Here's a list of equivalent and similar markets: https://www.politicalalertengine.com.../biden-markets

I think I got this from someone earlier in this thread, but don't remember who to credit. Anyway, it's a bit surprising how much you can get down using these other markets.

Thanks for that. I've got $1700 between Tx dem primary winner and SC dem primary winner. But yeah it absolutely looks like i could bet quite a bit more than that on the "same thing"... i love how they just blatantly skirt the FTC rules like that lol. I might end up doubling down on some of the others.

Chuck as far i'm aware predictit is the main tool we have in the us for political betting but i'm not really sure, i don't really bet that often.

Funny story for you all, i was so sure Hillary would defeat Trump in 2016, I decided to make a forex play converting dollars into pesos with my stock broker... Peso fell 10% overnight.

It’s illegal. Best bet for US is Bovada or some crypto markets.

Predictit is meant to be a “research” project into predictions, but due to the restrictions it falls short.

There’s max bet of $850, max number of participants at any point in time. So this illiquid market doesn’t correctly move as the other markets should.

lol

I posted this over the summer, but it seems worthwhile to re-up it before people go nuts on PredictIt without understanding how the fees eat into your profits.
PredictIt Price Converter

Man, I'm getting the same feeling as you. The more I study the data and numbers from this election the more I am confident in Biden. Reading American media though, it seems that people there think the election is much closer than it actually is. Republicans for the most part think Trump will win a clear victory - but many of their predictions are borderline delusional. Like Trump winning 30% of the black vote or flipping New York State.

Democrats still have PTSD from 2016 and are assuming worst case scenarios as well.

The betting markets all are still underestimating Biden based on what I've seen. The lines for him on Pinnacle on some of the swing states are pretty nuts

Florida +115 underdog, North Caroina -127 practically a coinflip, Arizona -147 are all lines I wanna smash.

I've gotten Biden at -178, -180 and -167 at multiple sites for signficant portions of my bankroll already though.

Thread would be much better if all of you posted screenshots with bet, line and amount wagered instead of amorphous allusions to “a large part of my bankroll.” If the various claims in this thread that people are betting 25%, 50%, and even their entire life roll on this election, then show us! That would be interesting to follow.

For what it’s worth I have only about .01% of my roll at risk, so I have nothing interesting to show from my own side.

Anyone finding good value in other stuff after maxing Biden?

Here's one I like:



(image modified to cut out a position I'm still entering/exiting)

Sticking with the theme of the year, a Biden blowout is massively underpriced in the electoral college market. If Biden wins Texas, he's going to win by 280+ most of the time. 538 has him winning Texas 33% of the time. It seems to me like this contract should be priced more than twice what it currently is. The shorts in all the GOP markets are just another very nicely priced Biden proxy.


I have a couple more I plan to post once my positions are complete.

I have around 10% of my liquid bankroll (not liferoll) on it now and while i'd rather not post publicly what my bankroll is etc we've done a bit of business in the past so i'm sure you can guess the rough ballpark number, it's slightly more than you ran the account I got you a while back up to but in around that region that I have on Biden. I did buy a house last year though which lowered the bankroll a little bit but i've had a decent year.

Might be able to go a little harder after I had a super good week but at this point may as well wait for election day for complete information in case of a late swing against

FWIW I think at current prices Kelly says I should have about 40% of my roll and half kelly would be 20% on it but i'm a little gunshy after last cycle even though Biden is in a way, way better position than Hillary ever was

At the actual average prices I got if my analysis is accurate half kelly would be 25.71% of my roll, granted at the time I made my first few bets Biden was probably more like 60-70% to win vs 80% or so now, I think half Kelly suggesting 20% is probably about right at any point in the cycle and by only having 10% on i'm def on the more conservative side but it is still something like my third or fourth biggest bet ever in terms of % of bankroll (obv may mac was biggest)

If nothing changes between now and election day or Biden improves his position i'll go harder, if there's any drift i'll prob just keep what I have and if there's a 4-5% drift or so i'll probably sell my position

For now standing pat at about 10% of roll, mix of -132 -140 and -150 (the -140 is field over trump, rest are biden directly)

FWIW I think Biden is about -400 right now but if the election were guaranteed to be 100% fair with no voter suppression of postal votes and so on it would be more like -800. With turnout looking set to be 60%+ Trump is drawing to Trump cheats successfully equity which is live with a very partisan supreme court, but still unlikely in my opinion

good post. thanks for the specifics.

what i think is interesting is that almost everyone here has a fudge factor (shout out @Daringly) on the polls. the trump bettors necessarily need a fudge factor, because you if you believed the polls, you wouldn't bet on trump at these prices. but some of the biden bettors are criticising trump bettors for not believing the polls, although they themselves don't totally believe in the polls.

swoop, i think your position, if i understand it correctly, is that 2020 polls are more convincing than 2016 polls, but 2016 showed that polls can be wrong so you can't trust polls 100%. so you bet on biden, but with some fudge factor to reflect some doubt in the polls for various reasons (including potential voter fraud). that's a completely reasonable stance. but then you lose your ability to criticise trump voters for doubting the polls and bringing up 2016. you're actually doing the same thing, they're just putting a bigger coefficient in front of their poll-doubt fudge factor.

i think you either have to believe in the polls, or you don't. once you admit the polls are kind of wrong, then it's a slippery slope between being off by a couple percent and being off by 10%. when we create fudge factors we leave the world of math and science behind. it becomes art. who's to say if the trump bettor who doesn't believe the polls and thinks trump is good here, or the biden bettor who doesn't believe the polls but think's biden is still good here, is drawing a more accurate picture?

chuck bass, you have been scathingly condescending towards trump bettors for not believing the polls. to be consistent with that rhetoric, chuck bass needs to say he pledges fealty to the polls, he has a poster of Nathan Silver above his bed and his best estimate for trump to win needs to be around 10:1 and at odds of -200, he should have about a third of his life roll on biden here. otherwise, his comments in this thread are no more valuable than some drunk guy in a bar in oklahoma, giving his opinion on the election, a little bit too loudly and rude to other customers but if the bar is mostly empty and he's ordering a lot of drinks we'll let him stay because he pays his bills. but this isn't a bar chuck bass, this is the Two Plus Two 2020 US Presidential Election Betting Thread and it's dedicated to +EV election betting. and you haven't been buying any drinks.

chuck bass, are you prepared to share with us your 35% liferoll stake on joe biden for president 2020? or are you going to post in bad faith and be put on ignore?

am i wrong to think that the biggest factor at play in these final days is the hunter biden dirt? a hunter biden photo has been posted every hour for the past few days, but so far it's mostly a nothing burger. it might actually affect a very small number of voters' opinions if the media discussed it, but they're doing their best to give it censor it, outside of fox and some far-right outlets.

on the one hand, i'd think if there was some meat here, they'd have already posted it, so it's unlikely any real bombshells are coming.

on the other hand, it seems weird they'd post all these degenerate hunter photos if it wasn't leading up to anything. why distract from the main stories, that hunter and his father were involved in corrupt dealings with ukraine and china? hunter biden making millions of dollars and giving half of it to his father in exchange for corrupt deals made while in office is a much more damning story than hunter biden doing lots of drugs and having lots of sex.

that should be the biggest fear for biden bettors right now, but nobody is discussing it here

LMAO did someone just say Texas going for Biden.

I should honestly pay you people for this entertainment.

This is so hilarious. Thank you all.

this is where you're wrong imo it is not a slippery slope any more than its a slippery slope to say 'well KC may not cover -20.5 vs the Jets, so they also may not cover -14.5 so they may also not cover -3.5 so they may also not cover +4.5'

We're probably at something like KC -3.5 or something here in 2019 with KC -19.5 or whatever the current line is being the coinflip mark as an analogy, while Hillary was at say KC -13.5 or something the day before the election. Obviously one 'miss' on the cover is far more likely than the other

If the slippery slope argument had any merit, Trump to win the popular vote would be a snap bet at +700 or whatever it is, because 'hey if it can miss by 5% it can miss by 9% just as often' etc

At a certain point events go from being likely, to not very likely, to very unlikely, to nearly impossible and so on. Right now we're at the very unlikely area in terms of a polling error being large enough to overcome the margin of error, whereas in 2016 it was in the 'not very likely' territory

Trump was 25-30% to win in hindsight down 4 or so w the way the electoral college works in 2016 and I made a few error that cycle, mostly being that I split my bet between Hillary to win and Hillary to win the popular vote when the odds were similar at -3xx from memory (I think I got about that price on both EC vote and pop vote can check my spreadsheet if anyone cares)

If Biden to win pop vote wasn't -600 and was say -300, i'd just be all in on that for ~50% of my roll instead but I think the ROI is higher getting -140ish on a -400 shot than getting -600 on a -1500 or -2000ish shot.

The polls missed by 1.5% last cycle nationally and Clinton's position got 2% worse with the Comey letter in the polls in the final days before the election

If Biden was 2% worse off, he's still in a far better position than Hillary, but he would then STILL win with a 1.5% polling error. Right now, the polls would need to be off by over 5% for Biden to lose, so assuming there is no 'Trump declares all postal ballots illegal with no evidence of fraud and supreme court upholds that' in which case we don't have a Democracy anymore, we'd need a historically large polling error for Biden to lose - again, he is leading by outside the margin of error in 270 EVs worth of states (PA WI MI gets him to 270) and then he has fallbacks if he loses one or two of those if he wins FL AZ NC etc etc (obv by GA TX OH etc the election is already well and truly over, same if Trump is winning Nevada or New Hampshire or whatever)

The Margin of error is typically 5% or so in large sample polls (which is basically what a weighted polling average is) with about a 95% degree of certainty. Individual polls suck, polling averages are a lot better than people seem to think they are

If you take a sample of 200 of my bets I probably win at about my 4% roi a bit, by 1000 bets the sample is semi meaningful by 10,000 bets you're prob gonna see me winning at between 2-6% roi because the sample size got meaningful and we got through the variance.

The certainty is slightly lower this cycle than usual specifically due to the possibility Trump will try and cheat by invalidating postal votes - PA has the double envelope rule, and WI has the must be received by close of polls regardless of when sent, so Dems will lose 1% or so in PA there but also they can be received later in PA so they're harder to suppress there. In Wisconsin Dems might lose 1% or so as well with the ruling today but all up Trump's efforts to **** with postal voting haven't been successful, my postal vote got there easily in Florida and incrementally with ballot tracking I don't know of anyone yet whose vote has been 'lost' in a swing state as a registered Dem, and 45% of the 2016 turnout or something insane like that has already voted (haven't checked todays numbers) so the Dems have banked a reasonably large lead so far that can't be taken back or invalidated barring massive cheating/abandonment of Democracy etc in which case we as in the entire west have much bigger problems than losing one wager

Anyone who cares about the Hunter Biden stuff is already voting for Trump, it may swing 0.x% but not enough care about it at all and there's some doubt over the legitimacy of some of it, but even if it's all accurate as told by Fox News, Hunter did some drugs and maybe had Joe set up one improper meeting or something which no one gives a **** about while Trump is in the oval office forcing the secret service to stay at his resorts and raking in millions while he golfs and refusing to release his taxes and all that and Trump has a secret chinese bank account himself and shady ties to Russia and whatnot. No one in either base is going to go 'oh **** Biden/Trump is shadier than I thought better vote for the other guy' and very very very few swing voters care about that this cycle - they care about healthcare, riots, political polarization, Trump's personality/divisiveness and a bunch of other things. Trump's approval rating has been more static at about 40-50 approve-disapprove through his whole term than any other president ever basically because people's minds are made up about him. The base love him, the left hates him, and independents don't like him as much as they did four years ago partially because he had a fairly bad first term and partially because Biden is less divisive and has less of an offputting personality than Hillary did. Also, Democrats were complacent in 2016 assuming a win was assured and are very much not so this year - case in point, I made the effort to vote (and didn't in 2016 only pres year ive missed after I requested my ballot and it didn't come I didn't follow up because I assumed Hillary was a lock) and I have friends voting Dem who skipped 2016 or voted third party etc it's all incremental but the numbers suggest 60%+ turnout as opposed to 55% last time and Trump hasn't grown his base or improved his popularity with independents - he'll get a similar number of votes to 2016, but Biden is going to get more votes than Hillary did. Remember, Trump roughly matched Romney's numbers it was Hillary's vote that declined, Trump didn't unlock a huge new base of support.

No swing voter is going to vote based on who they think is more corrupt this cycle, they're going to vote on 'do I want another four years of Trump yes/no', it's a referendum on the incumbent because Trump has not made it anything other than a referendum on the incumbent, trying to paint Joe as a dementia patient doesn't work with anyone outside the base, because people see the debates and while yeah, he may have lost a step compared to ten years ago he's obviously still got a functional brain as we saw in the debates.

Anyway sorry thats a bunch of ramble but the flaw in your thinking is that overcoming a 4% deficit in the polls by overperforming by 1.5% and losing the pop vote by 2.5% but winning the EC by about 1% in the key swing states is not the same as overcoming a 6% 8% or 10% deficit at all. Remember, the polls can be wrong in BOTH directions too they won't always overstate Democratic support they may overstate Republican support as well.

So first we need there to be a 5%+ polling error, then we need it to ALSO be in favour of Trump not against him (if it's against him he's losing a landslide) then Trump ALSO needs the vote to be distributed correctly in the appropriate states like it was last time if he can get the popular vote within the 3-4% he needs it to be to be live to win the electoral college

If he loses the pop vote by 5%+ he's just not going to win the electoral college. By comparison, if Clinton had 2.5% more of the vote nationally, she wins FL MI WI PA and the election

Again i'm not saying it's impossible Trump wins, but he's a lot closer to 20% to win than the 33% or so the market has right now and Biden is a lot closer to 80% than the 67% or so the market has give or take. The market is wrong, it is undervaluing both fundamentals and weighted polling averages and now that high turnout is a lock given the early voting, Trump is drawing to 'trump cheats' equity or 'historically huge polling error which is many many times less likely than 2016 margin'

I would snap lock in a 'polls are wrong by the same margin as 2016 in Trump's favour' outcome if I could today, and that would lead to a Biden victory. Trump needs a polling error about three to four times the size of the polling error in 2016, or to improve his position by several percent in the averages this week. Neither is likely.

This could be as good as the second best bet of the past five years on a liquid market after May/Mac which was -3xx on a spot that should have been between -2000 and -5000 or so - feel free to laugh at me in a week and change if i'm wrong, but I have a -14x average price on a spot that should be -400 or so and I probably don't have enough on it quite at 10% of the bankroll, but more than 25% or so would be too much

For what its worth my bet size is about 1.5x what I had on May/Mac, but my roll is several times the size of what it was back then so as a percentage of roll it's smaller, but again I was probably too conservative with my sizing then as I am being right now as well (half kelly would suggest 20% not 10% if my calculations are correct re actual odds vs available prices etc)

Saying '2016 proved the polls can be wrong' is like saying 'The Cardinals actually beat the Seahawks by 3 when the spread said they would lose by 3.5, therefore the current betting line is wrong by 6.5 in the same direction on all Seahawks and Cardinals games in the future'

On average, the polls will be accurate, with the most likely result being about the let's say 9% or whatever margin the polls suggest, then 8 and 10, then 7 and 11, then 6 and 12, and so on until eventually yes, the underdog can win a small percentage of the time, just as an NFL +10.5 favourite sometimes but not very often wins a single match (1 in 5-6 times or whatever), but just because they won that one match doesn't mean the spread was 'wrong' by 10.5 or more and will be every time in the future in the same direction

Obviously if Trump is only down 4% or so in the polls on election day he's going to win a LOT more often than if it's 6% which in turn is a lot more often than if he's down 9% and so on just as a +3.5 point dog is going to win more often than a +7.5 point dog and in turn more often than a +19.5 point dog in the NFL

If I had to pick an exact NFL game from this weekend to show where Trump is right now it would be about he's the Giants against the Buccaneers, but if his polling deteriorates by a few percent he becomes the Jets against KC, but if he improves it by 2-3% he becomes the Vikings or Bengals, and if he improves it by 5% or so to trail nationally by 3.5-4 or whatever then it gets a lot closer to a pickem, or if he's polling even nationally he becomes a pretty substantial fav and at that point he's the Packers or maybe even a slightly bigger fav than that

Holy ****. Just placed a wager on Biden. -198. Seems like robbery.

Since people wanted a value I have $2000 on Biden at -198. Considering upping it to 5.

When you withdraw that money, and PI juices you 5% of your withdrawal, how much did you earn on those positions where you paid 95 cents or more?
(To be clear, I know the answer is going to be that you're not planning to remove that cash, rather, roll it into something else on PI, but the noobs need to know they shouldn't go park money on PI for a week at 95 cents/ share and expect any positive ROI.)

From looking at all the markets on multiple sites 4 likely outcomes seem to be

Democrat 290 Republican 248 [42]
Democrat 279 Republican 259 [20]
Democrat 270 Republican 268 [2]
Democrat 259 Republican 279 [20]

so I'm on Dems by 10-29 +2500, Dems by 30-50 +2000, Dems by 1-9 +3500, GOP by 10-29 +2200

When you buy Nos on multiple contracts in the same market, it doesn't cost you more, as predictit only charges you the most you could lose in the worst case scenario. I'm too lazy to do the math, but its probably something like $1200 total he has tied up there. Should be quite a +EV position even for someone depositing and withdrawing right away.

Ah, I guess I don't get it. To simplify things, if our hero buys 100 contracts at 92 cents, 94 cents, and 96 cents, and they all resolve at $1, how much does our hero have upon resolution?

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Biden to win Texas hahaha, I've heard it all now.

Added Trump to win Florida.

(assuming these are all No contracts in the same market). The worst case scenario is you losing $83.4. So that's how much predictit takes out of your account. Then the payout at resolution is based on how much better the actual outcome is for you than the worst case scenario.

You get a payout of a few cents if its one of the other losing contracts (that are just slightly better than the worst case scenario). If all of your contracts are winners, your contracts are worth $96+$0.9*(0.04)*100 = $99.60 more than they are in the worst case scenario, so you get a payout of $99.60 for a net profit of $16.2.

So essentially, the bet is risk $83.4 to win $16.2.

So, I could "cover" 8 "no" contracts, × 100, in a market, and my only outlay is for the most expensive one? So, deposit, say, $100 and cover a ton of same-market no's? That's remarkably different given the 5% juice PI charges on withdrawal. Thanks.

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Correct

Thanks! I learned something new today. I was gobsmacked at how someone could be laying 95 cent prices and making anything, but when you can cover multiple positions with the same bet, it's quite different than betting a single outcome!

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Imagine reading an entire SwoopAE post. This thread is actually dece if you put him and the non sports bettors on ignore. Keep it coming HITS/SIGS/TOMG/JB/POOGS.

I have no idea what is going to happen, but if Biden is such a great bet, why haven't more people with money bet on Biden? Is it a Mayweather/McGregor sitch? Or are people afraid of the opp cost if these bets don't settle until May?