All against the BetFair premium charges

Posted on September 27, 2008 by admin

Excellent analysis from the &#8220-Punt&#8221- blogger.

Serial bet winners are accused (that&#8217-s the word) to withdraw money from the BetFair machine, compelling BetFair to attract new money from newbies at a high marketing cost, and thus BetFair has decided to tax those serial bet winners.

I wonder what a Harvard or Wharton MBA would think of this reasoning.

It is my understanding that, in the betting and gambling business, you are always trying to attract new blood to make up for the disillusioned gamblers that you are losing on a daily basis.

Am I correct, folks?

Why don&#8217-t BetFair raise moderately the trading fees for everybody, or try to reduce the cost of the BetFair IT architecture by slashing out what has been unnecessary added by their IT maniacs?

Previously: BetFair impose new “Premium Charges”, and their very active traders are up in arms. – 2008-09-09

2008 US Presidential and Congressional Elections Prediction: The Sarah Palin effect has partially evaporated, but its remains point to a close race, come Tuesday, November 4, 2008.

Posted on September 23, 2008 by admin

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#1. Explainer On Prediction Markets

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Prediction markets produce dynamic, objective probabilistic predictions on the outcomes of future events by aggregating disparate pieces of information that traders bring when they agree on prices. Prediction markets are meta forecasting tools that feed on the advanced indicators (i.e., the primary sources of information). Garbage in, garbage out&#8230- Intelligence in, intelligence out&#8230-

A prediction market is a market for a contract that yields payments based on the outcome of a partially uncertain future event, such as an election. A contract pays $100 only if candidate X wins the election, and $0 otherwise. When the market price of an X contract is $60, the prediction market believes that candidate X has a 60% chance of winning the election. The price of this event derivative can be interpreted as the objective probability of the future outcome (i.e., its most statistically accurate forecast). A 60% probability means that, in a series of events each with a 60% probability, then 6 times out of 10, the favored outcome will occur- and 4 times out of 10, the unfavored outcome will occur.

Each prediction exchange organizes its own set of real-money and/or play-money markets, using either a CDA or a MSR mechanism.

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More Info:

– The Best Resources On Prediction Markets = The Best External Web Links + The Best Midas Oracle Posts

– Prediction Market Science

– The Midas Oracle Explainers On Prediction Markets

– All The Midas Oracle Explainers On Prediction Markets

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#2. Objective Probabilistic Predictions = Charts Of Prediction Markets

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Put your mouse on your selected chart, right-click, and open the link in another browser tab to get directed to the prediction market page of your favorite exchange.

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2008 US Elections

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InTrade

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2008 US Electoral College

2008 Electoral Map Prediction = InTrade – Electoral College Prediction Markets = Probabilistic predictions for the 2008 US presidential elections based on market data from InTrade = electoralmarkets.com

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– This is a dynamic chart, which is up to date. Click on the image, and open the website in another browser tab to get the bigger version.

ProTrade vs. Sports Derivative Exchange

Posted on September 23, 2008 by admin

I asked Chris Hibbert whether they are &#8220-exchanges&#8221-.

Chris Hibbert:

It looks like it from a cursory glance. In both cases, you can buy and sell, and the prices appear to be set by market interactions rather than institutional fiat. They both have a feedback mechanism based on “dividends” produced by on-field performance. ProTrade has a sophisticated formula that takes into account the players’ contribution to a winning season. SDX seems to base their dividends purely on wins and losses. The latter is easier to understand, and probably closer to the way most fans think about things. I think ProTrade is justified in believing they are closer to capturing the individual athlete’s contribution.

There’s also the difference in betting on players or teams. I think both might be helped by offering bets based on both players and teams. But until they cover hockey, I won’t spend a lot of time there. I don’t want to have to start following one of the major sports in order to bet in these play money markets.

ProTrade has a market maker, and SDX uses book orders.

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External Links:

– ProTrade

– Sports Derivative Exchange

– Zocalo (the open-source software for enterprise prediction markets, coded by Chris Hibbert)

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UPDATE: The SDX co-founder has a comment.

Sports Derivative Exchange

Posted on September 22, 2008 by admin

Sports Derivative Exchange

A kind of HSX for sports.

In beta.

Best wishes to them.

UPDATE: The SDX co-founder has a comment.

With regard to the 2008 US elections, both Justin Wolfers and Robin Hanson implied that BetFair is not as predictive as it should be.

Posted on September 19, 2008 by admin

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Previously: About Justin Wolfers&#8217-s column

Justin Wolfers&#8217- Freakonomics post (which suggests that BetFair would have a better predictive power if US traders could use it).

InTrade vs. the other prediction exchanges

Posted on September 18, 2008 by admin

Justin Wolfers gives his views about the (now past) differences between the probabilistic predictions given by InTrade on the 2008 US presidential elections&#8230- and the ones generated by the other real-money and play-money prediction exchanges. One hypothesis: US political insiders can&#8217-t access BetFair, legally, and thus can&#8217-t arbitrage. (But they can trade legally on the Iowa Electronic Markets, NewsFutures, Inkling, and HubDub, one could retort.)

Emile Servan-Schreiber&#8217-s hypothesis still holds.

Or else &#8212-your own hypothesis is welcome.

P.S.: The latest news is that InTrade now gives Barack Obama slightly above John McCain.

Nobel laureate Gary Becker and judge Richard Posner both wish that, one day, real-money prediction markets will be legal, without restrictions, in the United States of America.

Posted on September 16, 2008 by admin

Via David Pennock of Odd Head fame

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Gary Becker:

[…] I believe that online political prediction markets, and other online prediction markets as well, should be legal in the United States and elsewhere, even if the amounts bet were quite large. There is no important substantive difference between such online betting markets and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and other exchanges that allow individuals and organizations to take positions on movements of stock indexes, housing price indexes, and prices of other derivatives. A distinction is sometimes made between political betting markets and derivative markets since participants in derivative markets may be hedging other risks that they face. Yet this distinction has little substance since if larger bets were allowed in online political markets, groups whose welfare depended greatly on political outcomes would make greater use of these markets. For example, if a Republican presidential win would mean greater spending on military weapons, companies in the arms business might hedge their risks by betting on Barack Obama.

If large bets were allowed, some wealthy groups may bet a lot on their candidates in order to exert bandwagon influences on public opinion through their large bets affecting market odds. If so, these markets likely would become less reliable as predictors of outcomes, and hence would have less influence on opinions. To a large extent, therefore, these markets would be self correcting, although online political markets might place various other restrictions on bets, as is common in derivative and other exchanges.

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Richard Posner:

[…] There is an interesting question whether prediction markets should be thought of as &#8220-gambling” and perhaps prohibited. As a matter of policy, that would be a mistake, even if one thinks that gambling should be prohibited. The prediction markets are markets for speculation, rather than for game-playing or risk-taking. Slot machines, card-playing, roulette wheels, and other conventional forms of gambling do not generate socially valuable information. Speculation does. Commercial speculation serves to hedge commercial risks and bring prices into closer phase with value. Political, cultural, etc. prediction markets also yield socially valuable information. The outcome of elections is important to companies and even individuals for whom particular public policies are important- they may wish to make adjustments to avert or exploit looming political change. Politicians too need to have as sharp a sense as possible about the effects on the electorate of their and their opponents&#8217- strategies. Apparently they can get more accurate information from the prediction markets than from the public opinion pollsters.

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