MM is more successful than Timex brand watches. I don't think a basketball bet can affect him, even for 7 figures.

Yes he has been very successful in cerebral based activities.

This.


And 90 of 100 is really not that difficult, if you put some time in it, and have a bit of talent. I've had countless 10 of 10 free-throws, a few minutes after training had ended (no high pulse anymore), when I was a teenager. Often wouldn't leave the court before I had 8 of 10, which usually didn't take too long.

I think people who bet against him are not very smart.

You keep throwing this around. Do you have any evidence that unsettled bets contribute to Pokershares' cashflow? That's not how legitimate betting operations work.

I don't know what his motivations are. He might be very bored, or embarrassed about his basketball ability and wants to improve in order to stop his flatmate laughing at him. Maybe he lacks motivation to improve his fitness unless there is money on the line. There any number of other reasons for why he's set himself what looks like quite a tough task. People set themselves difficult goals all the time, and some of them succeed and some fail miserably.

It's possible Mike's set himself a near-impossible challenge and it will cost him money. You can bet against him if you think that's the case.
All your theories about him desperately needing cash, or being unable to pay out are simply that: theories.

I cannot see anything in Pokershares Ts & Cs that mentions them ringfencing client money, nor about client money being deposited with a third party so that it is protected in the event of Pokershares becoming insolvent. Even if it was deposited with a third party to protect it, you would only get your stake back (up to a maximum of €500) but you wouldn't receive any winnings. (See Liability section from their Ts & Cs below)

All I have found so far that relates to protection of client funds / Pokershares' liability is below. I take the part I have bolded, to mean that clients are only covered up to a maximum of €500.

Pokershares are registered in Curaçao, and in the Governing Law section of Pokershares' Ts & Cs is says "The laws of Malta govern the provision of the Services." (Google about the Maltese government would be my advice)

Source: https://www.pokershares.com/help/terms-and-conditions

Liability

To the extent permitted by applicable law, we will not compensate you for any reasonably foreseeable loss or damage (either direct or indirect) you may suffer if we fail to carry out our obligations under these Terms unless we breach any duties imposed on us by law in which case we shall not be liable to you if that failure is attributed to: (i) your own fault; (ii) a third party unconnected with our performance of these Terms; or (iii) any other events which neither we nor our suppliers could have foreseen or forestalled even if we or they had taken reasonable care.

As this service is for personal use only we will not be liable for any commercial losses of any kind.

In the event that we are held liable for any event under these Terms, our total aggregate liability to you under or in connection with these Terms shall not exceed
(a) the value of the bets you placed via your Account in respect of the relevant bet or product that gave rise to the relevant liability, or
(b) five hundreds euros (€500) in aggregate, whichever is lower.

Edit:

It does say this in the "Is it licensed and regulated?" section of the Ts & Cs

Absolutely!
PokerShares is operated by Safe Shares N.V. a company licensed and regulated by the laws of Curacao under the C.I.L. Curacao interactive licensing N.V. with license number 8048/JAZ. Client funds are segregated from company funds at all time.

But it doesn't say how exactly they are segregated, and you still only have €500 max protection if they become insolvent according to the piece in bold above.

Is he deflating the ball?

If a guy like David Goggins took on this challenge, I'd bet everything I own on that guy being successful. But he's also arguably one of the most disciplined, persevering, finely-tuned minds in the world.

I do not think Mike McDonald has that kind of discipline and perseverance. Because this challenge will take a lot of that. And I mean, a lot. The hours and hours and days upon days of the same task over-and-over-and-over will become unbelievably tough on the mind. One could go insane trying to do this.

From watching the vid, you can clearly see the second shot shaking the rim/backboard on first point of contact and then the front of rim has some give on the second point, allowing the ball to fall in. If you're going to bet against, make sure he tightens that up. The ball being slightly deflated will be hard to notice though. One thing I'm confused about, how is he going to document this accurately? Does he get to 47/50 and then turn on a camera since he's in a groove or does he record the entire thing saying, "starting session 34 now"?

2,750
Tom Amberry (November 13, 1922 – March 18, 2017) was an American podiatrist who is best known for holding the Guinness world record for most consecutive free throws made, having shot 2,750 of them in a row in a span of 12 hours over the course of one day in 1993 at the age of 71

I think its not that difficult for anyone with a bit of drive.

Will there be a chance to bet on Mike completing the challenge at some point? looks like you can only bet against him

In terms of "evidence" supporting that it is possible for Mike to win, I think things such as above about a 71 year old man or the 60 year old basketball coach previously mentioned both making an incredible number of consecutive free throws, is not valid evidence, because they are outliers.

Show that every town in the USA and Canada has 5 or 10 people like this, or that there are thousands of people like this in total across the world. Showing a tiny number of people who are world record holders does not prove that if they can do it anyone can do it.

Real "evidence" that Mike can do it, would be to provide examples of similar people to him, who started from the same base as him (an awkward shooting style achieving a ~40% to 50% success rate, and then went on to become ~70% to 75% shooters and did so with no help on rebounds)

Plenty of people are saying things such as, virtually any healthy person with enough determination or with enough of a financial incentive can do this if they put the work in. I don't get what they are basing this on.

Posters ITT who have actual data on their own free throw record/ability have in general said that they have got close to 90% but over a smaller stretch than 100 shots, and the few that have said this have not described it as at all easy, and these are people that play a lot of basketball, not randoms who set themselves a basketball related challenge.

I wish Shaq would of tried this challenge.

If he does it granny style then possible with a lot of practise.

Why Shooting 95% From the Free-Throw Line Is Almost Impossible (ft. Steve Nash)

Mike talks about the challenge at 53:22 of this new podcast with Adam Levitan
https://establishtherun.com/episode-...mike-mcdonald/

Robot beats Pros in 3pt contest. granted they were Japanese pros but interesting anyway.

http://sierra.nmsu.edu/morandi/oldwe...istics-web.pdf

Page 6 shows a somewhat analogous set of trials - large numbers of 100 coin flip trials. I’d expect his number of attempts to be closest to 10k, at which point he’ll always have a trial > 10% above the mean and almost always have one 15% above.

Would need a math buff to alter the figures for higher probability events (ie: 70% free throw percent to achieve 90/100 at least one time) since I don’t think you can copy paste the distributions over to the right, but my suspicion would be that it becomes a fair even money bet when his free throw percent is not too far from 75%.

You'd be pretty stupid to bet against Mike IMO. Remember that he doesn't have to get a 90% average, he just has to get a lucky attempt over the course of tens of thousands of shots.

There's probably a dozen guys at the pick-up game at my local gym who could knock this out in a day. I wouldn't bet against a random guy from my local pick-up game if the timeframe was even a week. Hell, search "free throws in a row" on youtube and you get a bunch of videos of people hitting 50, 500, whatever IN A ROW. The world record is at least 5,221 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtvRN5S7m_U

I know someone who plays pickup games occasionally who hit 50 in a row recently to win a bet, and it only took him 16 tries. If there's significant money on the line, I think Mike can practice enough to have the skills of a decent pick-up game ft shooter. I can't imagine it'll take him more than a month

Every single clip I've seen of someone shooting lots of consecutive free throws, including the clip above, there is either someone feeding the rebounds straight back to the shooter, or there is a funnel attached under the net that the ball rolls down and back to the shooter.

If Mike had a rebound helper his odds to win this challenge might be about 2/1 3.0, but without one they could be as high as 200/1. The win streaks you see in these videos would be totally crushed if any of these guys had to fetch all rebounds themselves, including Prahlad Friedman who coasted to 80 consecutives without breaking a sweat.

It is a major f up by Mike him doing his own rebounds as part of the rules of the bet.

Rebounds make it more annoying, but doesn't change the odds that much. Remember that he's going to be making the vast majority of the shots, and the ball is just gonna fall straight to the ground.

I think there's a >50% chance he gets it in the first month. If the timeframe was a week, I wouldn't take this bet against a random guy at a pick-up game

EDIT: here's some 12-view video of a guy getting 63 in a row, with his own rebounds. Tons of examples of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8KhTPuZbY4 here's one of 115. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-W6jIbBVAY

I think you are underestimating what a massive advantage it is to be able to not change your starting position at all between throws, as well as having less time between shots for you to potentially lose muscle memory and depth perspective memory etc. Having to reset body position and refocus eyeline and concentration, either a lot or even fractionally between many of the throws, will kill Mike's overall chances IMO. Sure, some/many balls will roll straight back during a hot streak but even then he still has to reset his focus and perhaps his body position a little when this happens.

But bare in mind that when he is on lots of inevitable cold streaks or mini hot but then aborted streaks, that he will definitely have some shots missing which will mean he has to chase after rebounds expending more energy and this will affect the chances of achieving hot streaks in the same session.

Getting fatigued also affects concentration, which is why boxers make more technical and tactical mistakes later in fights and why vehicle drivers reflexes are slower and judgement is impaired when driving tired.

I would love to bet against him at 2.0 but don't know anyone who will take the other side, that I know well enough.

Guy couldn’t beat 500 zoom like 7 years ago and he’s a longtime poker pro AND had a massive sidebet AND Ike coached him. Maybe he’s not as capable as people think.

Yes so you have found some examples in the 100 range where they fetch their own rebounds, compared to people who have shot in the 1000s when having rebound help, the world record being over 5000.

Also the 115 took 24 minutes (12.5 secs per throw), compared to Prahlad Friedman's rebound helper assisted 80 which took only 7 minutes 20 (5.5 secs per throw), so doing your own rebounds takes ~2.2 times as long which will limit the length of Mike's sessions and make him progressively more tired the more he fails during a session.

I still feel that Mike doing his own rebounds will make it ~50 to ~75 times harder for him to complete the challenge, given that he has an uphill battle to get to ~75% in the first place. It's not like he is already a 75% shooter and can get up to 85% and then afford to slip down to the mid/high 70s when he has to do his own rebounding. He's gonna have to get from ~40% to ~75% in the first place. He admitted/estimated he is ~40% if shooting a hoop that has a standard rim and backboard, during his podcast with Adam Levitan, and said that he has never done free throws before at all seriously and is not a player of basketball, so is essentially a novice.

I agree, I don’t think he will be able to do this. The math models will not encapsulate some of the “mental torture” from this.

Can you also bet ON him on the site mentioned? or is it only Timex who cakes off from this