an enormous amount of market research before dropping $50 million on a movie, and the kind of data HSX was collecting was a natural fit for that purpose: Which demographic groups are buying into which movies and which stars? What is the public interest in horror films? How much buzz is there about the new Judd Apatow flick?

Prediction markets, based on the premise that mob wisdom rules, place trust in groupthink [???] over the postulates of individual experts — and in this arena, HSX would prove to be a resounding success. Since 1998, HSX traders have chosen the top eight Academy Award category winners with 85 percent accuracy. Just this past February, a few days before it opened in theaters around the county, the HSX stock price of Eddie Murphy’s Norbit was climbing through the 70s, while Hannibal Rising was hovering in the 30s. Using a simple formula known to the industry (divide the HSX price by 2.5 and multiply by 1 million), it has been consistently proved possible to predict a film’s opening-weekend box office with a fair degree of precision. (A 2006 Harvard Business School study found HSX to be a relatively accurate online prediction market, finding its opening-weekend forecasts to be on target 77 percent of the time.) According to HSX, then, Norbit would open well north of $24 million and Hannibal at $12 million. Indeed, Norbit — despite withering, often vicious reviews — grossed $34 million and Hannibal $13 million.

Which, for what it’s worth, is a neat trick. But what, exactly, is it worth?

It’s an open secret that for the past few decades, Hollywood studios have used a trio of research companies — Nielsen National Research Group, Online Testing Exchange and MarketCast — to decide everything from cast mix and storylines to marketing strategies and release dates. Thus, while the HSX was initially greeted with interest, it quickly devolved into something of an online sideshow to the research world’s Big Three. The industry was logging on, but getting anyone to pay for the data was a struggle.

Complicating matters, perhaps surprisingly, was the site’s high visibility. By 1999, as dot-com hysteria dominated the cultural landscape, revolutionary hubris was running rampant and HSX was, in some ways, taunting the movie industry. Keiser began appearing on Entertainment Tonight offering weekly box-office predictions based on HSX trading performance. He was a frequent pundit on cable news programs and a thorn in the side of the studios who did not much appreciate the fact that this fast-talking stockbroker was tainting the public perception of their movies by loudly declaiming their prospects before they were even released. At one point, Keiser says, studios threatened to boycott ET; Keiser was pulled off the air. Still, Web traffic to HSX was increasing rapidly, and it wasn’t long before more than 70 investors — including Citigroup, NBC, Travelers Insurance, Keystone Venture Capital and, of all things, the Scandinavian Broadcast Service — had ponied up some $40 million to get a piece of HSX. And although Keiser and Burns were still enamored of the notion of building a real futures exchange, their new investors dismissed the idea outright; they were, instead, eyeing an IPO. HSX built up a staff of about 100, more than a third of them in public relations and marketing, and the company went to great lengths to generate awareness, drive traffic and boost ad dollars — the favored revenue model of the day.

“I was outvoted,” Keiser grumbles today. “It was gut-wrenching. The board bailed on me and my vision.”

Regardless, those were the good times. HSX moved into a former Herb Ritts Gallery office in West Hollywood that it thoroughly revamped. Andy Kaplan, a top Sony television executive, was installed as CEO. They hooked up that giant ticker. They threw lavish million-dollar parties, became fixtures at film festivals and blew still more millions on advertising. Asked what the company spent its $40 million on that could not be considered promotion, Keiser, who still holds onto his dream of someday democratizing media finance, shrugs: “Nothing I can think of.”

By then HSX was losing about $700,000 a month. By mid-2000, it had burned through $23 million in VC funding raised the previous year. And after the market crash eliminated the IPO exit strategy, HSX investors tried a back-door exit, linking up with a publicly traded pink-sheet company called Predict-It, another struggling fantasy market. On paper, the two companies could together claim revenue of about $10 million, but that figure was window dressing at best. Not long after plans for the pending merger were filed with regulators, Keiser and Burns checked out of the deal. Subsequently, the company’s 70 investors also backed out, refusing to put up more money to float the venture.

“Everyone was struggling, and we were all trying to climb onto something that would keep us afloat,” says former Predict-It CEO Andrew Merkatz. He has since formed a merchant banking firm, CountryRoad Capital. “Two drowning bodies grabbing onto each other does not make for a good ending.”

Then suddenly, in May 2001, with the Scandinavian Broadcast Service in control of the assets and apparently willing to write the last check, Cantor Fitzgerald stepped in to acquire the company.

“We had launched a sports-spread betting program in 2001 and had interest in diversifying what we offered, and they were cheap and not making money,” says Paul Galbraith, a spokesman for the Cantor Index in London. “But in the end, we never found a market for movie spreads in the U.K. With movies, there were just a couple of people who really knew what they were doing, and they had a lot more time on their hands for the entertainment futures market than our market makers did.”

Slight, presumably, intended.

To be fair, today’s HSX is, if nothing else, highly liquid for a prediction market. Since its inception 12 years ago, the exchange has created 1.7 million trading accounts and developed a sizable, cultlike following among movie fans. On an average day, 20,000 traders on the HSX will swap 2.5 billion shares in more than 40,000 trades, volume that dwarfs rival markets such as the Iowa Electronics Market and HedgeStreet. Compared to In-Trade, an Irish prediction exchange that offers markets in politics, commodities and other products, HSX is the NYSE: In seven years, In-Trade has created just 65,000 accounts, 12,000 of them active.

Still, there is one key difference that separates HSX from its competitors’ sites: money. Traders on the Iowa Exchange, In-Trade and HedgeStreet are all investing with actual currency. At HSX, the $9.9 billion in “Hollywood Dollars” accumulated by the current leader are about as valuable as a photocopy of a dollar bill. Meanwhile, the number of active accounts at HSX.com has dropped to 650,000, an audience too small for Nielsen Net Media to bother tracking.

Keiser (who voted his 10 million shares “no” to the sale) now insists that Cantor has not made good on the deal — which the firm made using eSpeed stock — leaving the original owners with nothing. He estimates the company has since spent close to $20 million developing the exchange software he created, but has not yet taken advantage of the asset the way everyone expected it to. A Cantor spokesman declined to comment on Keiser’s allegations.

The company does finally appear to be building on its prediction-market foothold: Earlier this year, it hired Andy Wing, formerly a Nielsen executive, to run a new division, Cantor Entertainment, with HSX as its centerpiece. Might HSX finally achieve legal exchange status? Consider that it took HedgeStreet two years to win its legal-exchange designation, then another 18 months to get it off the ground. Or that in 2005, In-Trade was fined and placed under tight restrictions regarding its U.S. activities, while the Iowa Exchange, a nonprofit and largely academic outfit, has been granted a “no action” waiver from the CFTC so it can operate in the U.S. without penalty.

As for the founders? Michael Burns, it is safe to say, landed on his feet. Having spent a decade brokering broadcast deals as an investment banker for Prudential Securities’ Los Angeles office, Burns had maintained strong ties with the entertainment business and was helping to build the independent studio Lions Gate Entertainment even as he was working on the HSX venture. Today, Burns is Lions Gate’s CEO.

Keiser, meanwhile, is still relishing his role as a rebel. Leaving both Wall Street and Hollywood in the dust, he spends most of his time in Paris producing films for the Al-Jazeera news network and heading up his latest venture, Kinooga.com. Kinooga, as Keiser explains, is the offspring of his original idea, providing a venue for individual buyers to finance independent media projects. “We’re creating a funding mechanism for independent producers to compete with the entrenched entertainment cartel,” he says. “This is an unregulated piece of business that gives many, many, many more people access to funds.”

As for Keiser and Burns’s original dream, that online Hollywood market that would turn John Q. Public into a mouse-wielding movie mogul? Consider that based on the $1 commissions now being earned by HedgeStreet, a trading business even merely the size of HSX today would generate $30 million a year in revenue. Cantor’s own spread-betting business in the U.K. is now earning $70 million in annual revenue, according to Galbraith. “Any way you slice it, the trading business far outstrips selling research,” Burns says. “I’d be very surprised if a futures exchange is not the business Cantor wants to get into. It just doesn’t make sense otherwise.”

This final scene, it seems, has yet to be written — for both the future of online futures markets and one trader’s crazy dream that simply refuses to die.

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Note: I have permission from the publisher to re-publish this news article. Thanks to Trader Daily. (Contact me.)

The original news article: Trader Daily ($$$)

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NEXT: Cantor Exchange

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New York Times:

“As he stated on Saturday, Senator Craig intends to resign on Sept. 30,” Mr. [Dan Whiting, a spokesman for Mr. Craig] said in a statement. “However, he is fighting these charges, and should he be cleared before then, he may, and I emphasize may, not resign.”

Aaaarrrrgh…

Slate Video – Senator Craig: The Re-enactment

Sen. Larry Craig plead guilty to disorderly conduct following his arrest for allegedly soliciting in a public restroom. Slate V delivers a re-enactment, based on the police report.

Minnesota Police report.

Bathroom Sex FAQ

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Yet another InTrade-TradeSports scandal??

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Sen. Larry Craig to announce resignation or intention not to run in 2008 on/before 31 Dec 2007 – This event derivative has been expired by InTrade.

The rules (= the event derivative contract statement):

This contract will settle (expire) at 100 ($10.00) if Senator Larry Craig announces his resignation from the Senate or announces he will not run for re-election in 2008 on or before 11:59:59pm ET on the date specified in the contract.

The contract will settle (expire) at 0 ($0.00) if this does not happen on or before 11:59:59pm ET on the date specified in the contract.

A resignation does not have to result in the actual departure by the contract expiry date but rather the announcement of the resignation must be made before the date and time specified in the contract.

Expiry will be based on official, public announcements made by Larry Craig as reported by three independent and reliable media sources.

Due to the nature of this contract please also see Contract Rule 1.7 Unforeseen Circumstances.

The Exchange reserves the right to invoke Contract Rule 1.8 (Time Protection) if deemed appropriate.

Any changes to the result after the contract has expired will not be taken into account – Exchange Rule 1.4

Please contact the exchange by emailing help@intrade.com if you have any questions regarding this contract before you place a trade.

Important:
Please contact the Exchange if you have any query or uncertainty (including how it may be settled) about this Contract, the Rule above or the Contract Rules before you trade.

US Senator Larry Craig (on September 1, 2007 ):

Senator Craig Announces Intent to Resign from the Senate

BOISE, Idaho – Senator Craig made the following statement to Idaho:

First and foremost this morning, let me thank my family for being with me. We’re missing a son who’s working in McCall, and simply couldn’t make it down. But for my wife Suzanne and our daughter Shae, and Mike to be with me is very humbling.

To have the governor standing behind me, as he always has, is a tremendous strength for me. To have Bill Sali who has never wavered, and who has been there by phone call and by prayer, and his wife, is tremendously humbling.

For the leader of our party, Kirk Sullivan, to be standing here, who sought immediate counsel with me in this, is humbling. For Tom Luna—for any public official at this moment in time—to be standing with Larry Craig is a humbling experience. Learn more about Senator Craig’s top accomplishments

For most of my adult life, I had the privilege of serving the people of Idaho. I’m grateful for the opportunity they have given me. It has been a blessing. I am proud of my record and accomplishments, and equally proud of the wonderful and talented people with whom I have had the honor and the privilege to work and to serve.

I choose to serve because I love Idaho. What is best for Idaho has always been the focus of my efforts, and it is no different today. To Idahoans I represent, to my staff, my Senate colleagues, but most importantly, to my wife and my family, I apologize for what I have caused. I am deeply sorry.

I have little control over what people choose to believe, but clearly my name is important to me and my family is so very important also. Having said that, to pursue my legal options, as I continue to serve Idaho, would be an unwanted and unfair distraction of my job and for my Senate colleagues. These are serious times of war and of conflict—times that deserve the Senate’s and the full nation’s attention.

There are many challenges facing Idaho that I am currently involved in. And the people of Idaho deserve a senator who can devote 100 percent of his time and effort to the critical issues of our state and of our nation.

Therefore it is with sadness and deep regret that I announce that it is my intent to resign from the Senate, effective September 30. In doing so, I hope to allow a smooth and orderly transition of my loyal staff and for the person appointed to take my place at William E. Borah’s desk. I have full confidence that Governor Otter will appoint a successor who will serve Idaho with distinction.

I apologize to the people of our great state for being unable to serve out a term to which I have been elected. Few people have had the privilege and the pleasure to represent Idaho for as many years as I have. Each day, each week, each year brought new challenges and opportunities to create a better life for Idahoans. I have enjoyed every moment and cannot adequately put into words how much I appreciate what you have given me: the chance to work for this great state. I hope you do not regret the confidence you have placed in me over all of these years. I hope I have served you and our state to the best of my ability.

Lastly, Suzanne and I have been humbled beyond words by the tremendous outpouring of support we have received from our friends, our family, our staff and fellow Idahoans. We are profoundly and forever grateful. Thank you all very much.

US Senator Larry Craig announced his intent to resign, not his upcoming resignation (or effective resignation). Big difference. A resignation intent is not an upcoming/effective resignation. We know now, thanks to the New York Times, that there was an unstated conditionality —whether Larry Craig gets cleared before the 30th of September 2007. Thus, InTrade should not have expired the Larry Craig event derivative on the basis of that senatorial output. I bet that some traders will soon complain on the Intrade-TradeSports forum. They can contact me, if they wish.

More Info: – AP – MSNBC Video – Idaho Stateman -

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ADDENDUM:

Definitions of the word “intent” on the Web:

* purpose: an anticipated outcome that is intended or that guides your planned actions; “his intent was to provide a new translation”; “good intentions are not enough”; “it was created with the conscious aim of answering immediate needs”; “he made no secret of his designs”
* the intended meaning of a communication
* captive: giving or marked by complete attention to; “that engrossed look or rapt delight”; “then wrapped in dreams”; “so intent on this fantastic…narrative that she hardly stirred”- Walter de la Mare; “rapt with wonder”; “wrapped in thought”
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

* Intent in law is the planning and desire to perform an act.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent

* Reiki is an Intent driven system. Intent is the key to using the Reiki energy in healing and Attunements.
www.reikithehealingpath.com/reiki_glossary.htm

* Intent is the plan and will to act in a particular way or choice to remain inactive.
www.attorneykennugent.com/library/i.html

* The singlemost causal agency in all action, creation, destruction and change at all levels of existence. That component of consciousness which gives rise to all forms. The means by which the Will of God and Natural Law is manifest. The essence and source of motivation.
www.eoni.com/~visionquest/library/glossary.html

* Humans appear to be comprised of two important awarenesses: The Conscious Awareness (usually experienced through the personality) and a Greater Awareness. The Greater Awareness resides at body center and is connected to a fundamental force Seers call Intent. Intent is the equivalent of a muscle in the physical world. It is the means by which action, change, and expression happen in both the physical and energetic worlds for all humans. …
sentecenter.com/glossary.htm

* the mood, message, or meaning desired by the artist
www.learner.org/channel/workshops/artsineveryclassroom/p1popups/vocabulary.html

* A state of mind (mens rea) in which a person seeks a particular result through a particular course of action.
www.iejs.com/glossary/Glossary_I.htm

* the subtextual objective of a character
www.austin.cc.tx.us/sbramme2/Glossary.htm

* Voluntary function of a person’s mind in purposely performing a perceivable act.
www5.aaos.org/oko/vb/online_pubs/professional_liability/glossary.cfm

* requires that one intended to deprive the possessor “permanently” of the property. Although the mens rea of larceny is the intent to steal, the focus is on the loss to the possessor, not the gain to the defendant. Thus, even if the thief did not gain in the taking, if the possessor lost in the process. Courts have also held that permanence can be more than keeping forever. …
www.voyager.in/Larceny

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PARTING SHOT:

The problem with most of the socially valuable prediction markets (i.e., the non-sports prediction markets) is that all depends on:

- how well the event derivative contract is stated;

- how well the related information is interpreted;

- how well the event derivative contract is expired.

With the Larry Craig prediction market, we have yet another example that InTrade (which gets plenty of cites in Midas Oracle * and other business media outlets) might not have done its job with the highest degree of professionalism required —at least in my opinion. Judge by yourself, scanning all the facts presented above by yourself.

In the summer 2006, I denounced the North Korean Missile scandal, and here’s what followed:

- I received an e-mail from InTrade CEO John Delaney saying that I could put a prize of $10,000 in the ‘lost’ column;

- I have been attacked by a second-tier phone-booth conference organizer, sponsored by InTrade;

- I received e-mailed insults from Ireland, sent on forged e-mail accounts.

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[*] 3,820 cites of InTrade, says Google Search.

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Next: Resignation Intent vs. Upcoming Resignation vs. Effective Resignation

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UPDATE: Chris Masse’s response to the Mike Giberson comment…

The real issue is not much that InTrade makes a mistake (we all do), but whether it acknowledges its mistake and compensates the victims. (In the North Korea Missile scandal, InTrade did not behave well in this perspective, according to my reading of the situation.) [...]

US Senator Larry Craig simply said, “I’m thinking about resigning on September 30”. He did not say, “I’m resigning, effective September 30.” There is a huge difference between the two kinds of statement. And this difference (and InTrade’s error) pops up today because Larry Craig is exercising his constitutional right to change his intent. [...]

Next: Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation letter – November 6, 2006

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UPDATE: New York Times…

Sen. Larry Craig has all but dropped any notion of trying to complete his term, and is focused on helping Idaho send a new senator to Washington within a few weeks, his top spokesman said Thursday. ”The most likely scenario, by far, is that by October there will be a new senator from Idaho,” Craig spokesman Dan Whiting told the Associated Press. The only circumstances in which Craig might try to complete his term, Whiting said, would require a prompt overturning of his conviction for disorderly conduct in a men’s room at the Minneapolis airport, as well as Senate GOP leaders’ agreement to restore Craig’s committee leaderships posts taken away this week. Those scenarios are unlikely, Whiting said.

Craig, a three-term Republican, met Wednesday with Idaho Gov. C.L. ”Butch” Otter, R, to discuss a transition in which Otter would name his Senate replacement, Whiting said. Even if Craig were to complete his term, he said, the senator would not seek re-election in 2008. Whiting said Craig remains intent on clearing his name through the legal process in Minnesota and by having the Senate ethics committee address his claim that his misdemeanor conviction should not be a matter for action by the panel. [...]

UPDATE: How US Senator Larry Craig managed to fool InTrade-TradeSports.

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UPDATE: InTrade-TradeSports should have expired the Larry Craig event derivative today, on October 4, 2007, and not on September 5, 2007.

InTrade-TradeSports should have expired the Larry Craig event derivative today, on October 4, 2007, and not on September 5, 2007. That’s their main error. Last September, they expired this event derivative on the basis on Larry Craig stating his “intent to resign” —which is different than to announce an upcoming or effective resignation. Larry Craig later changed his “intent” —he then intended to stay in the US Senate (providing he would be able to withdraw his guilty plea). Unfortunately, today, a judge ruled against his attempt to dismiss his guilty plea. So, US Senator Larry Craig is announcing today that:

1. He is not resigning from the US Senate;
2. He will not seek re-election for his US Senate seat.

The condition #2 is sufficient to expire the December 2007 Larry Craig contract on the “yes” side. (“Yes”, he is announcing his “intention not to run in 2008″.)

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UPDATE: Craig hopes to redeem himself for future lucrative job as lobbyist.

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Czarek Sokolowski / AP

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The Los Angeles Times has a two-page investigation into the alleged corruption of that tennis game.

[...] In the room, it turns out, toil 40 people with 40 unusual jobs. They’re the “fraud team” and the “integrity team” of the Internet gambling colossus Betfair, which handles more daily trades than the New York Stock Exchange. Barton-Nicol heads the Risk Investigations department, and the specialists who undergo three months of training and spend eight-hour shifts scrutinizing wagering patterns had detected something with Davydenko-Arguello that qualified as, to use a popular British word, dodgy. “If they suspect something, they go in with all their toys and look closer,” said Robin Marks, a spokesman for Betfair. Their “toys” include software that allows Betfair to track every bet by every wagerer, even given the three billion hits, five million bets and one million account holders from the last year. If a wagerer bets only on soccer but suddenly turns to tennis, it shows. With the Davydenko-Arguello match at the Orange Prokom Open in Sopot, Poland, though, they didn’t need to track any individual. They just followed the galloping money total. [...]

[...] Those numbers would climb as match time approached, but they’d never reach the $7 million visible on Davydenko-Arguello in a mere $500,000 tournament in Poland. [...] On Aug. 2, though, once Davydenko won the first set, his match became official by Betfair policy. It would have a winner, whether through match point or injury retirement, and it apparently would pay out. That’s when seasoned bettors began peppering Betfair’s online forum with suspicion, and when an unassuming room in West London started buzzing.

Midas Oracle and CFM are the only webspots that report both the good side and the bad side of the prediction markets.

Previous: SPORTS CORRUPTION: The dark side of the prediction markets + CORRUPTION IN TENNIS: the Nikolay Davydenko vs. Vassallo Arguello prediction markets at BetFair + CORRUPTION IN TENNIS: Nikolay Davydenko claims that he is innocent.

UPDATE: Los Angeles Times

Next: Cooperation between BetFair and the British Horseracing Authority: IT IS WORKING.

NEXT: BetFair-TradeFair fights corruption, while TradeSports-InTrade does not.

William Hill Plc, a London-based bookmaker, will pay out on a number of bets on the fate of Harry Potter because of an “ambiguous ending” to the seventh and final novel about the boy wizard. The bookmaker repaid 50,000 pounds ($101,060) in wagers and a further 40,000 pounds to fans who either bet that he died, killed himself or was killed by his nemesis Lord Voldemort. “It was a fairly ambiguous ending, open to various interpretations, and so whatever way we settled the bets would have annoyed some people,” said Rupert Adams, a William Hill spokesman. “So we paid out on all the bets.’‘ The bets on the outcome of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” were the first William Hill had ever taken on the ending of a book. Three employees at the bookmaker read the novel by J.K. Rowling and failed to agree on the ending of the novel, Adams said. “Now we have to hope that Rowling doesn’t bring out another Harry Potter book in the next two years,” said Adams. “We have already taken 12,500 pounds on that bet.” [...]

#1. The William Hill assessment on the ending of Harry Potter in the 7th book, The Deathly Hallows, disproves Emile Servan-Schreiber’s cocky line of thinking —”there is just no room whatsoever for disagreement”.

#2. It also disproves Jed Christiansen’s gregarious and uninformed line of thinking —”there’s no controversy here whatsoever.”

#3. It proves that Chris Masse was right (once again) when he wrote that “NewsFutures expiry judgment on the fate of Harry Potter is too elliptic”.

#4. It shows the difference of ethics between William Hill and InTrade-TradeSports. When the outcome is ambiguous, pay both sides (or void all bets). That’s maybe what InTrade-TradeSports should have done for the North Korean Missile prediction market, which is, at this day, the biggest scandal in the field of prediction markets. Of course, it is easier to send to Chris Masse anonymous insults from forged e-mail accounts rather than to address traders’ problems with an ethical angle.

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UPDATE: Emile Servan-Schreiber’s comment…

As I answered to Niall earlier through more personal channels, I suspected that William Hill’s decision has more to do with the bad wording of their HP bets than with the clarity of the book’s ending (in which Harry survives). So, I looked around on the web and I found the bets and terms that William Hill proposed:

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Who Will Pot Potter**

4/5 Lord Voldemort
5/2 Professor Snape
6/1 Draco Malfroy
6/1 Ron Weasley
6/1 Harry Potter
14/1 Lucius Malfroy
14/1 Hermione Granger
20/1 Neville Longbottom
20/1 Proffessor Slughorn
25/1 Hagrid
25/1 Cornelius Fudge
33/1 Arthur Weasley
33/1 Dawlish
40/1 Proffesor McGonagall
50/1 Lupin
50/1 Mr Filch
50/1 Dobby
100/1 Ginny Weasley
100/1 Tonks
100/1 Fred/George Weasly
100/1 Uncle Vernon
Other On Request

**If Harry Potter survives all bets will be void and stake money will be returned -You cannot lose!
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What happened is that HP survived and WH just had to return all stake money, as the ** terms forces them to do. It really has nothing to do with any ambiguity about HP’s fate.

By the way, anyone who wanted to argue that HP is dead at the end of the book would simply have to reproduce here, at MO, the relevant passages of the book. Any other data or argument is of little value.

NEXT: The NewsFutures expiry judgment statements should not be elliptic.

• “We believe the technology has a lot of potential,” says Christina LaComb, a computer scientist in General Electric Co.’s computational-intelligence lab in Niskayuna, N.Y., which last summer ran a test to see whether the markets could help brainstorm new project ideas. Using software from Consensus Point Inc. of Nashville, Tenn., GE researchers created a market where participants could bet on what they thought would be the most feasible project. With the market, anyone could float “stock” in a proposed project; lab members began with a fixed amount of money, and then could buy shares in their favorite. The price of projects, which began at $50, rose and fell based on demand, with prices capped at $99. At the end of three weeks, the project with the highest price was declared the winner, and the winning team received financing to develop its idea. (A GE spokesman says only that the idea had something to do with artificial intelligence.)
• Adoption of the tools is expected to grow now that a few software vendors have begun to promote marketplace systems to corporate clients. Corning Inc. is running a pilot project with decision-market software from New York-based NewsFutures Inc., to see how markets might be used in forecasting the liquid-crystal display market. O’Reilly Media Inc., Sebastopol, Calif., is preparing a test to see how well decision markets can predict the optimal print run for its specialized software manuals, using a Web-based marketplace from a Chicago start-up, Inkling Inc.
• The market also can be used to forecast a range of possible outcomes, such as the projected demand for laptop computers. Here, players choose from among contracts that represent different sales ranges — under one million, one million to two million, and so on.

A NATO spokesman had it right when he said that in the 21st century, it’s not just going to be about tanks and planes.

CNET News on cyber war and cyber terrorism.