Yea I’m with holiday.

Chuck, show your bets or stfu.

Actually just stfu either way.

LOL swoop that post! How long did that take?? That’s the longest post I’ve ever seen on here. You gotta learn to edit yourself man, ain’t no one reading that whole thing. You gotta learn how to use periods correctly too.

Update on vaccine surprise: it ain't happening. PFE announced earnings today, and said they hadn't reached 32 cases yet. They said after they reached that point, they would need to do about a week's worth of analysis before announcing anything publicly. Even if they hit 32 tomorrow, we're not going to hear about it until after the election.

How I got this, methodology critiques?

I looked at the sportsbooks who are offering markets on this that aren't just copying each other and that I know take big bets. Set up a range of probabilities for 19 states based on the odds offered. Why 19? Not every state was offered and it's not worth caring about the 1% chance Trump wins California. I just treated those as 100%

Then I just sampled from those 19 states 1 million times and calculated the electoral votes. Difference in odds between books? More variance.

Those 4 scenarios I listed above were around 6%-11% (the first one listed was the most likely and is actually the scenario currently on the front page of predictit which is funny because that situation is one of the smallest to win there also) of happening. All those are +EV bets based on this.

Is this the best method? No but I trust sportsbooks that are taking 3k-10k bets on these more than 538 saying Biden is a favorite in Texas when Trump is -300 or more to win Texas all over the place. I'm sure sportsbooks are off (which is why we can bet there and make money), but if we went by 538 we'd assume a 40-60% edge on so many markets.

I trust the sportsbooks are closer to the real situation.

If it's not reported anywhere but Fox whose viewers (myself included) are already voting Trump did it even happen?

Also profiting of political office in shady deals is pretty standard in the American congress, so maybe the mainstream just accepts this and wouldn't care anyway. Bigger story imo is social media blocking legitimate stories.

Not that any of this matters, people are either voting for Trump or against Trump, no one actually wants Biden or cares what he has done. He's not Trump and that's good enough for the TDS sufferers.

Free money opportunities on PredictIt:

Who will control the House after 2020 election? Short Republicans at 16.
Related bets on balance of power in Congress and House seats won by Democrats.

Electoral college margin of victory. Sell GOP by 150+ for a total of 11%. Or sell GOP by 60+ for 39%. Shorting any of the GOP contracts is +EV, but GOP by 60-150 is at least in the realm of possibility.

Popular vote margin of victory. Sell any GOP contracts for a total of 24%.
Sell Trump win popular vote in 2020 at 19%.

There are a whole bunch of state markets -- Dems to win IL at 93, Dems in RI at 94, GOP to win IN at 92, SD at 94, etc.

You're ignoring correlations between states. The elections are not independent events.

Is that not captured in sportsbooks odds? If not then would the plan be to find a way to exploit that from them?

If they let you parlay WI and MI and PA, you should do that.

Are all the SCIENCE POLLS bros feeling the walls closing in?

Do you feel the squeeze starting to set in yet?

At the altar of lies you all will lie.

Add a correlation coefficient to your simulation. One simple method is to generate an additional random number for each simulation (Rcoef) and scale the random number you generate for each state by an appropriate amount. (Rcoef + Rstate = 1).

You should see your results fall closer to the sportsbook odds.

A more sophisticated method would be to use a state-by-state correlation matrix.

PM if you want to see some sample code for the first method.

The individual state odds definitely won't price in correlation. The MOV is kinda where they price correlation (I guess to a tiny extent also the main election market, but the information you can get from main election odds is not very much).

Polling error is often close to uniform, so at a minimum you want a nationwide correlated error, and probably some regional/demographic based errors as well.

I max bet 3 lines on SI and 1 line on Betway (at the time at least). Had problems getting money onto Pinny, so a friend took the other side of the bet for me.

The majority of my position is in stocks though (I jumped onto the green energy bubble).

Lol wtf this is probably the worst take I have read in all of this thread and that's including some hilarious Trump bettor manifestos. I have way more than 35% wagered but why the **** do you think I'd want to post my net worth on a public forum?

But yes I've been pretty vocal about the Biden betting opportunity since mid-September when Trump was still favorite and I was already 30% networth in. I also did this under my own name to nearly 4000 followers so that's a bit different than a random with 150 posts sharing his view from behind a screen name. If Biden wins I gain nothing extra from having recommended the bet to others but if Trump wins I'm going to feel like **** and people will be mad. It's a negative freeroll to do this kind of thing in general and I certainly wouldn't do it in public if I wasn't very certain of the bet being extremely great EV. Not a lock by any means, but first it was ~70% at evens and now it's probably close to 90% at -200. I think I've endorsed like 6 bets in my life to others beyond threads in betting forums, and the one time it missed I was borderline depressed for two months because I felt so bad for people's money. I have yet to feel anything positive about all the EV I've printed for others though. Here are some screenshots of bets from two weeks ago, but 0 chance I'm sharing my actual net worth in dollars with the peanut gallery. I know you Americans love talking about money but in the actual first world posting your own networth online, especially if you are even remotely well-known in any area of public interest is a terrible idea and very -EV.


Why are you so mad? Did you buy the Trump top?

If we agree that polling averages are non-biased, what evidence is their that polling error favors trump? Are you trump bettors ignoring polling statistics entirely or factoring them in somehow?

There's none. In 2012 the polls favored republicans, in 2016 they favored dems. Iirc in 2018 they favored republicans again?

I just think it's nice to have a bit of safety cushion here, I don't mind automatically assuming they're skewing a couple of points towards Dems. It just doesn't matter because it's not a close election at all. If it was currently Biden +3 nationwide and +1 in swing states, this would be a major talking point. But now the Trump bros keep shouting "the polls are wrong again1!!!!1111" without realizing that it's equally likely Biden is even a bigger favorite than the polls say, and even if they are wrong by a ridiculous magnitude in Trump's favor, Biden still wins.

Trump bros also love quoting Rasmussen/Trafalgar as "the only polls who got 2016 right so they must be right again". In shocking fashion, in a close election won by republicans, the polls that skew towards republicans by insane margins are the ones to get best result. Over time though... they will do much worse than neutral pollsters.

fair enough. i may not like you, but you can stay. you'll have to clarify what % of your net worth you have on biden though. you calculate that and when you've got it ready, come up to the bar, we'll have another kosenkorva waiting for you.

I've always wondered how it is that so many supposedly successful professional gamblers wind up broke, often more than once, and then today I learn that people are actually betting 35%+ on Nate Silver touts and it all makes sense.

if they put some meat in the burger maybe USA today or reuters would report on it until WaPo or NYT inevitably debunkadoodled

i agree that american voters are probably pretty cynical in this election and would tolerate worse misbehaviour from their chosen candidate than they might otherwise. i also agree that biden corruption is probably not going to flip too many voters.

what does seem feasible is that it demoralises biden voters who are already very low energy. they know their candidate sucks but at least he's honest, unlike that other guy. take that away and all those people that don't want to stand in the rain because they forgot their umbrella, are having car troubles, have a sick kid at home, have a bad headache today...all those people that are just right on the fence making a last-second decision about whether they really want to take a couple hours out of their day to go stand in line and maybe get sick -- well, they really did mean to vote. they planned to. they told their friends they were going to vote. and they REALLY HATE TRUMP! but, you know what, **** it. turns out joe biden is just like the rest of them, and it's only one vote he's probably going to win by thousands of votes in this state anyway. those are the people that some biden corruption news might dissuade from actually making the effort to vote.

you might only need 1 or 2 out of 100 people to think that way and that's trump winning it again. probably a similar situation with hillary and her emails in 2016.

the whole reason why people are dubious of polls is that they are biased. there are many potential reasons for this. but your starting assumption kind of misses the whole point.

I've seen the Rasmussen reports mentioned a few times. They definitely nailed the 2016 election, but weren't they super off for the 2018 midterms? Or am I mistaken?

Btw, very interesting discussion going here. Been enjoying going through it, even though I hate politics.

The situation changes by the day, but roughly of my net worth I have currently:

55%ish straight up Biden. Bought more probably close to 50 times now, average odds -125ish

15%ish other stuff, mostly hedges, semi-hedges and arbs. 300-400 different bets but the overall sentiment is that these are hedging huge against small Trump wins and not much at all against Trump landslides. As long as Trump doesn't win the popular vote, I'd say on average these more than double on average, so as of now as long as Trump doesn't win popular vote, my worst case scenario is something like -35 to -40% net worth.

3%ish senate bets and other random stuff like that

7% buys set on Betfair that have yet to hit

20% unwagered for now

If the odds are unchanged on election day I don't see much choice but going somewhat all-in Biden tho. But I doubt that happens, I would be extremely shocked if -- pending any further drama in Trump's favor or very bad polls for Biden -- Trump wouldn't drift towards the +400 territory.

Fair, I'm not a professional gambler (anymore) though. Had a pretty solid 12-year career. I wouldn't recommend anyone bet such a percentage of money they actually might need at some point. I'll have another paycheck coming every month and I'm not betting a cent I can't afford to lose. I view this as a not-very-many-times-a-lifetime betting opportunity and I'm wagering accordingly, and there's also a strong chance I'll sell a big chunk or even all of my position if Trump drifts enough as he should. The market is so slow to react, there's ~nothing that can happen that wouldn't leave me with enough time to sell it all, probably at a profit, even if something dramatic happened unless Biden dies or something.

But yeah I'm definitely not recommending anyone betting more than you can afford to lose on anything. Back when I was playing professionally and my poker roll was basically also my liferoll, idk how much I would've wagered... I'd guess maybe 25-40%. The kind of wager that would hurt like hell to lose, but still in the territory where you know you'll bounce back from the unlikely even of losing without too much trouble.

i thought this older 538 article was an interesting counterpoint to the conventional wisdom that increased voter turnout always favors democrats.



Increased Voter Turnout Could Benefit Republicans Or Democrats In 2020

according to this analysis, in many battleground states, it's not clear that huge turnout is a big help to democrats. caveat: the polling was done in early 2020 when betting markets actually had trump as a slight favorite, pre-pandemic, pre-recession, pre-biden as nominee.

Maybe. The last 2016 poll which weighted by 2012 vote (as this thread knows, I think any poll that doesn't weight by previous vote is utter trash) was this one:

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.ne...bReport_lv.pdf
(see table 12)

It has (actual results in parentheses)
Clinton 45 (48)
Trump 41 (46)
Johnson 5 (3)
Stein 2 (1)
Other 3 (1)
Not sure 4

So you could say the polls favoured third party candidates and also "favoured" not sure and underestimated both Clinton and Trump.

My view is that the polls were accurate but there was a late third-party squeeze and the voters just broke more towards Trump - which was predictable given two of the main 3rd party candidates were Johnson and McMullin. Effectively Clinton gained half of Stein's votes and half the not sure. Trump gained about half of the Libertarian+Other, and half of the not sure.

Admittedly this is hindsight but it's fairly obvious there where his votes are coming from.

This time the latest poll from the same company says:
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/fsf95upr...virus_tabs.pdf
(see table 6)
Biden 51
Trump 39
Other 2
Undecided 3
Will not vote 5

so it's harder to see where Trump's votes are going to come from.

Note that bottom right on the same page breaks out current voting intention by 2016 vote. Trump has lost twice more than twice as many voters to Biden than he has gained former Clinton voters.

Reverse your bets. Trump wins bro

Joe Biden's rally today