Last Prediction Markets Post (For Now)
There's too much casino content left unwritten to stay here any longer
The Fish Is Always Someone
When I was playing poker professionally, I had one constant wish: more fish at the table. Weak players, recreational gamblers, people who just wanted to have fun. Not because I was cruel — because that’s how the ecosystem works. More often than not, pros prefer to play against weaker recreational players or weaker regulars. They beat the people who show up to enjoy the game.
Same logic in a casino. I want more recreational players chasing jackpots, people playing just for the thrill — because their action is what grows the jackpot to the level where it crosses my breakeven threshold and actually makes sense for me to sit down.
Prediction markets work the same way. The ecosystem needs recreational players who come for the excitement, for the thrill of being right about something. Without them there’s no game.
Now when I open Polymarket to bet on a sports result or an election — something I’d genuinely enjoy having a position on — I realize something uncomfortable: I’m not playing against someone like me. I’m the food for professional traders who, unlike me, didn’t come here for the thrill — they came for positive EV decisions and profit.
Who You're Actually Playing Against
And these aren't hypothetical players. There's an anonymous mathematician-programmer who made $1.5 million on prediction markets — not through luck, but by exploiting exactly the kind of thinking that brings people like me to the platform.
He doesn't watch elections as a spectator. He runs probability models and looks for gaps between what the market prices and what the data actually shows. When Canadian conservatives kept betting on their party despite shifting polls — convinced the data was fake — he simply took the other side and collected.
I use a mathematical approach to make money from those who bet for fun.
He reverse-engineered NASA’s temperature calculation algorithms to predict global temperature readings ten days before official publication — while wealthy players were betting on gut feeling about a hot summer.
And his view on retail participants is blunt: talking to locals, reading the news, having opinions — it’s all minus EV. It adds noise to the model and creates false confidence.
That’s who’s sitting on the other side of your bet when you open Polymarket to have a position on something you find interesting.
Better Prices, Worse Game
And here's a funny paradox that came to me during one of those discussions.
Professional traders make prices better — tighter spreads, more accurate probabilities. They improve the market, but they make the game worse for every recreational participant who shows up with an opinion and a few dollars.
Without them, retail users trade against each other. Someone wins, someone loses — money stays in the ecosystem, circulating among people like us. Inefficient? Sure. But it’s a game where ordinary participants have a real chance.
With professionals in the mix, the money flows in one direction. Every trade a retail user takes as a liquidity taker funds the edge of someone sitting on the maker side with a model they’ll never see.
And yes — accurate prices are genuinely valuable. For Bloomberg citing Polymarket odds. For academics. For regulators. For anyone trying to understand what the world thinks will happen next. But for the average user funding that accuracy with consistent losses? They’re essentially paying an invisible tax to subsidize infrastructure that serves everyone but them.
I’d rather have worse prices and a better game.
No Fish, No Game
GGPokerOK — the world’s largest poker room — took a deliberate decision to remove professionals from their platform. Not because they broke any rules. But to let recreational players compete against each other, keeping the money circulating within the ecosystem for longer.
Maybe prediction markets will eventually go the same way.
TLDR
Casinos hate winners. Sportsbooks hate winners. GGPokerOK hates winners.
Prediction markets don’t hate winners — but for most people that won’t make a difference. The majority still loses despite better conditions. It’s like playing European roulette with a single zero instead of American with two. Better odds, same negative outcome.
P.S. This is my last post about prediction markets — for now. Back to the main topic of this blog: places that hate you for winning.